By Ioannis Rigkos-Zitthen, University of Copenhagen
In this short blog post, I wanted to bring to the attention of the readers an idea that was recently published in The Geographical Journal. This idea refers to the value of the commons for politics in a period of multiple and overlapping crises. From climate change to pandemics and geopolitical turbulence. Commons are social formations that come to life and are maintained by a collective that utilises practices of care named commoning. In this light, commoning plays an essential role in the formation, materialisation of the character and sustainability through time of the commons.
The period of multiple and overlapping crises is often referred to as the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is the name of a newly suggested geological epoch that aims to encapsulate and explain two things. First, that the crises we face are permanent. Second, it highlights the anthropogenic interference through technological means in bringing this epoch into being.
Together with my good colleague Nikos Kapitsinis, we suggested thinking about the commons as empty signifiers, echoing the idea of Ernesto Laclau about the essence of populism. Laclau’s idea about populism is that the concept should not necessarily be perceived with negative connotations, where particular political forces manipulate peoples’ opinion against liberal ideas and rational steering. He rather provided a nuanced understanding of the term, introducing the inclusive/progressive populism vis-a-vis the exclusionary one pertaining to right-wing populism, suggesting that the progressive form of it aims to strengthen liberal traits of democracy.
The scholar’s suggestion that populism should not necessarily be perceived as something politically negative for democratic politics finds well-suited reasoning in our understanding of the commons. Oftentimes, the commons have been depicted as social formations of a radically progressive nature within which we experience the cultivation of values, ethics, understandings and ways of being other than the dominant monetary-based ones. Instead, we argue that to be able to contemplate the value of the commons, we first need to attend to how the practices of care contribute to particular social, environmental and political issues that commons collectives engage with. For example, a right-wing commons collective that provides assistance and charity only to a particular ethnic or racial group can it be considered progressive?
By focusing on commons as empty signifiers, with our article, we aimed to bring to light two things. First to highlight the messy nature of the commons, the power asymmetries that stigmatise our lives, racial stereotypes and the gendered unevenness of caring responsibilities between those who participate in the making of commons. Second, we wanted to emphasise the importance of recognising the value of commoning for broader political constellations such as state institutions and capital. While often commons are depicted as purified formations from the ills of capitalism, with our description, we aimed to regain traction on the messiness of commons relations and performativity.
From our engagement with fieldwork studies, as well as by drawing inspiration from the “community economies collective”, we already know that commons can indeed cultivate a variety of moral and relational arrangements. Yet, those arrangements are not purified by power asymmetries, gendered relationalities, and various other stereotypes that we encounter in our daily lives. It takes a significant amount of effort, commitment and time to overcome those, establish institutional arrangements that dissolve those asymmetries and discard inequalities and forms of exploitation. In addition to that, as we tried to explain in the commentary we published, not all forms of commons and commoning contribute towards the same goals as for example, mitigating the negative effects of climate change or assisting all those in need beyond race, gender or ethnicity.
Moreover, as different scholars have shown, commons depend on capital circuits for reproducing their operational domain. Similarly, the seminal work of Elinor Ostrom has pointed out time and again the fact that commons collaboration with state institutions can allow the sustainability of commons, setting of regulatory frameworks of monitoring and conflict resolution, while also providing resources that can allow the amplification of commons’ impact in various local environments.
The overall point of the article was to argue for a more careful reading of commons as a concept that we believe has great potential for politics in the Anthropocene, where we can rethink the character of different commons as well as their relationship to state and capital. To achieve this, as a first step, we suggest considering the commons as empty signifiers. That is neither perceiving them as a priori radical or revolutionary nor predetermining their relations to capital and state institutions as opposing and confrontational. Conceptualising commons as empty signifiers, meaning emphasising the way practices of commoning are performed in each specific commons, as well as the values, understandings and collective identities they shape, makes fair judgements and opens possibilities for new political horizons to respond to the problems of our epoch in a democratic fashion.
We deeply believe that building a nuanced and balanced understanding of the importance of the commons for politics in the Anthropocene can help us amplify the contribution of practices of care as a way to address global, national and local challenges. In this context, further research is needed to reveal the dynamic, messy, but extremely important role of the commons and how commoning can enrich democratic politics in the Anthropocene.
About the author: Ioannis Rigkos-Zitthen is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen. He is a Political Geographer by training and currently working on food safety in the Anthropocene, focusing on topics around democratic governance and participation. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and a Ph.D. in Human Geography from Macquarie University, Australia. His interests are grounded in the relationship between collective action, politics in the Anthropocene, and democracy. The major question that drives his academic research is: How can we sustain and enrich democracy in the Anthropocene? The researcher focuses on caring practices as a potential response to this question by suggesting that the new geological epoch requires new political institutions inspired by local communities’ values, more-than-human understandings, building solidary collective identities and new ways of being and doing in a multipolar and fragile world.
Suggested further reading
Hastie, H., Dawney, L. & Butler, C. (2025) Warm spaces as commoning: Rethinking energy poverty beyond the private doctrine. Geo: Geography and Environment. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.70001
Kanosvamhira, T.P., Follman, A. & Tevera, D. (2024) Experimental urban commons?: Re-examining urban community food gardens in Cape Town, South Africa. The Geographical Journal. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12553
Rigkos-Zitthen, I. & Kapitsinis, N. (2025) On commons, state institutions and capitalism. The Geographical Journal. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.70023
How to cite
Rigkos-Zitthen, I. (2025, June) Commons and care in the Anthropocene. Geography Directions. Available from: https://doi.org/10.55203/NKYO2580
Geography Directions 