Common/ing Concerns
2 December 2024
Commoning practices have in recent years attracted increasing attention, also outside academia, as a potential solution to many of the problems facing the world today – social, political, and environmental – and as future-oriented political practice rooted in solidarity, justice, equality, and sustainability. Within academia, commoning has been understood as a way to rethink relations between the economy and social life, between humans and nature, and between North and South, by emphasing participation, collaboration and mutual well-being. Being or experiencing oneself ‚in common’ here provides a basis for re-imagining sociality, solidarity and citizenship outside traditional frameworks of community and nation, and beyond identity markers emphasizing sameness or difference.
In this dialogue, Xiang Biao (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology) and Susanne Brandtstädter (University of Cologne) will explore Common Concerns as a specific approach to anthropological research and discuss how commoning concerns may support social repair and generate new forms of solidarity ‘from the ground up’ in an increasingly divided, crisis-ridden world."
Organized by the Thematic Area "Commoning: Visions, Resources, Practices", Global South Studies Center (GSSC) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie (DGSKA).