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Paper Short Abstract

My paper explores commoning as an economic practice in reaction to crisis and the creation of different ‚mutualities‘. Using examples from China, I suggest that both hierarchal and egalitarian ‚kinship commons‘ create new chances, but only the latter constitute alterities to the existing order.

Paper Abstract

My paper starts from the Polanyi’an premise that crisis events may generate new forms of economic embedding: processes of ‚re-socializing’ that aim at mitigating a given crisis destructive effects. It answers the panel‘s call to distinguish between emancipatory versus ‚reactionary’ commoning processes by drawing on ethnographic material from China. Western scholars have often identified a ‚Chinese habit‘ to re-socialize supposedly abstract relations (of law, market transactions, intellectual property rights etc) and either lauded or criticized its effects (e.g.‚Confucian capitalism‘, versus ‚corruption‘). I shall argue that such efforts at ‚re-socialization‘ - which create new mutualities and often employ a kinship idiom - can be understaod as commoning processes. They have historically taken on two forms - (1) hierarchical commons(‚lineages‘) that compete for profit with perceived adversaries and (2) egalitarian commons (fraternities/sororieties) which constitute alterities to the established order. Commoning here seeks to mitigate risks, yet in markedly different ways. By exploring and comparing these dynamics, my paper hopes to contribute to a general theory of commoning in anthropology.