Abstract
While urban gardening and food provisioning have become well-established subjects of academic inquiry, these practices are given different meanings depending on where they are performed. In this paper, we scrutinise different framings used in the literature on food self-provisioning in Eastern and Western Europe. In the Western context, food self-provisioning is often mentioned alongside other alternative food networks and implicitly framed as an activist practice. In comparison, food self-provisioning in Central and Eastern Europe has until recently been portrayed as a coping strategy motivated by economic needs and underdeveloped markets. Our research used two case studies of allotment gardening from both Western and Eastern Europe to investigate the legitimacy of the diverse framings these practices have received in the literature. Drawing on social practice theory, we examined the meanings of food self-provisioning for allotment gardeners in Czechia and the Netherlands, as well as the material manifestations of this practice. We conclude that, despite minor differences, allotment gardeners in both countries are essentially ‘doing the same thing.’ We thus argue that assuming differences based on different contexts is too simplistic, as are the binary categories of ‘activist alternative’ versus ‘economic need.’
Highlights
Sowing seeds, growing plants and eating their fruits is an ancient, mundane and seemingly universal practice
Comparing urban allotment gardens in the Netherlands and Czechia, we investigated the legitimacy of the diverse framings of this practice in the literature
This attention has developed along different lines in diverse geopolitical contexts: whereas the literature describes urban gardening in Western European countries as a multifunctional activity that can create valuable alternatives and as a trendy and ‘cool’ thing to do, in the Eastern European context it is often framed as a remnant of the socialist era and a coping strategy for the urban poor
Summary
Sowing seeds, growing plants and eating their fruits is an ancient, mundane and seemingly universal practice. Urban gardening, which we consider to be food self-provisioning in an urban setting (i.e., in allotments, community gardens, backyards or public spaces), has attracted increased attention from both researchers and practitioners over the last two decades [1,2,3] This attention has developed along different lines in diverse geopolitical contexts: whereas the literature describes urban gardening in Western European countries as a multifunctional activity that can create valuable alternatives and as a trendy and ‘cool’ thing to do, in the Eastern European context it is often framed as a remnant of the socialist era and a coping strategy for the urban poor. Kosnik’s summary of the diverse framings of food self-provisioning is anecdotal, yet poignant: Mainstream society conventionally associates self-provisioning with poverty, loss of comfort, or bare survival (Murton, Bavington, and Dokis 2016), with hippies returning to the land where they live in communes and try to revive a preindustrial lifestyle, and more currently with lifestyle trends of rooftop gardens and the like [4] (p. 124)
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