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.