Commons: a social outcome of the movement of the squares

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the evolvement of the ‘movement of the squares’ following the end of the more visible cycles of mobilization of the squares´ occupations. We argue that a crucial aspect of this evolution lies in the creation of a social infrastructure of alternative (re)productive projects in the form of commons. We call this type of outcomes ‘social’ in order to distinguish them from the cultural, political and biographical outcomes underlined in typologies on the consequences of social movements. Bridging social movement studies with the literature on the commons, we build a conceptual framework of their relationship. Through a comparative analysis of the movements in Athens and Barcelona, we show how the commoning practices of the square encampments gave rise to more endurable commons disseminated across cities´ social fabrics. We identify both direct and indirect mechanisms of movements´ transmutation into commons, and distinguish the former into transplantation, ideation, and breeding processes. Our second aim is to scrutinize the political dimension of these commons in relation to what has been framed as the ‘post-political condition’. We maintain that the post-square commons constitute political and politicizing actions for activists and users for their effects on everyday life, for their capacity to link their practices with broader, structural dynamics of injustice, inequality and exclusion, and for their selective engagement with counter-austerity politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Commons
• outcomes
• social movements
• movement of the squares
• Indignados
• post-political
• occupy movement
• prefigurative politics
• movement continuity

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Prof. Ingolfur Blühdorn and Michael Deflorian for their continuous support and their thoughtful comments in various drafts of our manuscript, as well as Francesca Forno and Basil Bornemann for their insightful feedback. Versions of this paper were presented at the workshop COSMOShare at the Scuola Normale Superiore (November 2017), at the 2019 SASE conference- Alternatives to Capitalism Research Network (June 2019), and at the workshop “XX Incontro Giovani-Sociologia per la Persona” (June 2020). In each of these occasions, we received useful comments. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their detailed feedback that helped us to further improve our article. This publication was supported economically by the Spanish Government through the project COSMOS CSO2017-88212-R.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In 2016 and 2019 15 additional interviews were conducted in some of the commons, which further informed the analysis of this paper.

2. Transitional commons have also been theorized as liminal commons (Varvarousis, 2020; Varvarousis & Kallis, 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad [COSMOS CSO2017-88212-R].

Notes on contributors

Angelos Varvarousis

Varvarousis Angelos is a post-doctoral researcher with a background in urban studies, human geography and urban political ecology. He holds a PhD from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where he also teaches the MA course ‘Commons and Social Movements’. He is a visiting lecturer at the ‘Performing Public Space’ MA program of the Fontys University of Fine and Performing Arts and at the National Technical University of Athens where he teaches at the course ‘Mutations of Urban Concepts’.

Viviana Asara

Viviana Asara is assistant professor at the Institute for Multi-Level Governance and Development at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. She is a social scientist working at the intersection between social, political and environmental issues. Her work has focused on social movements, transformative/radical social innovations, commons and political parties, degrowth and social-ecological transformation, political ecology, democracy and state theories.

Bengi Akbulut

Bengi Akbulut is an assistant professor at the department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University. Her work is within the tradition of political economy and ecological economics. She has written extensively on the critiques of developmentalism and economic growth, environmental movements, and economic alternatives including commons/commoning, forms of economic democracy and degrowth.