Taking Stock of Italian Commons: Un-common Grounds?

This chapter provides a critical mapping of Italian commons, investigating the conceptualisation of property on both traditional commons (agricultural common land) and new commons (commoning projects and practices fighting neoliberal policies and laws). The key aim is to understand how traditional and new commons define and re-define property through law, customary practices and social movements and if there are similarities or differences between the two. Although both traditional and new commons attempt to transcend the public-state/private-individual dichotomy in property law and are permeated by a sustainability ethos, the differences between traditional commons and new commons are conspicuous, rendering impossible the transfer of legal concepts from one category to the other. Such differences relate to the substantive and procedural property rights of the actors involved and to their relationship with constitutional principles.