Stewardship was once ordinary.
Not universal, not perfect, but ordinary—woven into the rhythms of daily life, embedded in relationships, passed down through generations.
Farmers stewarded land. Artisans stewarded crafts. Communities stewarded commons. Families stewarded knowledge, traditions, and relationships across generations.
This was not romanticized harmony. Stewardship coexisted with exploitation, inequality, and violence. But the practice of caring for what you depend on, knowing you will pass it on to others, was widely understood.
Today, stewardship feels impossible.
Not because people lack goodwill or awareness. But because the conditions that made stewardship ordinary have eroded—replaced by systems that make extraction rational and care costly.
Understanding why stewardship became difficult is essential if we want to reclaim it.
The Enclosure of Commons
The history of capitalism is, in many ways, the history of enclosing commons—taking what was shared and making it private, converting relationships into transactions, and transforming stewardship into ownership.
The most literal example is land enclosure in England—when common lands that communities had stewarded collectively for centuries were privatized, fenced off, and converted into private property.
Peasants who once grazed animals on common pastures, gathered firewood from common forests, and fished in common streams were suddenly trespassers on land that had always been theirs to use.
This was not merely an economic shift. It was a relational rupture—severing the ties between people and place, destroying the social practices of collective stewardship, and making survival dependent on wage labor rather than direct relationship with land.
The logic of enclosure has since expanded far beyond land. Knowledge has been enclosed through intellectual property law. Water has been enclosed through privatization. Seeds have been enclosed through patents. Even genetic material has been enclosed through biotech patents.
Each enclosure follows the same pattern: what was once held in common, tended collectively, and available to all becomes private property—controlled by those with capital, inaccessible to those without.
And each enclosure makes stewardship harder. Because stewardship requires relationship—and enclosure severs relationships, replacing them with transactions.
The Commodification of Life
Closely related to enclosure is commodification—the transformation of relationships, practices, and living things into commodities to be bought and sold.
Food, once grown in relationship with land and community, becomes a commodity produced for profit and sold in global markets.
Care, once embedded in family and community relationships, becomes a service purchased from strangers.
Education, once a shared responsibility of communities, becomes a product consumed by individuals.
Even attention, time, and relationships become commodified—monetized through social media platforms that extract value from our most intimate interactions.
Commodification makes stewardship irrational. If something is a commodity, the rational strategy is to maximize profit, minimize cost, and externalize harms. Long-term care becomes economically inefficient.
A farmer caring for soil health across generations cannot compete with industrial agriculture that extracts maximum yield today, even if it degrades soil for tomorrow.
A local craftsperson investing years in mastering a skill cannot compete with factory-produced goods made by low-wage workers halfway around the world.
A parent dedicating time to caregiving cannot compete economically with parents who outsource care and focus on paid employment.
In each case, stewardship is penalized by market logic. Care is a cost; extraction is profit.
The Acceleration of Mobility
Stewardship requires staying with something long enough to see the consequences of care—or neglect.
But modern life is characterized by relentless mobility.
People move frequently for jobs, education, housing costs. Families are geographically scattered. Workers switch employers every few years. Communities turn over constantly.
This mobility is not inherently bad. It creates opportunity, exposure to different cultures, escape from oppressive situations.
But it makes stewardship extremely difficult.
Stewardship of land requires decades—long enough to understand seasonal patterns, soil dynamics, ecological relationships. But who tends land they will leave in three years?
Stewardship of relationships requires sustained presence—showing up repeatedly, working through conflicts, building trust over time. But how do we steward relationships in communities where people constantly come and go?
Stewardship of institutions requires intergenerational commitment—mentoring younger members, preserving institutional memory, caring for the long-term health of the organization. But who invests in institutions they expect to leave?
Mobility creates what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called “liquid modernity”—a world where all solid relationships dissolve, where commitments are temporary, where long-term responsibility becomes irrational.
In such a world, stewardship becomes nearly impossible. Not because people don’t care, but because the structures of life make sustained, long-term care incompatible with survival.
The Professionalization of Care
As communities fragmented and markets expanded, many practices that were once embedded in community life became professionalized—taken over by credentialed experts, institutionalized, and turned into paid services.
Midwifery became obstetrics. Community healing became medicine. Eldercare became nursing homes. Childcare became daycare. Education became schooling.
This professionalization brought real benefits—standardization of quality, accumulation of expertise, accountability mechanisms.
But it also made stewardship more difficult.
When care is professionalized, it becomes the responsibility of specialists. Non-experts are discouraged from participating. Knowledge that was once widely held becomes specialized and inaccessible. Relationships of mutual care are replaced by service transactions.
A grandmother who once helped birth babies in her community is now told she lacks credentials. A neighbor who once cared for an elder in his final years is now told professionals should handle it. A parent who once taught children practical skills is now told certified teachers must do it.
Professionalization does not eliminate care. But it extracts it from community life, making it something specialists do for pay rather than something communities do for each other.
And when care becomes professionalized, stewardship—which depends on widespread participation, local knowledge, and reciprocal relationships—becomes harder to practice.
The Erosion of Intergenerational Connection
Stewardship is inherently intergenerational. It is about caring for what others created, maintaining it, and passing it on to those who come after.
But modern life systematically severs intergenerational connections.
Age segregation is pervasive. Children spend their days with same-age peers in schools. Young adults cluster in cities with other young adults. Elders are warehoused in retirement communities, nursing homes, or isolated in aging suburban homes.
This segregation is so normalized we barely notice it. But it is historically anomalous—and profoundly damaging to stewardship.
Without regular contact with elders, young people do not learn stewardship practices. They do not see what it looks like to care for something across decades. They do not receive the wisdom that comes from lived experience. They do not understand themselves as part of a lineage—receiving from those who came before, responsible to those who come after.
Without regular contact with younger generations, elders lose a sense of purpose. Their knowledge goes untransmitted. Their accumulated wisdom dies with them.
And without intergenerational connection, communities lose institutional memory. Lessons learned are forgotten. Mistakes are repeated. Long-term projects are abandoned.
The Cult of Autonomy
Modern culture valorizes individual autonomy—the capacity to live independently, make one’s own choices, and require nothing from others.
This is celebrated as freedom, maturity, success.
But autonomy and stewardship are often in tension.
Stewardship requires recognizing interdependence—that we depend on others, that others depend on us, that we are responsible not just to ourselves but to the communities and ecosystems we are part of.
Stewardship means accepting constraints—that we cannot do whatever we want, whenever we want, because our actions affect others and the systems we share.
Stewardship means embracing obligation—that there are things we are responsible for, even when it is inconvenient, costly, or contrary to our immediate preferences.
The cult of autonomy makes these commitments feel oppressive rather than meaningful. Obligations become burdens. Interdependence becomes weakness. Long-term responsibility becomes an impediment to freedom.
This is not to say autonomy is bad. Personal agency matters. The ability to make choices is essential to human dignity.
But autonomy untethered from responsibility is not freedom. It is isolation—a lonely, alienated existence where we owe nothing to anyone and no one owes us anything.
True freedom is not independence from others. It is the capacity to participate responsibly in the relationships and systems we are part of.
Why This Matters
These forces—enclosure, commodification, mobility, professionalization, age segregation, valorization of autonomy—are not natural. They are historical. They emerged from specific economic, political, and cultural choices.
And because they are historical, they can change.
But change requires recognizing how deeply these forces have shaped modern life. They are not merely external constraints. They have shaped our desires, our assumptions about what is normal, and our sense of what is possible.
Many people genuinely want to practice stewardship. They want to care for land, tend relationships, contribute to community life, and take responsibility for what they pass on to future generations.
But they find themselves unable to do so—not because they lack virtue, but because the structures of modern life make stewardship irrational, costly, and nearly impossible.
Understanding this is essential. Because if we want to reclaim stewardship, we cannot rely on individual virtue alone. We must rebuild the conditions that make stewardship livable—creating structures, institutions, and cultural norms that support long-term care rather than penalizing it.
This is the first essay in Series III: From Learning to Stewardship. The next essay explores how we can make stewardship livable again—what changes in structures, institutions, and practices would support stewarded communities.