Conversing on the commons: an interview with Gustavo Esteva—part 2

Abstract

This is the second part of an edited transcript of an interview with Gustavo Esteva that took place during a Thinkery on the Commons held in Dublin in June 2014, a full recording of which is available on the journal’s companion website, CDJ Plus (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/cdjc/cdj-events/ commons-sense-a-thinkery-on-the-commons ). The fi rst part is published in the previous issue of theCommunity Development Journal (50(3)). One of the contributors to the Community Development Journal’s Special Supplement on the commons (Esteva, 2014), Gustavo Esteva is a Mexican commons activist, post-development theorist and ‘deprofessionalized intellectual’. Advocating an understanding of the commons as first and foremost an activity, a way of people relating to each other and the natural world, rather than a thing or a natural resource, Gustavo asserts that certain kinds of contemporary ‘commoning’ constitute the beginnings of a new post-capitalist society. He has two key sources of inspiration: the ideas of the Austrian-born philosopher and ascetic Ivan Illich (1926 –2 002), and the new way of living and governing of the Mexican Zapatistas that has emerged since the 1994 uprising of indigenous people calling themselves the Zapatista National Liberation Army. In the first part of the interview Gustavo explains some of the conceptual tools offered by Ivan Illich, along with his rejection of the project of development, and his commitment to interculturality, the possibility of real dialogue between people with fundamentally different worldviews. Emphasizing that social relationships are fundamental to any community organizing and commoning, he explains the interactions with others and technologies that Illich argued characterize a ‘convivial’ society. This second part of the interview, which includes challenging questions and comments from the floor, explores different traditions of thinking, speaking and acting in the contemporary commons movement. This movement, which is flourishing in various parts of the world today, includes highly diverse