# Enclosures as a Threat to Commons
Enclosure is the opposite of commoning in that it *separates* what commoning otherwise connects — people and land, you and me, present and future generations, technical infrastructures and their governance, conservation areas and the people who have stewarded them for generations.
The process of enclosure is generally driven by investors and corporations, often in collusion with the nation-state, to commodify shared land, water, forests, genes, creative works, and much else. The motivation is usually to monetize whatever can be controlled as private property and sold.
Enclosure is thus a profound act of dispossession and cultural disruption that forces people into both market dependency and market frames of thought. They must buy access to the essentials of life. They must bow to the conditions and prices set by investor-owners. They need permission to use resources they once stewarded for themselves.
Commons are also jeopardized by people who have trouble imagining social alternatives to the market (“co-optation from within”). Examples include coop housing members who seek to cash out when market prices rise, or medical researchers who attempt to patent drugs developed through community collaboration. Enclosures over-turn a comprehensive culture of Social Life, Provisioning, and Peer Governance — a way of acting, knowing, and being in the world. They usher in a culture of calculative rationality and short-term, impersonal relationships that undermine commoning.
BOLLIER, David and HELFRICH, Silke, 2019. Free, fair, and alive: the insurgent power of the commons. pdf 
, p. 152