The point of departure of our study is the observation that European societies currently experience increasing conflicts between ‘social’ and ‘ecological’ orientations. Policy measures aimed at limiting the risks of climate change currently fuel counter-reactions like the violent protests of the yellow vests in France. This conflict shows how the climate affects the social, and how the social affects the climate. Bruno Latour argues in his book ‘Down to Earth’ (2018) that we need to move beyond the divide between the ecological and the social, which will require new attachments to the earth. Meaningful forms of collective learning will be needed. Social movements are valuable sites of such learning both individually and collectively. In line with this, we are interested in the learning taking place in the emerging commons movement. The ‘commons movement’ is a new type of social movement currently experimenting with sustainable alternatives to the dominant economic regime (Bollier, 2014). We will particularly look at the social learning processes enhancing new attachments to the earth. We define social learning as ‘the learning of groups, networks, communities and social systems, engaged in problem solving activities, in conditions that are new, unexpected, uncertain, conflicting and hard to predict’ (Wildemeersch 2014, p 17). The learning of new attachments has a socio-emotional and a political dimension. We will consider the socio-emotional dimension through the lens of aesthetics. Jacques Rancière relates aesthetics to the ‘order of the sensible’, which is about the ‘specific distribution of space and time, of the visible and the invisible, that creates specific forms of “commonsense”’ (Rancière, 2010, p. 141). In this view, the order of the sensible, or the common sense, is challenged and eventually changed by moments of ‘dissent’. Dissent is also a central notion in the work of Chantal Mouffe (2005). Mouffe distinguishes between ‘politics’ and ‘the political’, whereby the notion of ‘politics’ relates to practices of governing and the notion of ‘the political’ relates to the condition of life, characterized by ongoing conflicts between interests, values, ideals, etc.. Particularly the notion of ‘the political’ will inspire our research. In conclusion, we propose to depart from two general research questions: In what way does social learning in the commons movement enhance the development of new attachments to the earth? How do aesthetic and political dimensions of sustainability issues play a role in these social learning processes?

Bollier, D. (2014). Think like a commoner. A short introduction to the life of the commons. Gabriola Island (BC): New Society Publishers. Latour, B. (2018). Down to Earth. Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mouffe, C. (2005). On the Political. Thinking in Action. London: Routledge Rancière, J. (2010). Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Continuum. Wildemeersch, D. (2014). Displacing concepts of social learning and democratic citizenship. In G. Biesta, M. De Bie, & D. Wildemeersch (Eds.), Civic learning, democratic citizenship and the public sphere (pp. 15–28). Dordrecht: Springer