Governmentality, the Local State, and the Commons: An Analysis of Civic Management Facilities in Barcelona

Marina Pera and Iolanda Bianchi
Additional contact information
Marina Pera: Political Science Department, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain / Institute for Government and Public Policy (IGOP), Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Iolanda Bianchi: Institute for Government and Public Policy (IGOP), Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

Social Inclusion, 2022, vol. 10, issue 1, 115-125

Abstract: This article deploys the Foucauldian concept of governmentality to study the political tensions that may unfold when commons are enacted through hybrid institutional configurations. We focus on civic management facilities (CMFs) that are located in the city of Barcelona. These are facilities owned by Barcelona City Council which, responding to organised citizens’ demands, are transferred to them so that they can develop their own transformative projects for the community. The hybrid institutional nature of these CMFs makes it impossible for them to avoid maintaining a relationship with the local state. Based on a survey to 51 CMFs, semi‐structured interviews with 41 grassroots members of CMFs and seven semi‐structured interviews with public employees and politicians, we argue that hybrid forms of commons lead to the development of political tensions. On the one hand, we show how the local state’s administrative procedures—to do with accountability and the use of public space—reshape the activities of the CMFs, leading to the depoliticisation of their transformative projects. On the other hand, the analysis also presents the strategies of resistance articulated by the facilities, which enable members to work towards the development of their transformative aims. We conclude that such political tensions cannot be resolved but must be properly governed in order to make the commons’ transformative project an enduring one.

Keywords: co‐option; depoliticisation; governmentality; grassroots; hybrid commons; local state; participation; qualitative research; strategies of resistance; technologies of power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/4732 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:socinc:v10:y:2022:i:1:p:115-125

DOI: 10.17645/si.v10i1.4732

Access Statistics for this article

Social Inclusion is currently edited by Mariana Pires

More articles in Social Inclusion from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().