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Paper short abstract:

We focus on the ‘unruly fruit trees’ of a Warsaw public park. The ‘unruly tree’ is a figure that forefronts the plant logic. We are interested in how local activists’ understand and practice biophilia and/or biophobia under the influence of the ‘unruly trees’ in this unique urban orchard.

Paper long abstract:

The framework of ecological services locks urban greenspaces in utilitarian rationality, which in itself can be seen as an impediment to green transitions. Among other limitations, it fosters a biophilic vision that does not leave space for an ‘unruly tree’ (Dean 2016). The latter is a figure that forefronts the plant logic.

In this paper we explore the case of park Owocowe Sady Żoliborskie in Warsaw, a unique fruit tree public park that transformed from allotment garden, through urban wilderness site into a managed urban greenspace in 1990. Historically and contemporarily the park provides apples, pears, and plums for local dwellers’ consumption. The park has witnessed an upsurge of local green activism focused on conserving its ‘fruit character’ in the last three years. The formalized and informal tree and flower planting practices as well as fruit picking and sharing practices unfold in the park.

Relying on the ethnographic fieldwork, we focus on the ‘unruly trees’ of the park. Are fruit trees a nuisance or an ecological benefit? How to manage the edibility of plants growing in urban greenspaces? Can relation with fruit trees help to overcome climate crisis as well as the crisis of urban alienation? The recent local green activism in Owocowe Sady Żoliborskie has evolved around these questions, with the audible overtones of neighbourly feud. In our paper we analyse the practices and meanings of both biophobia and biophilia triggered by the ‘unruly tree’ in this unique urban orchard.

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Paper short abstract:

Can hopelessness lead to political action? This paper analyzes how urban gardening in Sweden lends people a preparedness practice that both provides a profound experience of nature and teaches self-sufficiency skills. Both are needed for the deep moral commitment that leads to action.

Paper long abstract:

Anxiety over our inability to stop an imminent environmental apocalypse has led to forms of individualized and often consumer politics that help people cope with their own sense of powerlessness. However, social movement scholars drawing on the sociology of emotions have recently started to point out that, contrary to expectations, hopelessness may lead to mobilization. In this article, I analyze the intersection of hope and environmental anxiety drawing on three years of ethnographic research of urban gardening activism in Sweden. I show that many gardeners have a bleak view of our capacity to avert environmental catastrophe: in one way or another, they say, this way of living will come to an end. Gardening practice allows individuals to develop trust in nature’s capacity to renew and provide an abundance of produce, a process reinforced in communal gardens by others. Urban gardening activism with its focus on localized changes may not have the power to prevent environmental catastrophe, but it does provide a silver-lining: preparedness and post-apocalyptic renewal. Initially this work may at times bring relief to environmental anxieties. In the case of committed urban gardeners this is a much more profound experience. Hopelessness in the face of certain crises does not diminish but enhance gardening’s importance. More than simply providing a tool for coping with anxiety, it provides a tool that redefines individual powerlessness.

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Paper short abstract:

This presentation focusses on how the socio-spatial segregation in the Gothenburg area shapes and forms gardening members’ understandings and views of the urban common, and how their gardening impacts social connections, collaborations and sustainability practices.

Paper long abstract:

During the past decade, urban gardening in the Gothenburg area has become a popular activity supported and promoted by institutional actors such as municipalities, the Swedish Union of Tenants, the Swedish Church and public housing associations. This type of gardening on municipality owned land is often conditioned: the land is leased for free, but the gardeners need to be members of an association with a membership fee and specific enactments that members abide to. Nevertheless, the actual gardening can be organized in different ways; either as a shared gardening activity where everything is grown and harvested collectively or as a more individual activity where the gardening area is divided in different slots, planting and harvesting is individually prepared and performed. Another difference between gardening projects lies in their socio-spatial location, seen that gardening associations are located in more or less gentrified, socioeconomic and/or ethnically mixed areas.

The aim with this presentation is to explore how urban gardening activities in the Gothenburg area shape social sustainability practices and collaboration across social/socioeconomic and ethnical divides. Based on ethnographic field work and interviews, the study compares and explores gardening activities in different socio-spatial locations during and after the Swedish Covid19 restrictions. Empirically, we followed four different urban gardening associations and interviewed different members. The analyses focus on how the socio-spatial segregation shapes and forms gardening members’ understandings and views of the urban common, and how their gardening impact social connections, collaborations and sustainability practices.

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Paper short abstract:

In recent years, peri-urban allotment gardens in Hungary have become an important space for informal economic activities complementing households’ reproductive needs. We investigate allotments’ role in households’ portfolios, together with the values/imaginaries associated with them.

Paper long abstract:

After the regime change in 1989, and especially since the 2008 financial crisis, peri-urban allotment gardens in Hungary have become an important space for informal economic activities complementing households’ reproductive needs. Originally, allotments were institutionalized by the socialist state to provide agricultural and recreational spaces for workers living in urban flats. As housing and utility costs boomed after the regime change, allotments became a target for housing mobility. This tendency has been exacerbated both by the 2008 crisis and by climate-related anxieties. Besides systemic push factors, allotments also attracted households as potential spaces to develop self-sufficiency: detach from urban infrastructures (and related cost pressures), increase dwelling autonomy through self-building (often under conditions of informality), and develop informal economic activities tied to allotments, including gardening.

Our presentation investigates allotments’ role in households’ reproductive portfolios, through the example of an allotment in the Southern periphery of Budapest. Relying on ethnographic research, we discuss food production, self-building, and other informal economic activities performed in the gardens, and assess the significance of these practices in household types characteristic to this allotment’s social constitution. Next to the material significance of informal reproductive practices tied to the gardens, we also trace habitual and ideological aspects of practices associated with self-sufficiency. We look at structural pressures that shape these practices together with the values and imaginaries that household members associate with them.