Exploring commoning in the anthropocene. Introducing the concept of the election commons as a response to socio-ecological crisis. The case of Skouries, Greece

Ioannis Rigkos-Zitthen and Nikolaos Kapitsinis

Environment and Planning C, 2025, vol. 43, issue 4, 729-745

Abstract: The Anthropocene epoch challenges our planet’s ecological sustainability and its relationship with democratic processes. The prioritization of economic growth and capital accumulation within most democratic organizations and institutions encourages limitless economic expansion while ignoring or disregarding the earth’s ecological vulnerability in multiple crises (economic, social, ecological). Commoning presents an alternative political strategy to respond to these crises, particularly when it is based on transformative practices of collective care. In this paper, we investigate how an anti-mining community in Skouries, Greece, opposes the imposition of a large-scale mining project by forming a commons initiative. We introduce the concept of election commons, which was designed to allow the anti-mining community to claim institutional power at a local level. This concept is argued to provide valuable insights into how collective care sets the foundations for the renewal of democracy, allowing an alternative relation to the environment and playing a strategic role in connecting different geographical scales of politics. We claim that commoning can enable a more fitting political strategy for the Anthropocene while highlighting the case of decision-making at a national and international level benefiting from local politics.

Keywords: Commoning; election commons; temporality; legacy; political power; collective care; environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23996544241282844 (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:sae:envirc:v:43:y:2025:i:4:p:729-745

DOI: 10.1177/23996544241282844

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning C
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().