Dear all,

Please find below a call for papers for the (Un)doing the Commons
Conference organized by the Sociology Department, Shiv Nadar University,
India. The conference will be held at Shiv Nadar University on 27-28
February, 2020.

Concept Note:

This conference will advocate a move to explore the commons as a process
that involves constantly
emerging spatio-temporal dynamics generative of modes of identification,
place making, and
belonging. We foreground this form of an engagement by questioning or
(un)doing certain
themes underlying the dominant conceptualizations of the commons in social
theory.

As with “community,” the “commons” as a conceptual category, rather than
lived experiences, evolved
in a specific manner in India with the colonial encounter. In the mid to
late nineteenth century,
Henry Sumner Maine characterized village communities in India as organized
on communal landholding
patterns and representative self-government. For Maine, these institutions
were the earliest
phase of an evolutionary process whose end-point was parliamentary
democracy in England. We
unyoke conceptions of the commons from their scholarly location in
evolutionary ideologies, German
romanticism, Victorian society and politics, the compulsions of colonial
rule, and
anthropocentricism. In doing so, we view social life around, in and through
the commons as produced
from the historical circulation of peoples, species, ecological and
cultural objects; as politically
fraught, hybrid networks; as institutional formations that multiple actors
are constantly re-shaping,
re-conceptualizing, and re-articulating.

The ideas underlying the Robinson Crusoe myth (the atomized, industrious,
investing individual,
capable of dominating nature, and subjugating those seen as lacking
civilization in the name of
friendship) have been used by liberal theorists to justify slavery,
colonialism and enclosing the
commons. We ask that if Robinson Crusoe exemplifies one particular
understanding of homo
economicus, then what subject position, conceptions of the social, and
human non-human interaction
animate homo communis. Indeed debates around “The Tragedy of the Commons”
and “Governing the
Commons” center on the problematic of whether people recognize that the
interests of the individual
are congruent with those of the community and that this recognition has the
potential to displace
individual utility-maximizing behaviour. Yet, we seek to push this line of
thought by challenging
the agentive role of the human in making community and how utility is
understood. Is our only way
of relating to the world embodied in varied understandings of its
possibilities of commodification
that then constitute the commons? Or are other iterations possible that
grant an account of the
more-than-human world?

Following the diverse ways in which scholars have conceptualized the
commons (knowledge
commons, digital commons, urban commons, to name a few) we propose an
(un)doing of the
commons; an undoing from the traditional lineage of intellectual discourse
on the commons; an
undoing from readings that ground the human as central in any
conceptualization of the commons;
an undoing from understandings that are lodged in the public-private divide
and advocate a
move to unravel varied understandings of how engaged research can foretell
new
means of doing the commons, as a processual rendering.

Themes:

Sovereignty and Resource: If Anthropocene thinkers position the planet in a
state of crisis which can
only be overcome by human enterprise, the biosphere is being re-cast to
ratify the triumph of
human beings over the natural world. This is compounded by the fact that
climate science is still at
the helm of understanding what kind of a future will result from the
processes encoded in the
Anthropocene. In conversation with science and technology studies, we
expand the notion of
commons as governed by unregulated logics of sovereignty to question not
only the very idea of
sovereignty but how such notions are unfolding into an unknown and
scientifically fraught future.

Custom: How do customs emerge from communally held values? The tenuousness
of shared values is
evident from the ways in which authority figures must do the constant work
of reiterating these
values during dispute-resolution, rituals, and festivals. In everyday life,
different actors draw on an
archive of stories to assure people that their concerns, emotions, and
affects are in alignment with
others. What conditions hinder such processes, leading to transformations
of the customary,
and how does this lead to individuation and alienation?

Storytelling and Narratability: The philosopher Adriana Cavarero, following
Hannah Arendt, states
that individualist thought “flattens out the uniqueness of the individual”
replacing it with doctrines
that favor equivalence between individuals (Kottman 2000 ix). For Caverero
each of us is
“narratable by the other,” (ix) in other words we are dependent on shared
stories of others for the
narration of our unique life-story. The question, then, is no longer about
whether individual
interests align with others, but rather how shared stories have the
potential of simultaneously
becoming the edifice on which the commons are built and from which the
uniqueness of the
individual emerges.

Ownership dynamics: Going beyond the juxtaposition of the
private-versus-communal property
debates, we draw on the growing understanding of the plurality of ownership
dynamics and how
commons and the private are significantly co-constitutive and
interdependent. With the increasing
privatization of publics, different actors struggle to define the commons
in terms of
global imaginings of local community-based sovereignty, for example with
the category “indigenous
ways of life.” Such categories are sometimes in tension with the creative
ways in which people align
themselves to others.

Details:
This two-day conference aims to bring together researchers invested in
multi-disciplinary research
on themes of the commons, customs and transforming ecologies. We especially
encourage early
career scholars who engage in social and cultural anthropology to apply.

The Department of Sociology, Shiv Nadar University will cover all local
logistical and hospitality
costs of selected participants.

Abstract submission deadline: 30th November (word limit: 500 words)

Final conference paper deadline: 15th February

Submissions must be emailed to [log in to unmask] and should have
the conference
title in the subject head and the name, designation, affiliation, title of
paper and abstract in the
body of the email. Please also mention under which of the four proposed
themes given above your
paper fits best.
For any clarifications, please email [log in to unmask]


Devika Bordia
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Shiv Nadar University

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