ABSTRACT

Capitalism and the Commons focuses on the political and social perspectives that commons offer, how they are appropriated or suppressed by capital and state, and how social initiatives and movements contest these dynamics or build their struggles on commoning.

The volume comprises theoretical and empirical approaches that engage with three main themes: conceptualizing the commons, analyzing practices of commoning, and exploring commons politics. In their contributions, the authors focus on the development of anti-capitalist commons and explore the issue of practice and politics through case studies from Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, and Africa more broadly, Austria, Germany and South Korea, ranging from peri-urban and rural agriculture to urban commons and how they manifest in the Global South as well as in the Global North. The book engages with different discourses on the commons in regard to their relevance for social change and thereby reinvigorates the political meaning of the commons. It provides an original and important approach to the topic in terms of conceptualization, detailing diverse empirical realities, and analyzing potential perspectives. In so doing, the book transcends narrow disciplinary boundaries and expands the focus to the global.

Providing a fresh perspective on the commons as a decisive component of alternatives, this title will be relevant to scholars and students of resource management, social movements, and sustainable development more broadly.

part I|31 pages

Fundaments

chapter 1|15 pages

Expanding the scope

The commons within and beyond capitalism in crises

part II|67 pages

Boundaries

chapter 3|15 pages

Commoning land access

Collective purchase and squatting of agricultural lands in Germany and Austria

chapter 6|17 pages

War and the commons

Enclosures and capitalist mobilization of spatial configurations in course of armed conflict—the case of North Kivu, DRC

part III|32 pages

Openings

chapter 7|14 pages

Urban undercommons

Solidarities before and beyond the national imaginary

part V|9 pages

Transgressions

chapter 12|7 pages

Disengaging capitalism

A polyphonic conclusion