The Convent and the Commons: Collective Stewardship Models

Sor Juana's convent embodied collective living—shared resources, communal decision-making, mutual support—a model radically different from both capitalism and state socialism. This concept applies convent principles to imagining climate solutions: commons-based resource management where communities collectively steward water, forests, agricultural land with use-rights rather than ownership. Indigenous communities worldwide practice such stewardship, maintaining ecosystems for generations through collective governance. The convent model suggests combining cooperative economics with intellectual collaboration—communities collectively managing resources while sharing knowledge and decision-making. This rejects both corporate privatization and centralized state control, instead supporting local democratic management of common resources. Sor Juana's community aspect matters: the convent wasn't isolated intellectuals but people living interdependently, suggesting climate solutions require both systemic change and daily practices of cooperation. Contemporary commons movements—seed libraries, community land trusts, water cooperatives—revive these principles. Climate justice demands transition from resource extraction and private accumulation toward regenerative commons where humans participate as participants in ecosystems rather than dominators, mirroring monastic principles of stewarding creation.