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- Convenors:
-
Kevin Flanagan
(Maynooth University)
Ferne Edwards (City, University of London)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- 6 College Park (6CP), 01/035
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the social worlds of the commons and social movements to ask: how do practices of commoning enable communities to resist the alienating effects of contemporary life, to foster and sustain political cultures of contestation and resilience?
Long Abstract:
The commons has emerged as a political discourse among communities and social movements that recognises shared capacities to address needs and respond to situations of injustice. The commons act as a bridge - they link histories of resistance, contemporary experiences of collective action, and offer a means for transforming social relations and prefiguring possible futures. Experiences of commoning are heterogeneous and informed by the particulars of people and place. They range from the everyday politics of community organising through to explicit confrontations with power and mobilisations within longer cycles of socio-political change. We ask: in what ways do practices of commoning enable communities to resist the alienating effects of contemporary life, to foster and sustain political cultures of contestation and resilience?
In this panel we invite papers that explore:
● How social aspects - such as gender, race and class - shape the practices of commons and social movements.
● How the commons are informed by particular politics, economy and ecology of place.
● How the commons interface and are embedded within broader movements and processes of collective action.
● How commons projects or activists respond to, or have been impacted by, the pandemic.
● The ethnographic stance of the activist researcher - what practical and ethical challenges does this research raise? How can an engaged anthropology contribute to activist practice and knowledge production for and about social movements?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
to do if is good to do - place holder
Paper long abstract:
to do if is good to do - place holder
Paper short abstract:
A unique Moors & Christians festival in Andalusia engages in symbolic violence to connect the town’s historical trajectory of repression to ongoing injustices. Imagined as a commons, the festival is used to create community & instill the resistant character of past inhabitants in future generations.
Paper long abstract:
Imagined as a commons, a unique version of the Moors & Christians festival in eastern Andalusia (Spain) defies this festival’s more well-known representations by engaging in symbolic violence in ways that connects its community’s varied historical trajectory of repression and resistance to ongoing local and societal injustices. While seemingly paradoxical, its participants use the festival, characterised by traditional fighting, to promote the senselessness of societal division and violence alongside values of brotherhood and dialogue. Based on a decade of field research at these festivals, I consider the ways in which this festival fosters community; provides a social and cultural anchoring to the town for both permanent residents and those forced to emigrate elsewhere; and establishes social ties to assure a sense of belonging for future generations of the town’s present and former inhabitants, to root the former in local values, knowledge and the resilient character of its autochthonous people. Through the festival, this characteristic of resistance to dominant powers and the town’s various histories of repression – the subjugation of its medieval Muslims; the many dissidents executed in town by fascist troops; the current struggle to exhume their bones from the town’s mass graves; and the disenfranchisement of local livelihoods as a result of both fascist and neoliberal policies – become interwoven, united in elements such as spoken narratives and the meaning given to the traditional fighting. However, like the many festivals that underpin Spanish social life, this process of commoning, because of its physicality, becomes threatened by pandemic restrictions.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the intersections between environmental activism and peacebuilding in Northern Ireland. Focus is placed upon the mobilizing potential practices of commoning can have for environmental activists in the rebuilding of social ties eroded by legacy of ethnopolitical conflict.
Paper long abstract:
The legacy of the violent ethnopolitical conflict known as ‘The Troubles’ continues to manifest itself in Northern Ireland. As a consequence, high levels of residential, educational and political segregation remain. Political segregation is institutionally solidified through the consociational power sharing agreement, implemented as a transformative vehicle to a less sectarian system. However this portioning of state institutions along ethno-national lines often sees the collective rights of ethnic groups given political legitimacy at the detriment of alternative political viewpoints. In such a context, the very definition of ‘commons’ could be seen to be problematic to implement in Northern Ireland where the lack of commonality between two dominant opposing ethnic groups remains institutionally enshrined.
This paper examines the peacebuilding potential that the commons in practice can have among environmental activist groups in Northern Ireland. In addition to promoting pro-environmental behaviour, practices of commoning can perform a peacebuilding function by providing a facilitatory space for the rebuilding of social ties amongst citizens that have been eroded through decades of conflict and division. With natural resources such as clean air and water conceived as something concerning all individuals irrespective of ethnonationalist background, the fight to protect them from the effects of anthropogenic climate breakdown can be seen as an important vehicle for widespread community engagement to build lasting cooperation and sustainable peace. Therefore this paper will closely examine the peacebuilding potential of the concept of the commons to unify citizens and communities and provide opened spaces for new means of participation in political activity.
Paper short abstract:
Our paper focuses on the role played by law in the Italian “laboratory” of urban commons. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in three Italian cities between 2018 and 2020, we analyze the peculiar coalescence of pro-commons lawyers with local institutions and grassroots collectives in Naples.
Paper long abstract:
The “commons” have become a rallying point of social mobilization against privatizations and a linchpin of collective civic empowerment and democratic renewal in several countries. What singles the Italian “laboratory” of urban commons in recent years is the coalescence of pro-commons lawyers with activists, movements, and grassroots collectives.
Urban centers across the country have become the hub of diverse patterns of commoning around buildings, gardens, parks, culture, co-operatives, and so on. A plurality of processes in Italian cities grapple with the paramount strategic conundrums of alter-political commons: how to configure durable modes of collective organization which common leadership and self-government; and how to gain a grip on institutions to put them in the service of expansive commons. The Italian counter-hegemonic strategy for urban commoning must therefore be explored from the two vantage points of local governments and grassroots initiative. The latter converge with each other using legal devices based on private law and, alternatively, on public and constitutional law.
The central role played by law in the Italian commons network must be read in the light of the distinctive forms that regulations and rules assume in specific contexts. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in three Italian cities between 2018 and 2020, our paper focuses on the case of Naples and the reinvention of the legal tradition of “civic use”. Our account of the daily practices pursued by a Neapolitan community of commoners – L’Asilo – delves into a political and institutional context that has always been the subject of stigmatization.