Ah, yes, exactly something I’ve been saying for a while… hadn’t realized it had been said (that is, that ecologists are sorely under-versed in Ostrom).
Elinor Ostrom, the first woman ever awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, has died. Ecologists, including me, mostly don’t know her work (I only know of it). But we should. She did hugely important work on the management of common pool resources, and argued that Hardin’s tragedy of the commons was in fact sustainably soluble (and, as a matter of historical fact, had been sustainably solved many times) via appropriate social norms and institutions, not just by privatizing the commons as Hardin argued.
Crooked Timber has a brief remembrance and (as always over there) a remarkably good comment thread full of thoughtful remarks and useful links.
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