Research Encounter #7: Naomi Millner

As part of our Seeds of Change project, my colleague Martha and I went to pick the brain of Naomi Millner, a Lecturer in the School of Geographical Sciences, whose interests include migration and the political economy of seeds. But she also outlined her research around the idea of the commons:

What does the word commons mean to us, both now and in history?  In the 1600s, the commons meant rural land and ways of farming together.  But as the countryside became more enclosed, and industrialisation started to threaten the green spaces, the concept of commons took on a different meaning.  Campaigns for preserving the commons focused on a romantic ideal of nature and how it could be a transformative force for social change.  Today, the idea of a global commons is emerging as an alternative to capitalism – instead of organising the world according to private and economic interests, global movements are thinking about how we can govern common resources together.  Linked to this is the idea of food sovereignty, which was set up as a counterpoint to food security.  Food sovereignty suggests that hunger in the world isn’t mainly an issue of growing enough food and increasing productivity – it’s more a political question of control, access and rights to land.  As such, the idea of the commons becomes a way to imagine how we could use and govern our environment and natural resources.