The longue durée or fleeting of the plebeian commons? Towards historical (a)sociology
Abstract
The aim of the article is twofold. First of all, it provides a commentary on the growing interest in people’s history in Polish academic circles and public debate. The author questions why Polish authors omit the role played by the commons in their research, despite this phenomenon being crucial for historians of the plebeian classes in other countries. Secondly, by reflecting on this particular omission by Polish scholars, he strives to make a more general point concerning conceptualizations of the commons, and specifically the plebeian commons. The article demonstrates that the commons constructed and reproduced by subaltern groups are characterized by their fleeting nature. This is because plebeian subjectivities — in their struggles to defend the commons against enclosures —use a strategy of evading representatives of the state and capital. Their commons thereby become to a large degree imperceptible, including to scholars studying the archives kept by the dominant classes. But the fact that plebeian commons elude the archives does not necessarily mean that they do not exist, or that they cannot survive. In his conclusion, the author sketches out the paradigm of “historical asociology” as a possible solution in studying illegible and latent forms of the commons. This proposal is inspired by those scholars of the plebeian classes who focused on the role of the commons in reproducing autonomous and masterless ways of living.
Keywords
historical sociology; people's history; asociology; the commons; enclosures
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Uniwersytet Wrocławski Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2251-9351
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