Author Affiliation: 1. Chaitawat Boonjubun, University of Helsinki, Finland. 2. Anne Haila, University of Helsinki. Finland. 3. Jani Vuolteenaho, University of Helsinki, Finland.
摘要
Recent critical scholarship has theorized the urban commons in terms of value regimes and practices not reducible to market logic. Specifically, it views the urban commons as a counter force to greediness, poverty, and other ills of the neoliberal urban era, but it neglects the centrality of "land." We offer a corrective. Based on a study of the commons that is embedded in religious land, this article interrogates the tradition-rooted ethical maintenance and mundane uses of religious land in the context of urban Thailand. Buddhist temples (wats) show that monastic landlords are aware of religious land’s revenue-generating possibilities, but they resist the temptation to treat it speculatively. Instead, religious land is leased for housing, vending, and farming at a nominal rent, alongside its use for a range of religious and communal purposes. As a faith-based, non-Western, and pro-poor form of urban commons, the wats provide an understudied type of flourishing alternative to the privatized commodification and financialization of urban land. We discuss the advantages (related to the wats' stability and popular, but anti-radical, appeal) and problems (perils of repressiveness, otherworldliness, instances of corruption, and quasi-sovereignty from state power) in conceptualizing the land of faith-based organizations and their ownership and leasing practices as instances of the urban commons.
目次
Introduction 586 The Underlying Behemoth: Land as Privatized- Cum- Financialized Property 589 Conceptualizing the Land- Rooted Commons in the Urban Religious Context 592 Economics as a Secular Religion 594 From Newly Reclaimed to Tradition- Rooted Urban Commons 595 Research Design 598 Land Tenure and Property Rights in Thailand: An Historical Overview 600 The Origin of Temple Land: Merit- Making and Story-Telling 602 Present-Day Land Donations and Merit-Making 604 Legal Demarcations of the Temple Land 608 The Wats as Sacred Land 611 Temple Land as the Pro- Poor Commons: Wats as Social Landlords 613 Temple Land for Housing 613 Temple Land for Vending and Farming 616 Temple Lands' General Benefits for the Community 617 Wats as Stewards of Art 618 Wat Land for the Community 619 Conclusions: Religious Urban Land as Commons? 620 Acknowledgements 624 Notes 624 References 625
