The idea of the commons is the idea of something shared without rivalry, whether it is land or the environment or knowledge. The survival of the commons depends on human co-operation. In Culture, Capital, and the Commons, Akeel Bilgrami asks the question: Can human co-operation be enforced by regulation, by policing and punishing non-cooperation?
Invoking ideas in thinkers ranging from Nietzsche and Marx to Wittgenstein, Foucault, and Bishop Tutu, the book explores the extent to which regulation and the law depends on a background of the cultural commons that is implicit and inarticulate, and the extent to which the cultural commons is itself sustained by overcoming alienated human relations.