The Power of IIDEAS: Cosmolocalism and the Transformation of the Production of Everyday Life

Jose Ramos

Abstract: 

Cosmolocalism is an emerging mode of production and exchange that reflects both the possibilities and the crises of our era. This paper provides a descriptive, historical, discursive and empirical overview of cosmolocalism. The paper begins by describing the planetary context, cosmolocalization’s technological dynamics, its preferred virtuous cycle, the inversion of production it expresses, and presents the IIDEAS mnemonic. The second section reviews its historical emergence and context, the discourses that constitute it, the dynamics of capitalism and the commons, the relationship between labor and degrowth and modes of exchange. Section three provides a presentation of examples and a preliminary analysis of the data. Section four builds on this by discussing themes and issues that emerge from the preliminary analysis. This paper is intended as an explication of foundational concepts, examples and issues within the inquiry into cosmolocalism, from which further research and initiatives may stem.   

Keywords: 

Globalization, distributed production, sustainability, livelihood, peer-to-peer, open design, localization, cosmopolitanism, cosmolocal, IIDEAS, anthropocene.

Words: 10,100 (approx) 

This research was funded by The Seoul Institute, Seoul Urban Humanities Program
57 Nambusunhwan-ro, 340-gil, Seocho-gu, Seoul 137-071 Korea

Contents 

1. Introduction (page 2) 

2. Dimensions of cosmolocalism (page 7)

3. Presentation and analysis of examples (page 13) 

4. Discussion (page 20)

References (page 25) 

Image 1 – Earthrise. Source: NASA, Apollo 8 Crew, Bill Anders

1. Introduction 

The image of Earthrise is only a recent one, the Apollo missions glimpsing a spectacular life filled Earth rising from the cratered and barren landscape of the moon. Although sages of past millennia reminded us that we are all brothers and sisters, it was not until the space race that we could look back upon ourselves as a totality, a species interdependent with a planet. Both the beauty and fragility of our cosmic existence struck people deeply. Carl Sagan wrote: 

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives … Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot… Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark… There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known. (Carl Sagan, 1994)

Recent discoveries in science have brought this view home further. From evolutionary biology and genetics we know there is no such thing as “race”, this is a human invention. We are a species, or more accurately scientists think we are several species (Homo Sapien, Neanderthal and Denisovan) mixed together. Just as fundamental is the anticipatory aspect of our shared existence. We are facing a series of crises like never before, that require a new level of cooperation. If we continue to behave as competitors and adversaries, if we do not work together to address our challenges, we do not stand much chance of addressing our shared challenges and protecting our shared commons. If we come together as an Earth Community (Korten, 2006), we can overcome and indeed learn and grow from these crises.  

Geologists have even created a new geological era, the “Anthropocene,” a new epoch that signifies humanity as a transformer, or a terraformer, of our planet—producing effects comparable to grand geological shifts. The Anthropocene is playing out in three “movements” (Bauwens and Ramos, 2020). The first movement is simply our planetary scale impacts. This is the classic definition of the Anthropocene. Yet if this were the only dimension of the Anthropocene, we would be no different than the species that generated the first planetary crisis approximately 2.5 billion years ago, anaerobic cyanobacteria, which led to the Great Oxygenation Event (where the planet was literally poisoned by excess oxygen, a waste product of cyanobacteria).So, the second movement of the Anthropocene signifies an awareness of ourselves as a planetary species with planetary impacts. Although there is still denial and ignorance, with fits and starts we are coming to grips with the crises we have created. Finally, a third movement of the Anthropocene closes the loop on the first two, reflexive planetary responses, which signifies the capacity for humanity to leverage planetary awareness, toward coordinated, intelligent responses to the challenges we collectively face. This third movement of the Anthropocene is by far the most embryonic, and yet ultimately the most crucial, without which we have little hope of any real long term viability. These three aspects play out a classic action learning cycle, act—reflect—change, but at a grand scale that we have only begun to experience today. 

Cosmolocalism is one of a number of praxes for this third movement, reflexive planetary response. It represents an emerging and coalescing body of theory and practice (Sachs 1992; Manzini 2015; Kostakis et al 2015; Ramos 2017; Escobar 2018; Schismenos, et al 2020). At its heart it envisions a planetary mutualization of knowledge, in which localities benefit from and contribute to all other localities through open design, open hardware, open technology and open knowledge (what in this paper is described as “IIDEAS” – see explanation below), all of which supports and accelerates human wellbeing and a transition to low eco-footprint / carbon economies, empowers communities as producers of what they need and generates livelihoods for those most in need. 

In a historical context cosmolocalism inserts itself at a time when the neoliberal project is in crisis through several structural contradictions. First, an ecological crisis typified by unsustainable pollution, growth and consumerism. Secondly, a populist revolt against economic globalization. Thirdly, the contradiction between immaterial cognitive and relational labor and the way in which intensive capitalism (Robinson, 2004) acts to commodify this. 

Thus cosmolocalism picks up momentum as Fukuyama’s (1989) “end of history” has transformed into the seeming end of neoliberalism itself, its cultural hegemony greatly diminished. People are looking for a way to change a capitalist system typified by extractive logic into one with generative logic, to protect our shared commons and to avert a worst case scenario for humanity. 

As a matter of point, the scale and urgency of the climate crisis itself demands a planetary scale mutualization of knowledge, if only to liberate clean tech intellectual property (IP) and innovation for distributed use / problem-solving, which can rapidly accelerate a carbon drawdown. Equally, cosmolocalism can support livelihoods in diverse settings even as we anticipate an era of post-growth economic change. 

Technology and the P2P Revolution  

From a futures studies perspective cosmolocalism is an emerging issue (Molitor, 2010) or a weak signal (Hiltunen, 2008) that prefigures broader social changes. It has several technological names, including “Design Global Manufacture Local” (Kostakis et al, 2015) where peer to peer relationality / peer production is seen as potentiating localized manufacturing. “Open design distributed manufacturing” is another common descriptor. The possibility of this technological emergence rests on two key dimensions: precision automated production at local scales, and the emergence of an open and globally peer produced sphere of open knowledge. 

The potential for precision production at local scales rests on a number of new technologies: low cost renewable energy production and storage (solar, wind, battery tech) that is not energy grid dependent; microgrid technology that allows energy sharing and scaling; microcontroller technologies that allow small scale precision manufacturing (3D printing, CNC routing, etc.); sophisticated supply chain software that can instantiate circular economies and local economies.     

The emergence of a global design commons rests on the revolution in information and computer technology (ICT) over the last 50 years, and in particular how ICT enabled peer production (Benkler 2006). Early formations in open source software like Linux and Apache, and formations in the open knowledge space like Wikipedia / Wikimedia foundation, Creative Commons, and Mozilla Foundation normed and laid the foundations for the ideas of a global knowledge commons. The translation from open source software to open source hardware (e.g. Arduino), to open design, was married to the local through the maker and fab lab movements, where localized experiments in instantiating open designs quickened.   

From these two dimensions, a virtuous cycle can be discerned, in which with each cycle the overall cosmolocal ecosystem is strengthened. 

Diagram 1 – A virtuous cycle of cosmolocal production. Source: Author  

This virtuous cycle and the ecosystem it generates has been seen with a number of examples. A team of researchers have compiled examples from around the world for an upcoming anthology (see table 2 in section 3) (Ramos, Bauwens, Ede & Wong, Forthcoming). These examples and the technological potentials they rest on have fueled the futures imaginary, where the logic of global production is inverted as seen in the following table. 

Table 1 – Inversion of production logics. Source: Ramos (2017) 

As can be seen in the table, conventional production is based on a “hub and spoke” model, where the hub holds the IP and produces products, with transport of the product moving from hub to spoke. Cosmolocalism entails distributed and open IP located in “pools” and platforms, where the production is also distributed based on community / enterprise location.  

The power of IIDEAS 

Cosmolocalism rests on the power of IIDEAS as a resource for distributed, decentralized and autonomous activity. The IIDEAS mnemonic is meant to provide a basket to understand how a global knowledge commons includes a number of types and categories of cultural artefacts, and in fact how they might form an ecosystem. IIDEAS stands for: 

• Ideas – these can be concepts, ideas for change, and the realm of knowledge. Open knowledge potentiates communities with deeper understanding and capabilities; 
• Innovations – these are any artefacts from an innovation process, and can be reproduced or re-iterated;
• Designs – these are the often ready to use ways of manufacturing products, or can be the detailed specifications for a product;
• Experiments – these are processes to try something new with a community. It is possible to do open experimentation, where a planetary community can learn from one community’s experiment;
• Actions – specific practices people use to create change, that can be examples for others; 
• Solutions – ways that a problem is definitely resolved, and which can be shared.  

We cannot have experiments without first having ideas. We cannot have an innovation process without experiments. And we cannot have solutions before an innovation process. IIDEAS is a simple way to expand and hold a more complex notion of a global knowledge commons ideation process which can include many categories.

2. Dimensions of cosmolocalism 

Cosmolocalism is an emerging “post development” paradigm that aims to theoretically and practically address the contemporary challenges we are facing as a species and as communities. Wolfgang Sachs (1992) early on proposed cosmopolitan localism as an antidote to the problems of universalist developmentalism. While it can be looked at as merely a technological trend, it is ideologically more aligned as a post-capitalist project (Schismenos, et al. 2020), and as a species level response to species generated contradictions (the so-called Anthropocene) (Bauwens & Ramos 2020). 

Since its inception in the 16th century, the capitalist production logic has worked for the interest of shareholders. From the early days of the first stock markets and the Dutch and English expeditions, to the present, the logic of return on shareholder value has consistently put the interest of an investor class in contradiction with the interest of those communities affected by the actions / activities of companies and corporations (Korten, 2001).  

In contrast, the open and contributory logics of contemporary peer production has introduced new social interests – first the peer producers who can benefit from such mutualised production, and secondly para-local adoption, whereby other communities (globally) can share in the use of  IIDEAS, and whereby these new communities and people can also continue to build upon this, creating new open iterations of IIDEAS. 

This new logic twines localised (community or enterprise level) peer production with planetary scale peer production, in a process reminiscent of how ants and similar animals practice “Stigmergy”, through iterative and asynchronous contributions.  

Cosmolocalism conceived thus, on the one hand does not follow universalist prescriptions, in particular rejecting the evolutionist (Nandy, 1992) and developmentalist (Escobar, 1995, 2018) discourses and narrative. It does not say that there is one formula for all regions and locales. Context, cultures, conditions are different from place to place. As Escobar argues, life-worlds are unique to different communities, forming complex relationships between the land, people and species that are not replaceable through a universal developmental process (Escobar, 2015); and a community’s ability to sustain themselves and their living systems should be autonomous (Fals Borda 2013). Thus cosmolocalism aims at a pluriversality of change, each community and context wielding its own imagination, potency, wisdom and intelligence to satisfy its own unique needs. But even while rejecting universalism, it embraces our belonging in an Earth Community (Korten, 2006), with both the possibilities this offers (the power of IIDEAS) and our shared responsibilities. 

Cosmolocalism (with “cosmo” as the antecedent word) indicates a planetary scale inquiry and action / process. While we should not try to live the same and do the same (functionalism / universalism), we need to mutually generate the conditions on Earth that make our shared survival and thriving possible. This can include being global citizens in action (e.g. how can our communities reduce C02?), as well as sharing IIDEAS that help other communities around the world solve their own problems. The cosmo in cosmolocalism becomes even more poignant when we consider that we face a number of planetary scale crises, that require substantive mobilisation and change, from climate change to economic justice.      

Historical and discursive emergence of cosmolocalism

During the 1980’s US led structural adjustment programs and loans were applied on what were then termed developing countries, and rapid liberalization of economies radically reshaped the political economic landscape (Bello, 1996). Centre periphery dynamics dominated with peripheral nations getting into deep debt with the promise of modernization (Rich, 2013). With debt and a narrative of growth and progress, neo-liberalism created a fundamental rupture, where older subsistence systems were thrown asunder as mega-development projects displaced millions, migration drove urban slums and unsustainable commodity oriented economic policy had a devastating impact on the world’s ecosystems.    

By the turn of the century a global protest circuit was born, the anti-globalization movement, as protests straddled the Global North and Global South. Amid this the World Social Forum (WSF) proclaimed that “Another World is Possible”, inviting and gathering millions of social activists, movements, theorists and networks from all around the world. The seeds of cosmolocalism emerged (for this author) through research in/on the World Social Forum (Ramos 2010), a synthesis of a number of discursive movements associated with alter-globalization and critical globalization studies (Appelbaum & Robinson, 2005), that respond to the challenges we face today and in the 21st century. 

Cosmolocalism emerged (again, for this author) in a mix between several alter-globalization discourses (Ramos, 2010). From post-development the need to rupture from universalist, neo-colonial and top-town developmentalism and articulate an autonomous and endogenous “development” approach (Escobar, 1995). From relocalization the need to reaffirm subsidiarity as a critical pillar of economic life (Hines, 2002). From cosmopolitanism, the critical importance of a global / planetary community (Held & McGrew, 2000; Baker & Chandler, 2004). From Global Systems Theory, the challenge to address the power dynamics of global capitalism (Robinson, 2004). The horizontalist and network power perspectives informed the transformation in the ontology of struggle (the types of actors) (Hardt & Negri, 2000; Castells, 2000; Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 1999). As previously discussed, evolutionary perspectives situating humans as a single species, and ecumenical perspectives also influenced the thinking (Ramos, 2010). 

Cosmopolitan theory puts emphasis on universal human rights and an ethos of global community (Held and McGrew, 2000; Baker & Chandler, 2004). Of particular influence is the concept of insurgent cosmopolitanism developed by Santos: 

insurgent cosmopolitanism… consists of the transnationally organized resistance against the unequal exchanges produced or intensified by globalized localisms and localized globalisms. This resistance is organized through local/global linkages between social organizations and movements representing those classes and social groups victimized by hegemonic globalization and united in concrete struggles against exclusion, subordinate inclusion, destruction of livelihoods and ecological destruction, political oppression, or cultural suppression, etc. (Santos 2006, 397)

Through the 1990s and 2000s the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) brought together leading thinkers in an alliance dialectically opposed to the mega-scale economic globalization project. They argued for a localization of the economy as a counterbalance to the stripping away of local power and autonomy (Mander, 2014; Hines, 2002; Norberg-Hodge, 2000). 

At the same time, any notion of change needs to grapple with capitalism as a phenomenon.  Robinson (2006) and Sklair (2002) developed Global Systems Theory as a way of explaining the workings of contemporary capitalism. They argue it underwent a fundamental rupture from its pre-1970s manifestation. No longer confined to the nation state, capital became globally fluid as new technologies enabled transnational speculation, and corporations expanded operations.  This also saw a movement from extensive capitalism to intensive capitalism, where subjectivities (inner worlds, personal data, relationships, ideas) are opened to commodification – what we see today with platform capitalism.

Capital and the commons

Because capitalism has historically driven counter movements (in the West the socialist and union movements and in non-West anti-colonial movements), the rupture from a nation state based capitalism to a truly global capitalism forces us to consider what a new counter movement might look like, e.g. global class formation in the context of globalization (Cox 2005). How do the transformation and scale shifts wrought by globalization change class formation – a group of people aware of themselves as having a shared interest? Economic globalization has created a whole new level of complexity when considering who is impacted by capital, and who has a shared interest. A mining company may have non-unionized or unionized workers (both sharing a labor interest in value), but as well may impact local river systems or bays and the indigenous or local people who rely on them, and then there is how that company impacts the atmosphere / C02 emissions, where billions more have a stake. Shared interest contra-capital is not a neat set of actors. It is more like an assemblage, where convergence and commonality is situational and contextual. 

The World Social Forum helped drive a conceptual shift from the abstraction of class to the situational embodiment of a commons. At the WSF participants who experienced myriad localized struggles, typified by ontological diversity, across cultural, gender, political, class, caste and other categories, would find commonality. At the WSF ontologically distinct and different actors would engage each other, often finding that their interests converged. In the greatest convergence of counter-globalization the world had ever seen, struggle could not be reduced to class, there was a complex interweaving of interests, visions and ontologies (Ramos 2010).  

Our modern implication into a variety of shared commons spells out the nature of this complex interweaving of interests. At its heart a commons is that which we depend on for our mutual survival and wellbeing, such that we must actively protect, defend, nurture, manage, or govern it for our mutual interest. Theorizing of commons has focused on common pool resources (Ostrom, 1990), global commons in a geo-political context (Buck, 1998), digital commons and open source (Benkler, 2006; (Bauwens 2005), and urban commons (Foster & Iaione, 2015) to name a few. What is clear is that different commons have different operating logics based on situational embodiment and the idea has been extended into many domains of life (Bollier & Helfrich, 2015).    

A safe climate is exemplary of something that we mutually depend on for our survival and wellbeing. Human civilizations arose within the approximately 10,000 year timeframe of the Holocene, an exceptionally mild period in the geological record. Notwithstanding the most extreme prepper survivalist visions of the future, rescuing any semblance of the civilizations we have today for the next two centuries will require not just a decarbonization of the economy, but as well, sequestering carbon through various means, drawing down existing C02 levels to lower safer levels. Climate has thus moved over the 20^th-21^st centuries from an “implicit commons” (a taken for granted aspect of our survival and wellbeing) to an “explicit commons” that must be managed and protected, which then draws in this new complex of commoners to protect it. In so many words, we can call this movement from implicit to explicit a movement from a commons in itself to a commons for itself. As commons are diverse, so too will be the commoners enfolded into each instance of its explicit activation.  

From a cosmolocal perspective, what follows is the idea that any knowledge that potentiates action on climate change and the protection of a safe climate needs to be shareable and relocalizable. Humanity needs to find the means to accelerate action toward a safe climate, and creating an open knowledge and open design framework for sharing IIDEAS moves us in that direction. This is the heart of the rationale for a “global design commons”, the need for a domain of IIDEAS that potentiates many people and communities with a qualitatively new dimension of agency to address our shared challenges. 

Thus if a safe climate is a commons that must be governed for the common good, it follows that an open knowledge and design commons, an IIDEAS commons, should also be considered a commons that must be protected and nurtured. What does this mean? We can see this in many of the enterprise and institutional examples (see section 3 below on this), where a planetary mutualization of knowledge is convened on a theme by theme or multi-theme basis.

Degrowth and global labor mutualisation  

One of the biggest challenges we face is humanity’s aggregate impact on the biosphere. Degrowth advocates argue that we must reduce economic growth to slow down and repair humanity’s imbalanced relationship with the Earth’s multiple ecosystems and species (Kallis et al, 2018). 

The challenge is political-economic legacy, a mix of Keynesian and neo-liberal policies. Keynesian policy, which shaped the economic direction of social democracies from the 1930s, relies on economic expansion as a key to job creation. Consumption and demand are drivers of industrial output and therefore stimulating consumer demand is used to mobilize the industrial base. Keynes was concerned with job creation out of the experience of the 1930s when economic instability drove the rise of fascism in Europe (Galbraith, 1994). This formula led to the post war recovery and belle epoche of the 1950s-60s, and to varying degrees the consumer led economy we have today.  

How do we decouple general economic well being (so that people have enough material satisfiers) with economic growth that has a negative impact on ecosystems or expresses just “perverse” growth (e.g. the growth of the gambling industry)? How do we ensure adequate economic activity, material needs, jobs and livelihoods, without increasing impacts on ecosystems? A P2P Foundation study addressed this dilemma and argued resource mutualisation and cosmolocalization were viable strategies to decouple economic growth from production impacts (Piques, et al, 2017). 

Marxism-Leninism held the presumption of creating a universal proletariat, where workers were united against capital across borders, a global struggle. Historically, however, labor movements have been exclusionist, in the West centered on the White European male (e.g. the White Australia Policy had its origins in labor movements, and in the U.S. the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was also supported by labor unions). Within the Cold War detente social democracies held the union movement, socialist-communist countries carried the presumption of a proletariat and non-Aligned movement (NAM) countries held a post colonial posture. The possibility of such a universalism remained in the shadow of historical and constructed identities and interests. 

Cosmolocalism can be seen as another turn toward a planetary solidarity between producers everywhere (a kind of “global productivist solidarity”). It already exists in implicit form, as we have seen how emerging cosmolocal initiatives have done local work, rigorously documented, which is then adopted and adapted by other communities around the world (see list of examples in section 3). Whether those IIDEAS adopted came from a different culture, gender, or country, the solidarity is based on the functionality of application (do the IIDEAS work in this context?) and a planetary ethic of care (if it helps them, let them use it). In this way, we can envision, indeed forecast, a livelihood revolution based on global productivist solidarity. As the global pool of IIDEAS grows, it can potentiate livelihoods in a myriad of contexts and geographies. Any farming community, whether in Africa, India, China, Mexico, or the Global North will increasingly have access to the IIDEAS that can support their own livelihoods, and the long term sustainability of their community and the ecosystems from which they depend. 

Modes of Exchange 

From another view point, this new global productivist solidarity is the expression of a cycle in our species’ development. In Karatani’s (2014) study, The Structure of World History, he argued there are four fundamental modes of exchange: 

• Mode A, reciprocity of the gift and ‘community’ 
• Mode B, ruling and protection, and based on the ‘state’ 
• Mode C, commodity exchange mediated by the ‘market’
• A hypothetical Mode D, ‘associationalism’ and a planetary commons transcending the other three 

We saw an early transition from pooling of resources practiced by nomadic groups to reciprocity based gifting practiced by more scaled-up tribal systems (Mode A). A later transition saw the shift from reciprocity-based gifting practice by tribes toward state systems of authority, imposed through a combination of warrior and priest classes, which would take both protecting and paternal roles as well as extractive and exploitation roles (Mode B). In early stages this takes the form of kingdoms, and later stages of empires, and more advanced stages of the state more recent administrative and bureaucratic systems developed in post-Westphalian context. A third transition was the emergence of the market, culminating in the emergence of global capitalism and world economy (Mode C). The last transition that he posits, mode D, he calls ‘associationism’, reiterates mode A, pooling, but at a global scale (Bauwens and Ramos, 2018).  

…mode D is not just a return to the reciprocity of Mode A, nor a pure nomadic band structure, but a new structure which transcends all three preceding structures. If mode A is dominated by gift exchange and on the pooling of resources, then the digitized commons enable all kinds of pooling of physical and infrastructural resources, but at a global scale. In other words, mode D is an attempt to recreate a society based on mode A, but at a higher level of complexity and integration. (Bauwens and Niaros, (2017, p16,17)

Karatani’s analysis corresponds to the work of Fiske’s (1991) ‘Structures of Social Life’ (1991) and Ronfeldt’s (1996) ‘Tribes, Institutions, Markets and Networks’ (TIMN) works, which can add nuance to our emerging understanding of the phase shift we are experiencing today. Just as the market form / today’s neo-liberalism culminates in the domination and commodification of all aspects of life (Robinson’s “intensive capitalism”) and consumerism crashes into the realities of biospherical limits, our era of planetary mutualization is born. 

3. Presentation and analysis of examples 

Based on research for an upcoming anthology (Ramos, Bauwens, Ede and Wong, Forthcoming), a number of cosmolocal enterprise and institutional examples have been identified (shown in table 2). These are based on existing case studies or newly documented from around the world. We know of many other examples, but we have focused on the ones that are both current and where there is existing research.    

Because of space limitations, the examples are not delved into detail, but website info and references are presented to allow the reader to access more information. This is followed by a preliminary analysis, and a discussion.  

Example	Sector / theme	Website	References
Ability Made	Disability / prosthetics	https://www.abilitymade.com/	Ramos (2017b)
Appropedia	Database / repository	https://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia	Pearce (2009)
bHive	Community Economy Platform	https://bhive.coop/	—
Circles	Blockchain exchange system	https://joincircles.net/	Bauwens & Pazaitis (2019)
COVID-19 medical	Medical products		—
Cosmolocalism.eu  project	Research and evaluation	https://www.cosmolocalism.eu/	—
Envienta	Collaboration platform	https://sto.envienta.com/	Bauwens & Pazaitis (2019)
FairCoin	Blockchain ecosystem generation	https://fair-coin.org/	Bauwens & Pazaitis (2019)
FarmBot	Robotics / Farming	https://farm.bot/	Cruz, Herrington, & Rodriguez (2014)
Farm Hack	Farming / Agriculture Equipment	https://farmhack.org/tools	Giotitsas & Ramos (2017)
FabCity	City scale ecosystem development	https://fab.city/	Diez (2019)
Field Ready	Disaster / Crisis response	https://www.fieldready.org/	Saripalle et al (2016)
Glia	Medical Equipment	https://glia.org/	—
Guerilla Translation	Contributory accounting	https://guerrillafoundation.org/	Bauwens & Pazaitis (2019)
Hexayurt	Housing	http://hexayurt.com/	Priavolou (2018)
Holochain	Ecosystem development	https://holochain.org/	Bauwens & Pazaitis (2019)
Le’alelier paysans	Farming equipment	https://www.latelierpaysan.org/English	Giotitsas & Ramos (2017)
Leka Restaurant	Hospitality	https://restauranteleka.com/	—
Multifactory	Distributed production	https://multifactory.eu/	—
MuSIASEM	Socio-ecological accounting	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuSIASEM	Bauwens & Pazaitis (2019)
Nea Guinea	Community Development / Sustainability	https://neaguinea.org/2016/08/01/english/	Kostakis (2018)
Obviousness algorithm	Protection of IIDEAS commons	https://3dprint.com/103675/3d-print-material-ip-algorithm/	Pearce (2015)
Open Desk	Furniture	https://www.opendesk.cc/	—
Open Bionics	Prosthetics	https://openbionics.com/	—
Open Insulin	Pharmaceuticals	https://openinsulin.org/	—
Open Food Network	Farming / Food	https://openfoodnetwork.org.au/	—
Open Motors	Automobile	https://www.openmotors.co/	—
Open Source Ecology	Demonstration	https://www.opensourceecology.org/	—
OSE Microhouse	Housing	https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSE_Microhouse	Priavolou (2018)
Precious Plastic	Recycling / upcycling / circular economy	https://preciousplastic.com/	—
RepRap	3D Printing	https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap	Jones  et al (2011)
Shaji Village / Taobao	Digital Fabrication	https://www.studioshaji.org/	—
Solar Urja	Lighting	http://www.millionsoul.iitb.ac.in/	Joshi et al (2019)
Sensorica	Medical Equipment	https://www.sensorica.co/	Bauwens & Niaros (2017).
Terra0	Ecosystem development	https://terra0.org/	Bauwens & Pazaitis (2019)
Tzoumakers	Agriculture Equipment	https://www.tzoumakers.gr/english/	Pantazis & Meyer (2020)
Wikihouse	Housing	https://www.wikihouse.cc/	Priavolou (2018)
Wikifactory	Product development / collaboration	https://wikifactory.com/	—
Utopia Maker	Collaboration / Distributed Design and Production	https://www.utopiamaker.com/	—

Table 2 – Examples of cosmolocalism 

Analysis of Dimensions  

The emerging cosmolocal ecosystem includes a number of elements and strategies. Based on the examples, the following dimensions can be put forward. 

IIDEAS pool and collaboration platform 

An IIDEAS pool is any platform or repository which brings together resources (IIDEAS) which can be used/adapted by other people/org/communities in their local contexts. While a cosmolocal enterprise will pool around their specific theme, some initiatives do this as a focus across many themes. Appropedia for example is a wiki that documents sustainable solutions. Wikifactory is a social platform for collaborative product development. Envienta is a blockchain based system to accelerate collaborative open source hardware development. 

Local manufacture / production, prototyping and documentation

Some enterprises focus on local manufacture / production for their community, but keep their documentation, prototypes and designs open so others around the world can use them. L’atelier Paysans is a French co-op that prototypes and builds farm equipment for organic farmers. Farm Hack is a N.E. USA based not for profit association which also prototypes farm equipment. Both maintain open databases for others to use. Field Ready is a disaster response organization which uses distributed manufacturing strategies to address emergency response needs. 

Open Design Demonstration Projects 

Open Design Demonstration Projects highlight a particular design that represents a breakthrough, is open and replicable. It does not necessarily have community actively translating IIDEAS to use value, but it is inspiring for people around the world and allows people to use and remix designs. Leka restaurant is a restaurant in Barcelona in which everything in the restaurant is completely open for reuse. OSE Microhouse is a home construction project that demonstrates an open design for a small house that uses natural building material and is easy to build. 

Two sided design-to-manufacture platform 

A two sided design to manufacture platform is a platform that collects / pools designs from around the world, and customers or users can use those designs for local manufacture. Open Desk is a UK based business that aggregates designs for furniture from around the world. Customers choose designs, get local manufacturing quotes, and decide on a local manufacturer. Most of the revenue goes to the designer and manufacturer.

Modular production for delivery to context 

Some enterprises produce a modular product that can be adapted to local contexts. Open Motors produces an EV as an Open Source EV platform with add-on modules. They do external R&D services, and sell or lease complete highly-upgradable EVs, batteries and charging systems. Local resellers can modify and adapt the product for local needs and markets. Farmbot produces an automated open source garden bed, with a community that supports technical hacks and upgrades for adaptation. 

Contributory accounting system

Contributory accounting denotes approaches to creating shared value (IIDEAS) through collaboration, which accounts for the detailed contributions of its creators and rewards them in kind. It is a way of practicing open innovation while sidestepping the ‘value bleed’ problem in the open source economy. Sensorica is a producer of medical instruments, which use a detailed form of contributory accounting to reward their network of contributors. Guerrilla Translation is a communications collective that uses P2P accounting. 

Ecosystem generation 

Ecosystem generationing initiatives create synergies / value exchange between multiple communities. For example the Fab City Global Initiative aims to support city wide ecosystems for cosmolocal design and production. bHive is an open software sharing framework for economic relocalization. The Open Food Network supports the creation of food production ecosystems, linking farmers with wholesalers and buyers. Solar Urja used a university as an anchor institution (IIT Bombay) to use open hardware to design and scale solar lamps for rural Indian peasants. Multi Factory is a federation of autonomous manufacturing centres that practice collaboration and co-production. 

Governance and protection of commons 

Certain initiatives can be focused on the governance and protection of the cosmolocal ecosystem or specific enterprises. Indeed, given our understanding of common pool resources and digital commons, any long term prospering of a cosmolocal political economy will require institutional foundations. Josh Pearce developed an “obviousness” algorithm to identify what 3D printing technologies are common use, thereby protecting them from patent predation and enclosure (Pearce, 2015).   

Research and evaluation 

Research and evaluation is a critical pillar for understanding the landscape of emerging CL initiatives and dynamics. The P2P Foundation has played a critical role in fostering inquiry into CL. Other organisations like the P2P Lab and the Cosmolocalism.eu project aim to broaden and deepen research.  

Regulatory / Policy innovation 

For cosmolocalism to thrive will require that social policy support it. Regulatory / policy innovation can happen systematically through the efforts of centers or institutes, but can also be championed by enterprises. LabGov in Italy was one or the key institutions which supported the creation of Bologna’s Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of the Urban Commons. Fab City Global Initiative champions the establishment of city scale implementation of cosmolocal principles. The P2P foundation has also played a role in proposing and establishing, initiatives through the FLOK project, Ghent Commons Transition Plan and other activities. Many other institutes and centers have also intersected with cosmolocal ideas (such as Ivan Illich’s Intercultural Documentation Center)

Analysis of challenges and needs  

In the following table these dimensions are looked at one by one, exploring their strengths and potentials, some of the problems, challenges and contradictions they encounter, and what may be missing and needed.

Dimensions	Strengths and Potentials	Key challenges / obstacles / contradictions	Missing or needed
IIDEAS pools and collaboration platforms	Underpins the entire cosmolocal process, and potentiates leapfrog technologies, distributed sustainability applications and livelihood revolution.	Value bleed – private / corporate use of IIDEAS without reinvesting in a commons / cosmolocal economy.	Protection from appropriation / commodification of IP.
Local manufacture / production, prototyping and documentation	Can translate IIDEAS to application / use for communities and people.	Starting community enterprises takes knowledge and effort.    How can local enterprises sustain themselves within an open source / commons model?	Best practice models for CL enterprise and governance; approaches to scale successful community initiatives.
Open Design Demonstration projects	Communicates prefigurative IIDEAS powerfully, challenges core assumptions.	Relocalizing an open design most often takes a team.	Connecting people to translate IIDEAS to local applications.
Two sided design-to-manufacture platform	Simple to understand and operate model for distributed design and production.	Uses the platform capitalist model (platform is privately owned).	Using co-ops and commons type enterprises to operate two sided platforms (e.g. platform cooperativism).
Modular production for delivery to context	Ability to deliver highly standardised modules that can compete with traditionally manufactured products.	Module IP may be private. Module production is hub and spoke – still need to be transported across the world.	Need models to have distributed production of modules that can scale distribution and circulate value to distributed module production designers.
Contributory accounting systems	Ability to practice distributed /  collaborative design that is equitable.	Hard to find “off the shelf” product / platform.  Enterprise model is opaque – hard to understand.	Easy to use demos that show how it is done to produce basic items.
Ecosystem generation	Connecting a number of enterprises / institutions / communities to create dynamic value exchanges .	Chicken and egg challenge, hard to establish ecosystem when all elements are nascent.	Use anchor institutions to establish ecosystems.  Create system rules to circulate value back into an ecosystem.
Governance and protection of commons	Critical in protecting and maintaining local and global commons that underpin cosmolocal potentials.	In direct contradiction  with capitalist ownership model, or state ownership.	Network of institutes and centres with expertise and resources in coordination to champion a cosmolocal world.
Research and evaluation	Understand the deeper issues / dynamics in cosmolocalism.	It is very new, an emerging issue, even the definitions are nascent.	Broader convergence of research to develop co-learning. A series of congresses or conferences.
Regulatory / Policy advocacy and innovation	Pathway to create all of system frameworks that support the growth and development of cosmolocalism.	Hegemony of the neo-liberal discourse even while neo-liberal  policies flounder.	Connecting cosmolocal strategies with the broader global justice movement, green new deal, climate movement, transition discourses.  Need emerging relationships with partner states willing to experiment with new policy. frameworks.

Table 3 – preliminary analysis of cosmolocal challenges and needs  

4. Discussion 

Creating enabling contexts for cosmolocalism 

It is the political economy which picks winners and losers in various contexts, as can be seen by how the idea for the sharing economy was thoroughly co-oped by venture capital and “uberized” (Rushkoff, 2016). Today’s neo-liberal system, even while having given birth to the internet, could be said to be a disabling context for cosmolocalism, making it harder for cosmolocal initiatives to thrive. Extending on Karatani, Fiske and Ronfeldt, we can see that Mode C, commodity exchange mediated by the market, is not just dominant but predatory, and subverts the other three forms or modes toward its advantage. Toward the network form it generates artificial scarcity even when we emerge into a “zero marginal cost” commons of IIDEAS (Rifkin, 2014); it disciplines states and institutions that are not market friendly, setting up a competition between states to liberalize for access to foreign investment; and it submits local economies, identities and affiliations into a centrifugal dismembering within a superpowered global economy with its myriad economic relationships. We cannot expect a Panglossian transition into a cosmolocal IIDEAS commons when state and especially market power has dominated so extensively and intensively over the last several centuries. Such a transition will take effort, time and intelligent amplification of existing potentials. 

Beyond artificial scarcity 

The creation of artificial scarcity through intellectual property (IP) or patent enclosures is one of the biggest challenges in creating a cosmolocal economy. Today the ability to share knowledge or a design is easy, yet IP is often made scarce within a capitalist mode of commodification (Bauwens, 2005). IP is the “secret sauce” for many enterprises, allowing them a kind of monopoly on a particular formula, which is converted into profits as a market asks that enterprise to utilize that IP. In short, investment capital resists making IP open if that IP is the source of the business’ uniqueness or profits. “If you want our money, we want your IP,” is a common experience for those seeking investment capital. 

Initiatives based on a public anchor institution model, like Solar Urja, may find it easier to exist in an open IP environment, as development work is supported by a combination of state or social institutions without the needs and demands of private investment capital. Public institutions like Harvard University Library have a strong open access policy and advocacy, and a strong commitment of a global knowledge commons. They and others have argued that research funded by the public purse must be made open access. More public institutions need to use their purse power to drive an open IP use regime. Alternatively, where substantial research funding is needed, public institutions can become investors for the public interest to guarantee tiered IP use regimes, ensuring open IP systems for commons-oriented / for-benefit users, and a paid license model for for-profits to create a return on investment. 

Beyond new enclosures 

In addition, as the logic of capitalism drives monetary inflation by the banking industry, it then seeks opportunities for investment. IP / patents are yet another domain of investment and potential enclosure. As mentioned, Joshua Pearce (2015) has led a project to protect 3D printing technologies against efforts by patent trolls to illegitimately appropriate IP through opportunistic patent filings, which he discusses as the search for the “obviousness” of a technology, whether a technology is already in common use. Once a technology is established as obvious, it belongs in the public domain.  

Just as the Wikimedia Foundation protects the knowledge commons that Wikipedia relies on, for benefit organizations or institutional protectors need to be created to facilitate and protect IP for a cosmolocal economy. This can ensure that IP is opened up for a greater scope of use, and that localized development can ensue in any / many localities. We need a coordinated global network of institutes and centers with expertise and resources to champion a cosmolocal economy.  

Beyond the value bleed dilemma

Another problem is what might be termed the “value bleed” issue with open source. As Bauwens has argued, the first wave of the open source movement was very successful in creating a new model of peer production, for example through Linux and Apache, even while the value produced was mostly used by large corporations who absorbed the software into their systems. Instead of building its own economic ecosystem, the contributory and collaborative logics of a commons economy bleeds value into the capitalist economy. 

To address this, a kind of protocol for mutualization needs to be built into an intellectual property license. If a commercial entity wants to use a design they pay back to the owner a commercial price. If another commons-based enterprise wants to use the design, it can be done at a lower price or freely. This idea has the benefit of returning value from the capitalist economy into a commons economy. This solution relies on the social construction which is our legal system, and the ability to enforce claims. It would follow the example of Lawrence Lessig’s development of the creative commons license.

Generating cosmolocal ecosystems 

Many of the cosmological initiatives in the preliminary research are ecosystem generating initiatives, such as Fab City Global Initiative, Wikifactory, bHive, Multifactory, Open Food Network, Holochain and Solar Urja. Ecosystem generation is a critical strategic theme, as they provide an enabling context for a cosmolocal economy even while the broader neo-liberal economy may be disabling. Ecosystem generation must deal with the “chicken and egg” challenge, as it is hard to establish an ecosystem when all the elements are nascent. Here are summarized considerations on this theme: 

• Anchor institutions have been shown to be very successful at establishing local and regional ecosystems over long periods of time, such as the Cleveland Greater University Circle Initiative. Solar Urja’s success, laser focused on social needs (rural poor), is exemplary, 
• Urban environments are a logical scale and context for ecosystem generation. The Fab City Global Initiatives challenges cities to endogenize their production and build circular economies through a data-in data-out low impact model, 
• Nested system models like Multifactory and bHive attempt to create value across many localized hubs. These can generate geographically decentralized value exchange and resource mutualization,
• Platforms like Wikifactory create a decentralized community of IIDEAS producers which have a global scale. Like the Wikimedia Foundations, platforms like this need to be created that underpin a global IIDEAS commons that potentiates local production and action.  

The common thread with all of these approaches are system rules to circulate value back into the ecosystem. We need a distillation of how different ecosystem generating approaches use rules to recirculate value and grow.  

Models needed for making cosmolocal initiatives easier to establish 

Cosmolocalism suffers from a complexity of scale and theme. The multiple realities of the planet, localities, national and state laws, immaterial IIDEAS and physical production increase the complexity with which we have conventionally understood life. This may be why ideological variants of relocalization or any other discourse impulsively foreclose spatial and thematic possibilities – we are nostalgic for voluntary simplicity when our real dilemma is involuntary complexity. 

We therefore need models and guides that make the various enterprise approaches to cosmolocalism accessible and replicable. 

• For local production communities it can be a challenge to sustain operations. Very successful examples of community prototyping and production, such as L’atelier Paysans, can be models. We need models of success for cosmolocal enterprise and governance, approaches that help people to build community initiatives successfully, especially within an open source / commons model,  
• The two sided design-to-manufacture platform model is a well understood one (see Open Desk). We need a model for how to do this as a platform cooperative, 
• The modular production for delivery to context approach is also promising. Here we need models for how to distribute the production of modules. This means that, instead of a single producer of module-production to context, we have multiple producers of modules that can be adapted for ever more contexts. This has a better chance of accessing niche markets and can scale distribution better. It could be based on a licensing approach to circulate value back to the designers of the distributed module production,
• Contributory accounting systems are complex and most are designed for purpose, used by an enterprise to solve its own distributed contribution challenges. Models for easier to understand and use contributory accounting systems are needed, to practice distributed / collaborative design that is equitable.

Partner states and cosmolocal production 

The urgency to scale change points towards the idea of a “partner state” (Orsi, 2009) as a way to mobilize open knowledge in the service of myriad communities. A partner state expresses a transformation in the political contract between citizens and their state, such that: citizens are enabled and empowered as partners, co-creators, social innovators and contributors of the common good with the state; the state follows the principle of subsidiarity; and it acts as facilitator of change for a social transition to sustainability. 

In a cosmolocal context, a partner state puts knowledge and power into the hands of communities, by facilitating open knowledge and design, and supporting communities and locales to generate livelihoods and to produce the things they need. A partner state sees the role of the state as a facilitator and enabler of citizen led commoning activity. The state’s central role is to empower its citizens in meeting their needs and the challenges of their communities and society. In the context of cosmolocalism this can include: 

• Generating policies that support cosmolocal ecosystem development, e.g. by making sure research from the public purse remains open access,
• Supporting pilot projects and experiments in local economic development that use open source IIDEAS, e.g, by employing “barefoot” action researchers to support communities and businesses / organisations in using a cosmolocal approach, 
• Coordinating the creation of open IIDEAS pools in strategic areas, e.g. C02 drawdown / mitigation / adaptation, 
• Driving the development of anchor institutions that generate regional cosmolocal ecosystems, e.g. by using the states science technology and innovation capabilities and IP to drive cosmolocal potentials,
• Supporting intermediary market / industrial forms, e.g. co-ops, trusts, financial mutuals, in connecting markets, producers, consumers into cosmolocal value creating ecosystems
• Eliciting and connecting citizen interest and energy in addressing community / societal issues, e.g. by using participatory futures methods to engage citizens in envisioning the futures and charting strategic pathways (Ramos, et al 2019). 

Several experiments around the world have already been done by Bauwens and colleagues which are prefigurative examples of this. In Ecuador, Bauwens led a team in establishing the FLOK (Free Libre Open Knowledge) project, which attempted to establish an open knowledge regime across government and country. It represented an early attempt at creating a Partner State, the kind of social contract which can be a strong enabler of cosmolocal production (Ramos, 2016). In Ghent, Bauwens worked with the city on research that led to a commons transition plan that would put a partner city model into practice, which included elements of cosmolocalism (Bauwens, 2017).

In general, to move from just pockets of scattered ecosystems toward systematic application of cosmolocal principles and strategies will require experiments at various scales (cities, regions, states) to generate new policy frameworks and strategies. This in turn requires connecting the ideas and models with contextual needs and relationships where cosmolocalism may have value. Gaining traction here may also mean connecting cosmolocal strategies with the broader global justice movement, efforts for myriad Green New Deals being formulated or underway, the climate emergency movement, as well as multiple transition discourses (Transition Towns, Great Transition Initiative, Three Horizons Modeling, Transition Design, Design for Social Innovation, etc.) (Escobar 2018; Manzini, 2015). 

Toward a cosmolocal political contract 

A partner city or partner state represents a new political contract. The recent Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of Urban Commons is an example in evolving such a political contract. It makes citizens and the state partners in managing commons, and it repositions citizens as initiators and innovators of change, whereby citizens are enfranchised with a right to be social innovators in transforming their city. 

Today we see a mutation in the political contract that will govern our societies in the 21st century (Ramos, 2015). As Toffler argued, representative democracy is in crisis, as it is not able to respond with agility to the rapidly changing needs, challenges and contexts we experience (Bezold, 2006). It also infantilizes citizenry, who under its presumptions expect the state and market to take care of governance, with only tokenistic input every 3-4 years.  

The new political contract represented by a partner city or state can be understood as contributory democracy. This see “citizens and their associations … making a claim to govern a resource ‘according to their own rules and norms’, and as commons, outside of the public-private dichotomy” (Bauwens and Niaros, 2017). A partner state creates the conditions and framework for citizens to play a central role in initiating change which is supported by the state. It can be argued that a transition to sustainability will require widespread social innovation and design literacy (Manzini, 2015), and the partner state enables this to flourish. Further, coupled with the potentials for a global IIDEAS commons and liberating citizens as co-generators of change, the potential for social transformation toward sustainable societies and livelihoods is tremendous. 

In emerging years it is possible such a cosmolocal supporting partner state moves in the direction of what Keane (2005) calls a “cosmocracy”, a term to denote the way multiple overlapping institutions structure global, national, and local governance. What Bauwens’ terms “protocol cooperativism”, city-to-city resource mutualization, corresponds with this potential, where cities globally mutualize knowledge and infrastructure to facilitate transitions to sustainability and livelihoods. We see this with the C40 global initiative and can anticipate this can also happen using cosmolocal principles and strategies.  

Conclusion 

In a historical context, cosmolocalism is still emerging. It has the potential to be a transformational asset in our planetary response to our social and ecological crises, but it can be equally co-oped by the forces of capital and turned into just another tech trend which then generates qualitatively new externalities. It will need to be actively nurtured, shaped, and connected with people and places where it can find roots and provide value. 

We need to bring people together to discuss and design what the next steps are in bringing cosmolocalism forward as theory and practice. The needs of the moment and the futures call for a broader convergence of research to develop co-learning and collaboration. This may be through a series of meetings and conferences, or other ways that connect a variety of communities and discourses that, while complex, hold the potential for change through their interweaving. 

Returning to the image of our Earthrise, seeing ourselves as a totality, as a family, it is clear to this author that the promise of the future lies in becoming an Earth Community, working together to ensure the protection of our shared commons and to ensure the dignity and care of all people and all species. Our era sees the birth of a new phase in human experience and possibility. Cosmolocalism represents one of a number of important ideas, potentials and strategies in this next phase of becoming. 

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