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What’s radical about DIY food?

Intersectional Politics and Community Gardening

Gwendolin McCrea

Department of Geography

University of Minnesota

Critical Geographies of Urban Agriculture

RGS-IBG Annual International Conference

July 3-5, 2012

University of Edinburgh

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Introduction

In May 2011 I attended a film screening at Bread for the City, a social service

organization and food pantry in Washington, D.C. In addition to the documentary film A

Community of Gardeners, the evening included a tour of Bread for the City’s new rooftop

garden, a potluck dinner, and a discussion with the filmmaker and representatives from

organized gardening projects in the city. The film and the discussion were right in line with what

one might expect from such an event; the film showcased an interesting cross-section of

organized garden projects in the city, and the discussion was lively and inspiring. In short, it was

the kind of event that highlights the enthusiasm and passion of community organizers and

activists, in this case coming together to talk about the agricultural system, food justice, and

community gardening.

A few months after attending the screening of A Community of Gardeners, I purchased a

copy for my research on urban food self-provisioning1. As I watched it for the second time, I was

struck by an interview early in the film in which the assistant coordinator of a community garden

states that he had to fence his plot because he was being targeted by vandals who would pull up

his plants and even apply herbicides to his crops. He attributed it to someone “not liking [his]

style of management.” The filmmaker followed this revelation with a statement from the

president of the same garden discussing the issue of stolen produce. The manager’s response was

to tell new gardeners to “plan for yourself and others.” Gardeners, upset about the thefts, would

tell her that they would gladly give people food from their gardens, if only they would ask

(Cabib 2011). This is not an unusual statement at all, given the gifting cultures and traditions of

most food gardeners, except that the “others” are stealing produce, not accepting gifts.

What was most striking was not the revelation that there are problems of vandalism or

moments of conflict in urban community garden projects, nor that this particular issue was not

dealt with systematically in the film, but rather that issues of conflict are not much talked about

in community discussions, city council hearings, and other forums dealing with urban agriculture

projects. It is both pleasant and expedient for community organizations to focus on their

1 1 Self-provisioning is the production or procurement of a household’s means of subsistence through

practices that can include gardening, animal husbandry, beekeeping, hunting, fishing, wildcrafting, and

preservation and storage of food.

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achievements and visions for the future. But it is also important to consider the missed

opportunities and disconnects that are encountered in community work, because it is often

through dialogue over discord that the form and effects of community work are shaped. Lack of

discussion in the wider gardening activist community gives the impression that such struggles

are incidents isolated to specific times and projects, which makes it easy, perhaps inevitable, that

patterns of injustices from the wider society will be reflected and reproduced, even in visionary

progressive garden spaces.

We ask a lot of the term “community” when we talk about these organized garden

projects.2 Proponents wax lyrical about the potential to re-create society through connection to

growing things, to sustenance, and to life. Rarely do people bother to define community—is it

just the members of a garden project? Is it everyone in the neighborhood, or everyone in the city?

To use the terminology of this session, what does it mean to have “community cohesion”? Who

does the boundary work of these garden communities? Who refuses to participate, and why?

Who does participate, and what are their motivations? And crucially, what are the effects of the

practices of community gardeners?

The answers to these questions have changed in the nearly 120 years since community

gardens have existed as such in the United States. This essay will first look at the history of

community gardening in the United States and identify some of the factors that distinguish the

current surge in urban food production. One of those factors is the popularity of the alternative

food movement; I will discuss the cultural, social, and racial politics and practices of the

alternative food movement. In the following section, I will describe the community gardening

landscape in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area where I am conducting research that explores the

politics, practices, and effects of urban food production. The particular case of Washington, D.C.

highlights the importance of framing research questions in a way that will capture the

intersections of privilege and inequality. I will conclude with some thoughts about developing

research methodologies informed by feminist theories of intersectionality.

2 This variability, and the elusiveness of the meaning of “community” has led some researchers

to abandon the term in favor of more descriptive names like “organized garden projects” (Pudup

2008). In this paper I will use both terms, with the understandings that “community” is an

overdefined concept and that there are political and social implications of treating “community”

as axiomatic.

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Community Gardening in the United States

Community gardens can take many forms, from rental plots on public land, to school

gardens, to communal projects. The organized collective use of land for growing food known as

community gardens have existed in the United States in various forms since the late 19th

century

(Lawson 2005). Thomas Bassett, in his 1979 geography Master’s thesis, suggests that rather than

being institutionalized (as allotments are in Europe, for example), gardening projects in the U.S.

are a series of movements with differing origins and trajectories. He notes that periods of

community garden popularity have been preceded by social, economic, or political crises

(Bassett 1979). These crises fall into four broad categories: economic recessions, wars, urban

social movements, and public health concerns.

Bassett suggests that the energy crisis and the nascent environmental movement had a

significant impact on gardening projects in the 1970s. That decade also saw serious problems of

urban decay, as landlords abandoned properties and cities cut back on basic services. In some

urban neighborhoods, housing activist joined forces with gardeners to reclaim vacant properties

and transform them into cooperative housing and green space (Martinez 2010). The roll-back

neoliberalism of urban governance in the 1980s prompted a resurgence in gardening projects as a

form of resistance to the encroachment of market-driven rationales in daily life. While many of

these gardens are still in existence, and their origins are within the living memory of gardeners

who continue to take part in food production, in the 1990s there began a shift from a

communitarian ideal to one more informed by individualism. Non-governmental organizations

and public/private partnerships began to organize gardening projects with the object of making

improvements to individual well-being instead of community empowerment (Pudup 2008).

There are two other forces at work in the current popularity of food production in general,

and community gardening in particular. The first is the economic recession that began in 2007,

the effects of which are still being felt strongly throughout much of the country. In 2009, a

journalist from CNN reported on a surge in the number of people growing food, both in their

own yards and in community gardens, which he called “recession gardens” (Sutter 2009). 34% of

households included in a report by the National Gardening Association (NGA) reported being

motivated by the recession (NGA 2009). These two sources addressed food production in

general, not specifically in community gardens. However, that same NGA white paper reported

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that 1 million households currently cultivate food in community gardens, and 5 million more are

“extremely or very interested” in doing so (NGA 2009, 4-5).

The second influence on the current surge in community gardening is the alternative food

movement. This movement articulates a number of critiques of the industrialized agriculture and

food systems, in particular critiques of food contamination, poor nutritional content,

environmental degradation, and faltering local economies. In the United States, government

lobbying efforts have yielded mixed results; consumer activism has been the principal strategy

instead (Brown and Getz 2008; J Guthman 2007). This is expressed in buy-local campaigns, an

explosion of farmers markets, and farm-to-school programs that attempt to create short, local

food chains (Alkon and Norgaard 2009; Connell, Smithers, and Joseph 2008; DuPuis and

Goodman 2005; Watts, Ilbery, and Maye 2005). Popular media expressions of this movement

include The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (2007) and the documentary film Food,

Inc. (Kenner et al. 2009). First Lady Michelle Obama has even had an organic vegetable garden

planted on the South Lawn of the White House.

Alternative food movement projects, including community gardens, are forms of activism

that protest industrial agriculture while supporting alt-food producers (whether those producers

are local farmers or community gardeners). Their vision of “good food” as nutritious, varied,

raised with socially and environmentally sound practices, and supportive of local economies

offers a critique of the neoliberal roll-back and roll-out model as it has been applied to

agriculture. At the same time, scholars have pointed out the alternative food movement in the

U.S. is a normative one that promotes values, discourses, and practices of the White middle class

while masking them as self-evidently good (Alkon and McCullen 2011; Julie Guthman 2008;

Slocum 2011).

For example, practices at farmers markets embody some actors as white and others as

different (Slocum 2008). Such practices include market organizers’ choices about locations of

vendors, vendors’ interactions with one another and with customers, and customers’ practices of

handling produce they are unfamiliar with and questioning vendors or other customers about

how to prepare them. Slocum recognizes the hopeful politics enacted in farmers markets and the

alt-food movement, but does encourage awareness of these othering practices in order to identify

and ultimately change them. Guthman (2008) demonstrates that the assumptions of what “good

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food” is, who knows about it, and who needs education about it are embedded in white privilege.

She advocates that those who are interested in helping should do so by following the lead of

activists working for change from within minority communities.

Ultimately, the alternative food movement is profoundly ambiguous. Its radical critique

of industrial agriculture is tempered by activism that is primarily about influencing consumer

choice, and its unreflexive framing of issues of “good food” trades in socio-economic and white

privilege. The choices alt-food activists make about reflexivity and intersectional politics will

determine whether it may transform itself into a movement with broad appeal.

Community Gardening in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C. has been a majority African American3 city since the 1960s, although

the margin of this majority is in decline and the African American population is now around 50%

(US Census Bureau 2010). This city holds an important place in American history as the home of

many African American scientists, philosophers, and artists. The city in general, and many

neighborhoods in particular (e.g. Anacostia, Shaw, and the U Street Corridor), have historically

had a strong African American identity. With the decline in African American population, in part

caused by the push of gentrification and the pull of less expensive housing and amenities in the

suburbs of the DC Metro Area, the character of some of these neighborhoods is changing

(Tavernise 2011).

Washington D.C. is divided into eight wards, which are the basis of government (each

ward elects one representative to the D.C. City Council, in addition to the five at-large

representatives). As in many cities, there is a great deal of spatial inequality. The average family

income is US$257,386 in Ward 3, and only US$44,076 in Ward 8. Table 1 displays a significant

disparity in poverty levels and unemployment rates, particularly in Wards 7 and 8. There is also a

large difference in the number of acres of land available for community gardens in each ward.

All in all, the four wealthiest wards have 2.5 times as much land in community gardens as the

four poorest wards.

3 The 2010 U.S. Census racial category is “Black, African American, or Negro.” This does not necessarily reflect the

preferred terminology for any specific individual or group.

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Table 1: Population and Community Gardens in Washington D.C. Wards

Ward 1 Ward 2 Ward 3 Ward 4 Ward 5 Ward 6 Ward 7 Ward 8

Population 76,197 79,915 77,152 75,773 74,308 76,598 71,068 70,712

% Black 33 13 5.6 59 77 42 96 94

% White not Hispanic 41 67 78 20 15 47 1.4 3.3

% Hispanic4 21 9.5 7.5 19 6.3 4.8 2.3 1.8

% Asian 5 10 8.2 2 1.7 5 0.2 0.5

% Homeowners 37 40 57 63 49 47 40 24

Avg Family Income $98,485 $190,692 $257,386 $116,668 $78,559 $120,526 $54,677 $44,076

Unemployment Rate 7.2 4 3.4 7.6 13 8.4 19 17

Poverty Rate 16 15 6.9 9.9 19 18 26 35

Acres of Community

Gardens

0.635 0.619 7.281 9.368 2.379 1.710 4.268 0.257

Source data: DC’s Field to Fork Network: All Community Garden Data at http://fieldtoforknetwork.org/community-

gardens/chart/, and www.neighborhoodinfodc.org, which uses data from the U.S. Decennial Census, the American

Community Survey, and local administrative data sources.

What is not apparent from this table is how, or whether, the available land is utilized. In

fact, gardeners in the majority of the community gardens in the wealthiest wards can expect to

wait one to four years for a plot to become available. In contrast, the 3.5 acres of land that

comprise the 220 individual plots in the Fort Dupont community garden in Ward 7 are

underutilized. Many of the gardens in the poorer areas of Washington, D.C. have no waiting lists

and plots lying fallow. So what can account for these apparent discrepancies?

If the surge in interest in food production were inspired principally by economic crisis,

one might expect to find that the communities hardest hit by the recession have high rates of

community garden participation. Since this is not the case in Wards 7 and 8, what else might

explain the lack of participation? One goal of my current research is to understand why some

people participate in community gardening, and, critically, why others do not. On the one hand, I

expect to find that there are barriers to participation that are not being addressed in some

communities as well as in others. Some of these barriers may be economic (access to land, tools,

inputs, transportation, and leisure time to dedicate to food production) and social or cultural. At

the same time, I suggest that the cultural politics of the alternative food movement resonate with

some people, inspiring participation in food self-provisioning, while alienating others.

4 “Hispanic” is not considered by the U.S. Census to be a racial category. Therefore, there may be some overlap

between “Hispanic” and the other categories.

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Difference and Intersectionality in Urban Food Production Research

The stark economic and racial contrasts between Wards and the apparent contradiction to

the link between urban social movements, economic recession, and community gardening

participation encourage a closer look at the phenomenon of urban food production. These

contrasts are an opportunity to think about difference and intersectionality in U.S. society and

politics. It should come as no surprise that different urban contexts are shaped by different

histories and give rise to different possibilities. Community gardens are both a microcosm of

these urban politics of difference and also an expression of the corporeal and discursive politics

of alternative food production. As food practices are a mechanism through which social relations

are (re)produced (Cook 2008; Donati 2005), it is critical to pay attention to relations of power

and difference when studying alternative food practices.

It may be that the growing alt-food movement is affecting the production of meaning

around community gardens as well as other forms of urban food production. Both the emotional

responses arising from resonance with, alienation from, and resistance to the alt-food movement

and the bodily practices that accompany those responses are productive of new subjectivities and

associations with a variety of possible effects (Pain 2009; Slocum 2008). In this process, it is

critical to attend to the differential relations of power in which “different bodies [have] different

affective capacities” (Tolia-Kelly 2006).

To this purpose, I turn to the work of feminist and anti-racist scholars who have

developed the concept of intersectionality as a tool for analyzing the multiple axes of privilege

and oppression without resorting to rigid categorization of identities that inhibit recognition of

diverse experiences of race, gender, sex, etc. (Collins 1990). Intersectional theory offers a way of

understanding complex subjectivities, challenging the idea that the best way to understand a

subject is as the sum of multiple identities. An intersectional approach makes possible an

evaluation of how power circulates through the multiple subjectivities (re)produced in urban

food self-provisioning practices (Valentine 2007). However, research methodologies have not

lived up to this promise. In practice, the focus on the intersecting matrices of privilege and

oppression embodied in individual subjects has led to the use of selection criteria for research

projects that utilize the very categories they seek to challenge (Nash 2008).

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Three approaches are used to address these potential methodological difficulties in the

present project. First, selection criteria are based on practices rather than identities, subjectivities,

or socio-economic categories. Seeking to identify the food production practices of particular

groups of people tends to homogenize the experiences of individuals, at least with regard to the

specific identity group through which they were selected for inclusion in the research. Instead,

through attention to urban food practices, this project seeks to discover how individuals

experience those identities differently, and how the effects of trends in community gardening and

alternative food movements are unevenly felt.

Second, this type of minutely personal experience is best understood by utilizing an

intensive and comparative case-study methodology. Case studies are particularly apt for

intersectional research. The case study method allows researchers to capture complexity in lived

experience, to treat social categories strategically in order to unpack issues of privilege and

oppression, and to consider the effects of subjectivities that cross the boundaries of multiple

social categories (McCall 2005).

Finally, this project treats refusal to participate in food self-provisioning as an active

choice and a valid response to the framing of such practices in the context of urban life. Rather

than representing a lack of understanding, such refusal may indicate a different vision of “good

food” aligned with an alternative ethics of engagement with community (Callon and Rabeharisoa

2004). However, such a methodology introduces additional practical problems in terms of access

to subjects who choose not to participate in community gardening projects. The degree to which

these problems are resolved will greatly impact the potential for this project to address issues of

intersectionality in urban food production practices.

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