English

The Wealth of the Commons is about history, political change, public policy and cultural transformation on a global scale – but most of all, it’s about commoners taking charge of their lives and their endangered resources. It’s about common people doing uncommon things.

Publication Series on Ecology 21: The Future We Want – the motto chosen by the UN in the run-up to the June 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) – is certainly forward-looking. Rio+20 is supposed to define routes towards a safer, fairer, greener, and cleaner world. But the blueprints for a green economy are devoid of gender perspectives. Christa Wichterich’s essay takes a closer look on the relations between feminism and ecology.

Publication Series on Europe 7: The EU debt crisis has clearly shown that the monetary union cannot be upheld without coordinated fiscal and economic policies. However, there is an additional hold-up, as further «top-down» integration driven by the political elites runs into growing opposition. Thus the debt crisis may easily trigger a crisis of EU legitimacy.

It is almost a year ago that Syrian citizens, inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, courageously took to the streets in protest against the decades-long denial of their basic rights by the Assad regime. But Syria as a topic for research has long been marginalized in cultural, social, and political studies. This publication written by authors from the region wants to give new perspectives on Syria.

Publication Series on Ecology 20: The global crisis of unsustainability is not only a crisis of the hardware of civilization, it is also a crisis of the software of minds. Therefore we need a global (environ)mental change, that is a transformation process to affect the many relationships between our minds and their environments.

All over the world, information technologies and the internet have taken an increasingly important role in communication, challenging the conventional means of news consumption. Our office in Thailand has performed interviews with academics, journalists and activists to explore the role of new media in social movements in Thailand, and how it will develop.