Talk:Open-field system

Early comments

I'm confused. Why was putting fences around fields such a big deal? Josh Cherry 15:08, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It was a fundamental change to the property system - from common ownership to exclusive private ownership. It was a big social change as well, as it concentrated economic power in a relatively few people's hands. -- ChrisO 09:57, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I meant that it wasn't clear to me from the article why the need for large enclosed fields led to such sweeping economic and social changes. If changes to agriculture required it, why not just build some fences and leave economic relations unchanged? Josh Cherry 23:44, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It was not a change from common ownership to exclusive private ownership. It was a change from private ownership with some communal rights and with communal management - that is, an individual owned the strip, and had the right to the crop, but people in the community (not always all, sometimes it was restricted to other landowners only) might have a right to graze the cattle on the strips after the harvest. It was communally managed, because the manor community (in England at least) would set all the strips in one field to be fallow at the same time, so they could graze all the commoners cattle there without worrying about anyone's crop being eaten.

Open fields were originally needed because the ploughs were so heavy to cut through the heavy clay soil that it just made more sense to have as long a way to have them pulled before trying to turn them around. As for technological innovation after, there is little evidence to show that enclosed fields were more productive than open. But they were more easily sold and rented to commercial farmers, which was most important for landowners.

The reason it was a disruptive change was that a) people lost this right of grazing, b) the costs of enclosure were high enough to force many small landholders to sell their newly enclosed land because they could not afford to fence it, etc and c) it meant the community no longer worked together in land management. But many places were enclosed early, and in other places, there were very few small landholders and most landless had lost all common rights. There is a huge debate among historians right now about how disruptive/destructive to economic and social relationships enclosure was - the answer (currently) seems to be that in some places, it was a huge transformation and made people more wage-dependent, and in other places, those same changes had already come without enclosure, but through a concentration of landownership, and the increase in landless people. - *jb 17:39, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I also added the categories Middle Ages and Agriculture- open fields were used in many places in Europe, and contine to be. - *jb 18:02, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Braunton

An anon user added a link to http://www.explorebraunton.org suggesting that it would provide more information about Braunton. As yet, the page contains no information of any kind, however, it looks like it might be an 'official' (Devon CC) site, so it could prove useful in the future.

EdJogg (talk) 17:26, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Low importance?

Given that the open field system was the economic and agricultural system governing the lives of half the people in Europe for hundreds of years, I find it dubious that this article is deemed to be of "low importance." Smallchief (talk 22:44, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

@@Smallchief: I graded low on the importance to the Economics project scale because it may not be relevant to a modern economist or an understanding of economics. However, you are probably right that it should be a mid, as it does add depth of understanding to economics. Related articles are Enclosure which is at mid, and the more specific Inclosure Acts which is at low.Jonpatterns (talk) 12:12, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Allotment Gardens

This section is inappropriate at this point. and could easily confuse. Allotment gardens have an entirely different, relatively modern, statutory origin, clearly explained by the National Allotment Garden Society on their site. Manninagh1958 (talk) 09:57, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Unless someone raises objections in the next few days, I'll delete this section and put only a link into allotment gardens.Smallchief (talk 10:34, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Controversies and Inefficiencies

The tragedy of the commons part of this section is dubious. For example:

However, the creator of the term "tragedy of the commons", Garrett Hardin, pointed out that the pastures of England were "protected from ruin by limiting each tenant to a fixed number of animals". Thus, Hardin says the commons were "managed", the "logical equivalent of socialism...which may be good or bad depending on the quality of the management."

The cited source does not contain either of those quotes. I tried searching for the quotes and the only references to them on the internet seem to originate from this page. Even if these were real quotes, Hardin's essay isn't supported by evidence from an actual open field system:

The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. [...] As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?"

He never uses an example of an actual open field system to explain an actual tragedy of the commons. He has you imagine one, and then uses refuted economic/sociological theories (rational self-maximizers, utilitarianism) to explain how it must logically happen. The essay is little more than a pro-privatization think piece and there's no good reason to include it in an article about the actual open field system.

--Ackhuman (talk) 16:16, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

I've added a footnote citing the source of the quote by Hardin. Hardin and the open-field system are often used as examples of the inefficiencies of common ownership, and this quote from him is a qualifier to what he had previously said in his famous essay.

I believe this section as it is now written is necessary and balanced. I do not believe that the present text is a right-wing plea for capitalism and private ownership. Rather, this section points out that the open-field system lasted 1,000 years and that its demise was controversial, lamented by many, and accompanied by much hardship for displaced farmers. Smallchief (talk)

I agree with Ackhuman that this section is dubious, and in my opinion it violates the Neutral Point of View rule. The source of this analysis is Garrett Hardin - a right-wing white nationalist. The source was published by Liberty Fund - a far-right foundation that's heavily linked with the US Republican Party. The content of the quote calls manorialism the "logical equivalent of socialism," which is much closer to a right-wing rhetorical flourish than any sort of objective or even coherent economic statement - in fact, the source itself seems to be primarily a propaganda piece aimed at making this exact conflation. And yet, the article treats both this source and this politically charged statement as objective and uncontested. Seems like a textbook definition of "undue weight" to me. I edited the section to simply remove the "logical equivalent of socialism" clause for now, and I would also recommend expanding on the other sources in the paragraph (Dahlman and Cox) by including their criticisms of Hardin's analysis.

Combefere (talk) 06:31, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Your analysis falters with the assumption that comparing something to socialism means that it is bad -- which is the opinion of the Republican Party in the United States. However, contrary to the American Repubs (and defensive Dems), in most of the world "socialism" is a word of favorable connotation. The use of the word "socialism" in this article does not imply that socialism is either good or bad, but only that the open field system has been compared to socialism. Nor does the present text, proclaim the open-field system to be a bad thing. Rather the language of the article points out that the open field system lasted a thousand years and that it was replaced with "a harsher, more competitive and capitalistic society." That's hardly a right-wing clarion call for the virtues of capitalism. If this section of the wikipedia article was the work of a right wing ideologue as you imply, that conclusion about capitalism from a reliable source would most certainly not be included in the article. 'Balance" means that all relevant and verifiable opinions are represented fairly.

Likewise, your characterization of Hardin as a "right-wing white nationalist" is dependent on 21st century definitions of "right" and "left." Hardin was an ecologist and he both influenced and reflected the views of his time -- which in the late 1960s were concerns about environmental degradation, over-population, and "the limits of growth." These were issues important to the political left of the day -- not the right. On the environment, he was a leftist; on population control he was a leftist; on immigration his opinion was closer to the left of his day than to the right. It's simplistic to reject his whole body of work because he later became identified as a right wing white nationalist. Using that criteria, we would characterize Benjamin Franklin as a white nationalist, because he spoke out against the immigration of "swarthy" Germans to Pennsylvania in the 1760s. Smallchief (talk) 09:19, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

My analysis is not at all dependent on the assumption that comparing anything to socialism means that it is bad. It is also not at all dependent on the idea that this section is a "right-wing clarion call for the virtues of capitalism." My analysis is that Hardin's specific conflation -- not comparison -- of manorialism to socialism is:

• Not representative of a consensus of economic experts
  • This is not sufficiently sourced as even the opinion of one economic expert, as Hardin was not an economist.
• Not coherent enough to be taken as meaningful economic analysis
• Clearly part of a rhetorical campaign by both himself individually and the Liberty Fund to redefine (in a childishly simplistic manner) and denigrate socialism.

Socialism is not "when management" and no serious economist would even entertain such a meaningless and nonsensical statement. Manorialism was not Socialism in any sense of the word. It was not the "logical equivalent of socialism." Including this clause -- even if it were alongside a separate quote from another economist who disputed it which it is not -- would violate the undue weight section of the NPOV. It promotes a viewpoint that is held by an extreme minority (if any) of economists and gives not only a false impression of parity but a false impression of consensus to this viewpoint.

I'll add further that this viewpoint (that Manorialism was the "logical equivalent of socialism") is not relevant to the article, so its inclusion serves no neutral purpose. The edited quotation includes the actual kernel of economic analysis (that the Open-Field System was a managed system and its efficiency depended on the quality of the management) without the offhanded politically charged jab.

Combefere (talk) 03:47, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

References

Conflicting Data in the Example

The numbers given for Elton, Cambridgeshire in this article seem to conflict with the numbers given in the article for Elton, here it's stated as 13 hides with a population of 500-600, in the Elton article it's stated as 28 hides with a population of 129-185. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.149.192.144 (talk) 23:30, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

The article assumes the Marxist view of history is correct.

The article talks of the "rise of capitalism" with the invention of "the concept that land was a commodity that could be bought and sold" - even in the Middle Ages land was bought and sold in England and other European countries (as it has been in Roman times) and the Open Field system was far from universal. 2A02:C7C:E183:AC00:FC40:383D:A191:2435 (talk) 20:17, 6 October 2023 (UTC)