Securing flood risk as a “common-community”: institutional colonization and practical resistance in the Grenoble plain

In this paper, we mobilise the paradigm of the commons to re-interrogate, from the Ancien-Régime to the present day, the modes of governance of associations of property owners for the protection of the flood risk in the Grenoble plain (France). The hypothesis defended is that the analysis of the governance of these associations allows us to identify norms and practices of commoning that are often hidden due to a process of colonisation of the common by the public power. After having contextualised our problematic in the literature on flood risk and on the commons, we retrace the history of these associations by reporting on their colonization and marginalization by the public power. In the last part of the article, we discuss the contemporary issues and the future of these forms of commons organizations, based on the analysis of the case of two associations, one of which is still active.