#Otheranthropolitics Workshop, Volos 15-16 April

Proceedings from the “International Workshop on the commons and political theory” , 2018

Here is a list of abstracts of our presentations in our #otheranthropolitics Workshop, Volos 15 - 16 April, 2019

'Heteropolitics' is a project funded by ERC (P.I. Dr Alexandros Kioupkiolis) in contemporary political theory which purports to contribute to the renewal of political thought on the ‘common’ (communities and the commons) and the political in tandem. The common implies a variable interaction between differences which communicate and collaborate in and through their differences, converging partially on practices and particular pursuits. The political pertains to processes through which plural communities manage themselves in ways which enable mutual challenges, deliberation, decision-making, and creative agency. My post in Heteropolitics is that of Post-doctoral Fellow,, responsible for conducting ethnography with self-organised communities and their commoning practices in Greece. From 13 to 15 September 2017, we are organizing the first international workshop of the project in Thessaloniki.

This is the final version of the Proceedings from the Heteropolitics International Workshop on the Commons and Political Theory, which took place in 13-15 September 2017, at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Amfitheatro I, ELKE, 3rd Septemvriou street, Thessaloniki, 54636). The contributions of individual authors are presented here in form in which they have been submitted, with minor edits. This final version is published on-line at heteropolitics.net. Video recordings of all sessions of the conference, from 13/09/2017 till 15/09/2017, are available at http://heteropolitics.net/index.php/2017/09/20/video-recordings-from- heteropoltics -international-workshop-13-15-September-2017/

HETEROPOLITICS, 2018

During the last years, the discussion on commons and new enclosures revolves mainly around Marxist approaches that focus on the “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey, 2005) and conceptualize urban commons as a new version of the “right to the city” (Mayer, 2009). At the same time, during the current rising tide of urban revolts, the protestors do not just claim the urban space from the sovereign power, but they occupy and tend to transform it into common spaces. In this point it is emerged the crucial question how the spaces of commons can be circulated and go beyond the class, patriarchical, racial and other power relations. In order to unsettle my view I follow several critical scholars analyses (De Angelis, 2017; Caffentzis, 2010; Federici, 2011), who propose that conceptualizing the commons involves three things at the same time: common pool resource, commoning and community. Thus, the commons are not only physical, material or immaterial resources, they don’t exist per se but they are constituted through the social process of commoning. In order to examine and deepen the notion of commoning I am inspired by the discussion on “stasis”. Last years several scholars (Butler and Athanasiou, 2013; Douzinas, 2013; Tsilimpounidi, 2016) adopt the Greek ancient notion of stasis in order to explain the social movements. Indeed, stasis is the process by which people stand, reflecting upon themselves, recognize their strengths, contest and take position. On the other hand, the suppression of stasis can be understood as the response of systems of domination to the social emancipatory commoning. In this theoretical framework, I propose stasis as the catalyst for the circulation of commons. Based on the above theoretical context this paper explores the role of the physical, social and symbolic meanings of stasis in the processes of setting up the common space. In particular it is examined the protest camps in the Indignados movement in Syntagma square in Athens (2011), in the Gezi park occupation in Istanbul (2013) and in the refugees’ makeshift settlement of Idomeni in the Greek-Macedonia borders (2016). Through the above cases the main finding is that the protestors, through stasis, are transformed into an unpredictable and misfitted multitude that produces and circulates unique and porous common spaces, spaces in movement and threshold spaces.

The region of South and Central Europe and Middle East of the International Society for Cultural-Historical and Activity Research (ISCAR) (http://www.iscar.info/), the Department of Early Childhood Education of the School of Education of the University of Ioannina and the Department of Psychology of the School of Social Sciences of the University of Crete, are happy to announce the organization of the International conference “Crisis in Contexts”. The conference will be held at the University of Ioannina in Greece (http://www.uoi.gr/en/), from the 19th to the 24th of March 2019. The conference theme invokes the study of crisis in the past, present and future through the prism of cultural-historical activity and research. Challenging issues and practices, new ideas at different levels of human development at different parts of the world have raised deep conversations as well as new era in the socio-cultural field of research. The conference aims to promote dialogue as well as discussions about crisis in different contexts and to explore questions, problems, methodologies and practices in the traditions of cultural-historical activity theory.

The aim of the proceedings had been to bring together a diversity of perspectives on the commons as an alternative from a political slant and to stimulate reflection and debate.

This preliminary version of the ‘Proceedings’ has been prepared immediately after the end of the conference in 15 September 2017, only for the purposes of the deliverables of WP 1. The contributions of individual authors and panellists have not been edited. They are presented here in the form in which they have been submitted by the authors. A fuller and edited version of the ‘Proceedings’ will be published on-line, at heteropolitics.net, in February 2018. Video recordings of all sessions of the conference, from 13/09/2017 till 15/09/2017, are available at http://heteropolitics.net/index.php/2017/09/20/video-recordings-from- heteropoltics -international-workshop-13-15-September-2017/ Main Authors: Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Natalia-Rozalia Avlona