John Dewey and the Tragedy of Commons

Abstract

This paper seeks to show how Dewey’s concepts and practices of democratic participation make communities of inquiry which cooperate to face the tragedy of the commons and other social dilemmas presented by the environmental crisis possible. After analyzing the simplified model of economic rationality underlying Hardin’s challenge in The tragedy of the commons (1968), the paper explores the presence of these Deweyan concepts in the alternative notion of cooperative rationality sketched out by Elinor Ostrom to respond to this challenge. Finally, Action Research is introduced as heuristics which explicitly responds to this challenge by means of Dewey´s participatory democracy.