I like NICA's spring conference 2010 theme:

“FOOD AS CELEBRATION: how food helps build community”

* Share a happy memory around food
* How does food create a sense of community for you?
* Do you have a ritual around food?
* How does food nourish your Spirit?

I'm a sucker for these prompt questions and would love to hear about you and food in your community.

Well, it's Elinor Ostrom who actually won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Science, not the topic itself of collective management of resources. (hello, ELT!)

She's done years of work on societies and communities who manage property collectively - how it works, why it works, and what conditions must exist to make collective management work well. She's produced hundreds of studies on the conditions in which communities self-organize to solve common problems.

It's an interesting read about her in this month's YES! magazine. As YES! says, "What makes this award particularly special is that her work is about cooperation."

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/america-the-remix/elinor-ostrom-wins-nobel-for-common-s-sense

She lists conditions that need to exist to effectively manage collective property. Interesting to see if they apply to our circumstances and individual communities.