Paper Short Abstract:

This paper investigates the limits and potentials of building bottom-up solidarity in a Neapolitan squatted social center, in the scope of contentious urban politics. Mutual support and solidarity contrast against the compounding crisis in the city, in the wake of austerity politics in early 2010s.

Paper Abstract:

The flourishing of state-recognized “urban commons” in Naples is exactly due to — and not despite of — the city’s long history of economic deprivation and inequality, made staggering with austerity measures after the 2008 crisis. In this context of supposed underdevelopment and economic dependency, the vitality of leftist social movements and organizations is undeniable, underlining the transformative potential of solidarity-based, grassroots political organizing.

This paper explores the politics of solidarity pursued by Ex-OPG “Je so’ Pazzo”, a Neapolitan squatted social center formally recognized by the city as an “urban common” in 2016. In a nutshell, the political project in question emphasizes mutualism and horizontality, widespread care and unity in plurality, explicitly denouncing the illegitimate production of inequality by neoliberal forms of governance, producers of socialized dispossession. Therefore, this research investigates how the social and political space of the “commons” metabolizes social vulnerability into political radicalization: how does it relate to crisis discourses? What social impact does it have on the city and its population? And perhaps most importantly, what are its challenges moving forward, in the face of a proto-fascist Italian government and the prolonged crisis of European institutional politics?

My aim with this analysis is to bring to light an ethnographically sustained case of a (somewhat) successful narrative of social change, achieved within collective political claims and a constellate conception of power and possibility. It is relevant in that it reveals an open course of action, fleshing out “on the ground” the meanings and limits of bottom-up solidarity.