January 24, 2023

About refrigerators

By Mina Kouvara Triggered by examples of vernacular technologies, I wonder how things would have evolved if the technological rupture of the late 18th century hadn’t occurred—provided that cultivating a healthy self and society was integral to civilisation.
September 22, 2022

Encountering the commons in The Pluriverse of Eco-social Justice: From Coimbra and beyond

By Anoushka Zoob Carter. Both the Livros Carteneros movement and the Baldios are examples of everyday commons-making beyond a neoliberal capitalist society. They offer alternatives to privatisation and neoliberal individualisation, and help us to imagine the pluriverse in practice.
September 15, 2022

Energy Practices of Care: Politicizing Needs

By Angelica Wågström. The climate crisis cannot be solved merely by introducing large-scale renewable projects, since such solutions are neither sufficient nor socially just. An alternative strategy is care work, to mitigate climate change and increase human and environmental welfare. But what is care, and how is it enabled by energies?  
June 7, 2022

Public Water Services in times of emergency: the case of the Covid19 outbreak

By Gemma Gasseau. The book “Public Water and Covid-19: Dark Clouds and Silver Linings”, discusses how the Covid19 outbreak has underlined once again the importance of water and other basic services for human life, and re-opened the debate on the role of the state in managing such services.
May 24, 2022

Conflicts over the memorialization of water in Barcelona: A temporal turn in political ecology

By Lucia Alexandra Popartan and Camil Ungureanu. As part of the current global trend towards the “museification” of water and processes of re-municipalization, the politics of memory of hydraulic infrastructures and water resources has become a key battleground between corporations and transformative socio-political movements. These struggles in cities such as Barcelona show the relevance of complementing the spatial turn in political ecology and urban geography with a temporal turn.
October 19, 2021

Reclamando el derecho a la autogestión del agua

Por Marcela Olivera y Stefano Archidiacono Veinte años después de la Guerra del Agua en Cochabamba (Bolivia), reflexionamos sobre la “autogestión” del agua como dimensión práctica y cultural de los bienes comunes. Una nueva pieza para la serie “Reimaginar, recordar y reclamar el agua: Del extractivismo al procomún”.
October 19, 2021

Autogestión, reclaiming the right to self-management of water

By Marcela Olivera and Stefano Archidiacono Twenty-one years after the Water War in Cochabamba (Bolivia), we reflect on “autogestión” of water as a practical and cultural dimension of the commons. A new piece for the series “Reimagining, remembering, and reclaiming water: From extractivism to commoning”.
October 12, 2021

Dune and the Inhuman Agency of Commoning

By Riccardo Buonanno. The new sci-fi epic Dune is a planetary narrative. Human affairs only represent a part of a whole geopower, in which Planet’s forces organize, incite and deform social and political relations. Is it time to reconsider our certainties on the human agency facing environmental crisis?
July 20, 2021

Where have all the commons gone in Italy? A new podcast

By Emanuele Fantini In Italy, the success of the referendum against water privatisation pushed many social movements to reframe their struggles – on labour, education, debt, land use…. – in the name of the commons. Emanuele Fantini explores the legacy of that season in a podcast, here presented for the series “Reimagining, remembering, and reclaiming water: From extractivism to commoning”.
June 17, 2021

Transforming capitalism? The role of the commons and direct democracy in struggles against water privatisation in Europe.

By Andreas Bieler In his new book “Fighting for Water: Resisting Privatization in Europe” Andreas Bieler analyses the struggles against water privatization in Europe since the early 1990s. In this post for the series “Reimagining, remembering, and reclaiming water: From extractivism to commoning” he explores to what extent these struggles point towards a potential future beyond capitalism.
May 27, 2021

Commoning through blogging: Reflections on our “Reimagining, remembering and recommoning water” series

By Irene Leonardelli, Gustavo García López and Emanuele Fantini. In two webinars at the IASC 2021 Water Commons Virtual Conference (19-21 May 2021), past and future contributors reflected on the joint UndEnv-FLOWs series “Reimagining, remembering, and reclaiming water: From extractivism to commoning”.
April 9, 2021

How imaginaries shift in places: Native and settler politics of water and salmon

By Cleo Woelfle-Erskine. The latest installment of the series “Reimagining, remembering, and reclaiming water” discusses how new eco-cultural imaginaries can emerge from alliances for river restoration between ranchers-conservationists, salmon scientists, and Tribal natural resource staff.