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Nobel laureate Ostrom talks "commons" sense


March 03, 2010

When Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, it was not all that surprising considering her well-respected body of work. Yet, her selection was also an unconventional one. For starters, she is the first woman to be given the prize. In addition, she is not a traditional economist but what she deems a political economist, a political scientist who collaborates with economists. And perhaps most unusual of all is the fact that her research – unlike most economic studies – focuses on cooperation instead of competition.

Considered a pioneer in her field, since the early 1960s Ostrom has been studying how people relate to and manage common property, or “the commons.”

The current issue of Yes! Magazine features an interview with Ostrom, a research professor in ASU’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the founding director of the school’s Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity. In it, Ostrom discusses her award and the interdisciplinary work that led to it, as well as her hopeful view of humans as a species that, while often acting greedily, can and does organize to solve problems. She also emphasizes the need for sustainable thinking, transdisciplinary perspective and a clearer grasp of social ecological systems and touches on her upcoming book, Working Together, co-authored with ASU mathematical modeler Marco Janssen and Concordia University assistant professor Amy Poteete.

Article source: Yes! Magazine

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