Cultivating commoner subjectivities and transforming agency in commoned urban gardens. Issue 141 (May 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bergame, Nathalie
• Is Part Of: Geoforum. Issue 141(2023)
• Publication Date: 2023-05
• Subjects: Feminist theory -- Agency -- Commoning -- Urban gardening -- Subjectivity -- Critical realism; Geography -- Periodicals; Human geography -- Periodicals; Regional planning -- Periodicals; Sciences de la terre -- Périodiques; Géographie -- Périodiques; Géographie humaine -- Périodiques; Aménagement du territoire -- Périodiques; Earth sciences; Geography; Human geography; Regional planning; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 304.205
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103725
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0016-7185

Abstract

Highlights: Understands urban gardening as commoning practice that conditions agency. Explores practices of collective action and their effect on agency dialectically. Applies critical realist social theory novel to the study of urban commons. Probes urban gardening as mechanism for emancipatory subject formation. Abstract: Commoning as a mechanism for transforming agency and subjectivities is relevant in a contemporary urban context structured by neoliberal capitalist relations that work to alienate people, suppress agency and enclose spaces. Despite wide agreement that commoning practices mediate subject formation and agential change, little has been written on the epistemological and ontological grounds for understanding how commoning practices achieve this. Grounded in the social realist theory put forward by Archer (2000), which suggests understanding transformations linked to agency and subjectivity as outcomes of the dialectical relation between agency and structure, mediated by practice in space and over time, this paper analyses the burgeoning practice of urban gardening in common in the City of Stockholm, Sweden, with respect to its potential to transform agency and subjectivity. I find that (i) conditioned by structural context, gardeners assume a variety of (contradictory) subjectivities (the commoner, the white encloser, the unpaid public manager and hobby gardener), and (ii) that through the collective nature of the gardens, roles are created and a corporate agency emerges, which (iii) allows some gardeners to become social actors whereby they can live out their personal identities and change the structural context for others.