No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Commons and the new environmentalism of everyday life. Alternative value practices and multispecies commoning in the permaculture movement
Abstract
This article seeks to contribute to the elaboration of an analytically solid definition of the commons that can be used to identify organised practices with social transformative potential and aimed at increasing socio-ecological sustainability. I draw on the analysis of political economist Massimo de Angelis who reworks the notion of the commons in line with its growing centrality in the practices and discourses of contemporary social movements. Through the notion of modes of valuation, I expand on his definition of the commons as socio-ecological systems based on alternative value practices. I apply this framework to the analysis of the permaculture movement as a «new materialist movement» grounded on alternative value practices and «multispecies commoning». I discuss the results of a research project on the diffusion of permaculture in Italy to show how the subversive idea of redesigning the subsistence sphere in accordance with principles of earth care, people care and fair share is translated into a variety of «pericapitalist» socio-economic initiatives resting on alternative value practices. I conclude by advocating the adoption of the commons framework to increase the permaculture movement’s reflexivity on some of the internal and external challenges it faces.
... A central argument of this article is that by framing social movement engagement in common-pool resource management as commoning, these dimensions are productively clarified. Broadly defined as "a process of making and remaking of the commons" (Clement et al., 2019, p. 2), commoning is an action ("doing in common") that promotes commonization, an alternative to commodification and capitalization guided by emancipation, social justice, and ecological sustainability (Centemeri, 2018). Emerging from the convergence of a diverse array of literature from geography to feminist theory to political ecology among others, a commoning perspective expands and diversifies our understanding of common-pool resources (and even more broadly, common goods), foregrounding the social relations that facilitate the production and perpetuation of commons (Turner, 2017). ...
... In consequence, SGMA has in many ways, grown, rather than reversed, the enclosure of groundwater in the SJV. This enclosure, however, has not gone uncontested by the region's environmental justice movement who, despite these challenges, have continued to leverage SGMA as an opportunity to articulate and pursue their vision of groundwater commons in which groundwater is not just a common good, accessible and sustainable as a life source, but also actively commoned by commoners through shared, democratic management (Centemeri, 2018). In a region where water rules (Arax, 2019), there could be no clearer challenge to capitalist hegemony (García López et al., 2017, p. 1). ...
... Further, they have applied their expansive environmental justice lens to assert a broader, more holistic, and more inclusive vision for the future than GSAs presented to them. In seeking to renegotiate the contested political relationships governing groundwater, these efforts are well conceptualized as commoning or a "collective rethinking" of the ways groundwater management is performed and the resource is governed guided by objectives of emancipation, social justice, and ecological sustainability (Centemeri, 2018;Nikolaeva et al., 2019, p. 354). ...
Despite the commons being a long-standing site of conflict, the role of social movements in common-pool resource management has been underaddressed. By exploring the role of environmental justice organizing in the San Joaquin Valley during California’s landmark groundwater reform process as a commoning practice, this article seeks to fill this gap and advance our understanding of how collective action can, and is, being leveraged to advance just and sustainable transitions. I argue that through three principal strategies of challenging participation, scope, and authority, the movement has played a formative role in a landscape of intensive enclosure. Applying a commoning lens to the case highlights the important role of not only social movements in commons management but also of commons management as a venue for the rearticulation of regional socionatural relations. Such opportunities are particularly important in underinstitutionalized rural areas where opportunities to renegotiate these relations are often few and far between. Understanding the emergence and growth of commoning communities engaged in such efforts provides several important lessons. Individual commoning strategies can help identifying principal constraints and opportunities to transcend them. To be fully understood, however, they need to be considered collectively as well as in context. In doing so, the critical importance of focusing on the work commons do, rather than produce, becomes apparent. Commoning is both a tool and a goal in itself.
... Permaculture exemplifies a community-based approach to creating and sharing value (Centemeri, 2018). With conscious design and the integral principles of "earth care, people care, and fair share," one can argue that community-building (with earth and with people) is central to permaculture (Canty, 2019). ...
... Forde argues that "the permacultural focus on material agency in the context of agricultural production directly addresses the relationship between the material details of everyday life and broader geopolitical and socioeconomic structures" (2016, 118). According to these new materialist readings of permaculture, humans are positioned as living-in-community (Richardson-Ngwenya & Nightingale, 2018), or in a "multispecies commoning" (Centemeri, 2018) with other socio-natural beings, wherein nonhumans are assumed to also have the right to a "fair share." Here, the politics of "nature" and the politics of "community" intersect. ...
... The ideal then is for healthy relationships to lead to a socio-ecological community where diverse more-than-human life can thrive. This echoes Centemeri (2018), who suggested that through permaculture, the conventional (human-centered) boundaries of community shift, to encompass a community populated by multispecies relations. ...
Permaculture is an approach to sustainable design thinking, agriculture, and community, as well as a globalized movement. This article explores how different practices and processes of permaculture have generated different political registers of “community,” at three permaculture sites in Zimbabwe. Speaking to recent online media that asks “Is permaculture political?,” as well as to the academic literature critiquing localized environmental initiatives as “postpolitical,” the article adopts a feminist political ecology (FPE) framework to discuss two modalities in which the geographies of community‐building can be registered as political. First, I look at how subjectivities and intracommunity power relations have been reshaped through participatory practices of governance, taking on entrenched gender‐ and age‐based power relations in particular. Second, comes the idea of community as a more‐than‐human ontology. An FPE analysis offers an original perspective on how permaculture has become actualized in the Zimbabwean context. The research approach built on Gibson‐Graham's calls to engage performatively with examples of diverse economies and aimed to serve the efforts of these communities in a small way, by celebrating and documenting their activities and creating public media outputs. Contributing to the literature on permaculture, as well as to debates around community‐based environmental movements, an FPE perspective frames these community‐building efforts in terms of everyday political practices and performances. I conclude that while FPE draws attention to these everyday politics, permaculture practitioners actualize them and in doing so, make a much‐needed contribution to cultivating, or “worlding” diverse, more‐than‐human economies.
... The PKR is an experimental space for students to explore alternative lifestyles. Actually, lifestyle is not the appropriate term to describe permacultural behavior (Centemeri 2018). The word lifestyle would suggest that this certain type of behavior is merely a fashion, something that might appear and disappear with the next trend. ...
... Surprisingly, PC is not only widely ignored by scientific research in general, but also in sustainability transition research (for a comprehensive analysis, why this is the case, see (Ferguson and Lovell 2014)). Permaculture's holistic nature and its inclusiveness of other approaches and philosophies see for example (Aiken 2017;Centemeri 2018;La Puig de Bellacasa 2010;Roux-Rosier et al. 2018) makes it hard to grasp, what permaculture really is and what it stands for. As an example, most techniques permaculturists use did not originate within the permaculture milieu, but are rather adopted from other concepts (Ferguson and Lovell 2014). ...
... The duality between culture and nature is rejected, and humans are perceived as a part of nature. With such a profound premise, it is clear that PC is more than just a lifestyle (Centemeri 2018;Centemeri 2019;Holmgren 2016;La Puig de Bellacasa 2010;McManus 2010). Permaculture, according to Holmgren, suggests seven domains of action (the permaculture flower) that are to be transformed: (1) land and nature stewardship, (2) building, (3) tools and technology, (4) education and culture, (5) health and spiritual well-being, (6) finances and economy, (7) land tenure and community governance. ...
By using an inductive qualitative approach, investigating the micro scale, that is, the individual level, we conducted a case study on the PermaKulturRaum in Goettingen, Germany-an experimental space for students to explore alternative lifedesigns. On the supposition that only a radical transition can achieve sustainability on a global scale, we identified permaculture as an appropriate method to achieve this. However, permaculture is not widely spread and largely ignored by scientific research. We started a first attempt to understand the underlying motivations of permaculturists. Using behavioral studies as our theoretical framework, we found out that behavioral determinants, like biospheric values, green-identity, and the intention to act green were extraordinarily high and that the core of their pro-environmental behavior is most likely their strong intrinsic motivation. Regarding the PermaKulturRaum, we could formulate following theses: (1) a comprehensive implementation of perma-cultural aspects requires an urge for an alternative lifedesign, (2) a radical lifedesign attracts primarily like-minded people, which creates isolated spaces, (3) early childhood experiences or single key moments are important to trigger a pro-environmental interest.
... Instead of seeking to accrue a monetary surplus or return on investment, commonisation, from this viewpoint, seeks to achieve the 'maintenance and reproduction of the socio-ecological system and its components (ecological, social, symbolic, and cultural wealth; affective and social relations)' (Centemeri, 2018, p. 292). Recently, there have been attempts to realise and organise this situated and holistic approach to commoning through modelling responses to the climate crisis on the permaculture movement (Centemeri, 2018;Roux-Rosier et al., 2018). ...
... Instead, through a set of values and practical design principles that simulate ecological processes, permaculture seeks to balance the needs of nature with the needs of humans, a sentiment that is encapsulated in the ethical principles that underpin it: earth care, people care, and fair share (Permaculture Principles, 2020). In this sense permaculture practice resonates with the approach to the management of common pool resources proposed by de Angelis (Centemeri, 2018). That is, it seeks to establish and sustain locally embedded socio-ecological systems that produce ecological, social, symbolic, and cultural wealth held together by maintainable, affective, and social relations. ...
Like many communities, the people who live alongside the Calder River and its catchment in Yorkshire, UK, are having to face the health and other consequences of climate change, and catastrophic flooding is becoming a frequent event. Through the concept of planetary health, it is claimed the protection of natural and human systems could be achieved, in part, through the stewardship of common pool resources by the communities that know and depend on them. This paper explores, ethnographically, the challenges of enacting stewardship in the context of austerity. It shows how the socially reproductive capacity required for stewardship is limited in the context of austerity, which impinges the wellbeing and agency of stewards and the sustainability of their stewardship work. Building on theories of care, it is suggested that by aligning stewardship work with the ethical principles of permaculture – care for the earth, care for people, and fair share – forms of agency and action capable of addressing the many challenges wrought by austerity and climate change could be enabled.
... Goods are sold and bought, money is lent, plants are grown, research and technology development proceeds. To get the difference one has to look at telling clues, especially those 'alternative value practices' (Centemeri, 2018) which run counter capitalist chains of equivalences and (self-) valorizing thrusts, such as the replacement of profit-seeking with 'just price', the adoption of participatory systems of certification, or the 'dilution' of work time. 2 It is on such features that prefiguration can arguably play its cards as a force of change. ...
... For a combination of the two into a 'flour compact' see www.molinotuzzi.it/patto-di-filiera.php. Dilution of work time means that productive activities are interwoven with others: relational, leisure, etc. (see Centemeri, 2018). ...
Prefigurative mobilizations replace protest with direct action, means and ends becoming ideally one and the same. Analytically this entails a two-step movement: first, subtraction (withdrawal) from some arrangement; second, affirmation of an alternative. Both positive and critical assessments focus on the strength or lack of affirmativeness. However, as Foucault and governmentality studies have shown, power today crucially builds on promoting and influencing behaviours, rather than on commanding and prohibiting. Neglect of this aspect depends on the dominance, in current social and political theory, of ‘affirmative thinking’, whereby emancipation stems from the unbridled expression of vital forces. The flaws of affirmationism are discussed by focusing on post-workerist autonomism and degrowth theory. The possibility for subtraction to be self-sufficient in actualizing the alternative, rather than instrumental to the affirmation of something else, is explored with the help of Adorno and Agamben. The former offers a framework for understanding the emancipatory force of negation; the latter gives clues to how negation can be actually lived, via the concept of inoperativity. This is not passivity but activity pivoting on the human capacity of not being or doing – of leaving potentials inactualized – not as renunciation but as achievement, running counter to the capitalist thrust to endless (self-)valorization. Observable experiences offer clues to how consistency of doing with being (form-of-life) is pursued against the lure and trap of its opposite (lifestyle). In this view, as with Benjamin’s account of revolution, the transformative potential of prefiguration may lie more in doing things differently than in doing different things.
... I use the term worlding from Escobar (2016) to describe how we create and experience different interconnected worlds-past, present and futures-human and non-human worlds, material and spiritual worlds with different practices, cultures and natures connecting them. I see the international classroom as an exciting space where this worlding can be practiced guided by concepts of social justice and ecological sustainability (Escobar 2016;Centemeri 2018). ...
... Universities can open up ways to pay attention to how 'we' co-constitute the global in relation to the local by building alliances which are shaped by gendered and other political struggles in the geographical and socio-institutional locations of academe (Routledge and Driscoll Derickson 2015). The classroom is a unique space to explore alternative socio-ecological ways of understanding the interlinkages of ecological, social, symbolic and cultural wealth as well as affective and social relations (Centemeri 2018). ...
In the paper I argue that in a world where our lives are intricately interconnected and our environments are rapidly changing, commoning produces ecological imaginaries and understandings of places that could build a sense of global commons based on mutuality, reciprocity, and relationality. In exploring commoning in the international class room, my paper contributes to on-going dialogues community economies and feminist political ecology in the Community Economies Research Network (CERN), and the newly formed EU project Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity (WEGO). In the article I first set out how I use commoning in my teaching. In section two I present my methodology, followed by section three where I present the community economies research network. In section four I present a case study of how I employ the community economies iceberg diagram in my teaching process using drawing /art-making to create an emergent commons-in-practice. In section five I discuss the productivity of bringing community economies and commoning to abroader feminist, ecological justice project followed by a conclusion.
... (Ingram et al., 2014) Se incluye al uso regenerativo de la tierra integrando avances tecnológicos para simplificar y agilizar el proceso productivo. (Giraud, 2021;Caraway, 2018;Centemeri, 2018, Rhodes, 2015 Más que un sistema es una filosofía de agricultura regenerativa, anclada a tres aspectos que son: cuidado de la tierra, de las personas y participación justa (Luna, 2022) Teoría de diseño agrícola sostenible, a partir de un conjunto de pautas que facilitan la creación de proyectos con enfoque ecológico, considerándola como una cultura permanente que va más allá de los deseos extractivistas y egoístas con la naturaleza y el hombre. Marco de diseño de ecosistemas naturales biodiversos y sostenibles que satisfagan las necesidades del hombre sin alterar la armonía de la naturaleza, se guiado en la ética y sus principios se basan en el conocimiento ecológico tradicional de pueblos indígenas, conocimiento científico moderno y aplicación de tecnología. ...
La permacultura se ha establecido como una alternativa a las prácticas agrícolas actuales, priorizando la activación de las relaciones simbióticas con los elementos bióticos y abióticos que componen al ecosistema para conseguir la armonía con la naturaleza, y los aspectos socio culturales como la participación justa. La permacultura nace como concepto en Australia a mediados de la década de 1970, y a lo largo de los años se ha venido implementado en varios países con diferentes perspectivas, así a más de la agricultura permanente se han incluido complementos como la construcción de ecoaldeas en conjunto con estilos de vida ecológicos, investigaciones de riqueza nutricional y microbiológica, soberanía alimentaria bajo la difusión de dietas propias de los lugares, turismo agroecológico rural y científico, parques comunitarios, jardinería orgánica y otros. Además de ello existen redes de capacitación y certificación de conocimientos, y legislación que promueve la permacultura. En lo que respecta a los ecosistemas fríos, como lo es el páramo, también existen proyectos de permacultura que se adaptan a las condiciones climáticas incorporando tecnología o variando el uso acorde a las estaciones. Es de destacar, la experiencia boliviana, con la construcción de wallipinis, que son invernaderos subterráneos que ha permitido la siembra en alturas de 3500 msnm con temperaturas promedio menores a 10 °C propias del altiplano. Por lo que, a partir de la presente revisión, se concluye que es posible desarrollar proyectos de permacultura en los ecosistemas de páramos altoandinos.
... But this narrative from Borgo Maiola conveys the possibility to re-actualize past and present "minor" knowledges and sensitivities to invest radical imaginaries of post-growth societies. More than a call to "resilience," the joyful sufficiency that Mary and William daily practice seems to me an example of intense frugality, of an alternative mode of "valuation" (Centemeri 2018) where valued things and experiences do not come through the market commodification but through the embodied affection of co-beingness. ...
Everyday Life Ecologies: Sustainability, Crisis, and Resistance is about the complex, sticky, but also open socio-material relationalities that make up daily existence. It looks at how their established flows are disrupted by multiple capitalist crises (environmental, social, economic), opening opportunities for transformation, or foreclosing horizons of change. Rather than advocating “responsible behaviours” or lifestyle change, this book politicises everyday assemblages, showing their embeddedness in capitalist relations and highlighting acts of resistance that embody alternatives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Northeast of Italy, this journey engages in a wider dialogue with political ecology, new materialisms, and emerging mobilisations that centre on socio-ecological reproduction.
... Calls to citizens to take action in their everyday practices are made by an increasing range of grassroots organizations. Through "alternative values practices" (Centemeri 2018), activists aim to demonstrate that what they do can be important, not only to withdraw support from structures deemed unjust, but also to experiment with an alternative and desirable society (Goodman et al. 2012;Veron 2016;Yates 2011). Participating in alternative economic networks, adopting vegan lifestyles, or opting to conduct a slower or simpler life emphasize a deeper personal commitment, which synthetizes public and personal responsibility. ...
Political consumerism and lifestyle activism contribute to social change in Western democracies. Acts such as buying organic food, exchanging clothes, or cycling to work are part of contemporary action repertoires. Today, these forms of political participation define what it means to be a citizen. Yet, few studies question underpinning understandings of social change and democratic decision-making processes at the core of these forms of political participation. In this chapter, we ask: What are the mechanisms and procedural understandings of social change associated with political consumerism and lifestyle activism? First, we discuss how these forms of participation contribute to contemporary action repertoires. Then, we analyze mechanisms associated with social change and conceptions of collective decision-making processes. We argue that political consumerism and lifestyle activism are associated with unequal political participation and that they lack a procedural understanding of democracy that allows the inclusion of different segments of society in decision-making processes.
... Moreover (see section 4), ecological arguments that highlight the importance of "familiar attachments" (Thévenot 2007) also undermine the modern construction of justice because they claim that the singular ways in which humans and their environments interweave and interpenetrate are politically important. This interconnection gives rise to embodied and emplaced reasons to attribute value to something or someone that challenge publicly justifiable definitions of worth (see Centemeri 2017Centemeri , 2018). An environmental movements approach inspired by the EC/SC thus critically examines the NIMBY (not in my backyard) category as a useful analytical tool for understanding environmental conflicts. ...
... In these examples, in activism and in academic research, we move to a conception of everyday mobilisations involving the construction of a different organisation of life instead of being only enacted within the given options provided by the system. The reconfiguration of material and symbolic flows through collective practice allows, for instance, new forms of valuation to emerge (Centemeri 2018). Within the capitalist economy, value is that process through which life as a whole becomes exchangeable and functional to accumulation. ...
This chapter is to be published in the Elgar Handbook of Critical Environmental Politics, edited by Luigi Pellizzoni, Viviana Asara and Emanuele Leonardi.
... Aujourd'hui, comprendre les problèmes d'alimentation des citadins est d'autant plus indispensable dans un contexte où le changement climatique est en train de modifier les liens que ceux-ci construisent avec leur environnement proche et pousse les communautés à s'adapter (Centemeri, 2018 ;Volaire et al., 2016). ...
De multiples initiatives citoyennes se développent dans l'espace urbain ces dernières années, au sujet du cadre de vie et de l'environnement. Elles se structurent notamment autour de solidarités spontanées de citoyens engagés, souhaitant expérimenter leur citoyenneté par le biais de l'action. Plus spécifiquement, des initiatives tentant de faire face au changement climatique, émergent à l'échelle des villes, comme l'illustre, le développement de jardins communautaires dans la ville de São Paulo/Brésil. Ce travail de thèse analyse les expériences de jardinage à São Paulo, par le biais de la reconnaissance des plantes au sein des jardins communautaires et privés. Il identifie également les nouveaux régimes alimentaires qui se dessinent à l'intérieur de la ville, sous le prisme/ de l'approche de la capabilité. La notion de capabilité défend l'idée d'un développement fondé sur la liberté des individus à mobiliser leurs ressources en vue de leur émancipation; d'enrichir leurs choix en termes d'opportunités (les potentialités d'agir) tout en prenant conscience des différents facteurs qui affectent leurs conditions de vie. Évoquer les capabilités pour traiter de l'adaptation au changement climatique, c'est intégrer l'idée que l'adaptation ressort du rapport entre des contraintes évolutives et des capacités humaines en interaction. La prise en compte de ce que l'on nomme «capabilités socio-environnementales», donne dès lors la possibilité de préserver la richesse des trajectoires en matière d'adaptation, tout en essayant de les insérer dans le cadre de politiques publiques, afin de mettre en oeuvre des démarches interactives qui feraient grandir l'intérêt sociétal vis-à-vis de ce qui constitue le rapport des individus aux situations climatiques.
... And in the energy sector, community renewable energy projects have been used by movements to simultaneously provide a collective good, create a new vision of energy, confront clearly identifiable political opponents, mobilize broad popular support, and foster a societal change from a centralized to a decentralized, democratic, and socially just energy system (132,137,183,201). Environmental scholars have labeled some of these cases as environmentalism of everyday life (8,35,68,260,261) through which communities try to isolate themselves from unsustainable production and consumption by generating new circuits of goods and service production and consumption. ...
Over the past few years, studies in political ecology and environmental justice have been increasingly connecting the commons and social movements empirically, giving shape to a new, distinctive body of research on commons movements. In our review, we first organize and synthesize empirical lessons from this body of literature. We then highlight recent theoretical efforts made by scholars to both bridge and transcend the gap between the theory of the commons and social movement theory. As we illustrate, movements can help create and strengthen commons institutions and discourses, as well as rescale them horizontally and vertically. This is particularly evident in the context of rural community-rights movements in the global South, as well as in new water and food commons movements and community-energy movements in both the global South and North. Commons institutions, in turn, can serve as the basis of social mobilization and become a key frame for social movements, as shown in the context of local environmental justice and livelihoods conflicts and anti-privatization struggles. Tensions and contradictions of commons-movement dynamics also exist and reflect trade-offs between diversity versus uniformization and organizational closure versus expansion of discourses and practices. Theoretically, there is an opportunity to cross boundaries from the theory of the commons to social movement theory and vice versa, e.g., by highlighting the role of political opportunities and framing, and biophysical factors and polycentricity, respectively. More importantly, a new commons movements theory is emerging focusing on cross-scalar organizations, the virtuous cycles between commons projects and mobilization, and the processes of commons-making.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 46 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
... Through time, the human and multispecies communities shape the local milieus as matrices that will guide the individuals' behaviors and practices [32,33]. For instance, paths, bridges and buildings restrain and guide the movements of individuals within a particular place. ...
This article approaches the challenges of the distribution of responsibility for climate change on a local level using the framework of the milieu. It suggests that the framework of the milieu, inspired by Japanese and cross-cultural environmental philosophy, provides pathways to address the four challenges of climate change (global dispersion, fragmentation of agency, institutional inadequacy, temporal delay). The framework of the milieu clarifies the interrelations between the individual, the community, and the local milieu and is open to a conservative view of human communities and an inclusive view of multispecies communities. On this basis, an account of individual responsibility that is anchored in the local milieu and includes a responsibility to collaborate across milieus is developed. It consists of a forward-looking responsibility that balances a degree of contributory responsibility for one’s imprints on the milieu with a degree of capacity-responsibility that varies regarding the individual’s knowledge and powers, and the acceptability of practices within the local milieu.
... It is therefore in this field that one may expect to find significant attempts at a politics of forms-of-life. Among the examples worthy of attention are those experiences, such as permaculture, participatory plant breeding, 'just price' and other 'alternative value practices' (Centemeri, 2018), 10 that challenge the dominant grammar of goals, values and relations, replacing cost-effectiveness with the accommodation of a plurality of human and otherthan-human standpoints, entanglements, orders of worth and efficiency criteria. Also land occupations, like the one against the Notre-Dame-de-Lande (Nantes) airport project, can be read through the conceptual lens of forms-of-life (Bulle, 2018), as they create zones à défendre, that is 'places apart' where everyday life is emancipated from the surrounding order based on proprietary relations with people and things (Rancière, 2017). ...
The modern outlook on emancipation has made its quest inseparable from a quest for endless enhancement, based on an ever-more intensive exploitation of the biophysical world. This accounts for how unsustainable ways of living are reiterated worldwide, in spite of evidence of their deleterious effects. The underpinnings of unsustainability, and a major impediment to conceiving alternatives, come from an account of the human as ontologically indeterminate, crushed on doing, both vulnerable and powerful towards the world. The impasse of such ambivalence hampers social theory critique, from post-humanist ontologies to the case for degrowth and lifestyle politics. The article outlines a different take on emancipation. An account is provided of form-of-life as a doing tailored to being – not as a self-enclosed monad but as a result of the encounter between own ‘inclination’ and the world. This theoretical perspective discloses a research program on emergent mobilisations.
... Understanding complicity in these changing social and ecological landscapes recognises how they are built on erasures but also it is possible to take up differential responsibilities for past, present and future, in order to embrace life-in-commons and the practice of commoning. I define the practice of commoning as the collective actions to transform and reconnect human and more-than-human communities as we take up differential collective responsibility guided by concepts of social justice and ecological sustainability (Bresnihan, 2016;Centemeri, 2018;Escobar, 2016;Moore, 2017;Singh, 2017). ...
This commentary reflects on the shifts in my personal and political lifeworld across time and space by sharing a story of changing awareness about ‘life-in-common’ in the Australian landscape; a landscape that is marked by historical, ecological and resource struggle and injustice. My commentary takes up the rethinking of differential belonging and ‘life-in-common’ as part of the search for alternatives to capitalism and a way to overcome socioecological crises which pays attention to the deep connections of nature and culture. I reflect on life-in-common as an Australian white settler feminist political ecologist wishing to understand how to address the erasures and violence that mark the Australian landscape.
... SGMA set into motion a process of "commoning" (Centemeri 2018: 4) an action of "doing in common", to limit the extraction of groundwater. The institutional frame of SGMA opened up a field of political possibilities that were seized in their own way by people with different visions of the world and differing expectations. ...
Groundwater governance in Cuyama Valley, California unites the structural dilemmas of neoliberal environmental governance: a weak state, powerful corporations, a population called to participate but not to decide, and a limited vital resource. Creating institutions of self-governance in the conflictual domain of groundwater use draws local actors into the center of political struggles and strategies, as the State of California avoids governing or limiting groundwater use, purportedly for fear of getting embroiled in costly and lengthy lawsuits with private agroindustry. The SGMA process illustrates the power of property and money in the political game of sustainable resource governance, but it also confronts powerful actors with objectivizing satellite surveys, that point to absolute limits and challenge the growth myth. Institution-building for groundwater governance in Cuyama exposes the strategies of agricultural corporations towards local residents, highlighting the tensions inscribed in the very design of SGMA's polycentric governance structure, between the power to decide and the power to advise. Local residents have appropriated the language of science to contest strategies of denial by the agro-corporations, and to speak reason to unreasonable water users.
... The designers are required to be ecologically aware and phenomenologically informed, in order to consider the agency of non-humans in the design of landscapes (Chakroun and Linder 2018). The design should imitate patterns found in nature, and use these patterns to benefit nature itself, and to unlock the present and future possibilities of 'multispecies commoning' (Centemeri 2018) between the multiple human and non-human entities constitutive of each milieu. This 'co-agency' partakes in the foundation of an epistemology based, among other things, on a sense of mutual caring (Puig de la Bellacasa 2010). ...
Approaching sustainability through landscapes helps appreciate the value of the diversity of human ways to live with nature that exists today. On the basis of fieldwork research in Japan, we explore the landscapes of natural parks, satoyama, and permaculture, all three recognized as sustainable and of high biodiversity value despite showing significant differences in terms of nature protection and landscape management strategies. We use the ‘framework of the milieu’ inspired by Watsuji Tetsurō and Augustin Berque to situate individual experiences and behaviours within the landscape’s dynamics. It sheds light on the ideas of human-nature relations that underpin the understandings of sustainability as reflected in each landscape. We derive three corresponding landscape types: scenic, cultural, and ecotopian landscapes. We show that these types can be complementary insofar as they together support healthy ecosystems and fuel a sense of connectedness to nature.
EDITED BY Jacqueline Loos
... However, its ultimate aim is to preserve or create spaces for the development of small-scale practices for which they can establish their own internal rules. This is probably the meaning underlying the motto that has recently appeared in the network, 'Peasant Seeds, a Commons', echoing the Ostromian theories of the commons, which have shed light on the collective forms of natural resource management beyond the state, and which have been widely commented on and recently reappropriated by new environmentalisms (Centemeri 2018;Demeulenaere 2018). The drawback of such withdrawal is a loss of influence on the system which sets boundaries for their action. ...
This paper explores the organisational dynamics of movements claiming for a peasant reappropriation of seeds, in a context where genetic resources issued from Participatory Plant Breeding programmes involving farmers are getting official recognition from the European Union. The two organisations in France and Italy under scrutiny illustrate different pathways in seed activism. Drawing on Kriesi's framework, we interpret them as trajectories of institutionalisation, commercialisation, and conviviality. Whether or not seed activists should attempt to change the world from within institutions or from outside is highly disputed. It leads up to the connected issue of social base participation and internal democracy.
... Le milieu naturel et les entités qui le constituent, communément vus comme « des contraintes à l'accomplissement des performances productives souhaitées », sont alors considérés comme des « entités agissantes » potentiellement favorables à l'activité agricole (Barbier et Goulet, 2013 : 202). Dans cette communalisation multi-espèces (Centemeri, 2018) émerge la possibilité de penser et gérer le territoire comme bien commun (Magnaghi, 1.2. L'agriculture durable au prisme de la mésologie 8 Dans la perspective des systèmes agri-alimentaires territorialisés (Lamine, 2015), une agriculture durable désigne non seulement une manière écologique de cultiver la terre, mais se doit également de garantir, sur la durée, la possibilité de tisser avec le territoire des relations plurielles. ...
(EN)
Based on ethnographic fieldwork with permaculture practitioners of Swiss Romandie, we highlight the territorial dynamics propelled by the implementation of permaculture. We offer the neologism of mesologisation to better qualify the dynamics, in which the territory is construed as a matrix to design ecological agriculture projects. We then contrast the dynamics of permaculture with those undergone by the Swiss agricultural policy, in order to show and explain why the two seem hard to reconcile, although both have strong environmental objectives at their core. The persisting chasm between the two positions prevents a joint vision of « sustainable agrifood systems » from emerging.
(FR)
Sur la base d’un terrain ethnographique dans le milieu de la permaculture en Suisse romande, nous mettons en évidence les dynamiques initiées par la permaculture au sein des territoires dans lesquels elle se déploie. Nous qualifions de « mésologisation » la dynamique qu’amorce la permaculture en concevant le milieu (méso) comme une matrice qui guide le design de projets agricoles écologiques et territorialisés. Ce concept permet de faire ressortir les différences entre trajectoires d’écologisation. Nous soutenons ainsi que, bien que la politique agricole suisse et la permaculture portent l’une comme l’autre une dimension écologique forte, elles peinent à se rejoindre – et ceci freine l’avènement d’une vision partagée d’un système agri-alimentaire durable.
... 13 understood as a heterogeneous living community. I propose the term "multispecies commoning" (Centemeri, 2018) to describe the practices of mutualist and nonantagonistic interspecies entanglements that permaculture promotes through its design method and ethics. This implies the adoption of appropriate value practices. ...
... Le milieu naturel et les entités qui le constituent, communément vus comme « des contraintes à l'accomplissement des performances productives souhaitées », sont alors considérés comme des « entités agissantes » potentiellement favorables à l'activité agricole (Barbier et Goulet, 2013 : 202). Dans cette communalisation multi-espèces (Centemeri, 2018) émerge la possibilité de penser et gérer le territoire comme bien commun (Magnaghi, 1.2. L'agriculture durable au prisme de la mésologie 8 Dans la perspective des systèmes agri-alimentaires territorialisés (Lamine, 2015), une agriculture durable désigne non seulement une manière écologique de cultiver la terre, mais se doit également de garantir, sur la durée, la possibilité de tisser avec le territoire des relations plurielles. ...
(EN) Based on ethnographic fieldwork with permaculture practitioners of Swiss Romandie, we highlight the territorial dynamics propelled by the implementation of permaculture. We offer the neologism of mesologisation to better qualify the dynamics, in which the territory is construed as a matrix to design ecological agriculture projects. We then contrast the dynamics of permaculture with those undergone by the Swiss agricultural policy, in order to show and explain why the two seem hard to reconcile, although both have strong environmental objectives at their core. The persisting chasm between the two positions prevents a joint vision of « sustainable agrifood systems » from emerging. (FR) Sur la base d’un terrain ethnographique dans le milieu de la permaculture en Suisse romande, nous mettons en évidence les dynamiques initiées par la permaculture au sein des territoires dans lesquels elle se déploie. Nous qualifions de « mésologisation » la dynamique qu’amorce la permaculture en concevant le milieu (méso) comme une matrice qui guide le design de projets agricoles écologiques et territorialisés. Ce concept permet de faire ressortir les différences entre trajectoires d’écologisation. Nous soutenons ainsi que, bien que la politique agricole suisse et la permaculture portent l’une comme l’autre une dimension écologique forte, elles peinent à se rejoindre – et ceci freine l’avènement d’une vision partagée d’un système agri-alimentaire durable.
... References Allen, P. (2004) Together at the political community as the result of practices of 'multispecies commoning' (Centemeri 2018) grounded in the aspiration to social justice and emancipation. Even if local pericapitalist economies structured by alternative value practices and arguments do not represent the alternative, they 'can be sites for rethinking the unquestioned authority of capitalism in our lives. ...
This book argues that there is no way to make progress in building a sustainable future without extensive participation of non-state actors.
The volume explores the contribution of non-state actors to a sustainable transition, starting with citizens and communities of different kinds and ending with cities and city-networks. The authors analyse social, cultural, political and economic drivers and barriers for this transition, from individual behaviour to structural restraints, and investigate interplay between the two. Through a series of wide-ranging case studies from the UK, Australia, Germany, Italy and Denmark, and a number of comparative case studies, the volume provides an empirically and theoretically robust argument that highlights the need to develop, widen and scale up collective action and community-based engagement if the transition to sustainability is to be successful.
Permaculture offers an ethical, pragmatic, philosophical and technical response to the daunting diagnosis of the Anthropocene. Its comprehension of the Earth draws upon the idea of “working with nature, rather than against it”. In that sense, permaculture radically departs from the fixist and homogenizing logics that prevail in agronomic sciences, and in modern territorial planning. By reengaging with the cycle of life and with our own finitude as living beings, permaculture conveys an earthly vision of human that resists the impertinent idea of an Earth becoming the scene solely for anthropos.
The paper discusses Dimitris Papadopoulos and Andrea Ghelfi's proposal for a transition to a 'green democracy'. It identifies the main points of their argument, namely, a case for a green democracy from below, the level of everyday practices and of a technoscience made by and for communities; the need for taking into account more than human constituencies; and the need for having any efficacy, that these broadened constituencies be able to construct translocal coalitions, around the goals of decelerating carbon intensive activities and of engaging in reparative actions, away from mythologies of pristine nature. The paper proceeds pointing out some problematic or unaddressed aspects of the argument, namely: the problem of voice, of who is going to speak for nonhumans; of whether a green politics from below is capable of escaping the risk of ineffectiveness or unwitting alliance with their critical target; of the current zeitgeist emblematized by the notions of Anthropocene and Gaia, as hardly suited to a politics of deliberation and diplomacy; and the ambivalences of the idea of transition via experimental politics vis-à-vis the current politics of domination via ontological blurring.
The case for post-work is not new but has been recently gaining momentum, in coincidence with a growing hypostatisation and precarisation of work. It comprises claims about less work, more pleasurable work and a withdrawal from unjust work relations, often intertwining arguments about the overcoming of alienated work and of necessitated work. Though addressing the link between ecological damage and capitalist exploitation of labour, debates over post-work have largely left unquestioned the modern notion of work as limitless instrumentalization of a passive, valueless materiality, nature and human flourishing resulting in this way in competition. Yet, today global capitalism is increasingly indifferent to distinguishing between labour and biophysical dynamics, technology and nature, profit and rent. This indicates how seriously should be taken Benjamin's and Adorno's claim that human and non-human exploitation presuppose one another and can be overcome only together-as some emergent social experiences are ostensibly doing.
Îlots de vie surgissant au milieu de l’aridité du désert, les oasis sahariennes abritent depuis des siècles un habitat aux formes éprouvées. Cette adaptation matérielle et spirituelle aux contraintes climatiques du désert est aujourd’hui mise à mal par des politiques de rationalisation et de modernisation inspirées des modèles occidentaux. L’oasis se voit ainsi réduite à un potentiel agricole à exploiter ou à un décor touristique à valoriser, au détriment de sa richesse architecturale et de la pratique quotidienne de ses habitants.
S’inscrivant en faux contre cette évolution, Résonances oasiennes propose une approche sensible de ces territoires pour mieux en révéler et défendre la singularité. Issu d’un processus collaboratif original autour des ambiances sonores, cet ouvrage invite le lecteur à s’imprégner de l’atmosphère des oasis à travers une analyse vivante de leur patrimoine bâti et des modes de vie de leurs habitants. Il souligne ainsi la nécessité de promouvoir l’architecture vernaculaire et la culture qui l’a développée afin d’affronter les défis économique, démographique et climatique auxquels ces espaces sont aujourd’hui soumis
Avec les contributions d’Abdelaziz Barkani, Alia Ben Ayed, Azeddine Belakehal, Joseph Brunet-Jailly, Irène Carpentier, Hind Ftouhi, Zakaria Kadiri, Hind Karoui, Imen Landoulsi, Imed Melliti, Mohamed Mouskite, Salima Naji, Nasser Tafferant, Jean-Paul Thibaud, Laurent Valdès, Khadija Zahi et Dorsaf Zid.
L'ouvrage est téléchargeable sur le site de l'éditeur :
https://www.metispresses.ch/en/resonances-oasiennes-numerique
En format EPUB :
https://metispresses.ch/files/2021/05/5283663.epub
The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has elicited renewed attention to an approach to emergency which has come to the forefront in recent years, namely preparedness. Scholars have argued that its rationale is profoundly divergent from the securitarian outlook of prevention and precaution, entailing different techniques and ostensibly also a different, non-(or less) dominative, way of relating with the biophysical world. In this paper I argue that, to grasp its logic and import, preparedness has to be considered from the vantage point of the evolution of the anticipatory governance of future, the main forms of which are discussed before looking at how the rise and use of preparedness has been accounted for. Preparedness turns out ambiguous in its implications, as innovative but also consistent with the governmental rationality of late capitalism, with special reference to the latter's commitment to preempt any actual change.
Pour les chercheurs et les chercheuses en sciences sociales ayant le désir de produire des savoirs critiques sur les transformations contemporaines du travail et des groupes sociaux, la notion de précarité est incontournable, mais aussi problématique. Avant de présenter les contributions de ce dossier, les auteur·e·s dressent, dans cette introduction, un bref inventaire des différents sens que peut revêtir la notion de précarité, tant dans le champ académique que dans le vaste halo des discours journalistique et politique. En effet, à la fin des années 1970, dès les premières occurrences de la notion, celle-ci se diffracte en diverses acceptions qui peuvent renvoyer à une manière de désigner les formes particulières d’emploi en lien avec le développement de nouvelles formes de pauvreté, à l’émergence d’un nouveau sujet politique dans un capitalisme en mutation ou encore aux modes de vie marginaux inspirés par le refus du travail. Objet d’une circulation internationale dans les sciences sociales et le champ militant, la notion de précarité est réappropriée dans de nombreux pays et nous revient aujourd’hui chargée de sens diversifiés, à l’origine de ce dossier. La précarité renvoie ainsi aux défaillances contemporaines de la société salariale, aux subjectivités produites par les nouveaux dispositifs de travail et, enfin, à la vulnérabilité, aux interdépendances dont procède des interrogations en termes de care et de subsistance.
By conceptualising the commons not just as common goods but as social systems, the book show their pervasive presence in everyday life, mapping out a strategy for total social transformation. From the micro to the macro, this book unveils the commons as fields of power relations -- shared space, objects, subjects -- that explode the limits of daily life under capitalism. The book expose the attempts to coop the commons through the use of code words such as 'participation' and 'governance', and reveals the potential for radical transformation rooted in the reproduction of out communities, of life, of work, and of society as a whole.
This paper reconsiders the story of permaculture, developed in Australia in the mid-1970s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. This paper considers permaculture as an example of counterculture in Australia. In keeping with permaculture design ecological principles, we argue that today permaculture is best understood as part of an assemblage of design objects, bacteria, economies, humans, plants, technologies, actions, theories, mushrooms, policies, affects, desires, animals, business, material and immaterial labour and politics and that it can be read as contrapuntal rather than as oppositional practice. Contrapuntal insofar as it is not directly oppositional preferring to reframe and reorientate everyday practices. The paper is structured in three parts: in the first one we frame our argument by providing a background to our understanding of counterculture and assemblage; in the second we introduce the beginning of permaculture in its historical context, and in third we propose to consider permaculture as an assemblage.
This article studies urban gardening as a form of social resilience. It analyses its role and impact on society in a context of social and financial crisis through the lens of the debate about the commons on the basis of three case studies conducted in Brussels in 2013. The study connects the specificities of the current social and economic context with the new wave of urban gardening from a people-centred perspective. Both the motivations and the outcomes of this form of activism are analysed and led to the conclusion that being involved in urban gardening represents not only a way to cope with economic and social threats but also a tool to rebuild and reshape social bonds. The paper aims to contribute to the current debate about the commons, intended as a form of resilience and a tool of social change rather than a simple alternative economic model. It aims to do so through the analysis of urban gardening practices, which are more commonly studied from the perspective of urban agriculture, food production, access to land and urbanism.
This article studies ways in which the Slow Food movement creates spaces for political action and elaborates new normative systems, imagining new forms of economy. Taking quality consumption and production, respect for the environment, and the rights of small producers as its core aims, this movement has today become an actor in the larger debates concerning the problematics of food, agriculture and fishing. At the same time, Slow Food is a legitimate actor in spaces of political and social contestation and applies its philosophy of a sustainable economy (represented in the triad 'good, clean and fair') globally to defend local production. Slow Food makes gastronomic diversity an element of biological and environmental diversity. This article is based on fieldwork carried out since 2006 within the French and Italy networks of the movement and in its Italian headquarters. The article analyzes the interrelations between economy, legality and environment in some Slow Food projects such as the presidia projects. Through the presidia, the movement plays an active role in the production of new norms that permit the imagination of a moral economy of food.
Keywords: Slow Food, norms, economy, typicity, food activism
Grassroots networks and social movements are increasingly regarded as agents of change that can help respond to environmental degradation both by generating novel solutions to existing problems and influencing institutions toward more substantive responses. We examine permaculture, an international movement that, despite its broad international distribution and relatively high public profile, has received little systematic scrutiny in the scientific literature. We attempt to remedy that gap by conducting a broad international (though English-only) survey of 731 permaculture participants, and assessing the socio-demographic characteristics of the movement. The survey examined self-identified roles of permaculture participants and explored the relationships between those roles and socio-demographic factors race, gender, and socioeconomic status. The influence of structural factors on participant roles was examined by including multidimensional national indices development, inequality, and ecosystem vitality, for the 45 countries in the sample. Results showed the participation of women at or above parity (53%), while participation by race showed a white supermajority (96%). Multivariate regression demonstrated that race, gender, and socioeconomic status are shaping participation in distinct ways and that each interact with structural factors. The effects of gender on social roles varied with ecosystem vitality, with women scoring higher than men in countries with high levels of ecosystem vitality, and the reverse where ecosystem vitality was low. The observed effect of race on practice varied with national inequality, such that the scores of respondents of color were equivalent to white respondents in countries with the least inequality, but descended as inequality increased, while whites were unaffected. Different indicators of socioeconomic status depressed and amplified different dimensions of participation. Results point toward a theoretical framework that identifies multiple levels and sites through which socio-demographic factors shape participation in grassroots environmental action, and the outlines of such a framework are discussed.
This paper presents the contribution of the pragmatic sociology of critical capacities to the understanding of environmental conflicts. In the field of 'environmental valuation', nowadays colonised by economics, the approach of plural modes (or 'regimes') of engagement provides a sociological
understanding of the unequal power of conflicting 'languages of valuation'. This frame entails a shift from 'values' to 'modes of valuation', and links modes of valuation to modes of practical engagement and coordination with the surrounding environment. Different social sources of incommensurability
are thus detected and reframed as critical tension within and among modes of human coordination with the environment.
Permaculture design is a concept that aims at transforming not only agriculture, but also city planning, architecture, development, etc. In short it aims to change human habitats. It is part of a new ecological paradigm that is currently spreading in popularity from the urban gardening movement to various other alternative movements such as the slow movement, sustainable architecture, etc. Permaculture design defines itself as building on systems theory (as formulated in particular by Howard Thomas Odum and Christopher Alexander). However I would like to propose that the afterlife of systems theory as expressed in the concept of permaculture, first developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, should not only be sought in theoretical and analytical discourse. Instead we can understand permaculture as a form of figurative, ecological reasoning; a form of radical imagination drawn from the composite knowledge of a heterogeneous network of actors. Permaculture is thus neither a branch of environmental science nor an environmental political movement. Rather the philosophy of permaculture design questions the division between theory and practice or between rationality and sensibility. In permaculture design, these modes of knowledge are inextricably linked in explorations of patterns.
In this article, I attempt to delineate the ways in which permaculture design is rooted in the practical knowledge of systems. I shall limit myself to exploratory drilling, as it were, in three aspects of permaculture design thought. First, I describe permaculture thought as a form of practical knowledge that generated through a kind of visual thinking in patterns. Second, I describe permaculture thought as a type of thinking in which radical imagination and speculation play an active role. Third, I present permaculture thought as systems theory thought. However it departs from the idea of control inherent to systems theory, drawing instead from the equally popular (and colorful) Gaia hypothesis, which posits Earth as an intelligent, material assembly that modifies thought processes.
This article follows the trajectory of a French farmers' movement that contests the seed production and regulation system set in place during agricultural modernization. It focuses on the creativity of the movement, which ranges from semantic innovations (such as “peasant seeds”)
to the reinvention of onfarm breeding practices based on new scientific paradigms, and includes new alliances with the social movements defending the commons. The trajectory of the movement is shaped by its encounters—with scientists, other international seed contestations, and other
social movements—and by the productive frictions they create. This in-depth reframing of the activities connected to seeds contributes to building a counternarrative about farmers and seeds that reopens spaces for contestation. In this counternarrative, “peasant seeds” play
a central and subversive role in the sense that they question the ontological assumptions of present seed laws.
Agroecology is a promising alternative to industrial agriculture, with the potential to avoid the negative social and ecological consequences of input-intensive production. Transitioning to agroecological production is, however, a complex project that requires diverse contributions from the outside of scientific institutions. Agroecologists therefore collaborate with traditional producers and agroecological movements. Permaculture is one such agroecological movement, with a broad international distribution and a unique approach to system design. Despite a high public profile, permaculture has remained relatively isolated from scientific research. Though the potential contribution of permaculture to agroecological transition is great, it is limited by this isolation from science, as well as from oversimplifying claims, and the lack of a clear definition. Here, we review scientific and popular permaculture literature. A systematic review discusses quantitative bibliometric data, including keyword analysis. A qualitative review identifies and assesses major themes, proposals, and claims. The manuscript follows a stratified definition of permaculture as design system, best practice framework, worldview, and movement. The major points of our analysis are as follows: (1) Principles and topics largely complement and even extend principles and topics found in the agroecological literature. (2) Distinctive approaches to perennial polyculture, water management, and the importance of agroecosystem configuration exceed what is documented in the scientific literature and thus suggest promising avenues of inquiry. (3) Discussions of practice consistently underplay the complexity, challenges, and risks that producers face in developing diversified and integrated production systems. (4) The movement is mobilizing diverse forms of social support for sustainability, in geographically diverse locations. (5) And scholarship in permaculture has always been a diverse marginal sector, but is growing.
This article introduces a framework which aims at capturing the complexity of economic organizations. The analysis of most legitimate conventions of coordination results in a new approach to the firm as a compromising device between several modes of coordination which engage different repertoires of evaluation. This contribution to the Économie des conventions offers an analytical tool to operate comparative research on firms, intermediate regulatory committees or public policies.
Political cultures have usually been studied as static and perhaps monolithic. If any attention has been dedicated to how political cultures change it has been devoted to exogenous factors. In recent years, however, some authors have advocated exploring the role of endogenous factors. In this article, we reflect on the advantages of a comprehensive approach to explaining how political cultures change, embracing endogenous and exogenous factors. We look at peace mobilizations in Italy as a case study, which allows examination of the interactions of the two political cultures of Marxism and Catholicism. Our work suggests some provisional theories about the dynamics that lead to hybridization between different political families. These dynamics can be understood through the genealogy of a ‘grammar of responsibility’. We argue that the factors that condition change in political culture relate to both the national and the international political context. We also show how these processes of change occur as a result of collective action, although individuals also perform important functions of co-ordination, brokerage, leadership, and subversion of codes. Moreover, we show that change in political cultures does not occur in a linear manner but follows a shifting course, which alternates periods of innovation and of involution or regression.
Standardization has been extended far beyond the industrial world. It participates in governing our lives and the lives of all living entities by producing public guarantees in the form of standards. Social studies of medicine have provided a precious contribution to advancing standardization as a topic of inquiry, most notably through investigations of the relationship between 'regulation' and 'objectivity', drawn together in the concept of the standard. This postscript discusses this contribution from the point of view of 'regimes of engagement', that is, a variety of ways in which humans are committed to their environment - from public stances to the closest forms of proximity - and in pursuit of a kind of 'good'. These regimes are distinguished according to the good they promise, as well as the degree to which the guarantee being offered can be held in common. The discussion in this postscript extends the critique raised by scholarship on standards by taking into account the oppression and subjugation that standardization can engender.
Although it is evident in routine decision-making and a crucial vehicle of rationalization, commensuration as a general social process has been given little consideration by sociologists. This article defines commensuration as the comparison of different entities according to a common metric, notes commensuration's long history as an instrument of social thought, analyzes commensuration as a mode of power, and discusses the cognitive and political stakes inherent in calling something incommensurable. We provide a framework for future empirical study of commensuration and demonstrate how this analytic focus can inform established fields of sociological inquiry.
This review discusses North American and European research from the sociology of valuation and evaluation (SVE), a research topic that has attracted considerable attention in recent years. The goal is to bring various bodies of work into conversation with one another in order to stimulate more cumulative theory building. This is accomplished by focusing on (a) subprocesses such as categorization and legitimation, (b) the conditions that sustain heterarchies, and (c) valuation and evaluative practices. The article reviews these literatures and provides directions for a future research agenda.
What new forms of ethical engagement are emerging in naturecultural worlds? In this paper I explore the example of the practical ethics of the permaculture movement. I put these in dialogue first with new approaches to ethics in biopolitics and naturecultures and second with a reading of feminist care ethics. Across this discussion I focus on the potential of ethos transformations experienced through everyday doings to promote ethical obligations of care. If we are living in a naturecultural world where politics and ethics conflate in biopolitics, the permaculture movement is an example of an alter-biopolitical intervention. It works within bios with an ethics of collective empowerment that puts caring at the heart of its search of alternatives for hopeful flourishing for all beings.
While the contentious politics (CP) model has come to dominate the field of social movements, scholars note the paradigm's shortcomings, especially its narrow focus on movement organizations, public protest, and political action. The conceptual wall between lifestyles and social movements has created a theoretical blind spot at the intersection of private action and movement participation, personal and social change, and personal and collective identity. We suggest that lifestyle movements (LMs) consciously and actively promote a lifestyle, or way of life, as a primary means to foster social change. Drawing upon our observations of a variety of LMs, we discuss three defining aspects of LMs: lifestyle choices as tactics of social change, the central role of personal identity work, and the diffuse structure of LMs. We also explore the links between LMs and social movements, CP, and conventional politics. Finally, we demonstrate that LM, as a new conceptual category, is applicable across a range of movement activities.
Through an analysis of the 40-year history of conflicts triggered by the repeated attempts to expand the Malpensa airport in northern Italy, this paper seeks to show the heuristic strength of using the concept of modes of valuation of the environment to discuss the transformations of environmental critique over time in their relation to social change. I argue that, beyond empirical specifics, the trajectory witnessed in this case - from public participation to place-based resistance - reflects more generalized dynamics that can be found in many other conflicts over large infrastructural projects in contemporary Europe. The article is organized as follows: in the first section I briefly introduce the concept of modes of valuation of the environment, which is inspired by recent work in pragmatic sociology. In particular, I distinguish between universal, local, and emplaced modes of valuation. In the second and third sections I provide an analysis of the struggles against the Malpensa airport expansion from 1970 to 2014. Here, I distinguish three phases of mobilization, which I discuss in terms of the transformations that can be observed in the arguments that actors develop to fight or support the airport expansion. I argue that these transformations are articulated not only with changing action repertoires but also with evolving social and sociotechnical imaginaries that convey specific understandings of the environment as a matter of political concern. This analysis shows that, far from being simply a case of citizens' re-sistance to change, the mobilization against the Malpensa airport has contributed to producing the cultural basis of an increased collective reflexivity about the many values that the environment takes on among community members in the airport region. In the final section I discuss some hypotheses concerning what modes of valuation of the environment reveal about the emergence of a new radicalism in environmental struggles.
This remarkable book shines a fierce light on the current state of liberty and shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny-and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture-are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this powerful book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state. Peter Linebaugh draws on primary sources to construct a wholly original history of the Great Charter and its scarcely-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the subsistence rights of the poor.
This study analyses the framing processes of the Indignados movement in Barcelona, as an exemplar of the latest wave of protests, and argues that it expresses a new ecological–economic way out of the crisis. It finds that the movement was not just a reaction to the economic crisis and austerity policies, but that it put forward a metapolitical critique of the social imaginary and (neo)liberal representative democracy. The diagnostic frames of the movement denunciate the subjugation of politics and justice to economics, and reject the logic of economism. The prognostic frames of the movement advance a vision of socio-ecological sustainability and of ‘real democracy’, each articulated differently by a ‘pragmatist’ and an ‘autonomist’ faction within the movement. It argues that frames are overarching outer boundaries that accommodate different ideologies. Ideologies can nevertheless also be put into question by antagonizing frames. Furthermore, through the lens of the Indignados critique, the distinction between materialist and post-materialist values that characterizes the New Social Movement literature is criticized, as ‘real democracy’ is connected to social and environmental justice as well as to a critique of economism and the ‘imperial mode of living’. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
Environmental sociology was born to study the interaction of human societies with the material world, yet the concept of matter has been neglected. Possibly for this reason, the material (or ontological) ‘turn’ taking place in social theory has involved the discipline more marginally than other fields. The relevance of new materialist positions to environmental sociology is addressed. On one side, the realism/constructionism diatribe is sidestepped by an understanding of knowledge and materiality as mutually constituted and incessantly remoulded, and of agency as distributed among human and non-human entities, hence humble and non-dominative. On the other, the traditional idea of critique is replaced by a case for affirmative, embodied practices, arguably exemplified by emergent environmental mobilizations. At a closer look, however, new materialist standpoints result embroiled with the Western metaphysical tradition, neglecting how today non-dualist modalities may end up supporting, rather than opposing, exploitative orientations like those emergent in biotech and climate policy. Environmental sociology should address the new theoretical tide with care, working on and with non-dualist standpoints without forgetting the unbridgeable gap between matter and its ontologies. To this purpose the theoretical heritage of the discipline, and namely Adorno’s negative dialectics, may turn out valuable.
Rendering nonhuman life for sale is a fundamental facet of contemporary capitalism. Political economy extensively examines how nature is commodified but fails to analyse the difference liveliness of animals makes to processes of commodification. Drawing upon empirical work on lions and elephants in the political economies of tourism and biodiversity conservation in India, this paper proposes analytics for understanding commodification and accumulation in relational and less humanist terms. First, it develops Haraway’s concepts of ‘lively commodities’ and ‘encounter value’, foregrounding animal ecologies to rework political economic categories of the commodity, labour and production in more-than-human terms. Second, it examines how lively commodities and encounter value configure political economies, mapping their specificities and economic potential. The paper advances potential diagnostics and vocabularies through which ecology and non-dualist accounts of agency might be integrated into the nature-as-resources approach of political economy.
What counts? In work, as in other areas of life, it is not always clear what standards we are being judged by or how our worth is being determined. This can be disorienting and disconcerting. Because of this, many organizations devote considerable resources to limiting and clarifying the logics used for evaluating worth. But as David Stark argues, firms would often be better off, especially in managing change, if they allowed multiple logics of worth and did not necessarily discourage uncertainty. In fact, in many cases multiple orders of worth are unavoidable, so organizations and firms should learn to harness the benefits of such "heterarchy" rather than seeking to purge it. Stark makes this argument with ethnographic case studies of three companies attempting to cope with rapid change: a machine-tool company in late and postcommunist Hungary, a new-media startup in New York during and after the collapse of the Internet bubble, and a Wall Street investment bank whose trading room was destroyed on 9/11. In each case, the friction of competing criteria of worth promoted an organizational reflexivity that made it easier for the company to change and deal with market uncertainty. Drawing on John Dewey's notion that "perplexing situations" provide opportunities for innovative inquiry, Stark argues that the dissonance of diverse principles can lead to discovery.
Moving beyond a narrow definition of economics, this pioneering book advances our knowledge of global political economy and how we might critically respond to it. V. Spike Peterson clearly shows how two key features of the global economy increasingly determine everyday lives worldwide. The first is explosive growth in financial markets that shape business decision-making and public policy-making, and the second is dramatic growth in informal and flexible work arrangements that shape income-generation and family wellbeing. These developments, though widely recognized, are rarely analyzed as inextricable and interacting dimensions of globalization. Using a new theoretical model, Peterson demonstrates the interdependence of reproductive, productive and virtual economies and analyzes inequalities of race, gender, class and nation as structural features of neoliberal globalization. Presenting a methodologically plural, cross-disciplinary and well-documented account of globalization, the author integrates marginalized and disparate features of globalization to provide an accessible narrative from a postcolonial feminist vantage point.
Community-supported agriculture (CSA) seeks to create a direct relationship between farmers and those who eat their food-farm members or shareholders. Data from a five-year study of eight CSA farms are used to examine the perceptions and behavior of farm members in three different ways: their motivations for membership, the role of women in initiating and maintaining farm membership, and how the extent of membership participation relates to member perceptions about and commitment to their farms. We interpret the significance of our results using Gidden's concept of modernity and Etzioni's concept of communitarianism. Finally we raise questions about the long-term sustainability of CSA, given the lifestyle and needs of the farmers in tension with the constraints and competing values of shareholders.
Theories and concepts for understanding the political logic of social movements' everyday activities, particularly those which relate directly to political goals, have been increasingly important since the late 1970s. The notion of ‘prefigurative politics’ is becoming established in this debate and refers to scenarios where protesters express the political ‘ends’ of their actions through their ‘means’, or where they create experimental or ‘alternative’ social arrangements or institutions. Both meanings share the idea that prefiguration anticipates or partially actualises goals sought by movements. This article uses narratives and observations gathered in social movement ‘free spaces’, autonomous social centres in Barcelona, to evaluate, critique and rearticulate the concept. Participants' attention to the ‘means’ through which protest is carried out and emphasis on projects such as experimentation with alternative social and organisational forms suggest they engage in prefigurative politics. However, the article uses these examples to dispute the key ways through which prefiguration has been defined, arguing that it can better be deployed in referring to the relations, and tensions, between a set of political priorities. Understood as such, prefigurative politics combines five processes: collective experimentation, the imagining, production and circulation of political meanings, the creating of new and future-oriented social norms or ‘conduct’, their consolidation in movement infrastructure, and the diffusion and contamination of ideas, messages and goals to wider networks and constituencies.
Anthropology is a disciplined inquiry into the conditions and potentials of human life. Generations of theorists, however, have expunged life from their accounts, treating it as the mere output of patterns, codes, structures or systems variously defined as genetic or cultural, natural or social. Building on his classic work The Perception of the Environment, Tim Ingold sets out to restore life to where it should belong, at the heart of anthropological concern.
The multispecies commons is the kind of place in which human–animal entanglements are made most explicit. It is where social, biological and historical processes are so inextricably entwined with wider ecological processes as to be inseparable. Here I describe one such place: the area outside a gate in the ancient, defensive wall around the historic city of Harar, Ethiopia. It was at this place that a solitary, poisoned hyena set in motion a series of events which culminated in a conflict between two hyena clans; a conflict in which the local humans were participants. To gain an understanding of the events I follow the threads of histories, landscapes, territoriality and social engagement between species to reveal how this place demands interdisciplinary study. It dramatically exemplifies the ways in which humans and non-humans are entangled in more-than-social processes through which they co-shape each others’ worlds. The multispecies commons explicitly deconstructs limited conceptions of the social and weaves them back together with multiple other threads that coalesce to create a greater, tangled web of ecological processes.
This paper traces the origins of the concept of permaculture and discusses the sustainability of permaculture itself as a form of alternative agriculture. The principles of permaculture are shown to have many views and perspectives in common with Taoism and with Buddhist ecology and economics. The amalgamation of these Oriental traditions can be translated into the Kaya equation and beyond. It is argued that future permaculture movements should focus on revitalising the communitarian spirit of traditional farming villages instead of building intentional communal communities. The paper also calls for more aggressive environmental-policy measures that support permaculture and internalise the non-market value of reduced fossil-fuel energy consumption and waste recycling.
The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the 'tragedy of the commons' argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.
Autism has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years, thanks to dramatically increasing rates of diagnosis, extensive organizational mobilization, journalistic coverage, biomedical research, and clinical innovation.Understanding Autism, a social history of the expanding diagnostic category of this contested illness, takes a close look at the role of emotion--specifically, of parental love--in the intense and passionate work of biomedical communities investigating autism. Chloe Silverman tracks developments in autism theory and practice over the past half-century and shows how an understanding of autism has been constituted and stabilized through vital efforts of schools, gene banks, professional associations, government committees, parent networks, and treatment conferences. She examines the love and labor of parents, who play a role in developing--in conjunction with medical experts--new forms of treatment and therapy for their children. While biomedical knowledge is dispersed through an emotionally neutral, technical language that separates experts from laypeople, parental advocacy and activism call these distinctions into question. Silverman reveals how parental care has been a constant driver in the volatile field of autism research and treatment, and has served as an inspiration for scientific change. Recognizing the importance of parental knowledge and observations in treating autism, this book reveals that effective responses to the disorder demonstrate the mutual interdependence of love and science.