Community Gardening

Abstract

The term “community garden” generally refers to an urban piece of land that is gardened/farmed collectively (Lawson 2005). In sociology, research on community gardening has a very recent history. According to the database published by CSA Sociological Abstracts, Taylor (1993) was the first sociologist to examine social issues related to community gardening. Her piece was the only one published in the 1990s. Sociological research in this field really took off in the beginning of the twenty‐first century. The increased attention to community gardening coincided with more social scientific research on urban agriculture, community‐supported agriculture, farmers’ markets, and local food systems in general. Nevertheless, the practice of community gardening long preceded academic interest. For instance, in the United States, a desire to integrate gardening into school curricula dates back to the end of the nineteenth century (Lawson 2005). Also in the United States, Lawson (2005) dates a revitalized interest in community gardening to the 1970s. The American Community Garden Association was founded in 1979. “Confronted with poor environmental and social resources,” Lawson writes, “some urban dwellers began to rethink their living environment in light of greater self‐reliance at both the individual and neighborhood levels” (2005: 219). “Urban decline” and “the failing conditions of the city” (2005: 218) provided the socioeconomic context in which community gardening activism reemerged in the United States.