Telling Stories on Commoning with Design of Models and Simulations

Abstract

This paper will present learnings from a 4-year SNSF-funded research project (2018- 2021), exploring commoning initiatives through regular exchange with three housing cooperatives from Switzerland. In close cooperation with them, we developed four agent- based models as visions for dividing up work needed to care for common spaces and resources in a sustainable way. We affirm computational modelling as a design praxis that can address commoning as a world-making activity, and explore mechanisms that would challenge or restore the stability of community life simulated in this way. Our models are not to be understood as prediction-oriented systems, but rather as a process of designing thinking tools, or toys by which we are creating ways of being. What kinds of controls can prevent extraction of resources from the community? What personal strategies bring more harmony to the group and how much does individual behaviour affect it? We address these questions and propose some preliminary conclusions about the entanglements of labour with value extraction in commoning activities that are best addressed through stories.