In Wendy Brown's brilliant book, "States of injury," she reserves her harshest criticisms against the left for abandoning the call for "freedom" in their struggles. Cowed by the anti-statism of the right proclaiming an ethnocentric and jingoistic "free" society, the left turned on the concept, emptying it of power and action.

Colombo, Sri Lanka, March 23, 2006

Garett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" resulted in a massive, Orwellian sweep of the language previously used to attack collectivization and forms of communalism.  Rather than attacking communism directly, thinkers such as Hardin and the Chicago school of economists, led by Milton Friedman, led an attack against the unsustainabilities and instabilities of collective governance.

In a news item posted on the World Bank site earlier this year, Peter Harrold, Country Director for the World Bank Colombo Office, proclaims the need for economic growth to solve Sri Lanka's poverty. Harrold blames Sri Lanka's problems on the mismanagement of resources, in particular those resources managed collectively.  Paraphrasing Hardin, Harrold states that, "The freedom to consume the commons without cost leads to the ruin of all."

Harriet Friedmann Lecture at the Havens Centre for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change

Wednesday October 11 2006 http://www.havenscenter.org/VSP/2006fall/friedmann/friedmann.html

Harriet Friedmann is Professor of Sociology and Fellow of the Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto. Her research over thirty years has explored many aspects of food and agriculture, mainly through the historical framework of “food regimes.” These include the structure of family farms, international political economy of food and agriculture, agricultural policy from local to national, regional and international, changing patterns of trade and specialization, diasporic cuisines, agronomies and food practices, and international trade rivalries and institutions. Her current research is on the politics of certification and standards both globally and locally. Globally, how do new institutions and practices use “quality” standards to contest the restructuring of transnational and local agrofood relations? Locally, how can we understand creativity in local food networks and institutions, particularly in Toronto? She was recently a Fellow of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University, of All Souls College Oxford, and the Rockefeller Centre in Bellagio, Italy.