It's true that Marx defined commodities not as things but as social relations, but it was Karl Polyani who depicted most graphically these precise social changes that occurred in the British countryside during the time of enclosures, famous calling this period "The Great Transformation."

Well, with the rhetoric of the "new enclosures" sweeping social and legal theory today, it is crucial to understand the concurrent and indeed constitutive social transformations that define these enclosures of the "intangible commons of the mind" (see James Boyle's "The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain"). Intellectual property threatens the information commons, according to theorists and activists alike, but what is the relationship of these information commons to our changing social relations, or to political governance more generally?

Common Property Resource Management and the World Bank

 The World Bank, in 1997, released this document siting the importance of recognizing traditional common property resource management systems. The brief concludes that, "all natural resources that are managed in a traditional way, or in a way that combines traditional and more modern approaches, are affected by Bank projects." However, little to no research has been done on these impacts. The blame is placed on the shoulders of borrowers: "As a rule, borrowers attach little value to supporting and maintaining communally managed natural resources." Two years prior to the publication of this report, the Common Property Resource Management Network (CPRNET) was established to raise awareness among Bank staff about common property resource regimes.