* Special issue: Commons – Practices, boundaries and thresholds. edited by Giacomo D’Alisa & Cristina Mattiucci. Explorations in Space and Society No. 30 - December 2013 [1].

URL = http://www.losquaderno.professionaldreamers.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/losquaderno30.pdf

Excerpt

From the editorial by Giacomo D’Alisa & Cristina Mattiucci:

"Commons is becoming an increasingly crucial topic in the political arena. On one hand, academic debate has focused on defining the characteristics of common goods and services, as well as on the analysis of managing institutional frameworks: in this vein, some scholars have shown how self-organised communities guarantee the sustainability of commons resources, while others – taking a mainstream approach – have described the commons as a failure of the market, in the wake of a new wave of enclosures.

On the other hand, a varied group of commoners have been experimenting for decades the pooling of social and political practices. These practices have contributed to the identification and recognition of commons; they have transformed current values and produced specific spatial and social relationships. These sets of pooling practices concerning spaces, goods, times and knowledges are often turned into the expression of new practices of citizenship as well as alternative life schemes.

In any case, commoning is not yet a coherent political project. The social forces of capital can easily co-opt those interstitial practices, creating new markets out of them. Commons have already been dealt with recently in lo Squaderno (see e.g. no. 29 pp.25-27 and no. 25, pp. 29-31). Following these contributions, we have decided to expand this study into a whole issue, aiming to move some steps – among the others – towards the building of a coherent and robust critical perspective about the capitalisms on the commons.

The call raised several questions in order to foster a debate that would tackle the interpretation as well as the rhetoric of commons, as they are tested on, or applied to, specific spaces and places.

The authors who have answered the call have proposed very different frameworks and tales of experiences, opening up even more the discussion about the usual boundaries and thresholds. Contributions thus range from more classical ones – founded mainly on Elinor Ostrom’s theory of commons – to more antagonistic ones – founded on an epistemology that interprets the commons’ manifold and sometimes unexpected social and spatial features.

In the opening piece, Garcia-López summarizes the theory of commons. Using a case study from Mexico, he discusses the success of the commons, recapitulating the principles first outlined by Ostrom. Garcia-Lopez also points out the importance of the State role in guaranteeing the durability of common property regimes as well as the fundamental role of grass-roots struggles to defend them. In the following piece, dell’Angelo critically identifies the main limit of Ostrom’s framework in the scant attention paid to conflicts. On the contrary, in the perspective advanced by dell’Angelo the very existence of a commons derives from conflict.

Thus, both dell’Angelo and Garcia-López call for a political-ecological approach to better inform future analysis.

In order to understand the multiple factors that explain the durability of commons, in his contribution Gailing considers the notion of landscape. Through two case studies, he shows how the tension between commons and private goods shapes the social construction of the landscape in Germany. Along the same line, Dini proposes to interpret the Alpine landscape as a commons. Such a landscape, he argues, set clear limits to the human being and forced him/her to deal with his/her vulnerability, transforming the maintenance of a commons into a necessity rather than mere option.

Analyzing a somehow similar case, Moscovici discusses a case study from New Jersey (USA) where state bodies, private capital firms and non-governmental organizations are experimenting the joint management of what the author defines as a luxurious commons. Like Garcia-López, but in a completely different context, Moscovici underlines the role of the State as an important actor that fosters the pooling of resources.

Blokker looks at the commons from a different disciplinary perspective, focused on constitutionalism. He highlights the strict relation that exists between the struggle for commons and the language of constitutional rights. In particular, he focuses on the importance of constituent power emerging from the conflict over legal and constitutional power in contemporary democracy. In their articles, both Finidori and Dawney argue in favour of a shift from ontological to phenomenological studies of commons. Concurrently, they invite to move beyond the classical approach extensively presented in the first two pieces of this issue. According to these authors, the current research interest lies in understanding the everyday practices of commoning: in this respect, while Finidori mainly investigates the ethos of commoning, Dawney stresses the transformative process of commons activists.

From this perspective, struggle and power relations emerge as fundamental factors that shape the commons. In line with Finidori and Dawney’s perspective, Traquino shows how the appropriation of a public place for a multicultural business project can be counteracted by practices of commoning, able to re-articulate differently those spaces.

Rose’s starting point is the recognition of commons as a contested notion. In particular, Rose embraces Hardt and Negri’s approach, along with their invitation towards an explicitly political approach to the common.

Drawing from his case study of a public park in Salt Lake City, Rose discusses struggle as a constituent aspect of the park itself for marginal subjects’ existence. From a Marxian perspective, Cuppini then criticizes the overlap between the notions of ‘the common good’ and ‘the commons’. The distinction between these two notions is important to recognise the commons as not predetermined by nature or traditional customs, rather, as the outcome of social struggle. in the end piece, Guadagno discusses two cases from Italy to show how, in the aftermath of a tragedy, the lack of citizen participation in the reconstruction process undermines the commons.

The issue is enriched by Andrea Sarti’s visual contribution, who accompanies us with his pictures into some spaces in Italy where cultural commons are currently being experimented. The varieties of interpretations emerging from of the present issue may perhaps induce the reader to believe that a single discussion on the commons is hard to develop. Upon cautious reading, however, a shared ground among all articles emerges. Indeed, all contributors identify struggle as a constituent element of commons. Both those who look at commons through classical theories and those who look at commoning practices, identify struggle as a structural aspect that creates and even preserves the commons. In this sense, it is struggle that shapes and articulates, geographically and historically, those power relations capable of supporting the movement towards the commons.

Only through practices of commoning in space and time that update the commons and strengthen their (counter-)power, especially through anti-capitalist struggles, will different experiences be able to coalesce into a coherent political project, moving those experiences beyond their specific, and sometimes narrow, confines."

Commons Practices, Boundaries and Thresholds

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