International Association for the Study of the Commons North American Regional Meeting
Hosted by the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity
September 30 – October 2, 2010
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona, USA
Theme: Capturing the Complexity of the Commons
The regional meeting North American branch of the IASC will have as its theme “capturing the complexity of the commons” reflecting the increasing efforts to understand commons over time at multiple levels of scale. The goal is to foster more discussion and collaboration especially among North American researchers working on commons from an interdisciplinary point of view. We invite scholars from the natural and social sciences as well as humanities and arts.
The conference is interdisciplinary and open to any individual interested in common-pool resources and common property issues. It is aimed at encouraging the discussion on the conference topics among researchers and practitioners living in Canada, the USA, Mexico or elsewhere. This should result in a stronger research network and an enhanced exchange of experiences primarily among North American researchers and students working on the Commons and also with scholars elsewhere.
The conference is organized in 3 subthemes:
Complexity This theme address the increasing focus of commons research on cases with historical depth, multiple resources and resource uses, and multiple levels of social and ecological processes. Topics included in this subtheme are the resilience of common pool resources, institutional learning and adaptation, and transboundary commons and conflicts.
New Commons This theme includes commons that can be grouped in four broad classes: the urban commons, the virtual commons, the environmental services and public health. Research on those topics using conceptual tools designed for the study of commons has strongly increased in the last few years. Moreover, many of those commons are, at present, crucial for the welfare of human beings as a whole.
Multiple Methods to Study the Commons This theme addresses the methodological contributions to study the commons including ethnographic case studies, collaborative field studies, experiments, formal modeling and participatory processes. Besides contributions of the individual methodologies we recognize the benefits of using multiple methods to address the same research questions.
Proposals for panels, workshops and individual papers are due April 1, 2010. Confirmation of acceptance of the abstract will be sent by May 1, 2010. Final papers are due September 1, 2010 (details will be sent to authors upon abstract acceptance).
Submission of Abstracts . All abstracts must be submitted electronically in Word, text, or pdf format. Abstracts should be submitted via the conference website .
