Introduction Part II: Debt, Obligation, and Care on the Commons

Discussions about the commons raise philosophical questions about what we owe to one another as members of communities and societies. They also invoke claims about what society or the larger whole owes to us as individual members. In a book such as this seeking practical and transformative visions for leadership on the commons, it is appropriate to step back and grapple briefly with some of the subtle conceptual issues at hand. Rights, duties, obligations – these are the kinds of terms used to map and legislate life together politically and economically. It strikes me that one of the sites of confusion and tension around mapping our responsibilities within a commons framework concerns the ways debt and indebtedness blur with broader notions of obligation. This is partly why economic considerations are (understandably) foregrounded since language of debt (correctly) invokes financial considerations. But it limits our analysis to reduce the scope of our social bonds to economic ones. Discussions about obligations on the commons are partly grasping at what exceeds or is simply different than the economic but still pertains to what we owe to one another in our common life together.