New book on collaborative living

Collaborative living is experiencing a revival in The Netherlands. In the midst of an unprecedented housing crisis, more and more people turn to collective self-organisation to provide housing that is community-oriented, environmentally sustainable and affordable. But why is it so difficult for these initiatives to get off the ground? And what can be learned from other European countries?

Dr Darinka Czischke, Associate Professor in Housing and Social Sustainability at TU Delft, wrote a new book on this theme with colleagues Marije Peute and Sara Brysch. ‘Together: Towards Collaborative Living’ presents a collection of essays, data and cases from The Netherlands and other European countries that build on a knowledge programme developed in 2021 by Project Together!. The book illustrates the dilemmas and opportunities to move towards a new paradigm on how to live in the twenty-first century, together.

The book launch is on October 24 at Pakhuis De Zwijger. Read more about the event >

You can pre-order the book here >

New affiliate reseacher SE&ICA

Research group SE&ICA welcomes dr. Enrique Santamaría Echeverría as an affiliate researcher. Enrique is a researcher in Innovation of Public Law at Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands).

His research focuses on the relations between the human body and the law. Although it focuses predominately on bio law and private law problems, it also has a strong cross/interdisciplinary component, and tackles issues closely related to the fields of bio ethics, philosophy, data governance, and the protection of human dignity and other fundamental rights. His most recent research interests include health data governance, data and genome commons and health data cooperatives.

Thriving community enterprise ecosystems – SEWF

On October 10, Ondernemen met je Buurt organizes a SEWF Fringe Event and has invited Lukas Held from CollectieveKracht to participate in a discussion around thriving community entrepreneurships. He will shine a light on the commons movement and the role of the government. Also attending are: Tutku Yuksel, initiator of Thuis Wageningen, Caroline Gribner and Safka Overweel regarding funds such as Stichting DOEN and Katalys, and Martin Avila, explaining how the Scottish government created a welcoming environment for collectives.

From 9 to 13 October SEWF Week ’23 takes place, organized by the Social Enterprise World Forum. On the 10th is Fringe Day: a collections of related (and mostly free) events independent of SEWF.

Best Paper Award 2023

Thomas Bauwens (RSM), Benjamin Huybrechts (IESEG) and Frédéric Dufays (HEC Liège) have received the Organization & Environment’s Best Paper Award 2023, recognizing the 3-year impact for their paper “Understanding the Diverse Scaling Strategies of Social Enterprises as Hybrid Organizations: The Case of Renewable Energy Cooperatives”

The article addresses the diversity of scaling strategies, which the authors put forward as hybrid organizations, in the sense that they pursue several goals at once (economic, societal, environmental, etcetera). The authors also highlight how collaboration among social enterprises may help to achieve their goals collectively.

Read the entire article here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1086026619837126

Next step for research intern Grant

Grant Halliday, who has been with the team as a research intern since September 2021, will start his PhD near the end of the month. It will be a History PhD at the University of Michigan, with the current plan focusing on early medieval economic and environmental history. He’ll likely be working on some aspect of institutions surrounding agriculture and peasant organizations in the Merovingian period. It will be a interdisciplinary project, as he is hoping to bring in some archaeobotanical research in along with institutional theory. He is also thinking of ways to analyze collective action in the period, something that a few other researchers have begun to explore in the last couple years.

A word from Grant: “I certainly hope to continue fishing collective research on the side as well and will certainly keep up with the team. Working with this group has put me on a good footing for graduate study, I believe, and I can’t thank everyone enough for their kindness and support!”

Debate on commons at Debatcentrum Arminius

A lively debate on ‘commons’ took place at Debatpodium Arminius on 27 June. Prof. Tine De Moor (Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University) was one of the speakers, along with political philosopher Yara Al Salman (Universiteit Utrecht), Femke Stam (Knarrenhof), Jelte Boeijenga (Energie van Rotterdam), Annet Van Otterloo (Afrikaanderwijk Coöperatie), Sebastiaan Bonte (Leefbaar Rotterdam) and Tim de Haan (D66). Watch the recordings on YouTube, sound starts at 6:21.

‘Commons for dummies’ – interview (in Dutch) with Tine De Moor

Following her inaugural lecture ‘Shakeholder society? Social Enterprises, citizens and collective action in the community economy‘, Tine De Moor was interviewed about commons (a.k.a. citizen collectives) by Annemarieke Nierop from the Wiardi Beckman Association. Van Nierop also visited a modern common, to wit the division of Herenboeren Nederland in Bergen. The resulting article (in Dutch) can be found on the association’s website.

‘Samen bouwen, samen vertrouwen’, article in the Volkskrant

The Volkskrant published an article on citizen collectives: ‘Build together, trust together. It presents Ecodorp Boekel as a specimen of a citizen collective and gives an impression of the CollectieveKracht meeting on 16 June, which was co-organized by a sub-group of our research team. The journal article highlights the keynote speech from prof. dr. Godfried Engbersen (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam) and contributions from Wilhelmina Hoedjes (Energiecollectief Weert), public administration expert Karin Geuijen (Universiteit Utrecht), and Annet Van Otterloo (Afrikaanderwijk Coöperatie). The article can be found here: Samen-bouwen-hoe-burgercollectieven-gedijen-waar-het-vertrouwen-in-de-overheid-daalt.pdf. For the English translation see this page.