The Mixed Potential of Salvage Commoning: Crisis and Commoning Practices in Washington, DC and New York City

Abstract

This paper considers how and to what ends commoning practices can take shape in direct response to the spectres and/or realities of eroding resources (we focus especially on public resources) within iterations of what we term “salvage commoning”. We show how, in such contexts, commoning practices may potentially alleviate but also potentially (re)produce inequities, exclusions, and resource retractions. To illustrate, we draw upon two examples: parent‐teacher organisations in Washington, DC, and block associations in New York City. In both instances, people have cooperatively built new relations, coordinated voluntary labour, and stewarded resources in connection with specific commons (public schools and urban spaces) threatened by disinvestment and crisis. We show how troubling alignments and exclusions can emerge under these conditions, suggesting critical questions about the starkly mixed potential of salvage commoning—especially in the face of ongoing and emerging crises in which such orientations are likely to become increasingly prevalent.

For a Cooperative “Smart” City Yet to Come: Place-Based Knowledge, Commons, and Prospects for Inclusive Municipal Processes From Seattle, Washington

“…"Commons" and "commoning" are old concepts that have gained increasing purchase in different contemporary contexts. In keeping with definitions generally accepted in the commons literature (e.g., Anderson & Huron, 2021;Gidwani, 2013;Linebaugh, 2008;Ostrom, 1990), we understand these concepts as referring, on the one hand, to resources-often but not always materialthat are maintained, stewarded, and used collectively (commons), and, on the other hand, the practices-the actual activities, protocols, and ways of acting and relating in mutuality and relation (commoning practices)that people undertake in relation and in order to maintain particular commons as resources. It is worth noting here that contemporary work on the commons takes place along a spectrum ranging from what might be termed a descriptive-institutionalist approaches-often focused on understanding how shared resources are governed, by which communities of users, according to what rules and protocols, under what conditions and constraints, and so forth-to approaches more closely aligned with critical social theory and critique.…”

“…Moreover, given the crucial importance of open-ended process and constant negotiation within commons, the pairing allows us to speculate about how "smart" approaches could be re-tooled to enliven, support, and sustain organizing and participatory processes, diverse economic and planning activities, collective structures of data ownership and processes of cooperative analysis, and more, among already existing and/or nascent communities of users. Particularly where explicitly connected to goals like equity, racial justice, and/or just climate adaptation, the result could be "smart" uptakes that are participatory, researchoriented, self-reflexive, iterative, adaptive, and deeply transformative, rather than simply perpetuating existing status quo formations, exclusions, and advantages accrued by narrow groups (see Anderson & Huron, 2021;Foster & Iaione, 2022, for further theoretical elaboration of principles upon which such a process might work).…”

Reproducing the Plot: Making Life in the Shadow of Premature Death

“…Crucially, I note that the plot‐as‐sustenance results not only from resistant traditions; discrepant projects—e.g. slave amelioration, quelling the 1930s labour rebellions, a series of inadequate redistributive land reform programmes—transformed the state to expand the plot in some conjunctures, resulting in complicated geographies that are difficult to narrate (see Anderson and Huron 2021). I frame Tulloch as an instance of “untidy historically present geographies that are predicated on difficult encounters” (McKittrick 2011:950).…”

Outside the Wage: Seeing Politics and Possibilities with Critical Comparisons

“…Other contributions also contextualise specific forms of work to chart spatio‐temporalities and complex historical geographies. Anderson and Huron (2021), for instance, connect contemporary policy formations in two cities to voluntary and civic practices which mutated over four decades of disinvestment, resource erosion, and associated crises of social reproduction within the US and global North urban crisis contexts more broadly. Molinari and Pratt (2021) situate their account of the experiences of long‐term care workers in several facilities within broader contexts of underinvestment, privatisation, and the concomitant financialisation of this sector in British Columbia specifically, and Canada more generally.…”

“…These realities complicate the unstable distinctions between free and unfree, waged and unwaged labour, throwing into relief the interdependence and tensions between them. In a similar vein, Anderson and Huron (2021) draw our attention to the commoning labour that parent–teacher organisations and block associations contribute to the stewardship of public schools and urban spaces. In both cases, they draw our attention to the volume of unwaged, voluntary labours, and in‐kind contributions that these organisations’ members see as necessary investments—initially against crisis contexts in which these practices emerged, and presently understood as crucial to the secure futures of different users of these resources.…”