The meaning of commonly-cared for nature according to struggling farmers

Connecting to the Idea of Communism or How to keep grounding frail political capacities The two conferences on “The Idea of Communism” (London 2010, Rome 2016) have galvanized academics and non academics, students and lecturers, and amongst them STS scholars. Indeed, it’s both enticing and relevant for us STS scholars to work towards the reclaiming of the commons. For have we not for years now, learned to reveal and discuss how science and technology can be involved in such reclaiming? Have we not shown that science itself is part of what must be reclaimed? In short, our STS sensibilities and these of today’s Marxists commoners can connect. However we must tread with caution. For such a connection may shut out political capacities that are frail and not so easy to frame in Marxist terms. Tentatively constructed, collectively cared for and more-than-human worlds, such as those we’re investigating in STS, might fail to live up to the “Idea of Communism” if such an idea becomes the measure of all commons’ reclaiming today. In other words, STS must add local, popular, traditional and definitely non-Marxist reclaimers to the picture. We’ll present experimentations and struggles which might be frail and seem trivial when looked at through the Marxist lens but which are part of today’s reclaiming nevertheless. We’ll show how STS allows to pull back the future revolutionary horizon to more and always local constructions; how STS keeps grounding political capacities in the here and now. On such terms, a connection is definitely possible; which, in turn, will extend the realm of our own STS sensibilities