Chapter 2: Unveiling ‘Oppositional and Territorial Commoning’: Insights from the Self-Managed Places of Rome

This chapter introduces the term Oppositional and Territorial Commoning (OTC) to describe Rome’s self-managed political-socio-cultural places (SMPs), activist-driven spaces established through the illegal occupation of abandoned buildings for self-managed social, cultural and political activities. While existing labels, such as ‘liberated spaces’, ‘autonomous resource spaces’ or ‘urban commons’, capture certain aspects of SMPs, they fail to encompass their full essence. Drawing from extensive research, this study first conceptualizes SMPs as commons by highlighting their a-hierarchical management structure and their capacity to gather ‘strangers’ and foster relationships of care between them. The analysis extends beyond these features to explore SMPs’ particular way of commoning, characterized by their oppositional nature – resisting dominant political and economic systems, such as through illegal occupations that challenge private property – and their territoriality, rooted in their reliance on physical spaces as tools for activism. Establishing the concept of OTC provides a framework for comparing experiences across diverse contexts, emphasizing similarities between movements separated by spatial, temporal, or political divides and potentially fostering alliances. Grounded in an embodied analysis, this chapter critically examines the concept of commons through concrete case studies, offering insights into the specificities of oppositional and territorial forms of commoning while highlighting both their potential and their limitations.