The Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) has named Grant A. Mincy its first Elinor Ostrom Chair in Environmental Studies and Commons Governance.

Mincy holds a chair on the Energy & Environment Advisory Council for the Our America Initiative and an Associate editor of the Molinari Review. He earned his Masters degree in Earth and Planetary Science from the University of Tennessee in the summer of 2012. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee where he teaches both Biology and Geology at area colleges.

Mincy is a fellow of C4SS and has been writing with C4SS for almost two years. He has had commentaries published in many countries and in several languages. He has already published one academic study, Power and Property: A Corollary, with C4SS and is currently working on his second. His work has focused on issues of environment, ecology, commons governance, power of place, climate change, education, communication technology, resilient communities and the importance of anarchism to any social theory claiming justice, peace and prosperity as its values.

This chair is named in honor of the brilliant, prolific and passionate economist and political scientist Elinor Ostrom. Ostrom’s life, work, Workshop (research databases and libraries) and “a 50 year legacy of nurturing young scholars focused on solutions oriented research” demonstrates a powerful commitment to describing a a world beyond states and capitalism. A world where people are not at the mercy of the scarcity facts of the universe or the monocentric institutions desperately presumed as our only means of salvation. A world where people, communities, environments and resources are all important parts of governance problems and their quick-fix “Faustian Bargain” solutions are kept in view, in check, impossible and irrelevant.

We look forward to seeing how Mincy’s research and writing develops and enriches our understanding of Environmental Studies and Commons Governance for a stateless society.