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- Convenors:
-
Christoph Brumann
(Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle)
Philipp Demgenski (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Zhejiang University)
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- Format:
- Workshop
- Transfers:
- Closed for transfers
- Location:
- Seminargebäude S24
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 30 September, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract
While commoning is a major buzzword in urban activism, social scientific research on cities has been slow to follow. We invite ethnographic and theoretical explorations on the nature, significance and discursive affordances of the commons in contemporary urban politics, economies and everyday life.
Long Abstract
Classical social scientific studies of the commons often refer to rural or placeless phenomena, such as pastures, fisheries or scientific knowledge, whereas cities rarely feature. At the same time, ‘commoning’ has become a buzzword in recent urban activism and political mobilisation. This workshop aims to fill the empirical and reflective gap between these two strands, exploring the potential of commons and collective goods for understanding urban processes and realities, and vice versa. Most analyses so far focus on the appropriation of urban spaces for progressive politics and realising the ‘right to the city’ (Lefebvre), such as in square occupations, urban gardening on vacant lots, or squatting (Susser & Tonnelat, Stavrides). But streets, squares, sidewalks and public buildings are a commons for multiple everyday purposes too (Low, Kim, Wildner), starting from visual enjoyment (Brumann), even when gendered, racialised or class-based exclusion may interfere. Public housing and the sharing economy of food banks and car, tool and clothing exchanges have been discussed as yet another example (Kalb, Nonini), and some argue that street life and urban atmospheres are the quintessential case – one that defies standard expectations of ‘tragedy’ (Hardin) since increased use of the city vibe can augment the resource (Kornberger & Borch, Foster, Harvey). We invite ethnographic explorations and theoretical reflections on the place of the commons in contemporary cities and on its potential to transform urban economies, politics and ways of life, and we encourage precision as to who actually benefits from practices and discourses of urban commoning today.
Accepted contributions
Session 1 Tuesday 30 September, 2025, -Contribution short abstract
Building on a reflection about prior usage of the urban commons, the paper analyses volunteer councils authorised to negotiate building appearances with developers in a quintessential heritage city. What do these councils achieve for the common good?
Contribution long abstract
Kicking off the panel, the paper reviews prior usage of the urban commons, arguing that not all cases to which the concept has been applied fit the category. Yet while urban atmospheres and the cityscape emerging from building exteriors clearly do, they have been neglected. The paper then moves to Kyoto, the former capital of Japan and acclaimed stronghold of history and tradition. Decades of conflict over the built environment led to a new municipal building code in 2007 that continues to enjoy broad support. Details of building design, however, are now left to negotiations between ‘local cityscape councils’ (chiiki keikanzukuri kyōgikai) made up of citizen volunteers and the developers. Officially, local amateurs meet non-local professionals here, but ethnographic fieldwork in 2019/20 revealed a more complex picture. Kyoto City bureaucrats are also less absent than officially proclaimed. While these encounters are legally non-binding, they do produce widely appreciated results, demonstrating the potential of mixed management of the urban commons by the state, private corporations and civil society. ‘Commoning’ and the state should therefore not be posited as irreconcilable opposites.
Contribution short abstract
This paper examines “smart commons” in Hangzhou under China’s digital governance push. A case study of an elderly neighbourhood shows minimal digital uptake; instead, social practices create commons in unintended ways, revealing collaborative forms beyond official smartification agendas.
Contribution long abstract
This paper examines the making of “smart commons” in the context of China’s ongoing push for digital governance. The national “smartness mandate” requires urban management and community life to be increasingly digitalised, largely in the service of more effective top-down governance. Hangzhou has become a pioneer in this process, celebrated for its City Brain system and experiments in smart urbanism. Alongside these efforts, however, policy discourses also increasingly emphasise the need to make smartification people-centred, particularly through initiatives aimed at community-building. Focusing on an old inner-city neighbourhood in Hangzhou, inhabited mostly by elderly residents, the paper analyses a flagship experiment in applying smart technologies differently. The project includes a shared kitchen and community activities, yet the actual use of digital tools remains limited, with social interaction and collective practices taking centre stage. The case suggests that while smart technologies excel at producing more efficient, governable communities, their participatory promise often remains unfulfilled. Instead, what emerges are forms of “smart commons” that arise in unforeseen, unintended ways, rooted more in everyday collaboration than in data infrastructures, and that remain difficult to administer within a top-down governance framework.
Contribution short abstract
The practice of digital nomadism reveals cities as particular sort of commons that could be appropriated by a mobile group of people who assume less attachment to physical places but bring value increase and damage of the commons at the same time with the participation of the state and the market.
Contribution long abstract
This talk investigates a more nuanced practice of urban commoning in its value variation and beneficiary groups in the context of globalization and mobility, especially concerning the practice of digital nomadism. Commons have been identified as various material or immaterial resources which can be subtractive or nonsubtractive (Hardins, 1968; Ostrom, 1990; Hess and Ostrom, 2007; Feinberg et al., 2021) and the new commons situated in urban settings mostly assume that they are local resources shared by citizens (Wagenaar and Bartels, 2024). However, the practice of digital nomadism reveals cities as particular sort of commons that could be appropriated by a mobile group of people who assume less attachment to physical places but bring value increase and damage of the commons at the same time. This anthropological research-in-progress reveals that the digital nomad community in Bali characterized by freedom, self-organization, reciprocity and sharing present how the urban commons bring different values to various beneficiary groups with the intervention of the state and the market. This practice, on the one hand, shrinks the value of the urban commons by encroaching on the social space of the locals and, on the other hand, realizes an increase in the value of the local commons by upgrading the public facilities. Moreover, this practice not only demonstrates the great potential of individuals leveraging the state and the market to create urban commons, but also reveals the realistic role of state governance and the market capitalism in increasing and decreasing the value of the commons.
Contribution short abstract
How do Mexican return migrants navigate Mexico City's overwhelming urban complexity? This paper examines three commons that function as social infrastructure and the extent to which they serve as spaces of orientation, interaction and mutual support in a city marked by socio-spatial fragmentation.
Contribution long abstract
Mexico City, with its diverse economic possibilities, vibrant cultural scene and educational offerings, continues to attract migrants from across Mexico and abroad. Among these are Mexican return migrants who, after living abroad, move to the thriving capital of their home country. However, the very scale and versatility that make the city appealing also pose significant challenges. Everyday life is characterised by socio-spatial disparities, reflected in restricted access to urban commons, especially for those who live in the deprived peripheries. Furthermore, due to their formal membership in Mexican society, returnees' need for inclusion infrastructure is likely to be overlooked, often leading to disorientation and social isolation. Building on one-year ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores three rare examples of social infrastructure that return migrants use to find their way around in Mexico City's fragmented landscape: a central neighbourhood, a community house and a community organisation. I focus on the latter as a place for social encounters providing not only practical support and information, but creating a community of shared experience, which is shaped and maintained collectively. I argue that relational urban commons serve as crucial mediating spaces in a city marked by extreme spatial inequality, stimulating interaction between returnees and non-migrants, while also critically examining their limitations and questioning the extent to which their role as social infrastructure might be more aspirational than actual. This paper contributes to understanding the complex role of social infrastructures in fostering vital points of intersection and, thereby, enacting practices of commoning within highly segregated urban contexts.
Contribution short abstract
Through ethnographic fieldwork in 'wohnprojekts' in Göttingen in the current context of austerity and migration, this paper examines how utopian projects and the abstract notions of freedom and solidarity fare when confronted with real uneveness produced by capitalism.
Contribution long abstract
The 1960s was a generative moment for the political cultures on the left in Germany. Among the varied currents of left-wing politics that emphasised new expressions of radicalism, squatting emerged in the succeeding decades as a new frontier of protest against capitalist city-making. Originally addressing the questions of social housing in the cities, some of these surviving squats have evolved as housing commons that, although marginally, dot many German cities to this day.
Housing commons conceive themselves as utopian sites of mutual care and solidarity-based living that the capitalist regime of commodity, property and money discourages and endangers. As an intellectual tradition, kommonismus (commonism) emphasises commoning as a political practice against contemporary capitalism, and commons as underpinning values of inclusion, care, and collective disposition.
But how do such utopian projects and the abstract notions of freedom and solidarity fare when confronted with real uneveness produced by capitalism? Through ethnographic fieldwork in 'wohnprojekts' in Göttingen, this paper anthropologically examines the heightened contradictions in wohnprojekts today with austerity and migration crisis that define the current conjucture in European cities. Through participant observation and focused-group interviews among housing commons and migrant political groups in Göttingen, this paper examines the contradictions in utopian notions of care and solidarity. With this case study, the paper aims to highlight the limits of utopian notions of political community in ensuring 'right to the city'; instead , I foreground the embeddedness of utopian practice in imperial political economy and hegemonic civil society in capitalist metropolis.
Contribution short abstract
Qhatu is an Aymara form of market present in El Alto, Bolivia. More than a commercial space, it is a practice of commoning that promotes reciprocity, cooperation, and sovereignty. This ethnographic study explores its role in the urban economy, collective well-being, and reconfiguration of the city.
Contribution long abstract
This presentation explores the Qhatu, an Aymara term that designates both a small stall in public space and the collection of several such stalls that make up a market. Spread out in squares and streets, they are a widespread form of organisation among traders in El Alto, Bolivia's largest Indigenous city. More than just a commercial space, the Qhatu is a place where the private and the public coexist, where families consolidate their commercial relations and knowledge, while also serving as a practice of commoning where reciprocity and mutual cooperation are deployed.
Based on ethnographic research, this study examines how Aymara traders engage in shared decision-making, space allocation, and collective strategies to secure their spaces vis-à-vis official city institutions. The Qhatu raises several important elements for the study of urban Indigenous economies, not only as a family economic practice but also as an arena where traders reinforce social ties and express their logics of collective well-being or Suma Qamaña. It also reflects on its political dimension, as principles such as sovereignty and social, economic, and political positioning are exercised there, reconfiguring the city on their terms and contesting modernising forms of urban planning in the Global South.