Community gardens as feminist spaces: A more‐than‐gendered approach to their transformative potential

Abstract

In recent years, research in urban agriculture (UA) initiatives has adopted a more critical and transdisciplinary approach, proposing that UA enables shifts in socio‐economic, community, environmental and urban paradigms. Following this critical agenda, this paper draws attention to the multi‐scalar transformative potential that participation in community gardens (as a form of UA) can provide to volunteers, informed by a feminist approach. Firstly, we review the literature on the diverse gendered benefits, and degrees of empowerment women have experienced from working in community gardens, both individually and collectively. Examples from the literature review are informed by concepts from feminist geographies that support the exploration of community gardens as sites of embodied, relational and multi‐scalar experience. Following that, we expand the discussion to review opportunities community gardens offer individuals to gain greater awareness of symbolic forms of oppression, and envision alternatives for social change, drawing on feminist geographies in ways that move ‘beyond gender’. These benefits are mostly informed by conscientisation, decolonial and feminist political ecology approaches. Finally, the paper suggests that community gardens can be conceptualised as feminist spaces, given their fluidity and capacity to enable critical perspectives in volunteers, which may result in alternative forms of political action. The paper concludes with suggestions for further critical research on UA spaces.

Racism in paradise: Being migrants in urban agriculture in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…The effects of UA are wide, multifaceted and contradictory. Some positive aspects identified by UA researchers include improved physical and mental health of volunteers, community building, and spiritual and political engagement (Audate et al, 2019; Braga Bizarria et al, 2022). Alongside literature that has discussed UA as spaces for empowerment (Mmako et al, 2018; White, 2015), critical studies also show the emancipatory potential of gardens to marginalised populations, who find in these spaces opportunities to articulate themselves at multiscalar levels, challenging settler‐colonial and racist dynamics (Chollett, 2014; Hosking & Palomino‐Schalscha, 2016).…”

Affective atmospheres of care in community gardens: Women’s embodied practices of (co)becoming in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand

“…My study reiterates the perspective of community gardens as feminist spaces (Braga Bizarria et al, 2022), which reveals that the gardens' affective atmospheres not only enact critical reflections about gender relations but promote diverse and more inclusive forms of being with places and multi-scalar forms of political action. Nevertheless, also aligned with the feminist understandings of spaces as open, processual and negotiated, I acknowledge that the expressions of "resistance, resilience and reworking" (MacLeavy et al, 2021) enacted by the volunteers are not homogeneous, and limited.…”

“…These experiences reinforce the transformative potential of community gardens (Braga Bizarria et al, 2022), as the activities and relationships developed there can support people to recover a sense of self-worth, creativity and connection to place. The access to individual and collective resources to run these initiatives contributes to an atmosphere of support and solidarity that can enact empowering experiences for women (Mishra & Tripathi, 2011).…”

“…My interaction with the volunteers also revealed other nuances from the myriad of relations they develop with humans and morethan-humans, which were directly related to participants' gender and/or for being female bodies. Participants' engagement with the atmospheres of creativity, safety and tranquility echoes and adds to findings from the literature which indicate that community gardens can be learning, restorative, and well-being spaces (Braga Bizarria et al, 2022), although still pervaded with exclusive and discriminatory practices (Haskaj, 2021;McClintock, 2018).…”

“…As Gibson-Graham (2005) and Underhill-Sem (2005) argue, focusing on small, ubiquitous initiatives can highlight how places, identities, and power relations can be effectively transformed across scales, from the body/local to the collective/global. Indeed, Braga Bizarria et al (2022) suggest that the "patchy spatiality" of community gardens illustrates how these context-specific initiatives have the potential to "scale up and out from the specificity of the local" (p. 6). This multiscalarity helps to unpack the nuances and interconnections among personal, socio-cultural, and political processes and discourses, challenging the supremacy of the global compared to the local.…”