Field Lab on the Communal Production of Shared Resources

Catalog description

All around the world, people rely on a multitude of resources that are neither private nor public, but are instead provided by self-organizing communities. In New York City, for instance, these communal arrangements range from the mundane, like roommates maintaining a shared kitchen, to the more formal and consequential, such as Parent-Teacher Associations in public schools, business improvement districts, worker-owned enterprises, member-based cooperatives, community land trusts, credit unions, and a myriad of labor, industry, tenant, and neighborhood associations. This course is organized as a field lab where students examine how some of these communal arrangements thrive while others fail or are not even created. It is composed of three modules. During the first module, students learn key concepts related to collective action and shared resources, including the main types of goods, how each of these types can be affected by collective action problems, and how these problems have been solved by different groups, in different places and at different times. During the second module, students acquire basic skills in field research, including research ethics and informed consent, getting access, conducting a good interview, and analyzing field notes. During the third module, students collect and analyze primary data on a communal production arrangement of their choice anywhere in New York City, discuss their interim findings with their classmates, and prepare a final report.