Thanks to our visiting professors and teaching fellows, each semester the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work at Babes-Bolyai University offers special elective courses in English to international students.
Explore the list of elective courses for the 2023-2024 academic year
Contemporary Perspectives on the Commons (equivalent with ALR3413: Sociology of Social Movements)
Dr. Emrah Irzik
Description: There has been a surge of academic and public interest in varieties of collective management of natural and cultural resources known as “The Commons” in recent years in the face of the crisis-prone market system, tarnished state management models and relentless deterioration of bio-ecological conditions: The commons as the defense of nature, as model of self-management, as sharing of goods, as formation of communities… Was/is the withering of the commons at the hands of early industrial capitalism/contemporary neoliberalism inevitable? Should the commons be defended/regenerated?
There is now a fresh round of fighting taking place upon the digital terrain created by the maturation of “informational capitalism” and the concomitant “network society”: Between the Intellectual Property regime with its patents and copyrights on the one hand and the movements for Free Software, Creative Commons, Open Access and similar on the other. Is the production and distribution of digital artifacts best left to the mechanism of intellectual property, or can commons-based models present a viable alternative? Can unauthorized sharing, also known as “piracy” be defended with a straight face?
3 ECTS
Room 206, 2nd floor
