Towards a Politics of the Commons - The International ecology of media and nature: The constitution of contemporary international spaces can be described accordingly to (not only) two major historical processes: 1) the advent of the “global village” derived from informational-communication developments and 2) the practically simultaneous “environmentalization” of the planet – the coming into being of the “biosphere” as a cultural construction – which, firstly emerging from ecological grass-root movements of the late 60s, had now entered into the arena of institutional (both State-lead and NGO-lead) politics. The former is the material basis that enables and at the same time is constituted by various forms of capitalistic enterprises: global economy, delocalized financial markets and trans-national corporations are largely based on technological-logistics of material production, distribution and consumption, and deeply relies on the informational capacity of coordinating exchange circuits and exploring juridical-political differences at geographical scales. The later has become the ultimate domain of capitalist colonization: the translation of nature into “scare resources” increasingly starts to generate specific rationalities of government and exploitation that demands coordination, legislation and intervention at supra-national levels.

If the International is, as Marx and Engels early noticed in the Communist Manifesto (1872), a space resultant of the expansion of capitalism and colonization processes, it necessary generates a counter-space of new forms of social-cooperation, group identity formations and ultimately political resistance. From the communism of world proletarian (centralized) organizations to the recent “commons” of environmental and informational social-networks activism, international spaces can be historically seen as a major site of political struggles during processes of modernization. While is important to retrace a genealogy of the formation of The International as a technological-economic construction largely based on the formation of a global market and the consequently necessary governmental arrangements, it is also important to be aware of the possibilities for the creation of new social-cultural formations. The “mediatization” of the globe generates a public sphere beyond state boundaries, compounding a field whereby localized social-political issues are turned into relevant issues on international arenas thus fostering new-forms of trans-boundaries cooperation and action. On the other hand, while destabilizing forms of sovereignty and giving possibilities of effective intervention to non-governmental forms of organization, the emerging “politics of nature” articulate demands which, beyond juridical formations and civilian rights, extend itself to other forms of life, systems of (scientific and traditional) knowledge and poses problems to the logics of capitalistic development itself.

Think about the EZLN (Zapatist National Liberation Army), which tactics is based on the articulation between localized specific social-cultural demands of indigenous populations and the “internationalization” of political struggles by an increadibly inventive use of new-technologies. Or think about the Anti-Global movements of the late 90s (notoriously the Seattle riots in 1999 at the WTO meeting) that later had fostered global media-activist networks such as independent media organizations based on localized nodes but articulated at international levels. Or even think about how issues directly addressed by international arenas of eco-politics can only be resolved if acknowledging the myth-politics of non-western societies and traditional forms of knowledge and modes of production.

Both the formation of the “global village” and the “biosphere” can be read as the two sides of the constitution of an international “commons space” which appropriation, forms of regulation, production and preservation opens-up a new field of political conflicts and negotiations between governmental and non-governmental agencies and alternative forms of social organization.

MARA 0809 - The International - ideas for the brief by P.T.