Commons and Neoliberalism: evidences of and chances for a counter-hegemonic paradigm

Here below the abstract of the presentation which Antonio Putini gave during the Learning Mobility in Rome (24-30 March 2019) for the CSB project.

Abstract

Neoliberalism and common pool resources management model appeared in the same temporal frame of the past century. Neoliberalism spread as a very new model of production; common pool resources model, on the opposite side, as a recovery of ancient forms of managing resources based on collective use and government of resources. Neoliberalism quickly became the hegemonic developing model, and it changed both the way of exploitation and value extraction and the shaping of interaction among individuals, and between market and political institutions. Commons, on the opposite side, continued to play a niche-role both as a mode of production and alternative narrative at least until the Nineties, when ecological threat, Nation-State crisis and weakness of social ties became evident. Based on collective use of a resource, horizontal political procedures and a different approach to the connection between Nature and human beings (sustainability) commons turned into “The Common”, a sort of counter-hegemonic paradigm. By analysing the principal features of this paradigm, this contribution aims to give evidence to the potentialities and the main obstacles to its growing.

Written by

Antonio Putini, Researcher in Political Sociology at Sapienza University of Rome (Italy). Participant in the Training Week in Rome (24-30 March 2019) for the Cultural Studies in Business project in the field of Erasmus Plus.