Space, Power and the Commons ─ The struggle for alternative futures

Across the globe, political movements opposing privatisation, enclosures, and other spatial controls have recently coalesced over the notion of the ‘commons’. Struggles over the commons and common life are now coming to the forefront of both political activism and scholarly enquiry.

This book advances academic debates concerning the spatialities of the commons, setting the agenda for future research and drawing out the diverse materialities, temporalities, and experiences of practices of commoning. Part One, "Spatial Imaginaries of the Commons", extends approaches to the commons beyond anarchistic paradigms of disorder and disorganisation, and draws attention to the performance of new geographical imaginations in concrete spatial and material practices of commoning. Part Two, "Histories and Futures of the Commons", develops this argument, outlining the need to extend a spatio-temporal perspective on the commons. This section links struggles for the commons to historical campaigns for common land. Part Three, "Fragments of the Commons", develops novel ‘post-foundational’ theoretical approaches to the commons, exploring the instability and excess at the heart of every experience of common life, and demonstrates ways in which tracing this excess might lead researchers to extend the empirical focus of research on the commons.

Samuel Kirwan is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Socio-Legal Studies, Bristol University, UK.

Julian Brigstocke is Lecturer in Human Geography, Plymouth University, UK.

Leila Dawney is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Brighton University.