Claiming the common good? Local ressources, culture of possession and social bodies in the Old Regime

Angelo Torre, 2019-2020 Paris IAS Fellow, presents his research project at the weekly internal seminar.

What were really the commons? Were they expressions of backward agriculture or naive communal solidarity? New insights by legal history, historical ecology, social anthropology and spatial history suggest that they were ‘local resources’ through which local citizenship
and competence could be claimed through action. The concept of commons helps us to rethink local societies and their inner power dynamics.

This presentation will be discussed by Alain Mahé, lecturer at the EHESS, member of the Centre for the Study of Social Movements.