Socialising resources: State-encouraged commoning and the making of scarce social goods in Shenzhen (China)

Abstract

This article critiques the anthropological use of commoning to describe resource-sharing projects or ideals and advocates instead for a focus on socialising resources. While commoning practices involving small, autonomous communities may promote resource conservation and escape capitalist logics, they can also lead to class exclusion. In the Chinese megacity of Shenzhen, community-level cooperative companies exclude migrant outsiders, and state-encouraged commoning initiatives do not generate much solidarity between natives and migrants. Furthermore, the Chinese state’s points-based system for migrant access to public goods reflects a neoliberal logic of competition for scarce resources, creating club goods rather than truly socialised resources – social goods. Anthropologists will provide better-informed critical accounts of issues related to resource distribution if they look beyond the rhetoric of commoning and focus on the scale and degree to which resources are actually socialised.