Exploring ‘festive commoning’ in radical gatherings in Scotland

Drawing on immersive ethnographic fieldwork at three events in Scotland, all grounded in ecological sensibilities and focusing respectively on alternative medicine, music and reviving seasonal celebrations, this article illuminates aspects of what we call ‘festive commoning’. We ask: how, and to what extent, were commons ‘against and beyond’ capital produced in these gatherings? We re-read a history of resistance to festive autonomy in this light, as a continuing struggle against capitalist enclosures of time, space, knowledge, history and being in the world. We argue that alternative grassroots gatherings can produce a ‘festive commons’ that resists such enclosures, including breaking down divisions between self and other, human and non-human beings. Such processes generate collective joy, and enliven the radical imagination. Experiencing festive commons is not only an aspect of the pleasure valued in some radical traditions, but also makes another world possible, even if only a temporary one.