While legal tools are essential for fostering corporate accountability and safeguarding the interests of affected stakeholders, Italian corporate law has traditionally prioritized shareholder welfare as the primary concern for directors in fulfilling their fiduciary duties. This emphasis has created a corporate legal framework that largely overlooks the role of non-shareholder stakeholders in corporate governance and limits the legal remedies available to address adverse impacts on these groups. As a result, imbalances emerge in the management of shared natural resources, such as water, land, and air, where vulnerable communities often suffer harm from environmental degradation caused by corporate activities.
My presentation examines the underlying causes of this imbalance and explores whether more stakeholder-inclusive approaches might be viable, drawing on Italian corporate legal literature from recent decades. I identify the influence of Economic Analysis of Law (EAL) and neoliberalism on Italian corporate law theory as key factors contributing to this shareholder-centric approach. Concepts such as market fundamentalism, the principal-agent model of the corporation, shareholder welfare maximization, and fragmented legal analysis based on transactional efficiency have collectively favored market efficiency and shareholder interests over social and environmental concerns, reducing corporate accountability to non-contractual stakeholders.
In addition, I consider the Theory of the Commons (ToC), originally developed by Elinor Ostrom in the United States and expanded by Italian scholars Stefano Rodotà and Ugo Mattei, as a promising alternative framework for rebalancing the relationship between local communities and corporations within Italian law. The commons framework, which integrates a social system encompassing a shared resource, a community of users, and collective governance mechanisms, appears well-suited to address Italy's current gaps in legitimacy and protection for local communities as corporate non-shareholder stakeholders. It recognizes communities as legitimate rightsholders in corporate governance, introduces social utility as a metric for assessing corporate activities in relation to community interests, and aligns fully with Italy’s constitutional principles of solidarity, human dignity, and environmental protection (Articles 2, 9, and 41, paragraph 2 of the Italian Constitution).
Digital commons in the global south hold the promise of advancing social justice by creating spaces for knowledge sharing, community resilience, and cultural expression. Yet, these platforms are often structured through western-centric frameworks that fail to address the complex realities of marginalised communities. This paper examines how digital commons, while powerful in potential, can unintentionally reproduce exclusionary practices, sidelining women, Indigenous groups, and non-binary individuals whose voices are crucial to inclusive civic engagement and justice.
The environmental stakes in these spaces are high, particularly in regions facing acute climate impacts. Rural women, Indigenous communities, and other frontline populations, who bear the brunt of environmental change, often encounter barriers to accessing digital adaptation resources. Such barriers—rooted in language limitations, design bias, and technological inequity—restrict the flow of critical climate information to those who need it most. By analysing these disconnects, this paper highlights the urgency of reclaiming digital tools to enable equitable climate resilience and resource access for vulnerable communities.
Cultural representation within the digital commons also faces significant challenges. For communities with histories shaped by colonialism, these platforms present opportunities to reclaim narratives, preserve local knowledge, and strengthen cultural identity. However, platform algorithms and moderation policies often default to globalised norms, further marginalising non-western narratives. This research addresses the need to decolonise digital spaces, foregrounding Indigenous knowledge and local histories to transform digital commons into inclusive sites for cultural justice and resilience.
To enable a genuinely inclusive digital commons, this paper proposes a framework that prioritises equity, gender sensitivity, and cultural relevance in platform design and governance. Such a framework encourages participatory governance models, context-aware algorithmic design, and policies that honour the diversity of users within the global south. Reclaiming the digital commons thus requires collaborative efforts across communities, policymakers, and designers, envisioning spaces that not only reflect but empower the social, environmental, and cultural realities of those they aim to serve.
Architecture, understood not as a constructive practice but as a social, symbolic, and anthropological discipline, emerges as a means to interpret and enhance the commons. Communities "do architecture" in the territory through all practices of sharing, transforming it into a relational act that shapes the places where communities engage in practices of collective management and sharing. In this context, commons become not only physical spaces but also platforms for rethinking the relationship between communities and their territory.
With the idea of "Another way of owning"[1], commons offer an alternative perspective that challenges the dominant model of private ownership and, at the same time, the paradigm of architecture as an expression of spatial dominance. Instead, architecture here becomes a tool for generating connections, fostering ecological sustainability, and promoting social cohesion. This vision does not merely construct buildings but initiates a design approach that reflects the values of sharing and resilience.
Commons become the ideal setting for experimenting with a "relational architecture," where the project is not an end but a means to a continuous process of regeneration and participation. Architecture can take on a leading role in transforming these spaces into hubs of social and territorial innovation.
This approach not only surpasses conventional development models but also suggests a new paradigm in which architecture becomes a practice of dialogue and care. Commons thus stand as examples of creative resistance, capable of addressing contemporary challenges, while architecture serves as an essential tool for generating a more equitable and sustainable future rooted in the value of sharing.
[1] Grossi, P., 2019. Il mondo delle terre collettive: itinerari giuridici tra ieri e domani. Macerata: Quodlibet
Land tenure relations in Greece are shaped by the dominant dichotomy between private and public property. Cases of common land, locally managed by formal and customary law, are very scarce and sparsely distributed across the country. In the Ionian Archipelago, the Domestic Estate of Kythira Island (DEK), forms such an exceptional case. The Domestic Estate is a historical commons, with its roots dating back to the 15th century, the era of the Venetian Empire’s occupation on the island. Today, it is still active, encompassing all the non-private areas of the island, that are legally acknowledged by the Greek State as the common, ex ab indiviso property of the local people of Kythira. The governance of the common property of Kythira is executed by a specific body, the Committee for the DEK, whose members are elected by the local municipal council.
Rewilding activities in Europe have been focusing on the reintroduction of so-called “keystone species” to territories where they have been absent for centuries. Most notably, the European bison has been part of a continental-scale initiative to repopulate its former grazing grounds, from Portugal to Siberia, for the last thirty years. As much as re-establishing the population of an almost lost species, rewilders argue for multiple ecological benefits that come along with its presence in ecosystems.
In the USA, projects of reintroducing the buffalo to its former territories are being led by indigenous communities on their lands. The example of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative is one of many bison rematriation projects whose main objective is to reconnect Native American communities to their long-lost relatives. These initiatives present an opportunity to generate new meanings around the notion of commons.
With this presentation we will therefore question what status bison are given in different countries across the world, focusing especially on fieldwork in Switzerland and the USA. How can we share space with this “megafauna” in landscapes that are overly anthropogenic. What conflicts emerge when these initiatives are undertaken? Can we imagine a future where bison would be part of commons and share resources with humans? What new perspectives on commoning initiatives can we learn from so-called “bison rewilding” projects and how can we make these projects beneficial to human communities as well as non-human entities.
What are the implications for institutional analysis and governance if commons are (or are believed to be) co-created – including through cooperation, competition, mutual adjustment, social learning, and collective self-regulation – by the choices of multiple types of beings and not only humans? And what if not only humans are considered to have rights, duties, desires, strategies, roles, and other attributes? Could considering some nonhumans as commons actors help regenerate and sustain social-ecological systems by improving understanding and governance?
This paper explores from an Ostromian institutionalist perspective a range of arguments and issues relevant to these questions. In doing so we draw on ideas including from indigenous ontologies, sacred ecology, land ethics, environmental philosophy, rights of nature, (re)wilding, and complexity science, and on empirical findings from the life and cognitive sciences. Reciprocity and strategic behaviour in social-ecological dilemma situations are considered, as are other relationships of interdependence and cooperation including those involving interspecies mutualism, niche construction, and keystone species in ecosystems. Conceptualisation of humans and nonhumans as commons actors is explored from the perspectives of both institutional researchers and those engaged in commoning. Issues and arguments are examined in the context of illustrative cases, including of multispecies cooperation and ecological regeneration. Implications for improving institutional analysis and governance of environmental commons are discussed.
As a society, we are faced with a critical dilemma. While the current pattern of economic growth is getting increasingly unsustainable (and more so ecologically), low or negative rates of economic growth can have adverse social impacts. The efforts designed for economic well-being seem counterproductive to the poor and marginalised and make them more vulnerable. The inexplicable damage being done to the rural infrastructure (land and water) along with the complete lack of recognition of the traditional knowledge and siloed thinking has further pushed the country deep into the swamp of environmental degradation.
The central question being explored in the paper is if an alternative economic model (circular rather than linear) is necessary! Especially when common resources are degrading at an alarming rate; impacting the very survival of the dependent communities. The paper explores how circularity principles when applied in market models lead to the shortening of value chains (burning less fossil fuel), conservation and governance of commons (forest, water bodies), enhancing dignity among smallholder producers, and recognising women as a key stakeholder in economic activities and being the contributors to family incomes.
The paper further stresses the point (through extensive field research) that an alternative model emulating the principle of circularity is essential for the survival of the rural economy. More so for countries where the predominant population lives in rural areas and common resources contribute significantly to their livelihood. It positions ‘Circularity’ as being very fundamental to economic models (and not as an afterthought) that act as a catalyst for the conservation of common resources like forest and water. It provides enough examples as to how marketplaces (built on the principles of circularity) enable conservation while ensuring adequate economic opportunities for the most disadvantaged-like women and tribal.
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