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Accepted Paper:
Making common grounds: experiments in self-organization in Dutch urban environments
Fabiola Jara Gomez (Utrecht University) Beatriz Pineda Revilla
Paper short abstract:
Resilience and sustainability are key challenges for self-reliant grass-roots urban initiatives. This paper focuses on urban food provisioning initiatives and presents ongoing research in the Eastern district of Amsterdam. We use strategies of participative research in urban planning and social anthropology.
Paper long abstract:
Resilience and sustainability are key challenges for grass-roots urban initiatives. Research on alternative food provisioning systems in Amsterdam and Berlin demonstrates the crucial role that the networks intersecting neighborhood organizations, city council officials, housing corporations and local entrepreneurs play in enduring success of these initiatives. This paper focuses on action research methodologies. We present preliminary results of an ongoing research in a neighborhood located in Amsterdam East. Remarkable neighborhood due to its high degree of ethnic diversity (more than 36 distinctive groups), its high incidence of families depending on complex public support, in combination with a concentration of initiatives and experimentation in self-reliance by the local population. People experiment on alternative food distribution: food banks and community kitchens; use of alternative currencies and time-banks; community gardening and community based care. How do resilience and sustainability appear in local settings and in which environments do they thrive?
The proposed methodology encompasses multidisciplinary strategies including: the mapping and archaeology of the places; the recording of narratives of belonging; some instruments from the Actor-Network Theory to follow processes of network formation recruitment and mobilization. We are attentive to the presence of brokers notably creative actors and cultural translators; and seek to assess the diversity of resources (material, social, cultural and conceptual) mobilized throughout the networks. We consider what we call the impetus factor expressed in a sense of urgency the incidence of sharing events and the awareness in the making of common grounds amongst the participants.
New directions in anthropology, architecture and design
Session 1