Table Of ContentCapitalism and the Commons
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 Dem-
ocratic 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 ap-
proach to the topic in terms of conceptualization, detailing diverse empirical
realities, and analyzing potential perspectives. In so doing, the book tran-
scends 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.
Andreas Exner, RCE Graz-Styria, Centre for Sustainable Social
Transformation, University of Graz, Austria.
Sarah Kumnig, Institute for Sociology and Social Research, Vienna
University of Economics and Business, Austria.
Stephan Hochleithner, Department of Geography, University of Zurich,
Switzerland.
Routledge Studies in Global Land and Resource Grabbing
Series Editors:
Andreas Neef, The University of Auckland, New Zealand
Chanrith Ngin, The University of Auckland, New Zealand
This series presents and discusses ‘resource grabbing’ research in a holistic
manner by addressing how the rush for land and other natural resources (wa-
ter, forests, minerals, etc.) is intertwined with agriculture, mining, tourism,
energy, carbon markets, climate change, and disasters. This series welcomes
contributions from a wide range of inter-disciplinary approaches and on a
global basis.
Titles in this series include:
Industrial Tree Plantations and the Land Rush in China
Implications for Global Land Grabbing
Yunan Xu
Capitalism and the Commons
Just Commons in the Era of Multiple Crises
Edited by Andreas Exner, Sarah Kumnig and Stephan Hochleithner
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
sustainability/series/GLRG
Capitalism and the
Commons
Just Commons in the Era of
Multiple Crises
Edited by
Andreas Exner, Sarah Kumnig,
and Stephan Hochleithner
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Andreas Exner, Sarah
Kumnig, and Stephan Hochleithner; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of Andreas Exner, Sarah Kumnig, and Stephan
Hochleithner to be identified as the authors of the editorial material,
and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Exner, Andreas, 1973– editor. | Kumnig, Sarah, editor. |
Hochleithner, Stephan, editor.
Title: Capitalism and the commons : just commons in the era of
multiple crises / edited by Andreas Exner, Sarah Kumnig and
Stephan Hochleithner.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Routledge studies in global land and resource grabbing |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020038580 (print) | LCCN
2020038581 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367420024 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780367822835 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Commons. | Land use—Law and legislation. |
Land tenure—Government policy. | Sustainable development.
Classification: LCC HD1286 .C37 2021 (print) | LCC HD1286
(ebook) | DDC 333.2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038580
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038581
ISBN: 978-0-367-42002-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-82283-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
Contents
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgments xi
PART I
Fundaments 1
1 Expanding the scope: the commons within and
beyond capitalism in crises 3
ANDREAS EXNER, STEPHAN HOCHLEITHNER, AND SARAH KUMNIG
2 Towards the commons through the gift 18
ANDREAS EXNER
PART II
Boundaries 33
3 Commoning land access: collective purchase and
squatting of agricultural lands in Germany and Austria 35
SARAH KUMNIG AND MARIT ROSOL
4 “We don’t eat flowers”—spatial empowerment and
commons in peri-urban agroecological networks as
answer to socio-ecological conflicts in Colombia 50
BIRGIT HOINLE
5 Women’s struggles for land in Africa and the
reconstruction of the commons 68
SILVIA FEDERICI
vi Contents
6 War and the commons: enclosures and capitalist
mobilization of spatial configurations in course of
armed conflict—the case of North Kivu, DRC 83
STEPHAN HOCHLEITHNER
PART III
Openings 101
7 Urban undercommons: solidarities before and beyond
the national imaginary 103
NIKI KUBACZEK AND SHERI AVRAHAM
8 Cracking territorial commons—the Gongyuji
movement in Seoul, South Korea 117
YOONAI HAN AND SEON YOUNG LEE
PART IV
Perspectives 133
9 Public-common partnerships, autogestion,
and the right to the city 135
KEIR MILBURN AND BERTIE RUSSELL
10 South African commoning, cooperatives, and
eco-socialist potentials in the context of COVID-19 151
PATRICK BOND AND MERON OKBANDRIAS
11 Liberating the commons by commoning
commons research: the enclosure of reality
and the systematization of experience 169
BARBARA STEFAN AND ANDREAS EXNER
PART V
Transgressions 187
12 Disengaging capitalism: a polyphonic conclusion 189
ANDREAS EXNER, STEPHAN HOCHLEITHNER,
AND SARAH KUMNIG
Index 197
Contributors
Sheri Avraham was born in Beit Dagan in 1979. She is an artist, curator,
and a theater-worker who lives and works in Vienna in the field of art and
culture. She sees herself as a translator between theory and practice, and
between classes, religions, geographies and generation.
Patrick Bond is Professor in the University of the Western Cape School of
Government, where he focuses on political economy, political ecology,
social mobilization, and geopolitics. He did his doctorate under David
Harvey’s supervision and his books include Elite Transition, Talk Left Walk
Right, Unsustainable South Africa, and Politics of Climate Justice.
Andreas Exner studied ecology and political science at the University of
Vienna, where he also received his doctoral degree. Exner worked several
years in applied ecology and in social science research on socio-ecological
transformation. He was a one year research fellow of the Catholic Social
Academy in Austria 2018/19. Since 2020, he is operational manager of the
RCE Graz-Styria, the Center for Sustainable Social Transformation of
the University of Graz. His research is focused on social-ecological trans-
formation, with particular interest in commons and solidarity economies,
urban development, food, and the geographies and politics of resources.
Silvia Federici is a feminist activist, writer, and teacher. In 1972, she was
one of the cofounders of the International Feminist Collective, the organ-
ization that launched the Wages for Housework campaign internation-
ally. From 1987 to 2005, she taught international studies, women studies,
and political philosophy courses at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY.
All through these years she has written books and essays on philosophy
and feminist theory, women’s history, education and culture, and more
recently the worldwide struggle against capitalist globalization and for a
feminist reconstruction of the commons.
Yoonai Han is a doctoral student in human geography at London School
of Economics and Political Science (LSE). In her research, she writes
about commons-making by precarious people, and her major field of re-
search is South Korea. Prior to pursuing doctoral degree, she engaged in
viii Contributors
anti-evection movements in Seoul and worked on research projects on
sharing city.
Stephan Hochleithner is a senior research and teaching associate in Polit-
ical Geography at the Department of Geography, University of Zürich.
He held research positions in Environmental Science at the University of
California, Berkeley, and in Political Science at the University of Vienna.
His work engages with human-non-human relations—with a special fo-
cus on social transformation—and with theory and practice of knowl-
edge production—with special regard to interdisciplinary research and
intra-academic hierarchies. For more information see www.meanwhile-
north-south.com.
Birgit Hoinle is a geographer and finished her PhD in 2020 at the Univer-
sity of Hamburg on (peri-)urban agriculture and processes of spatial em-
powerment in Colombia. During field research (2014–2016), she worked
as visiting scholar at the Universidad Externado in Bogotá and collabo-
rated with the network GeoRaizAL (Latin-American Network of Critical
Geography) for a series of conferences and compilation on “Territories
of Peace between Cities and Countryside”. Since 2019, she works in the
area of Higher Education for Sustainable Development at the International
Center for Ethics in Science (IZEW) at Tübingen University. Her research
interests are decolonial perspectives, feminist political ecology and alter-
native food networks.
Niki Kubaczek is a sociologist and publisher based in Vienna. He is a member
of the editorial board of transversal texts (transversal.at), of the eipcp (http://
eipcp.net), of kritnet – Network for Critical Border Regime and Migra-
tion Research (http://kritnet.org) as well as of the council of the section
for racism and migration research of the Austrian association of sociology.
Nikis main research interests are antiracism, critical migration research,
queer feminist and postcolonial theories, poststructuralism, political the-
ory, social movement studies, as well as friendship, solidarity, difference,
affect and commons.
Sarah Kumnig studied Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna,
Austria. Over the past years, Kumnig has worked in the field of critical
urban studies as research associate and lecturer at the Departments of Po-
litical Science and Sociology at the University of Vienna. She has edited
books and published articles on urban development, urban agriculture,
housing, and urban social movements. Currently, she is working as doc-
toral researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Social Research at the
Vienna University of Economics and Business.
Seon Young Lee holds her PhD in Geography from King’s College London
and works as an independent researcher. She has published several jour-
nal articles and book chapters about gentrification and anti-gentrification
Contributors ix
movements in Korea. She has discussed social, physical, and psychological
aspects of gentrification as urban disaster and has analyzed the contri-
bution and limitation of cultural resistance in recent anti-gentrification
movements in Korea. Her current research is about women’s participation
in community-led urban regeneration. It attempts to analyze how highly
educated housewives get involved in community-based enterprises for
community-led urban regeneration.
Keir Milburn teaches Political Economy and Organisation at the University
of Leicester. His research bridges organizational theory, political theory
and cultural studies, focusing in particular on how organizational struc-
tures are impacted by transformation in the subjectivities, values, and de-
sires that animate them. His latest book Generation Left develops a theory
of political generations and examines the composition and political imagi-
naries of the ‘young, new socialist, left’. He is also interested in transitional
institutions and radical municipalism, working, in particular, on ‘Public
Common Partnerships’ as a transitionary institution aiming to address our
current economic and environmental crises.
Meron Okbandrias is a lecturer in the University of the Western Cape
School of Government, where he focuses on public policy, migration, and
cooperatives. He completed his PhD on the subject of the role of NGOs in
Migration and has published work on cooperatives and migration.
Marit Rosol is a geographer who works as Canada Research Chair and
Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University
of Calgary, Canada. In 2006, she received her PhD from Humboldt-
Universität Berlin, Habilitation 2012 Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Her
research areas include urban and economic geography, critical urban food
studies and geographies of alternative food, housing, (neoliberal) u rban
governance, participation. Theoretically she has been contribution to
questions of political economy, alternative economies, urban political
ecology, hegemony, and governmentality.
Bertie Russell is a Research Associate at the University of Cardiff. His
research is focused on radical municipalism, innovative models of hybrid
ownership, and new approaches to decentralized participation. He has
published in journals such as Antipode, City, Soundings, Renewal, and Area.
He also writes for popular media including Open Democracy, Roar Mag-
azine, CityMetric, and the New Internationalist. He is current co-editor
of Red Pepper magazine and a coordinator of the international Minim
Municipalist Observatory.
Barbara Stefan, MMag., is cultural and social anthropologist, political sci-
entist and activist, editor of the blog “Mosaik”, and currently researcher at
the Ilse Arlt Institute for Social Work.
