‘The Commons’ promotes and publishes essays, articles, visual stories as well as audio-visual outputs coming from the fields of social sciences, arts and humanities. It delves into the fields and subjects of history, politics, culture, and economy dealing with aspects of state, society and everyday life in and of Nepal and of Nepalis the world over. It publishes works of established as well as up-and-coming researchers, scholars, artists and journalists of Nepali and non-Nepali backgrounds based in and outside Nepal.

Why ‘The Commons’

There are three broad factors that speak of the need for a platform such as ‘The Commons’.

1. Academic writing/publication is not always accessible to the general public anywhere in the world, but especially so in Nepal. Not everything is open access and even when it is, academic writing remains out of the grasp of most of the reading public, mainly because it is aimed at a particular audience and hence written in a style that is often criticised as being ‘pedantic’.
2. Second, the gradual rise of anti-intellectualism and pervasiveness of claptrap clickbait online and social media outlets promoting ‘fake news’ have led to a general decline in informed debates and deliberation and an eroding sense of camaraderie and collegiality. Although there are fact-checking entities for verification, they do not offer any substantive space for thoughtful engagement. ‘The Commons’ aims to foster civic engagement in questioning/promoting ‘common sense’.
3. In the context of the Nepali public sphere, particularly the last decade or so has witnessed a general rise in both the production and consumption of writings in the form of short as well as long-form essays. Likewise, there have been academic outputs that have taken up ‘simpler’ and less jargon-filled theoretical writings to reach out to a larger body of readers. Graphic essays, novels and photo essays have also become popular modes for communicating and consuming knowledge. Ethnographies have become increasingly narrativised in graphic form while graphic arts and paintings have become a powerful medium for articulating messages contained in essays, aided, of course, by textual representations. There remains, however, a serious dearth of platforms to accommodate and promote these outputs/writings. ‘The Commons’ hopes to tap into these emergent tendencies in the production and circulation of knowledge.

Format and content of media outputs in ‘The Commons’ 

1. Textual materials is the primary focus: book reviews, articles, long-form essays, as well as interviews and conversations.
2. Graphic essays, illustrations as well as photo essays.
3. Audio-visual materials: podcasts, media shorts and documentaries.
4. The language of publication will be both English and Nepali.

The Commons is an undertaking of Social Science Baha.

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