Land, territory and commons: voices and visions from the struggles

Abstract

All over the world, financial capitalism and extractivism are appropriating land as if it was nothing more than a commodity, a mere 'factor' of production that can be exploited to generate financial returns. Movements and activists are organizing, resisting, protecting and promoting life-giving visions against this continuous enclosure of living beings and paces: they use their bodies, laws, educational projects, histories and visions to regain control over territory as a political space, self-determine and create solidarities. In the act resistance, they are the target of moral, physical and legal violence. They and their ideas are criminalized, disciplined, punished and in some cases exterminated. In this contribution, activists from the Basque Country, Guatemala, Kenya and the Six Nations and a group of academics get together to learn from each other, support the ongoing search for common vocabularies and identify possible milestones of a coordinated and international strategy for a lifeenhancing future.

Grassroots and Global Governance: Can Global–Local Linkages Foster Food System Resilience for Small Northern Canadian Communities?

“…Furthermore, the CSM has also become a convening space based on solidarity that brings together food movement actors from all over the world. Solidarity is regularly referenced in relation to CSM actors having different histories and circumstances, but they work together across differences through a common goal for more just and sustainable food systems that support everyone, especially the most vulnerable [57,111]. Moreover, solidarity is also part of their normative framing of alternatives to the mainstream food system.…”

Commons Movements: Old and New Trends in Rural and Urban Contexts

“…Although the commons concept has received most recognition in North American and European contexts (203), it is being increasingly mobilized by global North-South networks. For instance, in the People's Summit organized in 2012 in parallel with the United Nation's Rio+20 Sustainable Development meeting in Rio de Janeiro, a statement denounced the "dangerous conspiracy between the market and state" to enclose commons, and stressed the need to visibilize and organize commons-based alternatives as part of a convergence of movements across sectors (quoted in 201).…”

“…With regard to the use of the commons frame by movements, Ferrando et al (203) conclude that this concept was mostly developed in Europe and North America, particularly in urban areas. Thus, it risks reinforcing North-South epistemological hierarchies, displacing other visions from the global South, and even inciting resistance in some instances.…”

Market‐based commons: Social agroforestry, fire mitigation strategies, and green supply chains in Indonesia’s peatlands

“…Critical accounts of commons for private profit argue that markets restrict the range of available spaces and means of environmental stewardship (Amin & Howell, 2016), resulting in deepening social inequalities and the depletion of the very resources that market regulations are supposed to sustain (McCarthy, 2005; McCarthy & Prudham, 2004). Post‐capitalist geographical work has responded to these negative consequences of privatising nature by proposing common property alternatives centred on barter markets and complementary currencies (Chatterton & Pusey, 2020), de‐commodified community food systems (Tornaghi, 2017), and land and labour struggles of resistance against global agro‐business enclosures (Bauwens & Ramos, 2018; Bollier, 2014; Ferrando et al, 2020). These commons tend to self‐define in opposition to actual or perceived neoliberal forms of capitalism (Bailey & Maresh, 2009; Castree, 2006; Chatterton, 2016), including by over‐simplifying or misrepresenting market interventions in communitarian models of resource organisation as “hybrid neoliberalism” (Baldwin et al, 2019).…”