02 Oct 2025  |  Ruben Darío Chambi, Juliane Müller & Carmen Ibanez

Collaboration and knowledge commoning from the perspective of Indigenous economies

One characteristic of the (re)emergence of Indigenous peoples on the global stage has to do with the growing Indigenisation of cities and economies. In recent times, various communities have entered, deployed and redefined urban spaces based on their own logics of economic, social and political organisation. One example can be found in Bolivia, where the city of El Alto prompts researchers to reconfigure some anthropological reflections on economic exchange and consumption, showing that Indigenous actors challenge the idea of a uniform global market economy. However, this process has also revealed commercial practices contrary to a “community economy”, which is often attributed to these very actors by some social scientists and activists, or through political narratives such as “Vivir Bien” that promotes, among other things, a solidarity-based, non-accumulative economy.

Given this somewhat paradoxical friction between Indigenous economic scenarios and anthropological analysis, the following questions arise: What happens when Indigenous economic practices challenge the idea of a simple resistance to capitalism? How shall we deal with communities whose aspirations seem oriented towards economic inclusion, but at the same time seek to move away from hegemonic economic institutions and rules? The workshop invites reflections on these new scenarios that Indigenous economies pose, and the ways in which collaborations with Indigenous actors prompt us to (re)think our categories of analysis and the forms of sharing or commoning knowledge with and about these emerging actors.

Convenors

Ruben Darío Chambi (LMU Munich)
Juliane Müller (University of Barcelona)
Carmen Ibanez (Freie Universität Berlin)

Speakers

Theodor Borrmann (University of Oxford)
Vinícius Mendes (University of São Paolo)
Paulina Mendez Castellanos (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

Visit the conference website for more information on the program and view this workshop here.

The conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologieon, DGSKA (German Association of Social and Cultural Anthropology, GASCA) “Un/Commoning Anthropology“ takes place in Cologne from 29 September – 2 October 2025. It is organised and hosted by the GASCA together with the Cologne Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology.