Abstract
The concept of commons is often understood to refer to resources shared among a group of people. The resources are typically classified by binaries such as (non-)natural, (non-)rival and (non-)substractable, and the analytical focus is placed on governance for sustainable management. Another approach to the idea of commons emphasises social relations. This concentrates on production resulting from human-human and human-nature interactions. Here, we focus on the latter and investigate the relationship between these two conceptualisations. This is enabled through an empirical study of the development process of a drought-tolerant rice variety, Sahbhagi Dhan, which was the result of a twelveyear long collaboration between the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and other different Indian institutions. We argue that the concept of the common as a production system can be characterised as an interwoven process of community building involved in the production of resource commons, and we indicate several features of the community-building process that are essential to an understanding of commons as a socially specified system of production.