ABSTRACT
Tristan Partridge, by focusing on experiences in the indigenous community of San Isidro in Ecuador’s Cotopaxi province, shows us how different resources held in common can become the basis of both physical and social forms of infrastructure vital to the realization of a range of social and political goals. The commons in the experiences described by Partridge refer both to the natural resources at the heart of San Isidro’s pipeline project in Ecuador and the social resources that are required to maintain and sustain it – including voluntary labour schedules, cooperative decision-making processes, regular participation in assembly meetings and collective work-parties. Together, as Partridge explains, these can be understood as comprising an “organizing infrastructure” – a set of practices, skills, techniques and forms of organizing that can be (and have been) put to use in other actions and collaborations. He further argues that the timing of these developments in community praxis and collective action in San Isidro is linked to political shifts at the national-level: through their collaborative work on the pipeline project, San Isidro residents have realized a number of objectives that the 2008 Constitution aimed to achieve. Partridge invites us to see San Isidro’s community-operated irrigation system as both an expression of collaborative potential and an illustration of how a network of communities seized emergent political opportunities – where different elements of “the commons” were indeed the basis for an emergent political space that fosters collaboration. Such fraught and shifting political dynamics also reflect how post-neoliberal ideas continue to rely for their actualization on the commitment, cooperation and labour of diverse communities.
