THEORY FROM EMPTY LAND: Informal Commoning Outside/Within Economies and Ecologies of the Urban

Debates over the ontology of contemporary urbanization have questioned the notion of a meaningful ‘outside’ to the urban and have called for greater attention to the socially contested construction of urban subjects and space. Ethnographic study of informal peri-urban agriculture in the rapidly urbanizing city of Chongqing in Southwest China allows for a critical examination of the everyday ecologies and economies of planetary urbanization. The state-led expansion of Chongqing since the early 2000s has created a peri-urban zone consisting of large areas of undeveloped land awaiting construction, which is utilized informally by displaced ‘urbanized’ peasants and migrant workers. The use of this ‘empty’ urban land for agriculture reveals informal practices and displaced subjects which are variously positioned as ‘outside’ or ‘within’ urban systems and values. The undeveloped land remains ecologically entangled with urban processes and is the site of a contested commoning of space which is regarded as external to urban market values. Theorizing from the kongdi (empty land) launches a novel understanding of under-studied urbanizing spaces which are positioned ambiguously outside urban governance, are under threat of rapid enclosure within urban regimes of accumulation, and spatialize the negotiation of the boundaries and meaning of the urban itself.