Urban agriculture and the neoliberalisation of what?

Journal article

Community gardens in the canton of Geneva (Switzerland) are predominantly organised through municipal programmes. Because of their highly regulated character, they are at odds with dominant depictions of community gardens as contestatory, grassroots spaces. They, however, do not map perfectly either onto the accounts of institutional "organised garden projects" deemed to accompany municipal entrepreneurial strategies and/or the implementation of neoliberal governmentality. Critically engaging with municipal involvement in community garden and urban agriculture development, this paper draws attention to the contradictory ways in which municipal actors frame and govern these issues. Drawing upon a case study in the municipality of Vernier, it argues that the municipality's integrated urban agriculture programme serves different and contradictory functions and is simultaneously progressive and neoliberal. Indeed, while Vernier's programme clearly attempts at reversing processes of space privatisation and nature commodification, its focus on individualised action and choice contributes to reinforcing neoliberal modes of subjectification. This analysis, I hope, will encourage urban agriculture scholars to question their reliance upon a dichotomy between benevolent civil organisations and profit-oriented public institutions, and to account more precisely for the singular processes of neoliberalisation at play within the boundaries of their case studies.

Authors: Ernwein, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: University of British Columbia, Okanagan
• Journal: ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 249-275
• Publication date: 2017-07-28
• Acceptance date: 2016-11-27
• ISSN: 1492-9732
• Keywords: urban agriculture; community gardening; neoliberalism; privatisation; neoliberal governmentality; commodification