Swiss commoners’ struggles for the right balance: Ontologies,identities and responses to market and state pressures

Abstract

What can the study of classic examples of Swiss commons systems bring us with regard to a critique of the anthropology of the study of commons systems in transition? This article addresses the topic by examining the institutional, economic and social changes in old Swiss community property institutions and described as sustainable in Ostrom’s work. After the decline in the value of common-pool resources as a result of industrialisation and the subsequent structural neoliberal market changes and state subsidies, Swiss commoners are under pressure that is not taken into account by Ostrom because she does not address questions of power. While in the past, Swiss commoners’ organisations were always the result of economic and political interconnections and entanglements with external feudal forces, they now have to deal with their reduced bargaining power in relation to market and state pressures as agricultural resources have lost value and the state’s power has increased due to the payment of subsidies. Two case studies (Korporation Uri and Patriziato Olivone) show that power, understood as bargaining power, combined with questions of identity and non-naturalist ontology, make the difference in how successfully the organisation of old commoners can deal with the neoliberal capitalist pressures of ‘uncommoning’ processes. The article highlights bargaining power, identity and ontology as critical themes that have been overlooked in the anthropological literature on the commons, and shows what can be gained from examining the transformation of old commoners’ systems in Switzerland in new debates on commons and commoning.