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And Lettuce Is Nonanimal: Toward A Positive Theory Of Voluntary Action, Roger A. Lohmann
And Lettuce Is Nonanimal: Toward A Positive Theory Of Voluntary Action, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
Much recent conceptual and theoretical effort to identify and define the kinds of voluntary action that take place outside households, economic markets and governments has a consistent emphasis on negation: It seems to define these matters by what they are not: not for profit, or nonprofit, nongovernmental, unproductive, inefficient, examples of contract failure, market failure, government failure and more. This paper is a beginning effort to shift the emphasis to the positive and the describe and explain what voluntary action is and what it consists of. It proposes the beginnings of an economics of common goods production, and differentiates such …
Book Review: Sievers, B. R. (2010). Civil Society, Philanthropy, And The Fate Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Book Review: Sievers, B. R. (2010). Civil Society, Philanthropy, And The Fate Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
The selection of civil society institutions (which the author refers to as strands) around which the volume is woven is interesting because it contains several novel elements in a novel combination: civil society is said to consist of philanthropy, the common good, rule of law, nonprofit and voluntary institutions, individual rights, free expression and tolerance. This book is important reading for political philosophers, doctoral students and theorists interested in the connection of civil society and philanthropy. Yet it has a number of weaknesses that are enumerated in the review.
Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
The commons is a theoretical formalism that is useful in understanding many diverse problems of civil society. A common (or commons) is an economic, political, social, and legal institution that enables joint, shared, mutual or collective natural or social action by agents using a “pool” of shared or jointly held or mutually controlled resources. A substantial body of work exists detailing natural common resource pools acted upon by physical or biological agents. Another large body of work on humanly-directed natural resource pools study the human-natural environment interface, interspecies conflict and population density. Studies of social commons have also looked at …
The U.S. Social Economy And The Commons Model Of Production, Roger A. Lohmann
The U.S. Social Economy And The Commons Model Of Production, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
Recent work in Canada and Europe has re-emphasized the place of nonprofit organizations, as that term is conventionally understood in the broader context of social economy. Although not generally recognized by U.S. and international scholars, a distinctive concept of social economy largely compatible with the Canadian and European formulations is embedded in U.S. constitutional, corporate, charitable and tax law. However, its full recognition is discouraged in the current U.S. political culture and third sector studies. The U.S. social economy provides full and robust, recognition of the social, political and economic organizations known as commons, as well as nonprofit firms.
Community Foundations In West Virginia, Roger A. Lohmann
Community Foundations In West Virginia, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
This report is part of an ongoing investigation of the support of neighborhood associations by community foundations in three states – Michigan, New Mexico and West Virginia. The findings are primarily negative: There is no evidence that the 22 community foundations of West Virginia have provided support for the development or continuation of neighborhood associations in the state.
After The Third Sector: Emerging And Disappearing Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
After The Third Sector: Emerging And Disappearing Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
The third sector is currently the most popular label for capturing the activities of a highly diverse set of tax-exempt corporations and nonprofit organizations. For some, the third sector is also the nonprofit organization sector, although for many of us it is also the sector of voluntary associations, clubs, self-help groups, and volunteering, although these components of voluntary action have been over-shadowed by interest in nonprofit management. The general thesis of this paper is that although the voluntary action is a more or less permanent feature of human community, the particular forms of the contemporary nonprofit organization and the third …
After The Third Sector: Emerging And Disappearing Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
After The Third Sector: Emerging And Disappearing Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
The third sector is currently the most popular categorical label as a summary term for capturing the activities of a highly diverse set of tax-exempt corporations and nonprofit organizations. I draw a sharper-than-usual distinction here between a third sector composed of a million or more social entrepreneurial nonprofit firms and and the voluntary associations, clubs, groups and diverse uncountable volunteer and philanthropic efforts, projects, causes, which I label as commons and which have in recent years been increasingly subsumed under the general heading of civil society. While the voluntary action of commons is a more or less permanent feature of …
Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
In Anglo-American traditions, the concept of a commons has historically been most frequently attached to shared land in joint use by a village or community. The common theory of voluntary action presents organized collective action as consisting of shared purposes, shared resources and voluntary participation resulting in an evolving sense of mutuality, and moral order, consisting of shared norms of fairness and participation.
Escaping The Tragedy Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Escaping The Tragedy Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
Is tragedy due to over harvesting an inevitable consequence of the voluntary action of cooperation in a commons? No. Actually, commons theory resolved this question several decades ago. Such common goods are those pursued jointly by pluralities less than the dominant majority controlling the state and its unique ability to define public goods. In an era when the state has proven relatively powerless to define unambiguous public goods and public policy making is largely circumscribed in terms of a competition among interest groups, the state itself has become a major producer of common, rather than genuinely public, goods.
The Internet As Commons: A Tale Of Enclosure, Roger A. Lohmann
The Internet As Commons: A Tale Of Enclosure, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
The original model of the internet developed as an electronic commons for scientists and academics. It will be only a matter of time before the same rich and powerful information barons who already control such "fourth estate" communication industries as newspaper, magazine and book publishing, television networks and movie production facilities establish their toll-booths on the information superhighway as well. Fortunately, within this electronic ocean of corporate and proprietary feudalism, there may also be room for an archipelago of freistaaten; "free citystates" functioning as autonomous and self-governing islands for the arts, sciences, humanities, social service and community.
The Commons: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Nonprofit Organization, Voluntary Action And Philanthropy, Roger A. Lohmann
The Commons: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Nonprofit Organization, Voluntary Action And Philanthropy, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
The task of identifying nonprofit organizations, voluntary action and philanthropy as the principal constituents of a single "sector" within the larger economy, society and polity has been a central challenge for the multidisciplinary paradigm which seems to be emerging in this field. The concepts of the commons and common goods are presented as concepts with important multi-disciplinary implications. The commons is characterized by uncoerced participation, shared purposes and resources, mutuality and fairness and the derivative concept of common goods, as desirable ends which are universal and indivisible within a commons but not necessarily beyond. Taken together, commons and common goods …
The Repertory Of Social Care Of The Elderly, Roger A. Lohmann
The Repertory Of Social Care Of The Elderly, Roger A. Lohmann
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
This paper is an analysis of aspects of the emergence of a repertory of social care services for the elderly from the vantage point of the common theory of voluntary action. One facet of that theory, labeled here as endowment theory, is an emerging rational choice model of the praxeological implications of voluntary action within the pragmatic problem-solving tradition. Three terms – endowment, repertory and commons – are presented in the paper as terms whose conventional meanings contain previously undisclosed connotations relevant to a fuller understanding of voluntary action.