The Tragedy of the “Tragedy of the Commons”: Why Coining Too Good a Phrase Can Be Dangerous

UBC Faculty Research and Publications

The Tragedy of the “Tragedy of the Commons”: Why Coining Too Good a Phrase Can Be Dangerous Hawkshaw, Robert Stephen; Hawkshaw, Sarah; Sumaila, Ussif Rashid

Abstract

A deep reading of Hardin (1968) reveals that he had a lot more to say about the use and regulation of resources such as fisheries than he is given credit for in the literature. It appears that he is typically cited just so that authors can use the phrase “tragedy of the commons” to invoke the specter of looming catastrophe and then tie that to whatever solution they have proposed. We argue in this contribution that there is a lot more in Hardin’s essay that either contradicts or greatly complicates the arguments he is cited as an authority for.

Item Metadata

Title	The Tragedy of the “Tragedy of the Commons”: Why Coining Too Good a Phrase Can Be Dangerous
Creator	Hawkshaw, Robert Stephen; Hawkshaw, Sarah; Sumaila, Ussif Rashid
Publisher	Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Date Issued	2012-11-15
Description	A deep reading of Hardin (1968) reveals that he had a lot more to say about the use and regulation of resources such as fisheries than he is given credit for in the literature. It appears that he is typically cited just so that authors can use the phrase “tragedy of the commons” to invoke the specter of looming catastrophe and then tie that to whatever solution they have proposed. We argue in this contribution that there is a lot more in Hardin’s essay that either contradicts or greatly complicates the arguments he is cited as an authority for.
Subject	Tragedy of the commons; Fisheries economics; Individual transferable quotas
Genre	Article
Type	Text
Language	eng
Date Available	2019-04-15
Provider	Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights	CC BY 3.0
DOI	10.14288/1.0378217
URI	http://hdl.handle.net/2429/69697
Affiliation	Law, Peter A. Allard School of; Science, Faculty of; Oceans and Fisheries, Institute for the
Citation	Sustainability 4 (11): 3141-3150 (2012)
Publisher DOI	10.3390/su4113141
Peer Review Status	Reviewed
Scholarly Level	Faculty
Rights URI	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Aggregated Source Repository	DSpace

Open Collections

UBC Faculty Research and Publications