Planetary Commons

Andrea Mühlebach
 
Der Begriff "Planetary Commons,“ jüngst von Johan Rockström und Ko-Author:innen geprägt, bezeichnet nicht nur den ständigen Prozess der aktiven Selbstreproduktion der Erde durch komplex miteinander verbundene Systeme und Subsysteme, sondern auch die Notwendigkeit, diese Ganzheit als globales Gemeingut zu regeln. Diese politische Forderung steht im Kontrast zum sogenannten „End-Times Fascism,“ wie es Astra Taylor und Naomi Klein vor kurzem formulierten – die derzeitige Tendenz der Superreichen, sich von der Erde als Ganzes abzuwenden und somit (um es mit dem Vokabular der DGSKA auszudrücken) eine Ära der planetarischen Un/Commons einzuweihen. Dieser Vortrag ist ein Versuch eines sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Beitrags zu der Frage, was unsere lange disziplinäre Auseinandersetzung mit Commons diesen teilweise sehr abstrakt skalierten Argumenten und Visionen entgegenhalten kann. Ausgehend von einer kurzen Genealogie der Commons und dem Beitrag, den die Ethnologie in deren vielleicht berühmtesten Formulierung durch Elinor Ostrom leistete, wende ich mich zwei ethnographischen Kontexten zu: Wasserbewegungen in Europa und der weltweiten Bewegung für die Rechte der Natur. Beide streben eine radikale Politik an, die als Planetary Commons bezeichnet werden könnte – aber anders als die von Rockström angedachte Form.

Andrea Mühlebach is Professor of Maritime Anthropology and Cultures of Water at the University of Bremen, Germany, where she also leads the Bremen NatureCultureLab. Her current work expands long-standing interests in environmental and infrastructural politics, neoliberal and financialized citizenship, and global extractive regimes to include oceanic and maritime perspectives as well. Prior to joining Bremen, she worked at the University of Toronto and at the University of Chicago, where she also earned her Ph.D. She is the author of two monographs, The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2012), and A Vital Frontier: Water Insurgencies in Europe (Duke University Press, 2023).

More-than-Human Un/Commoning

Chair: Franz Krause, Universität Köln

Projects of commoning and uncommoning are not limited to human participants and contestants. In multiple environmental movements, Indigenous organisations and local communities, un/commoning means relating with non-human beings, elements, and spirits. By expanding the boundaries of commoning beyond human communities, this plenary challenges the anthropocentric limitations of traditional commons theory and highlight the interdependent relationships that sustain collective life.

The plenary brings together scholars and activists working in southern Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia to reflect on Indigenous land management, alternative conservation initiatives, and collaborative environmental movements that position animals, plants, and ecosystems as active participants in shaping collective governance. It discusses the ways in which more-than-human relations of producing, maintaining or unmaking commons are imagined, known and practised in different contexts. This includes orangutan conservation in Borneo, where the conservationists’ ecosystems-based logic of more-than-human commoning clashes with the relational, intersubjective logic of the area’s Indigenous communities. In southern Africa, San groups are struggling to re-build commoning practices in the face of intergenerational trauma resulting from multiple waves of dispossession of both human and non-human communities. Wayuu women in Colombia are campaigning to establish water and non-human beings as bearers of rights, as well as securing access to water for both humans and non-humans, thereby reshaping ideas and practices of environmental justice. By examining the interplay of commoning and uncommoning, this session invites a reimagining of collective futures where human and more-than-human relations are reconfigured through mutual care, solidarity, and justice.

Plenary Speakers:

Liana Chua teaches at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. She has long-term research experience in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, where she has explored conversion to Christianity, ethnic politics and experiences of development and resettlement among Bidayuh communities. Her more recent research centred on the more-than-human politics, socialities and aesthetics of orangutan conservation in the ‘age of the Anthropocene’. Liana works across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries through collaborations with conservationists and public engagement. She also holds long-running research interests in theories of visuality and materiality, more-than-human socialities, indigenous museology, and the histories and politics of anthropological knowledge practices. Engagement beyond anthropology and the academy is an important part of her research practice. She is also committed to making anthropology more accessible and interesting to the general public.

Kileni Fernando is a !Xung speaking San researcher and activist. She is a co-founding member of the Indigenous San youth organisation ǁAna-Djeh San Trust (AST), for which she has conducted various projects including "Ju-Taa-Khoe, Nature’s Recipes: An Introduction to Traditional Veld Foods for San Youth". Kileni completed several short courses on marginalisation & inequality, as well as a diploma in legal history. She has volunteered as a community facilitator for the Women’s Leadership Centre (Windhoek, Namibia) on the project: “Speaking for ourselves, Voices of the San Young Women”. In 2017, she continued to be a voice for San as a curatorial development consultant for the !Khwa ttu San Heritage Centre on the West Coast of South Africa. In 2024, Kileni was the inaugural San Visiting Fellow at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree with the Open University of Tanzania.

Astrid Ulloa Cubillos is a Full Professor at the Department of Geography of the National University of Colombia. Her research and teaching focus on Indigenous peoples’ movements, ethnicity, eco-governmentality, environmental anthropology, feminism, and climate change with a particular expertise in Colombia. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork with Wayúu people in La Guajira region, with various Indigenous people in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and with Indigenous Embera people in the Pacific Coast rainforest of Colombia’s Chocó region. Astrid has worked at the Universidad del Cauca, Université de Paris III, Universidad del Magdalena, Universidad de los Andes, and Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia.

Authoritarian Publics. Anthropological Perspectives on the New Right in Germany

Chair: Dr. Simone Pfeifer (Universität zu Köln)

In recent years, right-wing politics and discourses have gained substantial traction in Germany, mirroring broader trends across Europe and globally. While anthropological research has focused on far-right movements and the production of an “uncomfortable other,” studies on more every day, centre-right forms of political mobilization and sense-making remain underdeveloped. The Plenary Authoritarian Publics: Anthropological Perspectives on the New Right in Germany brings together leading scholars in the field to explore how authoritarian and right-wing ideologies permeate public and private spheres, reshaping the dynamics of political inclusion and exclusion.

The panel will examine how the New Right in Germany has expanded its reach and normalized authoritarian ideals within mainstream spaces, fostering what can be termed “authoritarian publics.” Participants will discuss the nuanced and often insidious processes of political Un/Commoning – or the creation and disruption of shared spaces and values—as well as the violent effects of such discourses on social cohesion, public trust, and marginalized communities. By interrogating how ordinary, centre-right forms of belonging and mobilization contribute to these shifts, the panel aims to uncover the mechanisms through which authoritarianism becomes embedded in everyday life.

Grounded in ethnographic case studies focusing on different geographic and media locations within German-speaking contexts, this panel seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of authoritarianism’s spread and its complex intersections with race, gender, class, and historical memory. By examining how the New Right navigates and shapes German-speaking publics, this discussion will contribute to broader anthropological debates on nationalism, political identity, and the evolving nature of “common” spaces within democratic societies.

Plenary Speakers:

Nitzan Shoshan is Professor at the Colegio de México in Mexico City. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is the author of “The Management of Hate: Nation, Affect, and the Governance of Right-Wing Extremism in Germany”, published with Princeton University Press. This study was awarded the “William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology, Society for the Anthropology of Europe of the American Anthropological Association” in 2017, as well as Honorable Mentions for the 2017 Gregory Bateson Prize and APLA Book Price. His book was one of the first studies to look closely at milieus of radical Right youth cultures in Berlin. Since, he has increasingly shifted his attention from the ‘far right’ to right-wing politics as part of the political mainstream (Shoshan 2020) and to anti-muslim Racism in Germany (Kalmar and Shoshan 2024).  

Mario Krämer is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne and a principal investigator of the DFG-funded Research Unit “Transborder Mobility and Institutional Dynamics” (FOR 5183). His main fields of research are political and environmental anthropology and he has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Southern Africa and Europe. The power and legitimacy of chieftaincy and dynamics of political violence are the foci of his research in Southern Africa. One of his current research projects deals with the nexus of environmentalism, traditionalism and rural-urban relations in contemporary Germany and he examines the relationship between nature conservation and opposition to wind power in particular (see his recent publication in the Special Issue ‘Justice in the Anthropocene’ in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie / Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology 2024 149(2).

Konstanze N'Guessan is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology and African Studies in Mainz. Her research interests encompass a diverse range of topics, including nationalism, state ritual, historiography, memory studies, parenting and child development theory, performativity and play, transgressive humor, and the far right. Until 2024, she was part of the interdisciplinary BMBF research project MISRIK (Memes, Ideas, Strategies of Far-Right Digital Communication), which focused on memes, trolling, and other forms of „ludic fascism“ in and through participatory social media. Research insights from this project were disseminated into primary prevention tools, experimenting with different modes of knowledge transfer, such as the game “Mem-ori,” which playfully explores how memes promote far-right narratives and conspiracy theories. Beyond her research on ludic fascism, Konstanze has incorporated games and playfulness into anthropological teaching and public anthropology.

Un/Commoning Anthropology 

Chair: Nina ter Laan and Hauke-Peter Vehrs (Universität zu Köln)

Anthropological methods and forms of knowledge-making are part and parcel of various forms of Commoning and Uncommoning.

This plenary brings together scholars from around the world to reflect on the histories, effects and potentialities of anthropological Un/Commoning. On the one hand, since its emergence as an academic discipline, social and cultural anthropology is deeply enmeshed in colonial and neo-colonial forms of extraction, and domination. On the other hand, as a discipline that foregrounds empirical research and learning relationships it also entails the potential to critically engage with, question and subvert existing power asymmetries. The panel un/commoning anthropology therefore addresses the extractivist histories of anthropology and engages with demands for an institutional, methodological and epistemological commoning of anthropology’s knowledge-practices. It also asks which ressources anthropology may provide and continues to hold that can actually unfold a commoning potential. In what ways can and does anthropological practice support and enhance projects of commoning? And in what ways is anthropological commoning misplaced and a form of extraction?  By examining past and current, manifest and potential roles of anthropologies in forging processes of in- and exclusion, commoning and uncommoning this session invites situated perspectives on the potentials and pitfalls for un/commoning the discipline – in past, present and possible futures. 

Plenary Speakers:

Tamer Abd Elkreem holds a Ph.D. from Bayreuth University and is a Co-Investigator/Sudan lead researcher of the ESRC funded project “Digitalising Food Assistance: Political economy, governance and food security effects across the Global North-South divide”, hosted by SOAS, London. He is a lecturer at the department of Sociology and Social Anthropology and the Deputy Director of Peace Research, University of Khartoum. His research interest focuses on power relations of development, Anthropology of post-colonial state, anthropology of mega developmental projects and critical analysis of its discourses and practices in Sudan. Abd El Kreem will contribute his perspectives on Power and Representation and the current debate on decolonizing anthropology. 

Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan (New York University) explores in his ethnographic and multimodal research  how media consumption, production, and dissemination shape the understanding of migration, gender, ethnicity, and urban space. He is particularly interested in how corporate social media platforms have become a space for the rearticulation and disruption of persistent forms of coloniality, thereby engaging in "Digital Un/Commoning." For the plenary session, his focus on collaborative and multimodal forms of research is also relevant, along with his role as the editor of the multimodal section of the journal American Anthropologist.

Mary Mbewe holds a Ph.D. from the University of the Western Cape and works a Senior Lecturer at Mulungushi University, Sambia. Previously she has worked as Keeper of History at the Moto Moto Museum, the second-largest Museum in Zambia. Here, she was involved and has been involved in many programmes that have sought to transform museum practice by opening the core functions of the museum to multiple actors away from the conventional expertise of museum curators. By collaboratively reimagining problematic ethnographic museum collections she has explored in depth the challenges that come with past and present forms of Un/Commoning anthropology. Dr. Mbewe is also a case study researcher with Open Restitution Africa researching the provenance and restitution process of African cultural artefacts.

Christiane Falge is Professor of Health and Diversity at Bochum University of Applied Sciences and a medical anthropologist whose research centers on migration, community health, and health inequalities. Following extended transnational research on the global Nuer in Ethiopia, Sudan and the US she founded the Bochum City Lab, a pioneering site for decolonial, collaborative knowledge production through community research and empowerment which she developed in close cooperation with her colleague Silke Betscher. Commoning is at the heart of her approach, fostering solidarity and co-creation between academia and local communities. She has co-authored publications and video based  health informations with community members and promotes community involvement and empowerment to address health inequalities. Currently, her work focuses on reducing health disparities by establishing solidarity-based neighborhood health centers grounded in community research and collective action.

Academic Freedom in Times of Crisis

Chair: Julia Eckert (University of Bern), Lipin Ram (University of Bremen)

How do we practice academic freedom when it is increasingly undermined, sometimes overtly, sometimes more subtly and to different degrees in many parts of the world? How do we respond to an era characterized by patterns of political interference, forms of silencing, and at times systematic attacks on progressive education and research, including at institutions previously deemed free from such incursions? Can education be understood as a tool and protective device against increasingly right-wing public and political spheres - in Germany, Europe, and beyond, and what does it need to afford that?

This roundtable brings together scholars to debate what critical paedagogies we can employ to protect and expand academic freedom in current times, how Universities can be recuperated as spaces for public debate, how we as academics can practice our responsibilities towards critique as teachers and scholars. They look back on longer histories of writing and teaching under authoritarian conditions. What can we learn from the pedagogical practices developed in contexts where critical scholarly debates have long been limited by the authoritarian oppression of free speech, the withdrawal of funding and the precaritization of academic labor? What can we learn from colleagues who are experienced in protecting academic freedom and preserving universities as spaces for common debate? We invite a broad discussion about the pedagogical tactics and strategies we need to respond to the ways in which scholars can invigorate our democratic institutions as a whole and in co-creating progressive, non-violent futures?

Plenary Speakers:

Basak Ertür (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK) is an interdisciplinary and critical legal scholar with an intellectual home in the BritCrit tradition of general jurisprudence – a body of scholarship combining a strong methodological focus on aesthetic and ethical dimensions of law, legal forms and methods, with critical attention to political practices of resistance in negotiating legal violence. Her book Spectacles and Specters (2022) draws on legal history, philosophy of language, deconstruction, political theory, and addresses questions of historiography. Her current research and forthcoming publications are focused on the themes of the relationship between legal factuality and public truth, counter-forensics, investigatory aesthetics, and rethinking the forum as a collective space of judgment. At the roundtable Academic Freedom in Times of Crisis she will speak about two forms of threats to academic freedom and how scholars, also in their roles as teachers, can address them. First, she reflects on her experiences with the criminal prosecution of Academics for Peace in Turkey; second, she discusses the impact of the British model of university funding on the independence of research and teaching. 

Ghassan Hage is Future Generation Professor of Anthropology at the University of Melbourne. He has held visiting professorships at the American University of Beirut, University of Nanterre – Paris X, the University of Copenhagen and Harvard. He has been Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences, of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, of the British Academy of the Social Sciences and served as president of the Australian Anthropological Society. He has published several books on immigration, race and refugees in Australia. For more than 40 years Hage researched and published on the various dimensions of Israeli and Palestinian society, including on anti-Arab racism and Antisemitism. More recently he developed a ‘relational imperative’ and argued that the very nature of the post-colonial world entails the inevitability of co-existence and living together. Currently he prepapres a more theoretical work on the social phenomenology of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (Pierre Bourdieu’s Political Economy of Being, forthcoming 2025).

Nandini Sundar is Professor of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Somerville College, Oxford in 1989 and Master of Arts, Master of Philosophy and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University. Her research interests include constitutionalism, authoritarianism, academic freedom, democracy, law, inequality, and agrarian ecologies. She is currently on the editorial advisory boards of Current Sociology, Sociology, Contributions to Indian Sociology, HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, Anthropological Theory, and INSEE (Ecology, Economy, Society).  She was awarded the M.N. Srinivas Memorial Prize, 2003, Infosys Prize for Social Sciences (Social Anthropology) in 2010, the Ester Boserup Prize for Development Research, 2016 and the Malcolm Adiseshiah Prize for Distinguished Contributions to Development Studies, 2017.  

Martin Zillinger works as Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne and is currently president of the German Association of Social and Cultural Anthropology. His major field research has been in Morocco on trance, ritual and new media. Since his Ph.D. (awarded with the Frobenius research price) his work expands on his interest in sensing, sense-making and new publics in the Euro-Mediterranean. More recently he worked on the category project of the Durkheim school, and on provincialising the restitution debate. Since 2017 he is co-editor of the boasblogs.