Revaluing the foundation(al): the role of commons for social-ecological provisioning

The capitalist growth paradigm’s continuous production of intertwined and mutually reinforcing crises underscores the need for a social-ecological transformation toward a more just and sustainable economy. Investigating the economy as composed of monetized and non-monetized provisioning processes, feminist ecological economics foregrounds the non-monetized social-ecological foundation of our economy and the foundational provisioning processes taking place therein. This article contributes to debates on social provisioning and provisioning systems by unpacking the role of communities and commons in ensuring human and planetary well-being. More concretely, we investigate the transformative potential of commoning to revalue the non-monetized economy of social-ecological provisioning. We find that commoning prioritizes use value over exchange value and allows for value practices incompatible with a capitalist growth paradigm. We illustrate what role commoning – for instance, commoning land for collective food provisioning – can play in the boundary struggles over what is, and is not, valued. Taking a multi-level approach, we find that debates on public provisioning that foreground collective forms of provisioning (e.g., foundational economy, universal basic services) as well as alliances within and beyond the meta-industrial labor class constitute important building blocks for revaluing the foundation(al).