Paper short abstract:

This paper brings into analysis the transformation of urban spaces in India under the colonial rule, specifically focusing on the city of Patna in eastern India. It shows how the insights into historical decommonisation processes could pave the way for prosperous commons in the future.

Paper long abstract:

This paper brings into analysis the historical transformation of urban spaces in India under the colonial rule. By the end of the nineteenth century, urban development in India began to revolve around commercial and economic activities, shaped significantly by colonial influence and technological advancements like railways. Patna, a city with a rich historical background, emerged as a hub for manufacturing and trade, thanks to its strategic location at the confluence of the Ganga, Son, and Punpun rivers. This advantageous position facilitated international trade and led to the proliferation of the city during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Consequently, many urban structures started to emerge closer to the riverbanks. The British, aware of the strategic importance of Patna and seeking to avoid potential uprisings, established their settlements on the outskirts of the old city, between the old city and the cantonment. This move was partly motivated by the fear of future rebellions, and their experience in other cities suggested that proximity to waterways and gunpowder depots would be advantageous for maintaining control. The construction of railway lines along the Ganga in the 1860s further limited the city's expansion southward. The paper seeks to unravel the historical roots that influenced the development of urban centers and their potential adverse environmental consequences. It also investigates the enduring effects of politically guided urban expansion on riverine ecosystems. The insights into historical decommonisation processes could pave the way for prosperous commons in the future.

Paper short abstract:

Undomesticated city and suburban spaces have long formed part of the urban commons, but their more-than-human uses, values and management have changed dramatically over time. This paper applies the commonisation-decommonisation framework to the history of wild nature in Perth, Western Australia.

Paper long abstract:

Undomesticated city and suburban spaces have long formed part of the urban commons, but their more-than-human uses, values and management have changed dramatically over time. This paper applies the commonisation-decommonisation framework to the history of urban wild nature in Perth, Western Australia. Since the settlement became recognisably ‘urban’ in the late 19th century, remnant bushland has formed part of both traditional ‘old commons’, in the form of commonage lands held for community use, and ‘new commons’, in the form of urban nature reserves and national parks that provide climate, biodiversity and recreational benefits. A complex matrix of factors including economic transition, class interests and ascendency, scientific knowledge, and the rise of environmentalism account for the timing and forms of commonisation and decommonisation of these ecosystems. The paper concludes with thoughts on how this history can inform the development of sustainable and participatory institutions for managing bushland as urban commons into the future.

Paper short abstract:

The horizontal collaboration of commoning is vital to successful environmental activism. As academics sharing environmental history with the public through walking tours and social media, we recognize and hope to mitigate gaps between the public and academia and foster a flourishing hybrid commons.

Paper long abstract:

Elemental Tours is a public environmental history project based in Manchester, UK, that aims to foster both place-based and digital communities that share resources regarding the environmental humanities and local environmental activism. This hybrid commons is created through a combination of walking tours focusing on the materiality of Manchester’s environmental history and an online community fostered through social media and an active website.

Manchester’s past is most often presented as industrial, social, and everyday history, much of which is seen as the result of its place in the Industrial Revolution. The city’s radical history, including suffragette and labour activism, and the commoning that the public ownership of these narratives engenders, is a source of pride for many of its citizens.

In this context, a public environmental history of Manchester has the potential to generate tension if presented through the declensionist, anti-capitalist frameworks foundational to the discipline. Many walking tour participants are emotionally invested in the narrative of Manchester’s industrial history and may find an environmental perspective challenging. Elemental Tours seeks to create horizontal connections between academia and the public to grant community participants a strong sense of ownership over this aspect of Manchester’s history.

Part of this is successful communication across lines of class and education, making the material accessible in our tours through suitable language choices and a mix of theory and narrative. Additionally, we are creating space for public contributions to both our walking tour conversations and our online discourse.

Paper short abstract:

In Sanuki, a region in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan, with low annual rainfall, there are approximately 14,000 reservoirs in a small area, 1,877 square kilometre. The reservoir culture, which has continued since ancient times, is disappearing except to be preserved and maintained as cultural heritage.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on reservoirs in Sanuki, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. In Sanuki, a region in the Seto Inland Sea with low annual rainfall, there are approximately 14,000 reservoirs in a small area, 1,877 square kilometre. Countless small reservoirs have now been neglected and are disappearing along with the deterioration of farming villages. These abandoned reservoirs, which are no longer used for agricultural purposes, are also exposed to the risk of disasters caused by climate change. The reservoir culture, which has continued since ancient times, is disappearing except to be preserved and maintained as cultural heritage. The Mannoike Pond, said to have been constructed by Kukai, one of the most prominent Buddhist priests in Japan, and other huge man-made structures that could not have been achieved by ordinary human labour, have been created. It can be said that the motivation to build huge reservoirs was driven by drought and flood risks, especially drought risk. However, it is also important to note that there were many more small reservoirs managed by individuals than one might imagine. Although the results of paleoclimatological research are rewriting Japanese history, they remind us of the source of contemporary issues beyond the relationship between climate change and the historical event of the construction of giant reservoirs. More precise reservoir research limited to a region, especially focusing on labour politics and local economies, can provide an important subject for viable commons in the future.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores histories of outdoor recreation through the Nordic concept of friluftsliv. It unveils patterns of exclusion in shaping recreational commons and implementing materialities of unequal wellbeing while tracing transformation of Sami homelands into Swedish welfare landscapes.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores histories of outdoor recreation in Sweden from a decolonial intersectional perspective and challenges the normative approach to the Nordic concept of friluftsliv that celebrates the regime of “allemansrätten”, or public access to land. It provides a more nuanced view on the development of outdoor recreation practices highlighting their inextricable connections to Sweden’s nation-building project and colonial modernity. Investigating processes of genderization, racialization and modernization of northern nature, it traces the transformation of Sami homelands into Swedish welfare landscapes and unveils experiences of historically marginalized groups and patterns of social exclusion and invisibilization of the Other. Through archival sources documenting the establishment of outdoor recreation infrastructures in Northern Sweden 1920-1970, the paper shows how the very materialities of recreational practices shaped a distinctive, male-dominated recreational commons suppressing other agents of space-making.

As these recreational spaces are becoming increasingly overutilized and contested due to climate crisis and conflicts of land-use, the question of their sustainability becomes more pressing, and the tragedy of the open-access regime more apparent. Protecting and sustaining nature as commons, including its role as a space for wellbeing, requires a deeper understanding of historical path dependencies and patterns of alienation from land-planning. The key lies in the acknowledgement of historical injustices and generational traumas of belonging, as well as in the change of governance patterns towards inclusion, reciprocity and equal participation in negotiating the commons.

Paper short abstract:

Responding to the central theme of the panel, which emphasizes the role of history, power and politics, and giving special attention to the question of access, this paper explores the formation of the new commons in Indian Eastern Himalaya.

Paper long abstract:

Rangeland conservation policies across South Asia and Africa are based on the orthodox understanding of rangeland functions and state-induced pastoral development initiatives. Given the larger issues of land tenure changes and contemporary conservation challenges, pastoralists are losing access to their commons at an alarming rate.

In the year 1998, the state of Sikkim implemented a grazing ban, which was followed by massive forceful evictions across the state, especially west Sikkim. In the Khangchendzonga National Park, where I conducted my PhD research, the impacts were particularly detrimental to the pastoral livelihoods, which resulted in an overall decline in pastoralism and exclusive access of the elite pastoralists inside the park. After more than two decades of the ban, however, the pastoral livelihoods are again picking up, especially among the new generation.

In this paper, I explore the long-term trajectories of the loss of commons and the emergence of new commons after two decades of the ban. I am particularly keen on exploring the question of access across the decommonised and the newly commonised rangelands of Sikkim.

Paper short abstract:

The paper reconstructs the complex historical processes of constitution, dissolution and reconstitution of agrarian commons around the Italian-Slovenian border, with the aim to reflect on the concepts of commonisation and decommonisation in time and space through specific case studies.

Paper long abstract:

The forms of collective management of resources need to be observed through the lens of historical discontinuity, and not only because the continuous administrative and institutional shifts (particularly dense in the area under examination between Italy and Slovenia) require a non-linear trajectory of analysis, but also, and above all, because if we use categories that are too compact we might fail to grasp the movements of non-formalised social groups that nevertheless acted in a collective sense, building de facto social relations around access to and use of natural resources. The commons are dynamic realities, whose history is often little known. A two-year interdisciplinary research project attempted to reconstruct (through historical research on archive documents and ethnographic research conducted through interviews and fieldwork), the complex processes of constitution, dissolution and reconstitution of agrarian communities around the Italian-Slovenian border. The same social groups that in the mid-nineteenth century divided shares for the management of forests and pastures, at the end of the twentieth century, after the end of the socialist experience in Slovenia, were trying, and are still trying with difficulty, to reconstitute themselves out of the need for social re-aggregation and environmental protection. Tracing these deep historical dynamics, which play out at different scales, from local to national to supranational, allows us to reflect on the concepts of commonisation and decommonisation, seeing them act in time and space.

Paper short abstract:

The study of history is an important element of innovations in social-ecological research. Using small-scale fisheries as commons, I offer insights to move beyond theoretical, methodological and disciplinary boundaries as an approach to study transition from vulnerability towards viability.

Paper long abstract:

Innovations in social-ecological research require novel approaches to conceive change in human-environment systems. The study of history constitutes an important element of this process. First, using Chilika Lagoon small-scale fisheries in India as a commons case study, I reflect on the appropriateness of a social-ecological perspective for understanding histories. Second, I examine how changes in various components of the Lagoon social-ecological system influenced and shaped history and the political processes surrounding the deep-rooted vulnerabilities. I discuss the two-way linkages between history and social-ecological (environmental) processes to highlight that the components of a social-ecological system, including economic, social, political and ecological aspects, interact and intersect to define the level of vulnerabilities within the small-scale fisheries of Chilika Lagoon. Social, ecological, economic and political components of a system are interlinked and may jointly contribute to the shaping of specific histories, not separately by drawing lines based on disciplinary boundaries. Based on this synthesis, I offer insights to move beyond theoretical, methodological and disciplinary boundaries as an overarching approach - an inclusive lens - to study not only vulnerabilities but also the processes of transition towards viability.