Common(s) Language? The Growing Challenges of Interdisciplinarity in Common Property Studies

Abstract

"I hold out hope that there is a grounding of resonances to work from here, one that emerges from a respect for the human, emotional realities of everyday life. In this field I am reminded very forcefully that academic work is always and primarily an issue of relationship, and always and primarily an issue of relationship among people who come from very different positions. The potential heightened visibility of this at these conferences makes this field rare, as academic fields go. I believe it also makes the work of those in Common Property Studies all the more important. This nexus of academic approaches is a wonderful opportunity for interdisciplinary engagement, a wonderful opportunity for people to dare to talk across methodologies, to dare to critique each other without our methodologies and epistemologies hardening into ideological positions. I believe that the field of common property studies can yet serve as an exemplar of interdisciplinarity. Maybe there can be no common language, but maybe yet a common attitude, in the cause of socially, politically, and ecologically transformative scholarship."