No Commons Without Micropolitics. Learning with Feminist and Municipalist Movements in Spain

Abstract

This article emphasizes the importance of micropolitical and feminist research into the commons, particularly for understanding and developing forms of articulation between the public and the commons. It draws on experiences of autonomist-feminist and municipalist commons in Barcelona, presenting a case study on childcare commoning, based on engaged and situated research conducted between 2015–20. Those years were a lively period of city based commons experimentation that coincides with the first mandate of the municipalist Barcelona en Comú government. Emphasizing feminist and micropolitical understandings for commons research as a matter of going beyond technical visions of commons, based in Spanish and Latin American commons thinking, this text emphasizes the contribution of micropolitics as activist analytical lens that places a focus on knowledge production across social movements and institutions, and on the role of the invisible others of organization. To do so, it analyzes childcare commons through three micropolitical-feminist terms: care, community and resurgence. It points to possible ways of thinking alliances across grassroots and public institutions, as a matter of micropolitical articulation between claims to self-governance and claims to universality, and between autonomy and interdependence. Feminism and micropolitics feature as indispensable lenses for developing lively and lasting commons practices here.

Keywords

• commons
• micropolitics
• care
• municipalism
• feminism
• barcelona
• community
• resurgence