Land commoning in deagrarianized contexts: Potentials for agroecology?

Abstract

Amid socially and ecologically failing food systems, land commoning has been proposed as a pathway to align food systems with agroecology and food sovereignty. This article aims to contribute to nascent understandings of land commoning movements in relatively deagrarianized contexts by presenting two distinct and complementary case studies in England and South Africa. We show how commoning imaginaries in both contexts are informed by racial justice politics. These movements offer some potential to change food provisioning yet are also limited by tensions with other strategies for both racial justice and agroecology that reinforce individualized property relations. We argue that the nuances and potentials of land commoning movements in deagrarianized contexts merit further research.