« The issue of sustainability is not easy to address because we are confronted with a double jeopardy: the abusive exploitation of natural resources that endangers the balance of the climate and biodiversity, and the growing inequalities that condemn our ability to live together as a society». (Eynaud, 2019).

Faced with the continuing destruction of ecosystems and social ties, we are witnessing the deployment of various forms of organisation of collective action and redefinition of productive activities that involve grassroots communities and territories (see Coriat, 2020, Slawinski et al 2019).
Whether they take place in small towns or in large metropolises, in the North or in the South, these plural collective initiatives aim to participate in the construction of a viable, sustainable environment. They are the bearers of organisational and socio-technical innovations. They sometimes rely on the reasoned use of new digital tools to extend cooperation between actors and/or communities (Vercher - Chaptal et al., 2021).

These initiatives constitute real laboratories for social and environmental transitions, capable of addressing the diversity of relationships between nature and human activities that are found throughout the world.

The commons theory, to which some of these field initiatives refer, can provide a relevant framework for interpretation. This field, opened by Elinor Ostrom in the 1980s, was concerned with exploring the conditions under which human communities inserted into different types of ecosystems can both live off the natural resources they take from these ecosystems and ensure their long-term reproduction (Ostrom, 1990), thus demonstrating a primary ecological concern.

Ostrom's approach demonstrates the existence of a diversity of self-organised forms of collective action, based on institutional arrangements that can, under certain conditions, produce their own identity and autonomy (Chanteau and Labrousse, 2013; Brondizio and Pérez, 2017).

The framework of the commons makes it possible to overcome the aporia of a conceptual model based solely on the opposition and/or complementaritý between the market and the state and which has rendered invisible a large part of the alternatives observed in the field of transitions. It allows, as well, for the articulation of a critical perspective and a pragmatic attention to emancipatory experiences (Sousa Santos, 2016). It has given rise to a wealth of research in many fields of social science (sociology, law, economics, geography, etc.). And, in a more practical sense, it can be considered as "a movement 'for', and no longer only a movement 'against'" (Laval, 2016).

Since the first commons described as 'natural-based' by Ostrom, the framework of the commons has expanded in many directions (see Cornu-Volatron, Rochfeld, Orsi 2017). It has integrated the informational and digital commons of universal access and has expanded to include research on living things and literary as well as artistic creations (creative commons).

It now concerns a large number of fields (Hess, 2008), encompassing in turn the notion of the common goods. For a long time limited to 'natural' areas (rivers, oceans, the atmosphere, etc.), the commons are now, according to the work of the Rodotà Commission (2016), linked to fundamental human rights, which significantly broadens their framework and the possible extension of their application.

In sociology, in particular, reflection on the commons has focused on the 'common', considered as a political principle (Dardot and Laval, 2014), while recognising that it is the relationship to the living and to the planet that it is now essential to take into account more broadly in order to think about a sociology of the common (David and Le Dévédec, 2016).

For its 17th congress, the RIODD intends to take up the pluridisciplinary issue of the commons, communities and territories to explore the pathways towards the transitions that the current crises (ecological, economic, social) call for.

This subject is in line with the CEPN's fields of expertise, which will be in charge of organising the conference. Moreover, it echoes the laboratory's Crises & Transitions programme, the work on the commons that has been carried out for several years, and it is more broadly in line with the field of the Federative Structure on the Commons of the University Sorbonne Paris Nord.

The CEPN will benefit from the support of two external partners for the organisation of the RIODD congress: the IAE of Paris and the Ecological Accounting Partnership Chair.

1/03/2022: deadline for submission of open thematic session proposals

11/03/2022 : opening of the call for papers

18/05/2022 : deadline for submission of papers (short or long papers)

06/06/2022 : deadline for submission of closed session proposals

11/07/2022 : notification to authors

19/09/2022 : deadline for sending the final versions of papers