Abstract
As a response to the march of privatization and neoliberal individualism, the commons have recently re-emerged as an attractive alternative. In this article, I bring a feminist political ecology critique to the burgeoning literature on commoning to develop a conceptualisation of how political communities of commoning emerge through socionatural subjectification and affective relations. All commoning efforts involve a renegotiation of the (contested) political relationships through which everyday community affairs, production and exchange are organised and governed. Drawing on critical property studies, diverse economies, feminist theory and commoning literatures, the analysis critically explores the relationship between property and commoning to reveal how the commons emerge from the exercise of power. Central to my conceptualisation is that commoning is a set of practices and performances that foster new relations and subjectivities, but these relations are always contingent, ambivalent, outcomes of the exercise of power. As such, commoning creates socionatural inclusions and exclusions, and any moment of coming together can be succeeded by new challenges and relations that un-common. I argue for the need to focus on doing commoning, becoming in common, rather than seeking to cement property rights, relations of sharing and collective practices as the backbone of durable commoning efforts. Becoming in common then, is a partial, transitory becoming, one which needs to be (re)performed to remain stable over time and space.
Highlights
Perhaps a coalition needs to acknowledge its contradictions and take action with those contradictions intact.(Butler 1990, 20)Growing frustrations with the capitalist, technocentric economy have led to a proliferation of academic and activist attempts to imagine other forms of exchange, production and living well
As a response to the march of privatization and neoliberal individualism, the commons have recently re-emerged as an attractive alternative. In this article, I bring a feminist political ecology critique to the burgeoning literature on co mmoning to develop a conceptualisation of how political communities of commoning emerge through socionatural subjectification and affective relations
Drawing on critical property studies, diverse economies, feminist theory and commoning literatures, this analysis critically explores the relationship between property and commoning to reveal how the commons emerge from the exercise of power
Summary
Perhaps a coalition needs to acknowledge its contradictions and take action with those contradictions intact. Examples from around the world show a range of commoning efforts: collectivization of governance and use of forests, water, and other livelihood resources, urban gardens and vacant lot reclamation, open source and internet-based production efforts and alternative currencies, among many others (Bollier and Helfrich 2015) These efforts help us to imagine “the particular combinations of work, exchange, production, distribution, investment and ownership that help our communities to survive well (rather than just survive)” (Dombroski et al 2019, 4 emphasis in original). I develop my feminist political ecology conceptualisation of commons as socionatural becomings by linking critical property studies on power and authority to feminist work on power and subjection To animate these more philosophical arguments, I round out my analysis by telling a short story from my extensive empirical research in Nepal on community forestry that illustrates how c ommoning efforts produce ‘being in common’ (Singh 2017) and exclusions and enclosures of political communities and socionatures
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