Earlier this year I took on some work tutoring at both the ANU and UC. At the ANU I am teaching a course titled “Environment and Society: The Geography of Sustainability” — one of the first courses I did ten years ago when starting my degree. The course is an introduction to environmental politics and policy, using a multi-disciplinary approach to think about the issue of sustainability.
Last week was one of my favourite tutorials where we talked about Garrett Hardin’s theory of the Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin’s essay is arguably one of, if not the most influential pieces of work in environmental policy and politics. It forms the basis of much of environmental policy and planning and is hardly criticised despite its deep problems.
Hardin’s theory is based on the idea that when a resource is available to all — when it is a common — the acts of “rational people” will ultimately lead to its destruction.
“Picture a pasture open to all,” he starts. In this scenario, a “rational” herdsmen will want to maximise the amount of cattle he can herd. This is part of an inherent desire to grow production and increase one’s wealth. Yet adding more cattle brings cost, so when deciding whether to increase his herd a herdsman needs to think of the positives and negatives. Hardin explains:
“What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?” This utility has one negative and one positive component.
1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.
2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of âÂÂ1.
With a hersdman being the only one to gain the benefits of the extra cattle, and with the costs being shared amongst all, inevitably “the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd.”
But this is a method for disaster. As each herdsmen adds more cattle the pasture becomes depleted and destroyed and eventually everyone fails. The environment collapses and a “tragedy’ ensues. This example, Hardin argues, can be replicated across all resource issues. Allowing resources to fall to the commons is a tragedy of disaster.
Hardin’s theory is one that I’ve dealt with quite a bit in my previous work. It runs throughout mainstream environmental management and politics, forming the basis of a lot of our decision making. The Tragedy of the Commons is an assumed, inherent, part of human nature — one that we must find ways to tackle whenever dealing with the environment.
But when teaching this topic last week I began to think about the connections between this theory and the family. This is something I’m still developing but plays out into a broader discussion on the relationship between the environmental politics and familial structures, one I think is much stronger than many think.
Let’s be clear first that the evidence behind Hardin’s theory is scant at best. Angus for example quotes Engels, who looked at communal resource management in Germany. Engels said:
[T]he use of arable and meadowlands was under the supervision and direction of the community. . . .
Just as the share of each member in so much of the mark as was distributed was of equal size, so was his share also in the use of the “common mark.” The nature of this use was determined by the members of the community as a whole. . . .
At fixed times and, if necessary, more frequently, they met in the open air to discuss the affairs of the mark and to sit in judgment upon breaches of regulations and disputes concerning the mark. (Engels 1892)
This sort of communal management has been well documented by many ranging of Engels and Angus to Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for her research into communal resource management schemes. This evidence we also presented to my class, getting them to think critically about Hardin’s work.
The question I asked my class therefore was, given this evidence, what was Hardin’s motive for writing his essay, and what is the motive for ensuring it remains as the basis of environmental policy making?
To understand this we need to look at the main solution he provided. Apart from his advocacy for eugenics (which he talks about in the essay), Hardin was a huge advocate for privatisation. As humans were unable to manage the “commons” we had to split up land and resources and privatise them. People who owned resources and had an economic reason to maintain them would likely look after them better than a collective.
It is here where you can start to see the connection with the family unit. Privatisation requires units who can do the privatising, and in capitalism this unit is the family. Many others have explored the idea of the family being the major ‘economic unit’ of capitalism, “an integral part of the reproduction of capitalist relations.”
Families play a major role in capitalism. At the most basic level the modern nuclear family allows for the reproduction of labor power (i.e. the birth of children who will become new workers) and the passage of wealth and inheritance, both of which are essential to the continuation of the system. But more importantly for this discussions the dominance of families privatises functions that were once under communal control. Nuclear families privatised domestic work, ensuring it was not the burden of the capitalist class (who refused to pay for it). Families also looked after ‘unproductive’ members of the working class (the sick, elderly, children etc.) and wives were placed in charge of looking after their husbands to ensure they were ready and able to participate in a full day’s work. Martha Gimenez states this in these terms:
As long as the family continues to operate as an economic unit, ’society’ does not assume responsibility for its members except under limited circumstances; distribution and consumption are organized in ways that presuppose family membership and specific relations between the family and the ’economy’ which severely restrict women’s lives and opportunities.
What Hardin’s essay does is provide some form of ‘scientific’ basis for this. These processes occurred well before Hardin wrote his essay — hundreds of years in fact. Hardin wrote the Tragedy of the Commons in 1968, notably at a time when environmental concern and the environment movement was growing. In doing so he provided essential ‘scientific’ cover for a system that was already well entrenched, but was also being challenged. This was not just cover for the way we manage our resources but for our social system as well. Hardin entirely rejected communal forms of living, favouring privatisation of both the means of production and the family unit. This entrenches our understandings of how societies operate, in particular entrenching modern family forms.
This is a pretty common trend in capitalist society and its interaction with the sciences. Every year for example we see new ‘data’ that reinforces the norms of our familial and sexual life, whether it is research that says that monogamy is ‘natural’ or that women inherently have lower libido and sexual desire. Science is commonly used to reinforce our social norms — from psychology to genetics.
For me, this is the link between Hardin’s work and the family. Hardin didn’t create a challenge to the commons. Pastures, land, the atmosphere and water had all started to be privatised by the time he wrote his essay. He was just the right man, at the right time. In the heart of a burgeoning environment movement he provided some (unsubstantiated) “science” to reinforce the system as it existed. This influence continues today — invading both neoliberal politics, but potentially more importantly, environment movements across the globe.
I’m increasingly seeing connections between our families and all of the other elements of capitalism. Hardin has opened up some thoughts about how we think about resource management, and in turn the environment, builds in to this. It’s an important connection, particularly given the timing of his essay and the prominence it still has. Was a good use of my teaching as well!