How do we make—and share—place? This display gathers artists, theorists, and organizers who reimagine belonging not as a private sentiment but as a shared, public practice. This display is inspired by We All Belong (2025), a new mural by MasPaz created in dialogue with Offering the Potomac: Acknowledging Indigenous Place. The mural reflects on interconnectedness and reciprocity among humans, animals, and the natural world.
From Meridel Rubenstein’s storied landscapes of Los Alamos and Vietnam to Ray Oldenburg’s notion of “third places,” these selections trace how people co-create spaces of care, memory, and conviviality. The commons appears here as both method and horizon: Elinor Ostrom’s field-defining work on collective governance sits alongside contemporary studies of cultural, digital, and urban commons. Texts on migration and sociolinguistics explore how language, mobility, and policy shape who gets to belong, while philosophy and evolutionary anthropology ask what kinship and friendliness make possible.
Together, these works offer both practical tools and imaginative frameworks for stewarding resources, cultivating publicness, and repairing relations—so that belonging becomes something we make, and remake, together.
Visit Provisions, explore books online, or book an appointment ([email protected], [email protected]) to discuss your research or creative projects regarding this topic.
This curation was realized through a partnership with George Mason University Libraries.
Visit the Mason University Libraries’ book collection page to check some of these books.
Books in this display
- Belonging: Los Alamos to Vietnam — Meridel Rubenstein (2004)
- All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons — Jay Walljasper (2010)
- Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons — Peter Barnes (2006)
- Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth — David Bollier (2002)
- The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community — Ray Oldenburg (1999)
- Being Public: How Art Creates the Public — Jeroen Boomgaard & Rogier Brom (eds.) (2017) from Mason University Libraries’ collection
- Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action — Elinor Ostrom (1990) from Mason University Libraries’ collection
- Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship — Catherine S. Ramírez et al. (eds.) (2021) Online/from Mason University Libraries’ collection
- Contested Belonging: Spaces, Practices, Biographies — Kathy Davis, Halleh Ghorashi & Peer Smets (eds.) (2018) Online/from Mason University Libraries’ collection
- The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging: Perspectives from the Margins — Leonie Cornips & Vincent A. De Rooij (eds.) (2018) from Mason University Libraries’ collection
- A Philosophy of Belonging: Persons, Politics, Cosmos — James Greenaway (2023) Online/from Mason University Libraries’ collection
- Making Commons Dynamic: Understanding Change Through Commonisation and Decommonisation — Prateep Kumar Nayak (ed.) (2021) Online/from Mason University Libraries’ collection
- Cultural Commons: A New Perspective on the Production and Evolution of Cultures — Enrico Eraldo Bertacchini et al. (eds.) (2012) from Mason University Libraries’ collection
- Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity — Brian Hare & Vanessa Woods (2020) Online/from Mason University Libraries’ collection
Keywords: belonging, commons, community, place-making, public practice, reciprocity, interconnectedness, stewardship, conviviality, care, memory, kinship, friendliness, repair, publicness