Pruning the Community Orchard: Methods for Navigating Human-Fruit Tree Relations. Issue 1 (2nd January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Betz, Megan
• Is Part Of: Geographical review. Volume 110:Issue 1/2(2020)
• Page Start: 224
• Page End: 237
• Publication Date: 2020-01-02
• Subjects: community orchards -- urban agriculture -- multispecies research -- political ecology -- vegetal geography; Geography -- Periodicals; 910
• DOI: 10.1111/gere.12348
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0016-7428

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The Bloomington Community Orchard's volunteers articulate their experience in the orchard as working in tandem with human and nonhuman others. Orchardists and fruit trees co-construct the space, and in turn the community it fosters. This co-construction is most prominent in pruning, the most affect-laden task in the orchard's management, requiring violence and care as orchardists carve trees into shape. To understand these human-fruit tree relations and allow my methods to mirror the orchardists' articulation of their experience, I turn to multispecies research, examining how humans speak for or with trees, as well as how trees exert themselves and define a community orchard's needs. I combine participant observation, semistructured interviews, and discourse analysis with a national survey of community orchards and an analysis of trees' responses to orcharding methods to understand how fruit tree-human relations inform the community that emerges from such orchards.