Creating careful circularities: Community composting in New York City

Abstract

Compost is seen as black gold among food producers. However, the process of creating, distributing, and using compost in an urban setting has received limited attention within the social sciences broadly and within geography in particular. This is despite an increasingly robust realm of waste and discard studies within the academy (Davies,

Creating fairer futures for sustainability transitions

“…It is assumed that people in the future will be unequivocal in their support of technologically‐enhanced eating, something which is not borne out in literature (Davies, 2014a ). As with FPE, a more critical perspective gives intellectual space to ask questions about the impacts of further distancing people from food grown ‘in nature’, such as a further loss of spaces to practice caring around food, and to experience the feeling of care, of putting hands in soil, planting seeds, and experiencing the emotional and physical wellbeing of growing food in community with others (Dobson et al., 2020 ; Morrow & Davies, 2022 ; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2015 ). Furthermore, it helps us to explore the subjectivities shaped by materialities of such techno‐dominated futures.…”

On meaningful diversity: past, present and future of Wageningen rural sociology

“…For example, work on food sharing and food waste considers formal to non-formal modes of governance to understand shared responsibility ). This approach has also supported our thinking around circularity and(Morrow and Davies 2021;Duncan and Pascucci 2016) and regeneration(Duncan, Wiskerke, and Carolan 2021), informing inputs that aim to challenge dominant narratives about how and why people provision food the way they do.…”

From Circular Economy to Circular Society

“…Care cycles are responsible for the well-being and education of children, the feeding and nourishing of most of humanity, the regeneration of vital ecosystems, the protection of biodiversity, the maintenance of people's physical and mental health etc. (Morrow and Davies, 2021;Pla-Julián and Guevara, 2019;Rogers et al, 2021). When these cycles of care stop by being commoditized, by neglect, by lack of free time, or by lack of funding for social services and safety nets; human societies can face major crises of socioecological health and wellbeing (Dengler and Lang, 2021;Helne and Hirvilammi, 2019;Phillips, 2020).…”

“…There is also a significant lack of academic research on the social and political implications of CE and on the public policies to transition to a fair and sustainable circular future (Lazarevic and Valve, 2017;Millar et al, 2019;Temesgen et al, 2019). Although some social movements and academics have started to propose a "social CE" (Social Circular Economy, 2017), a "circular humansphere", (Schröder et al, 2020), a "careful circularity" (Morrow and Davies, 2021) or a "circular society" (Jaeger-Erben et al, 2021;Jaeger-Erben and Hofmann, 2020;Leipold et al, 2021;Melles, 2021) as a more inclusive and socially just approach to circularity, they remain a relatively marginal part of the academic and societal discourse on the topic.…”

“…They thereby foster democratic citizen control over the economy and create more resilient, vibrant, and selfsufficient local economies (Alexander, 2015;Bookchin, 1982;Felber, 2015). By supporting local cooperatives, municipalities can not only maintain wealth and resources within the local economy, but can also promote and finance ecologically sustainable initiatives such as repair cafés, tool libraries, community swap centres, community-owned renewable energy generation, and community-supported organic agriculture (Hobson, 2019;Hobson and Lynch, 2016;Koretskaya and Feola, 2020;Lekan et al, 2021;Morrow and Davies, 2021). Moreover, cooperatives enable a redistribution of resources, land, wealth, and knowledge, from private corporations to local communities thanks to open-source platforms, community land trusts, local currencies, community banking and other key elements of cooperative and collective ownership structures (Bengtsson et al, 2018;D' Alisa and Kallis, 2020;Ferreira and von Schönfeld, 2020;Foramitti et al, 2020;Gerber and Gerber, 2017).…”