The social boundary work of new middle-class organic gardeners in Bangalore, India

Abstract

Organic gardening is increasingly being performed as a marker of middle-classness. As the middle class is expanding in countries such as India, China and Brazil, the leisure practices of large parts of these countries’ populations are changing. This article draws on preliminary research on a new middle-class organic gardening group in Bangalore to analyse how gardening is practised as a form of distinction in a dense and segregated urban environment. The research reveals that gardening is conducted in exclusive spaces that accommodate the articulation of social connections and status within spatial constraints and social boundaries. The case study encourages careful interpretation of the gardening of the new middle-class as practices that enrol food-production, technologies and resources in ways that unify a heterogenous new class and obscure and distinguish it from the gardening efforts of working classes. The paper contributes insight into the possibilities for ethical positioning that make gardening an appealing past time for new middle-class urban residents, and it makes a case for more extensive future research on this topic.