Acknowledging Contradictions – Endorsing Change: Transforming the Urban Through Gardening

Abstract

ABSTRACT The contradictions of commoning practices have recently gained increasing attention in critical research. As such, research has shown that collective practices of gardening in common produce contradictory effects not necessarily in line with progressive ideas of the common. Instead of a general dismissal of commoning due to its documented contradictions, I suggest looking beyond the naïve wishing away of contradictions by way of deploying Marxist dialectics as a research perspective from which to explicate and understand underlying processes. Rather than undermining the common's potential as a post-capitalist alternative, this article uses contradictions as an analytical lens through which the meaning of six contradictions of urban garden commons identified in the academic literature is explored. This article concludes that a conceptual focus on contradictions allows for a reflexive and critical research practice revealing the complexity of dialectical relations through which the practice of gardening propels changes but also the reproduction of existing relations.