Collective ownership structures between conflict and territorializing potential

Abstract

The ancient practice of collective use of territorial resources has been expelled from the public scene, as a recent result of a long process contrasting its recognition by the sovereign powers that historically alternated on territories. This enmity was particularly exacerbated in the modernization process of Western Europe, since the individual ownership scheme – both private and public – could not accept the exception represented by community connotation of collective uses. The succession of legislative devices has gradually allowed governing authorities to dissolve the notion of collective ownership within the more generic concept of public property – of the state or local administrations – divesting customary tenants from the possibility of self-regulating common goods uses. The most recent Italian jurisprudential and legislative activity, however, has shed new light on the value of collective uses in protecting local socio-ecological, landscape and cultural peculiarities, considering the latter entirely dependent on those human uses. In this sense, such a value can be regarded as fully expressing a co-evolutionary dynamic between communities and the goods they use, both generative of commons and intrinsically reterritorializing.

Keywords

• territory
• commons
• sovereignty
• democracy
• property rights