Post date: Oct 17, 2012 4:07:04 AM
Ivan Illich seems to have influenced the commons study in Japan, explicitly or implicitly, through Japanese translation by Yoshiroh Tamanoi (玉野井 芳郎) and others. I abstract (parts of) paragraphs including the term “commons” from his main work, Shadow Work (1981) and Gender (1982). I also bold the term. The italic is original.
From Shadow Work:
Speaking of the commons, one immediately imagines meadows and woods. One thinks of the enclosure of pastures by which the lord excluded the peasant’s single sheep, thereby depriving him of a means of existence marginal to the market, and forcing him into proto-industrial wage labor. One thinks of the destruction of what E. P. Thompson called the moral economy. The commons now under discussion are something much more subtle. Economists tend to speak about them as the ‘utilization value of the environment’. I believe that in its third stage the public discussion on limits to economic growth will focus primarily on the preservation of these ‘utilization values’, values which are destroyed by economic expansion, whatever form it takes. (p. 3)
In Tools for Conviviality, I called attention to how the environment is ruined for use-value oriented action by economic growth. I called this process the ‘modernization of poverty’ because in a modern society precisely those who have least access to the market also have least access to the utilization value of the commons. I ascribed this to the “radical monopoly of commodities over the satisfaction of needs”. (p. 4)
As a result, slowly, the full impact of industralization on the environment becomes visible: while only some forms of growth threaten the biosphere, all economic growth threatens the ‘commons’. All economic growth inevitably degrades the utilization value of the environment. (p. 10)
In Rome, [the term ‘vernacular’] was used from 500 B.C. to 600 A.D. to designate any value that was homebred, homemade, derived from the commons, and that a person could protect and defend though he neither bought nor sold in on the market. (p. 24)
Vernaculum as a Latin word was used for whatever was homebred, homespun, homegrown, homemade, as opposed to what was obtained in formal exchange. The child of one’s slave and of one’s wife, the donkey born of one’s own beast, were vernacular beings, as was the staple that came from the garden or the commons. (p. 57)
From Gender:
Counterproductivity is a social indicator that measures a group- or class-specific frustration resulting from the obligatory consumption of a good or service. Time loss through the acceleration of traffic patterns, medicine that makes one sick rather than well, stultification by educational curricula or news, dependence induced through political or social guidance—all are examples. (… ) In my opinion, counterproductivity is the result of a radical monopoly of commodities over vernacular values, which I still called use values in Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper and Row; London: Marion Boyars, 1971), esp. chapter 3, part 2, and Ivan Illich, “Energy and Equity” in Toward a History of Needs (New York: Pantheon, 1977): 110-43. This radical monopoly stems ultimately from the transformation of the commons—for instance, those regulated by traditional laws on the right of way for pedestrians—into public utilities necessary for the production or circulation of commodities. (p. 16)
Subsistence that is based on a progressive unplugging from the cash nexus now appears to be a condition for survival. Without negative growth, it is impossible to maintain an ecological balance, achieve justice among regions, or foster people’s peace. And the policy must, of course, be implemented in rich countries at a much higher rate than in poor ones. Perhaps the maximum anyone can reasonably hope for is equal access to the world’s scarce resources at the level currently typical for the poorest nations. The translation of such a proposition into specific action would require a multi-faceted alliance of many diverse groups and interests that pursues the recovery of the commons, what I call “radical political ecology.” (p. 17)
“Commons” is an old English word. Almende and Gemeinheit are corresponding German terms [see Ivan Illich, Das Recht auf Gemeinheit (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981), introduction]. The Italian term is gli usi civici. “Commons” referred to that part of the environment that lay beyond a person’s own threshold and outside his own possession, but to which, however, that person had a recognized claim of usage—not to produce commodities but to provide for the subsistence of kin. Neither wilderness nor home is commons, but that part of the environment for which customary law exacts specific forms of community respect. I will discuss the degradation of the commons through its transformation into a productive resource in Vernacular Values (op. cit. FN 1). Those who struggle to preserve the biosphere, and those who oppose a style of life characterized by a monopoly of commodities over activities, by reclaiming in bits and pieces the ability to exist outside the market’s regime of scarcity, have recently begun to coalesce in a new alliance. The one value shared by all currents within this alliance is the attempt to recover and enlarge, in some way, the commons. This emerging and converging social reality has been called the “archipelago of conviviality” by André Gorz. The key instrument for mapping this new world is Valentina Borremans, Reference Guide to Convivial Tools, Special Report no. 13 (New York: Libraary Journal, 1980), a critical guide to over a thousand bibliographies, catalogues, journals, etc. Periodical information and bibliographies on the struggle for a new commons can be found in such journals as: TRANET: Trans-National Network for Appropriate Alternative Technology, P.O. Box 567, Rangeley, ME 04980; CoEvolution Quarterly, Steward Brand, ed., P.O. Box 428, Sausalito, CA 94965.
For a more limited but lively survey, see George McRobie, *Small Is Possible (London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1981) and, more political, Harry Boyte, *The Backyard Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 198o). A major intellectual obstacle to the common formulation of the new claim on the commons is the consistent tendency among philosophers, jurists, and social critics to confuse the commons with industrial-age public utilities. I argue that the commons, which were protected by legal precedents prior to industrialization, were in fact gendered domains (cf. FN 79). (pp. 17-8)
In this essay, I use the term [scarcity] in a narrow sense only, the one used by economists since L. Walras first inaugurated that precise meaning in 1874. In this sense, scarcity defines the field in which the laws of economics relate (1) subjects (possessive, invidious, genderless individuals—personal or corporate), (2) institutions (which symbolically foster mimesis), and (3) commodities, within (4) an environment in which the commons have been transformed into resources, private or public. (pp. 18-9)
Unless the distinction between scarce productive resources and shared, porous commons is philosophically and legally recognized, the coming steady state society will be an oligarchic, undemocratic, and authoritarian expertocracy governed by ecologists. This is cogently argued by William Ophuls, *Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1979). (p. 19)
I set out to argue that the fight against sexism converges with efforts to reduce environmental destruction and endeavors to challenge the radical monopoly of goods and services over needs. I have argued that these three contemporary movements converge because economic shrinkage is the common condition for all three. And the recognition that economic cutback, for reasons specific to each movement, is for each not just a negative necessity but a positive condition for a better life can lead from theoretical convergence to concerted public action. I have further argued that these three movements represent three aspects of an attempt to recover the commons, the commons in that sense in which the term designates the precise inverse of an economic resource. For this undertaking I wished to suggest a theory to clarify the concepts necessary for a history of scarcity. (pp. 178-9)
Relevant (short) notes:
Commons Advocates against “Globalization,” etc.
A Criticism by T. T. Minh-ha against I. Illich
REFERENCES
Illich, Ivan. 1981 Shadow Work, Boston: Marion Boyars.
Illich, Ivan. 1982 Gender, New York: Pantheon.
Japanese translation:
- I．イリイチ 著／玉野井芳郎、栗原彬 訳『シャドウ・ワーク——生活のあり方を問う——』岩波書店;
1982：岩波現代選書,
1990：同時代ライブラリー,
2005：岩波モダンクラシックス,
2006：岩波現代文庫.
- I．イリイチ 著／玉野井芳郎 訳（1984）『ジェンダー——女と男の世界——』岩波書店（岩波現代選書）.