Commons and discourse of legality: the case of Palermo

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO
Author/s Veronica Pecile
Publishing Year 2020 Issue 2019/3 Language Italian
Pages 17 P. 139-155 File size 278 KB
DOI 10.3280/SD2019-003007
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The movement for the commons has emerged in the past decade in opposition to neoliberal policies of privatization of resources and services. It claims the right to occupy publicly- and privately-owned spaces and to use them according to the principles of self-government and direct democracy. In the Southern European context, the movement for the commons has focused on the grassroots restructuring of public services otherwise eroded by austerity policies. This paper investigates the trajectory of the movement for the commons in Palermo and highlights how a social mobilization with a critical approach towards private property and socioeconomic inequalities has been partially co-opted by the public administration through an institutional rhetoric promoting legality and participation in public spaces. From the legal point of view, this process translated into the negotiation of a top-down administrative, regulation establishing that the commons should be managed through a public-private partnership. The risk is both the political weakening of the movement for the commons and the social marginalization of vulnerable subjects inhabiting the city centre.

Keywords: Commons - Social movements - Property - Neoliberalism - Legality - Southern Europe

  1. Agamben, Giorgio, 2007. La città e la metropoli. Posse, 13.
  2. Bailey, Saki, & Ugo Mattei, 2013. Social Movements as Constituent Power: The Italian Struggle for the Commons. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 20, 2: 965-1013.
  3. Bartoli, Clelia, 2019. Inchiesta a Ballarò. Il diritto visto dal margine. Palermo: Navarra Editore.
  4. Bascetta, Marco, 2013. Il feticcio della legalità. Outlet, 5, Legalità. Per una critica della ideologia italiana: 16-21.
  5. Blank, Yishai, & Issi Rosen-Zvi, 2010. The Spatial Turn in Legal Theory. HAGAR Studies in Culture, Polity and Identities, 10, 1: 37-60.
  6. Blomley, Nicholas, 1994. Law, Space, and the Geographies of Power. New York, London: Guilford Press.
  7. Breshinan, Patrick, & Michael Byrne, 2015. Escape into the City: Everyday Practices of Commoning and the Production of Urban Space in Dublin. Antipode, 47, 1: 36-54.
  8. Capone, Nicola, 2016. Del diritto d’uso civico e collettivo dei beni destinati al godimento dei diritti fondamentali. Politica del diritto, 4, a. XLVII: 597-636. DOI: 10.1437/85476
  9. Chatterjee, Partha, 2004. The Politics of the Governed. Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press.
  10. Chatterton, Paul, 2010. Seeking the Urban Common: Furthering the Debate on Spatial Justice. City, 14, 6: 625-628. DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2010.525304
  11. Cohen, Morris R., 1927. Property and Sovereignty. Cornell Law Review, 13, 1: 8-30.
  12. Commissione Rodotà, 2007. Proposta di articolato per la modifica delle norme del codice civile in materia di beni pubblici (14 giugno 2007), https://www.giustizia.it/giustizia/it/mg_1_12_1.page?contentId=SPS47624&previsiousPage=mg_1_12_ (visitato il 20 gennaio 2019).
  13. De Angelis, Massimo, 2004. Separating the Doing and the Deed: Capital and the Continuous Character of Enclosures. Historical Materialism, 12, 2: 57-87. DOI: 10.1163/1569206041551609
  14. Dardot, Pierre, & Christian Laval, 2014. Commun: Essai sur la révolution au XXIe siècle. Paris: La Découverte.
  15. Di Feliciantonio, Cesare, & Silvia Aru, 2018. Dai Commons al Commoning (Urbano): Pratiche e Orizzonti Politici nel Contesto Mediterraneo. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 17, 2: 258-268.
  16. Eizenberg, Efrat, 2012. Actually Existing Commons: Three Moments of Space of Community Gardens in New York City. Antipode, 44, 3: 764-782.
  17. Federici, Silvia, 2010. Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. In Team Colors Collective (a cura di), Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States. Oakland: AK Press.
  18. Fiorentino, Dario, & Xenia Chiaramonte, 2019. Il caso 7 aprile. Il processo politico dall’autonomia operaia ai No Tav. Milano: Mimesis.
  19. Foster, Sheila, & Christian Iaione, 2016. The City as a Commons. Yale Law & Policy Review, 34, 2: 281-349.
  20. Foucault, Michel, 1969. L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard.
  21. Gágo, Veronica, 2017. Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies. Durham, London: Duke University Press.
  22. Grossi, Paolo, 1977. Un altro modo di possedere. L’emersione di forme alternative di proprietà alla coscienza giuridica postunitaria. Milano: Giuffrè.
  23. Hardt, Michael, & Antonio Negri, 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
  24. Harvey, David, 2013. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso.
  25. Kennedy, Duncan, 1976. Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, Harvard Law Review, 89: 1685-1778. DOI: 10.2307/1340104
  26. Klein, Naomi, 2001. Reclaiming the Commons. New Left Review, 9: 81-89.
  27. Lefebvre, Henri, 1968. Le droit à la ville. Paris: Éditions Anthropos.
  28. Llewellyn, Karl, 1931. Some Realism about Realism - Responding to Dean Pound. Harvard Law Review, 44, 8: 1222-1264.
  29. Marella, Maria Rosaria, 2017. The Commons as a Legal Concept. Law and Critique, 28, 1: 61-86.
  30. Marx, Karl, [1843]2008. Zur Kritik der hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Traduzione italiana Critica della filosofia hegeliana del diritto pubblico, Macerata: Quodlibet.
  31. Mattei, Ugo, & Alessandra Quarta, 2015. Right to the City or Urban Commoning? Thoughts on the Generative Transformation of Property Law. The Italian Law Journal, 1, 2: 303-325.
  32. Napoli, Paolo, 2011. L’histoire du droit et le commun. Quelques éléments de réflexion, -- http://dupublicaucommun.blogspot.com/2011/04/contribution-de-paolo-napoli-pour-le.html?m=1 (visitato il 24 novembre 2018)
  33. Ong, Aihwa, 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham, London: Duke University Press.
  34. Ostrom, Elinor, 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
  35. Pupolizio, Ivan, 2010. Più realisti del re? Il realismo giuridico statunitense nella prospettiva dei Critical Legal Studies. Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica, a. XL, 1: 73-104. DOI: 10.1436/31778
  36. Rodotà, Stefano, 1960. Note critiche in tema di proprietà. Rivista trimestrale di diritto e procedura civile: 1252-1341.
  37. Rossi, Ugo, 2017. Ambivalence of the Urban Commons. In B. Miller, A. Jonas, K. Ward & D. Wilson (eds.), Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics. London: Routledge.
  38. Sauvêtre, Pierre, 2016. Les politiques du commun dans l’Europe du Sud (Grèce, Italie, Espagne). Pratiques citoyennes et restructuration du champ politique. Actuel Marx, 1, 59: 123-138.
  39. Soja, Edward, 2010. Seeking Spatial Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  40. Spanò, Michele, 2013. Istituire i beni comuni. Una prospettiva filosofico-giuridica. Politica e Società, 3: 427-228.
  41. —, 2013a. Negoziare. Sulla governamentalità neoliberale. In Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalismo come eccezione. Cittadinanza e sovranità in mutazione. Firenze-Lucca: VoLo Publisher.
  42. Treves, Renato, 2002. Sociologia del diritto. Origini, ricerche, problemi. Torino: Einaudi.
  43. Valli, Chiara, 2015. When Cultural Workers Become an Urban Social Movement: Political Subjectification and Alternative Cultural Production in the Macao Movement, Milan. Environment and Planning, 47, 3: 643-659.
  44. Varriale, Andrea, 2015. The Usage of Public Space in Naples. Informality in the Time of Commons. RC21 International Conference, Urbino.

Veronica Pecile, Beni comuni e discorso della legalità: il caso di Palermo in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 3/2019, pp 139-155, DOI: 10.3280/SD2019-003007