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- Convenors:
-
Margit Feischmidt
(Center for Social Sciences (Hungarian Academy of Sciences))
Gabriella Lukacs (University of Pittsburgh)
Violetta Zentai (Central European University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 02/011
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel explores practices of commoning that are emerging in contexts of democratic backsliding which are often positioned as political interventions by previously non-political actors who strive to reverse the enclosure of the commons and produce new political, economic, and cultural commons.
Long Abstract:
As the central theme of the upcoming conference suggests, recent socioeconomic crises (exacerbated by the current global pandemic) can be understood as effects and expressions of ubiquitous processes of uncommoning, which are advanced by repressive political regimes. This panel will explore new practices of commoning that are emerging in contexts in which democratic backsliding has advanced the dismantling of the commons. These practices are often positioned as political interventions by previously non-political actors who strive to reverse the enclosure of the commons and produce new political, economic, and cultural commons. Our panel highlights that these new practices of commoning are vitally importantly in that they provide immediate help to vulnerable populations whose needs local and national governments are unable or much too slow to address. Starting from the departure point that new practices of commoning are pivotal expressions of solidarity and assumptions of responsibility, our panel examines how these practices galvanize transformation and generate new discussions about the commons and the common good. Our goal is to theorize what we see as innovative new forms of political engagement that depart from such conventional practices of political participation as attending demonstrations, signing petitions, and voting. The new practices of commoning our panel explores represent acts of "political engagement otherwise," which itself is a critique of authoritarian and/or populist forms of governance.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 July, 2022, -Wei Gan (Princeton University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the ways in which Asian American philanthropy, in providing funding and support to Asian Americans by Asian Americans, hopes to serve as a commons for political empowerment.
Paper long abstract:
As the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted lives worldwide, anti-Asian hate rose in the United States. In response, Asian American leaders called for the empowerment and recognition of the Asian American community. A key mode through which this effort is pursued is the deployment of philanthropy – specifically through and by Asian American organizations. Citing the historical lack of both public and private resources allocated to Asian Americans, activists have moved to create funding and support institutions for their own communities. The Asian American Foundation, for instance, was founded by Asian American business leaders and, within three weeks of its launch in May 2021, boasted $1 billion in pledges to advocate for Asian American interests. In this paper, I explore these projects in relation to older iterations of community-based social provisioning in the form of family, merchant, and civic associations first established in early Chinese American communities, as well as community development funds of other marginalized groups. I suggest that one unique marker of contemporary Asian American efforts to establish solidarity funds is their characterization as critical steps toward achieving racial equity and justice. While community institutions have historically taken on the responsibility of providing and caring for its members, organizations today render that responsibility a political one: against structural disempowerment, philanthropy itself becomes a social movement – though not one of resistance but resilience.
Milena Baghdasaryan (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia)
Paper short abstract:
To protect commons from pollution several communities have applied various forms of resistance, e.g. petition approval by municipalities. The government has sued the latter and initiated law changes to undermine civil resistance. The paper examines the processes by focusing on Save Amulsar movement.
Paper long abstract:
As in most countries, Armenian communities have little decision-making power when it comes to mining. Even international conventions dealing with decision-making do not stipulate that residents’ position should be binding (see Walter and Urkidi 2014). One of the promises of the 2018 Velvet Revolution was the promotion of direct democracy mechanisms. However, the government that replaced the semi-authoritarian regime continues to endorse extractive projects, in spite of numerous communities’ opposition and, in some cases, evidence indicating potential large-scale environmental consequences, as in the case of Amulsar gold-mining project. Given that this project threatens to pollute nearby water resources, land, air, habitats in protected areas, and to stifle the spa economy of Jermuk town, the local community has applied various forms of resistance, including blocking roads to the mountain or filing complaints to appeal bodies. An important step to protect the commons was to engage local self-government in the struggle: the residents signed a petition in favor of prohibiting mining in their community and had it approved by the municipality. Several other communities resisting mining did the same. However, the government, unwilling to forfeit its nearly unchallenged ability to permit mining projects, has sued the municipalities requesting the annulment of their decisions, on grounds that the subsoil belongs to the state, and initiated legislation changes to undermine civil resistance. Another form of engaging local self-government bodies are NGOs’ efforts to include social-environmental elements in communities’ policy documents. This paper discusses the resistance strategies and the debates on local communities’ decision making-power.
Susan Hyatt (Indiana University Indianapolis)
Paper short abstract:
As austerity measures constrain the public sector, responsibility for social provision is increasingly falling to voluntary organizations and philanthropies. Despite the anti-democratic nature of these bodies, I suggest that they may have created a new civic infrastructure and a new kind of commons.
Paper long abstract:
As public sector institutions become increasingly constrained by a lack of resources and by the anti-tax sentiment of the electorate and of politicians, the responsibility for addressing such critical issues as education and poverty alleviation are increasingly falling to the efforts of voluntary sector organizations and private philanthropies, who are now among the primary providers of basic levels of social assistance, at least in the United States. These philanthropic interests and NGOs frame their interventions as a positive benefit to struggling cities trapped by the resource deprivation that Berglund (2020) has described as ‘austerity urbanism’. While many of these philanthropic concerns are linked to corporate giving, they also have a certain autonomy which suggests that they merit a somewhat different mode of critique and analysis. In the absence of public resources, these interests have been given free rein to create what Schuller (2012) has called a new “civic infrastructure,” one that is able to sidestep those institutions—school boards, labour unions and other elected bodies—that were once, at their best, intended to enforce public accountability. Despite the apparent anti-democratic nature of this new civic infrastructure, however, I suggest that they have, in fact, created new opportunities for commoning as they work to address the most pressing basic needs of marginalized populations, whose vulnerability has become even more acute under the conditions created by the pandemic.
Margit Feischmidt (Center for Social Sciences (Hungarian Academy of Sciences)) Violetta Zentai (Central European University) Eszter Neumann (Centre for Social Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to uncover forms, visions of solidarity actions in Hungary during the first wave of coronavirus pandemic. We will investigate the conceptual opportunities to refine the modalities of being political instead of separating the political and the apolitical forms of civic engagement.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the nature of solidarity work during the coronavirus and also the solidarity actors’ aspirations and visions to initiate social transformations. The research which informs this article was conducted by a team of scholars affiliated with the Institute for Minority Studies at the Centre of Social Sciences, Budapest.
Critical social science passionately tries to differentiate between the politically salient and the apolitical helping actions. These accounts attribute significantly less social and moral value to the latter and view apolitical assistance as contributing to social inequalities and the existing power structures. There is no agreement over what counts as political and apolitical, however, actions that meet basic human needs tend to be interpreted as apolitical, similarly to activities by institutionalized civil society actors which cooperate with the state. We discovered various forms of solidarity that practiced empathy, enacted new sociabilities, and reflected upon various societal problems. Even if they produced social capital for the helpers or yielded to paid assignment, it did not undermine the political potentials of the engagement and did not coalesce in the logic of the market, competition, and individual ownership. In reverse, most observed solidarity acts were aspired by the duty to care.
These modalities of solidarity engagements contributed to shaping up new commons, at least for the extraordinary time of the pandemic. We will investigate the conceptual opportunities to refine the modalities of being political instead of separating the political and the apolitical forms of civic engagement and contemplate the potentialities of transformative solidarities.
Gabriella Lukacs (University of Pittsburgh)
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on the affective labor that sustains commoning projects, this presentation examines the street art projects of an activist group that transformed this genre into a practice of commoning and a mode of critique to call out the government for not maintaining the commons for the benefit of all.
Paper long abstract:
Focusing on the affective labor that sustains commoning projects, this presentation examines the street art projects of a small political party, the Two-Tailed Dog Party (MKKP). In recent years, the MKKP transformed this genre into a practice of spatial commoning and a mode of critique to call out the government for not maintaining the commons for the benefit of all. The MKKP’s street art projects are collaboratively designed and open to the public. MKKP activists coordinate each project and typically six to ten people complete them including some passersby who stop to observe and then get on board. These projects build on affective labor, which, in the Hungarian context, strategically links projects of repairing decaying public property with the political program of revitalizing bonds of solidarity and rebuilding communities. The MKKP harnesses street art to demonstrate how democracy works in practice and what democratic citizenship looks like on the ground. Although the affective labor invested in commoning projects does vital political work, it is not recognized as a valorized form of activist labor. As such, affective labor does not help activists convert their activist labor into political capital, nor does it serve as a conduit for the MKKP to earn seats in the parliament. The affective labor of commoning, I conclude, sheds sharp light on the paradox that the labor of building democracy does not always benefit the ones who invests this labor.