Commoning as Social Struggle
Three Modes of Commoning Mobility Infrastructures in Berlin
Abstract
The article provides an empirical insight into urban initiatives that advocate for better urban mobility infrastructures and outlines a theoretical perspective of commoning infrastructures as a terrain for political struggles. Rather than constructing commons as the interplay of methodologically presumed elements (resources, a community of commoners, and their institutions of commoning) it takes a relational perspective on commoning that asks how activists mobilize and relate heterogeneous elements to make urban mobility infrastructures a common political concern. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on mobility activism in Berlin, the second part of the article illustrates such a relational perspective and presents three modes of commoning. To achieve what is called “mobility transition” (i. e. more sustainable and equitable urban mobility infrastructures), activists rely on mobilizations of knowledge, space, and affect.
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Blaser, Mario, and Marisol de la Cadena. 2017. “The Uncommons: An Introduction.” Anthropologica 59 (2): 185–93. https://doi.org/10.3138/anth.59.2.t01.
Bluhm, Harald, and Herfried Münkler. 2015. “Einleitung: Gemeinwohl und Gemeinsinn als politisch-soziale Leitbegriffe.” In Gemeinwohl und Gemeinsinn. Historische Semantiken politischer Leitbegriffe, edited by Harald Bluhm, Herfried Münkler, 9–30. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Borch, Christian, and Martin Kornberger. 2015. “Introduction. Urban Commons.” In Urban Commons. Rethinking the City, edited by Christian Borch, Martin Kornberger, 1–21. Abingdon, Oxon, New
York: Routledge.
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Burbano, Lucia. 2022. “Berlin Citizens Propose the Largest Car-free Area in the World.” Tomorrow. City, March 11, 2022. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://tomorrow.city/a/berlin-car-free-area.
Dalakoglou, Dimitris. 2016. “Infrastructural Gap. Commons, State and Anthropology.” City 20 (6): 822–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2016.1241524.
Faust, Friederike. 2019. Fußball und Feminismus. Opladen: Budrich UniPress.
Fians, Guilherme. 2022. “Prefigurative Politics.” In Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Felix Stein, Cambridge, UK: Open Knowledge Press. https//:doi.org/10.29164/22prefigpolitics.
Gutiérrez Sánchez, Isabel. 2022. “Infrastructures From Below. Self-Reproduction and Common Struggle In and Beyond Athens in Crisis.” In Care and the City. Encounters with Urban Studies, edited by Angelika Gabauer, 151–61. New York: Routledge.
Holston, James. 2019. “Metropolitan Rebellions and the Politics of Commoning the City.” Anthropological Theory 19 (1): 120–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499618812324.
Huron, Amanda. 2017. “Theorising the Urban Commons: New Thoughts, Tensions and Paths Forward.” Urban Studies 54 (4): 1062–69. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098016685528.
Kip, Markus, Majken Bieniok, Mary Dellenbaugh, Agnes Katharina Müller, and Martin Schwegmann. 2015. “Seizing the (Every)Day: Welcome to the Urban Commons!” In Urban Commons.
Moving beyond State and Market, edited by Markus Kip, Majken Bieniok, Mary Dellenbaugh, Agnes Katharina Müller, Martin Schwegmann, 7–25. Basel, Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Kratzwald, Brigitte. 2015. “Urban Commons – Dissident Practices in Emancipatory Spaces.” In Urban Commons. Moving Beyond State and Market, edited by Markus Kip, Majken Bieniok, Mary Dellenbaugh, Agnes Katharina Müller, and Martin Schwegmann, 26–41. Basel, Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1996. Writings on Cities. Cambridge, USA: Blackwell.
Linebaugh, Peter. 2008. The Magna Carta Manifesto. Liberties and Commons for All. Berkeley: University Presses of California Columbia and Princeton.
Meinharter, Erik, and Andre Krammer. 2023. “Temporär, experimentell, schnell.” derive 90: 23–28.
Müller, Agnes Katharina. 2015. “From Urban Commons to Urban Planning – or Vice Versa? ‘Planning’ the Contested Gleisdreieck Territory.” In Urban Commons. Moving Beyond State and Market, edited by Markus Kip, Majken Bieniok, Mary Dellenbaugh, Agnes Katharina Müller, Martin Schwegmann, 148–64. Basel, Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Nightingale, Andrea. 2019. “Commoning for Inclusion? Political Communities, Commons, Exclusion, Property and Socio-natural Becomings.” International Journal of the Commons 13 (1): 16–35. https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.927.
Offe, Claus. 2019. “Wessen Wohl ist das Gemeinwohl?” In Institutionen, Normen, Bürgertugenden, edited by Claus Offe, 341–66. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien.
Ortiz, Daniel Opazo. 2015. “Creating and Appropriating Urban Spaces – The Public versus the Commons: Institutions, Traditions, and Struggles in the Production of Commons and Public Spaces in
Chile.” In Urban Commons. Moving Beyond State and Market, edited by Markus Kip, Majken Bieniok, Mary Dellenbaugh, Agnes Katharina Müller, Martin Schwegmann, 117–29. Basel, Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons. The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Poderi, Giacomo. 2020. “The Subjects of/in Commoning and the Affective Dimension of Infrastructuring the Commons.” Journal of Peer Production 14: 30–44.
Raekstad, Paul. 2018. “Revolutionary Practice and Prefigurative Politics: A Clarification and Defense.” Constellations 25 (3): 359–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12319.
Schatzki, Theodore. 2013. The Timespace of Human Activity. On Performance, Society, and History as Indeterminate Teleological Events. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Scott, James. 1998. Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Stavrides, Stavros. 2016. Common Space. The City as Commons. London: Zed Books.
Strößenreuther, Heinrich. 2014. “Wem gehört die Stadt? Der Flächen-Gerechtigkeits-Report.” Agentur für clevere Städte, August 5, 2014. Accessed May 15, 2023. https://www.clevere-staedte.de/files/tao/img/blog-news/dokumente/2014-08-05_Flaechen-Gerechtigkeits-Report.pdf.
Sutter, Ove. 2019. “Präfigurative Politiken und kulturelle Figurierungen des Helfens. Konstellationen zivilgesellschaftlicher Willkommenskultur in den Migrationsbewegungen von 2015.” In Konfliktfeld Fluchtmigration. Historische und ethnographische Perspektiven, herausgegeben von Reinhard Johler, Jan
Lange, 299–318. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
Ticktin, Miriam. 2016. “Thinking Beyond Humanitarian Borders.” Social Research 83 (2): 255–71. https://doi.org/10.1353/sor.2016.0030.
Valverde, Mariana. 2023. Infrastructure. New Trajectories in Law. New York: Routledge.
Vrasti, Wanda, and Smaran Dayal. 2016. “Cityzenship: Rightful Presence and the Urban Commons.”
Citizenship Studies 20 (8): 994–1011. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2016.1229196.
Published
2024-11-17
How to Cite
Mazukatow, Alik. 2024. “Commoning As Social Struggle: Three Modes of Commoning Mobility Infrastructures in Berlin”. Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology 30 (1):100–116. https://doi.org/10.36950/sjsca.2024.30.9422.
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Research Articles
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