Spaces for feminist commoning? Creative social enterprise’s enclosures and possibilities

McLean, H. (2021) Spaces for feminist commoning? Creative social enterprise’s enclosures and possibilities. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 53(1), pp. 242-259. (doi: 10.1111/anti.12684)

Abstract

This paper contributes an intersectional feminist analysis and methodological approach to debates about commoning and social enterprise. Through a narrative description of feminist social enterprise projects based on action research with the Kinning Park Complex, a social centre with a radical history in Glasgow’s South Side, I demonstrate how contemporary community economic development models can entrench intersectional exclusion. Specifically, I show how market‐oriented social enterprise models reproduce precarious work, hinder cooperative ethics, and promote depoliticised notions of difference. However, I also investigate the ways that community organisers and activists at KPC are re‐working these neoliberal models to carve out spaces for feminist commoning. Through these acts, women‐identifying and non‐binary activists, artists, and community organisers grapple with the classed, raced, and gendered politics of community organising and foster solidarities across difference.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: McLean, Dr Heather
• Authors: McLean, H.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences
• Journal Name: Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography
• Publisher: Wiley
• ISSN: 0066-4812
• ISSN (Online): 1467-8330
• Published Online: 27 October 2020
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2020 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 53(1): 242-259
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
173234		Community Organizing in an Era of Precarity: Forging Creative Solidarities	Heather McLean	Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)	ES/N017854/1	GES - Human Geography