Subproject C04 in the Collaborative Research Centre/Transregio 294 “Structural Transformation of Property” at the Universities of Jena and Erfurt. Click hereExternal link for the Website of the Collaborative Research Centre/ Transregio SFB TRR 294 “Structural Transformation of Property” and here directly for Subproject C04External link.
Project management: Prof. Dr. Silke van Dyk
Research assistant: Dr. Markus Kip
Student assistants: Moritz Heinrich and Luzie Gerstenhöfer
Contact: silke.vandyk@uni-jena.de
Duration: April 2021 – December 2024
Welfare states are an institutional response to the social dislocations of societies in which the private ownership of the means of production and assets is concentrated in the hands of a few, while the majority is dependent on selling its labor power. While in Fordist welfare states the importance of private property was relativised by (wage-substituting) benefits, public services and the regulation of property owners’ power, since the late 1970s processes of deregulation, commodification and privatisation have caused a dismantling and restructuring of social rights and public property. These longer-term developments were exacerbated in many countries by the consequences of the financial and economic crisis of 2007/2008 and the prevalence of austerity policies.
In the sense of the SFB’s disembedding thesis, the subproject’s research is based on the assumption that, in the course of these processes, a disembedding of private property has taken place that varies from country to country, which is at the same time structured by and effective in municipal contexts and which has the potential to endanger social reproduction through cuts and restructuring of (wage-substituting) services and public services of general interest. Against this backdrop, the boom of local alternative economies, commons and new forms of subsistence, the growing importance of sharing economies and new municipalisms, along with political efforts for the remunicipalisation of infrastructure are examined as counter-movements (in the sense of Polanyi’s ‘double movement’) which are striving for new forms of regulation. Specifically, the subproject asks how, under conditions of austerity and the economic, political and social counter-movements reacting to it, firstly, the interplay of public, private and municipal property is restructured, secondly, what role social and labor-related (protection) rights and non-property-based lending and utilisation arrangements play in this process and, thirdly, what effects this has – in the sense of a structural change through property – on the modes of welfare state governance.
The subproject collects empirical data in Great Britain and Spain, two countries that were both severely affected by the financial and economic crisis and reacted with comprehensive austerity measures. At the same time, the countries differ with regard to their welfare state regimes and the history of deregulation and privatisation, as well as with regard to the scope of municipal actors and the significance of local counter-movements. The subproject takes an empirical approach on three levels. Firstly, it examines the country-specific processes of welfare state re-structuring and disembedding since 2008. Secondly, it analyses their implementation and design in two urban contexts (Barcelona and Liverpool), also taking into account countervailing developments (e.g. re-municipalisation) and related political struggles. Thirdly, the subproject examines selected civil society projects in the study cities that close gaps in services of general interest on the basis of commons (common property or practices of use and sharing). The central question here is what role commons play in times of crisis for dealing with the social question beyond welfare state institutions and services, and what effects they have on (local) property systems.
