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Accepted Paper:
Co-creating health with non-humans: Insights from elderly urban rooftop gardening in South Asia
gomathy kn
(University of Hyderabad)
Dominant anthropological discourse on organic food gardening tend to be anthropocentric, privileging the role of humans, thereby muting the agency of non-humans in the process. This paper tries to redefine urban food gardening as an animistic performance of kinship by both humans and non-humans.
Paper long abstract:
Two of the many problems associated with rapid urbanization are food safety and waste management. In the case of South Indian City of Thiruvananthapuram, India, the past decade has witnessed awareness and alarm from media reports of increased amount of pesticide residue in imported vegetables and fruits. This led to a policy of 'self sufficiency' in vegetable production. Growbags with seeds, compost bins, lab cultured microorganisms, bio-fertilizers, biogas plants, irrigation tubes, and so on began to be supplied by the State to city residents to take up home gardening and in situ waste management. This paper is based on an ethnographic study among 150 elderly urban residents engaged in this process. Following the new materialistic, and more-than-human turn in social sciences, this chapter tries to challenge the idea of gardening as a human-designed activity, where the non-humans (plants, pests, and things) are mere beings or instruments fulfilling human purposes. Instead, it seeks to look at gardening as an assemblage, foregrounding the intentional ‘doings’ of all entities, human and non-human. In the process gardening emerges beyond growing food; gardening emerges as the animistic performance of kinship. Thus it also highlights how human-environmental relations in built environments are integral to healthy and happy ageing.