” ‘Commons’ determines a public area that involves shared livelihoods of people in the dimensions of culture, social institutions, economy, and environment. Generally, commons consist of 2 types; first: commons based on a traditional way of life in the community including natural resources management; second: commons based on alternative markets such as green markets, organic markets or community markets. In terms of development, commons are dynamic and inconstant, consequently, they have brought about overlapping challenges in many dimensions when we study commons in different contexts. For example, in the social and cultural dimensions, commons are a shared area in the community where everyone can access to mutually use and produce, so this dimension is expressed as ritualized togetherness. On the other side, commons in the economic dimensions are a kind of alternative approach to trading and exchanging which avert the mainstream market and external capital. Additionally, in the political dimensions, commons are a participatory process which advocates people to establish co-governance to negotiate with the authorities or capitalists. Commons open true self-organization of lifeforms. Thus, they protect and peacefully interact with their environment. Moreover, in terms of spatial dimensions, commons in the rural areas are attached to sharing, using and producing common resources and products without claiming the ownership. Everyone is responsible to protect and maintain the resources mutually. On the contrary, the term ‘commons’ in urban areas has been still facing some semantic difficulties in defining its meaning because the complexity in the urban context has brought about the meaning enigma, term confusion, unsettlement of interpretation among various styles of interest groups and communities. Therefore, gaining an overview of the ‘commons’ is a tangible and intangible area that is an important root value for people in sharing their way of life,” (Prapart Pintobtang, 2020).
Prof. Prapart Pintobtang manifested 2 cases involving commons initiatives in Thailand: Ban Baw Kaew Village Movement (Khonsan Forest Preserve) and Kroi Bai Node. He considered commons as public spaces that are dynamic and diverse contexts both in social and economic dimensions relating to sustaining people’s lives. From his perspective, there are many types of commons depending on objectives, values, ways of life, or political identities, which formulate collective actions in diverse and different movements. Therefore, commons is an alternative approach for people with the expectation that they can sustain their lives in alternative solutions, not submerged in mainstream society and capitalism.
