Cultivating the Good Community Garden
A Case Study of Valuing Among Volunteers of Voedseltuin IJplein
Name: Jessey Róisín Woodley Student number: 10594264 jessey.woodley@gmail.com University of Amsterdam Graduate School of Social Sciences
Master’s thesis in Sociology, Cultural Sociology track
First supervisor: M. de Wilde MSc Second supervisor: Dr. C.S. Abrahamsson
18 August 2014
Illustrations: Nanna Prieler Design: Mark Visbeek
Table of contents
1. Introduction 7
1.1 Taking a Closer Look at the Community Garden 9 1.2 Valuing the Community Garden 11
2. Case Study: Voedseltuin IJplein 15
2.1 Foundations 17
2.2 Space 17
2.3 Volunteers 18
2.4 Working in the Garden 19
2.5 Methods 19
3. Registers of Valuing 23
3.1 The Civic Garden 25
3.2 The Industrial Garden 28
3.3 The Sustainable Garden 31
3.4 The Natural Garden 33
3.5 The Aesthetic Garden 35
3.6 The Inspirational Garden 37
3.7 The Renowned Garden 39
4. Combining Registers 41
4.1 The Industrial-‐Civic Combination 42 4.2 The Industrial-‐Natural Combination 45 4.3 The Industrial-‐Aesthetic Combination 48 4.4 The Industrial-‐Renowned Combination 48 4.5 The Industrial-‐Inspirational Combination 49 4.6 The Industrial-‐Sustainable Combination 50 4.7 The Sustainable-‐Renowned Combination 51
5. Caring for the Good Community Garden 53 5.1 Caring for the Civic Garden 55 5.2 Caring for the Industrial Garden 57 5.3 Caring for the Sustainable Garden 58 5.4 Caring for the Natural Garden 61 5.5 Caring for the Aesthetic Garden 62 5.6 Caring for the Inspirational Garden 63 5.7 Caring for the Renowned Garden 64 6. Conclusion 67 6.1 Valuation 68 6.2 Community Gardening 69 Bibliography 72 Appendix I 74 Appendix II 110 Appendix III 111 Appendix IV 189
People are gradually becoming more aware of the story behind the food they eat and in many cases this story makes them dissatisfied. Afraid of a world dominated by ‘McDonaldization’ (Ritzer, 2001), people turn to alternative forms of consumption, favouring local, traditional, sustainable and organic products (Sassatelli, 2007). Urban gardening as a phenomenon has increased in popularity over the last decade as a response to issues of food security, critiques of the governing food production methods and awareness of social and environmental problems associated with food miles (Evers & Hogdson, 2011; Germov, Williams & Freij, 2011; Guitart, Pickering & Byrne, 2012). This advance of urban gardening, mostly in developed countries, can be observed in the proliferation of guerilla gardening projects, urban farms, community gardens and private vegetable gardens.
An ‘anti-‐McDonaldization movement’ originated in the late 1980s in Italy: the Slow Food movement. This challenging trend to the ‘McDonaldization’ of food seeks to positively counter the rise of fast food and the standardisation of taste and homogenisation of culture that are closely associated with it (Germov et al., 2011). Its goal is to “preserve traditional and regional cuisine” and to encourage “farming of plants, seeds, and livestock that are culturally appropriate and characteristic of local ecosystems” (Rooden, Grubb, Wiskerke & Sheppard, 2012:26). Speed is regarded negatively within this movement; it has spurred the formation of many slow practices. In line with the ideas of the slow food movement, a speedy lifestyle has come to be seen as having adverse effects on health and happiness and slowness is often linked to personal health and greater connection to place and community (Frost & Laing, 2013). A slow practice like urban gardening does not only take people out of their daily routine in the busy urban life, but it provides a means for expressing views on contemporary society (Baudry, 2012). As such, urban gardening provides a way to create time and to “resist the accelerated pace of contemporary life in order to promote values and concepts such as community, sustainability, justice, roots, quality, and belonging” (Lindner & Meissner, 2014:5; Germov et al., 2011).
Amsterdam envisions itself as a creative city in which art and culture can flourish freely and rely on a solid economic foundation and in which it can provide with a dynamic that provokes contacts “between groups, networks and social contexts, between old and young, black and white, chic and shabby... It is this interaction that determines the cohesion, the atmosphere and the civility of the city” (Peck, 2012:463).
Within this frame of the creative city, urban gardening as a practice suits Amsterdam’s identity very well. Not surprisingly, the municipality of Amsterdam explicitly states that its interest in urban gardening has been sparked and that their enthusiasm to work with the phenomenon in the near future is great (Knibbeler, 2012).
Community gardening is one of the ways in which urban gardening is practiced. Urban garden is an encompassing term that includes private gardens or larger urban farms as well for example. Community gardens are “open spaces which are managed and operated by members of the local community in which food or flowers are cultivated” (Guitart et al., 2012:364). The physical and social spaces of the community garden do not merely provide a space in which people can grow organic fruits and vegetables, like the urban farm or the private garden. What makes the community garden different is that it is a place in which values and concepts like community, sustainability and belonging can flourish (Pols, 2013). As Pols describes, most interactions between people happen in specific material environments and objects play a central role in these exchanges. For citizens to meaningfully relate to one another, the interaction with things can be a helpful tool (Pols, 2013). Two people working together in order to plant a tree illustrates the role an object can play in creating human interaction.
1.1 Taking a Closer Look At the Community Garden
In a comprehensive meta-‐analysis conducted by Guitart, Pickering and Byrne (2012), they show that 86% of the research on community gardening discussed the motivations and benefits related to participation in a community garden. Social cohesion, consuming fresh foods, improving health and saving or making money are the four principal motivations for people to engage in urban gardening. Many gardens operate from an ‘ethical programme’, as social benefits such as community building, community resilience and social interaction are among the most commonly demonstrated benefits (Guitart et al., 2012). Almost all the studies reported on an (either positive, neutral or negative) outcome of community gardening. There also appears to be a clear geographical bias in the research regarding urban gardening, as 57% of the research originated in the USA, only 13% of the research originated in Europe and only 1 research paper was found which focused on a Dutch urban garden. As Dutch citizens and
media outlets are now increasingly shadowing the American interest in urban gardening, academia cannot lag behind.
This meta analysis shows that there are many different aspects of community gardening to focus on. However, most research is quite similar as the customary way to analyse a community garden is to assess the benefits related to participation. The community garden is good because it stimulates personal health and greater connection to place and community. The community garden is also good because it allows people to grow organic crops close to home, avoiding pesticides and food miles. We can see that there is a great amount of evaluation involved. The community garden is evaluated according to how good it is perceived to be and how good its outcomes prove to be. What all of the current literature has in common is that they take the evaluation process for granted and rush into focusing on its outcome.
By taking one step back, this study aims at taking a closer look at the processes of evaluation related to community gardening. The aim is not to elucidate the effects of urban gardening or report on the developments in community gardening. Mapping out the dimensions along which people evaluate the garden takes us off the beaten track. What is a good community garden? In the course of the following chapters I will alternate between using the terms ‘the good community garden’ and ‘good community gardening’. When I talk about the community garden, I am not only referring to the space and its physical characteristics, but also to the practice that constitutes the community garden. Alternately, when I refer to community gardening I am referring to the practice as it is (and can only be) practiced in and around the community garden. From the material that will be gathered through field observations and interviews, I hope to be able to consitute different ‘registers of valuing’ (Heuts & Mol, 2013). Registers of valuing “...indicate a shared relevance, while what is or isn’t good in relation to this relevance may differ from one situation to another” (Heuts & Mol, 2013:129).
The question that will structure this thesis is: What is a good community garden? In search for an answer to this research question I will first look at which registers are mobilised by community garden volunteers when valuing the good community garden. Consequently I will explore the combinations and clashes between registers, as all registers are critical relation with each other (Thévenot, 2001). However, valuing is not merely a matter of classifying something as valuable or invaluable, it also involves the process of making something valuable. It is thus of considerable importance to assess
the way people are actively involved in enacting values. Therefore, we will also take a look at how volunteers care for the good community garden.
1.2 Valuing the Community Garden
Within the discipline of sociology there has been a growing interest in valuation and the evaluative processes (Lamont, 2012). The field of valuation studies is situated in the new pragmatic school of sociology. Luc Boltanski was one of the leading figures in the development of this school in reaction to the critical school of sociology. Critical and pragmatic sociology stand in opposition to one another (Lamont, 2012). Bourdieu, one of the fathers of the sociological discipline, firmly embraced the critical sociological way of thinking in his work. Critical sociology stands for the idea that taste is socially structured and unchangeable. Society is structured in one single order. An individual’s taste both reflects and is reflected by their social class within that order, and furthermore functions as a distinction mechanism (Heuts, 2011). Concepts like habitus, capital and field are important in this line of thinking.
Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot disagreed with this dominant view within sociology. They believed that society is structured by multiple orders, as described in their book ‘On Justification: Economies of Worth’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). The following quote, taken from Lamont’s recent piece on the comparative sociology of valuation and evaluation, accurately and concisely describes the essence of their message (2012:10):
“The book considered how actors demonstrate the universality of their positions by appealing to different logics, and accomplish this by “qualifying” (or differentiating) various objects, actors, and instruments in their environment in ways that are consistent with these logics. For instance, if market logic prevails, the object of evaluation will be considered from the angle of profit-‐maximization.”
Within pragmatic sociology actors are not confined to their predetermined social class, predicting their behaviour. Instead, they coordinate their actions in a dynamic and creative manner, according to specific justifications that are dependent on different ways of relating to the context (Lamont, 2012). These justifications are continually in tension and are continually reconstructed. By placing value on people and things,
individuals allow themselves to coordinate their actions accordingly and justify them (Thévenot, 2002). As moral and political agents, individuals are able to connect the good and the real. Boltanski and Thévenot identified six orders of worth: the industrial logic, the market logic, the domestic logic, the civic logic, the inspired logic, and fame. Actors mobilise these orders in order to connect the good and the real. Every order emphasizes a different kind of good. The industrial order emphasizes productivity and efficiency, the market order emphasizes competition and money, the domestic order emphasizes tradition and close relationships, the civic order emphasizes collectivity and solidarity, the inspirational order emphasizes passion and creation, and the famous order emphasises public opinion and reputation. When individuals combine registers, they either combine them or choose a dominant register. Thévenot applied this theory to the case of the development of a new road and tunnel in the French Pyrénées (Thévenot, 2002). He showed that the definition of a good road differs from one register to another. The actual characteristics of a good road are different for a good domestic road than they are for a good industrial road for example. He also shows that registers can be combined and that compromises can lead to a road that is considered good (enough) in more than one register.
The focus lies not on the idea of (e)valuation inside the mind of an individual, but rather in the practices that the individual engages in (Lamont, 2012). As described by Heuts and Mol (2013), Vatin makes a distinction between valorising (the activity of making things more valuable) and evaluation (the activity of classifying something as valuable or invaluable). These concepts are located in respectively the realm of production and in the realm of consumption. Heuts and Mol contest this distinction. In their case of good tomatoes, both activities are relevant throughout the whole process. Therefore, they do not use two distinctive terms, but rather use one encompassing term: valuing (Heuts & Mol, 2013). I will also use that the term valuing in the present study.
Heuts (2011) applied the theory in a matter similar to Thévenot, but to a completely different case: tomatoes. In his endeavor to find out how a good tomato is defined, Heuts did not limit himself to the registers that were spelled out by Boltanski and Thévenot. In defining the six orders of worth, the focus of Boltanski and Thévenot mainly rested on production practices. Therefore, Heuts believed that those orders were not necessarily universally applicable. Central to Heuts’ study are consumption
practices, specifically consumption practices related to the tomato. He interviewed thirteen Dutch experts and determined five new registers of valuing (translated from Dutch): the register of costs, the register of deliverance, the register of tradition, the register of aesthetics and the register of naturalness.
In addition, he considered the notion of care. We shift focus from modes of ordering to modes of doing good (Pols, 2004). The notion of care is of central importance to the synergistic ‘valuing’ concept. As Heuts and Mol (2013) explain, caring implicates the respectful tinkering towards improvement without being totally in control. Valuing is thus not only something one does from a distance, it is something one is tightly involved in. By caring, one can make something good. Furthermore, caring practices can reveal how an individual values a certain person or object. Action is coordinated according to evaluations. Pols calls this “the ‘performance’ or the ‘enactment’ of ideals” (Pols, 2004:23). Heuts (2011) reveals various caring techniques that are implemented by the experts to achieve a good tomato.
Heuts added to the valuation literature by showing that this method that was developed by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) is applicable to consumption practices too. By using the method on a different kind of practice he concluded that there are more registers of valuing than Boltanski and Thévenot had assumed. The assumption that Heuts subsequently makes, is the following:
“Because of the practically oriented approach and the flexible registers this method is not only suitable for studying production or consumption practices, it is also possible to research other practices.” (2011:45)
Inspired by this assumption, this study intends to add to this young interdisciplinary field of valuation studies by testing it. The community garden serves as an interesting case to apply the method to. Community gardening as a practice of the Slow Food movement sets out to close the gap between production and consumption (Evers & Hodgson, 2011). The urban garden is a space in which production and consumption meet (Germov et al., 2011). It is also an interesting illustration of a space where the often paradoxically regarded notions of pleasure, health and political fairness get the opportunity to come together. The emphasis on the goodness of local and organic produce in the urban garden teaches its participants to appreciate the flavour of the food it produces; through the practices involved ‘doing good’ is no longer a duty, but
becomes integrated with individual pleasure (Mol, 2009). This practice can neither be strictly classified as a consumption practice nor a production practice can therefore be considered as an “other practice” of which Heuts (2011) speaks in his conclusion.
The present exploratory study will follow the study of Heuts (2011) in its methods. Valuing in practice will be the central focus of this study. This thesis will tell a case study of a community garden located in the district of Amsterdam North: Voedseltuin IJplein. In order to be as sensitive and thorough as possible in the observations as well as in the analysis of the data, ANT will serve as the backbone to this work. In the valuation and enactment of the good community garden, it is important to consider that actors involved in valuing are not only human. The involved humans are not in complete control of the caring process. The ‘things’ that are involved in the different practices are as important to the process as humans. Without soil, there would be no garden. Without seeds, there would be no crops. Without water or sunlight, the crops would not grow. The elements in the network define and shape each other (Law, 2009). Human and non-‐human elements jointly enact different ‘goods’ (Pols, 2004). As this study aims to explore the dynamics of a community garden on the basis of Actor Network Theory with a focus on valuation in practice, a qualitative, ethnographic approach will be maintained. Data were gathered through participant observation in the garden and semi-‐structured interviews with the volunteers. Guided by this theoretical framework, I hope to provide the interdisciplinary field of valuation studies with a new viewpoint, enabling a continuation of the discussion concerning valuing.
In chapter two I will introduce the subject of this case study and dive a little deeper into my methods. Chapter three, four and five will show the empirical data that were gathered in the field and during semi-‐structured interviews. I will first present the seven registers that volunteers of Voedseltuin mobilise while valuing the community garden. Second, I will explore how these registers combine and clash. Third, I will show how the good community garden is enacted by the volunteers. In the closing chapter of this thesis I will return to the research question. I will conclude by relating the findings of this case study to the urban gardening literature as well as to the valuation literature.
My first encounter with Voedseltuin IJplein (Vegetable garden IJplein) occurred in early March 2014. This year’s winter had been exceptionally mild and the garden was still full of marigolds, blooming into their second year of existence. A rare sight at this time of the year, as the cold Dutch winters usually only let these flowers bloom for one year. This Wednesday night I was about to join in on a volunteer assembly, held in their repository, which is located a few minutes walking distance from the garden. The group of volunteers and the professionals involved with the garden just went out for dinner at Resto van Harte, one of the recipients of the garden’s crops. Resto van Harte wanted to show their gratitude by preparing a meal especially for them. People noticed me, said hello and introduced themselves. There was only one person who strook up a conversation, FR. FR is in his mid thirties, but definitely the youngest person there. He told me about their dinner and asked me about my gardening experience. The repository was messy, with tools and potting soil lying around. There was a table in the middle with folding chairs lined up around it. We sat down and Mariken asked who wanted to lead the assembly. No one volunteered, so she said that she would do it “like the last time”. The assembly took about two hours. Everybody spoke, there was some laughter and I was silently observing. Among other things they talked about the future of the garden, about building a shed in the garden grounds and about designing new promotional banners. When the assembly was finished people exchanged one or two words before leaving. From that day on I visited the garden every Wednesday for two months.
I encountered Voedseltuin IJplein during an internet search for urban gardening projects in Amsterdam North. What made this garden stand out to me was the fact that it stresses the importance of its social role and supports local charity organisations. It donates its entire harvest to its volunteers, Resto Van Harte and the Food Bank. Resto Van Harte is a restaurant that provides healthy and cheap three course meals for people that are in need of some company. A warm social environment is created in which people can dine together and form new social contacts. Furthermore, the local Food Bank can supplement their food packages with fresh and local products because of these donations coming from Voedseltuin IJplein. But, most importantly, the garden intends to function as a green, social meeting place in the neighbourhood.
2.1 Foundations
Voedseltuin IJplein was initiated by Ans Klein Geltink and Hans Pijls from Buiten Ruimte Voor Contact (BRvC). BRvC is a non-‐profit organisation that strives to connect people by creating a new purpose for green areas in neighbourhoods that lack these kinds of spaces. Their goal is to create a space which can be used by local residents, usually from diverging backgrounds, and which can contribute to social cohesion and integration in the neighbourhood in question. BRvC enjoyed support from Stichting Doen for their plan to create a social green space the Vogelbuurt. Stichting Doen is another non-‐profit organisation that (financially) supports smaller organisations like BRvC in realising their ideas. Stichting Doen stresses that all the projects that they support must be unquestioning in their goal to contribute to a green, social and/or creative society. To supervise and maintain the garden, BRvC hired gardening professional Mariken Heitman. Mariken was fit for the job not only because of her agricultural education, but because of her affinity with the social aspect of community gardening. She is currently the coordinator of the project in the ground. BRvC and Stichting Doen are currently supporting the project for 3 years in total, of which 1,5 years have passed at this point. Mariken will only be payed to be part of this project for another 1,5 years, after which BRvC will direct their resources elsewhere.
Voedseltuin IJplein desires to be a green space that functions as a social meeting place. and Mariken told me that there is also room for more vulnerable populations.
2.2 Space
Voedseltuin IJplein consists out of two spaces. One of the spaces is a 3000 m2 piece of land in the Vogelbuurt at the IJ, next to a couple of Rem Koolhaas appartment buildings (see Appendix IV). A 2012 study declared the neighbourhood as the worst neighbourhood to grow up in in Amsterdam (Parool, 2012). A walk around the neighbourhood shows Morroccan bakeries, a Mosque, people dressed in Islamic attire, people speaking Arabic languages and many more signs of foreign influences. Passing through the neighbourhood on bicycles you see a more mixed population of young and old, different cultures and different classes. The adjacent neighbourhoods have different
statusses and contain different populations. There is a primary school located next to Voedseltuin IJplein.
In the repository on the Nachtegaalstraat equipments are stored and assemblies and courses are hosted. The room contains a toilet and a tiny countertop with a tap. There is a table and a collection of folding chairs and garden furniture. It is always messy. The room is accessable to every volunteer at any time. as there is a little box with a number lock on the front door which permanently holds a set of keys. The code is distributed to every volunteer, even to me on my very first day.
2.3 Volunteers
The volunteers are free to come and go as they like, no one is ever obliged to come and work in the garden. Some people are present every week and others drop by more occasionally. There is a ‘core’ group of volunteers, which has been growing slowly ever since the start of this project. This core consists out of approximately 20 people now. There is also a group of volunteers who choose to drop by less often. Even though there is no exact work schedule and everybody is free to come and go, there are always enough people to do the work. The group of volunteers has been relatively steady for quite some time and it is continually slowly expanding. Even though the group has been stable up until now, it is quite fragile. Most of the active volunteers are currently out of work and therefore are able to invest a lot of time into the garden. As soon as people find a job, they might have to give up their active role as a volunteer. People with a lot of knowledge knowhow of the garden are hard to replace.
Whereas one of the goals is for the volunteer population to be a reflection of the neighbourhood population, there are relatively few locals included in the regular group of volunteers. Some volunteers live in Amsterdam North, but quite a few people come from other parts of the city too. Most of the regular volunteers are from Dutch descent or have lived here for some decades, with the exception of one Argentinian woman, who grew up in NYC and moved to The Netherlands a few years ago. During my fieldwork period there has been an increasing attendance of vulerable groups. A group of people with aquired brain impairments from the neighbourhood now regularly participate on Wednesday afternoons in the garden.
2.4 Working in the Garden
In the garden the atmosphere is very relaxed. At arrival, there is no central start of the afternoon but people seperately go to Mariken to ask for a task. She tells people what to do and people carry out the tasks independently. Most of the time, at least two people work together on one task. Tasks are carried out alone when there are not enough people or when there are not enough tools (mowing the grass for example, there is only one mower).
Communication between volunteers generally revolves around gardening related subjects. People ask each other for advice on how to carry out tasks, talk about insects and objects they encounter or talk about how they will prepare the crops they are harvesting for example. There is not much talk on a very personal level during gardening practices. During breaks around the picknick table there is more space for personal conversations. There is one volunteer in particular who is most often the one spilling personal information, but unfortunately she denied my request to interview her. However, many of the volunteers are quite reserved and the subject of conversations at the picknick table often remains garden or neighbourhood related.
2.5 Methods
I started my ethnographic research with two months of participant observation. I sought contact and was invited to participate soon after that. I became one of the volunteers that same week. People accepted me right away, which was fortunate because of the short time I had to gather my data. New people are always welcome and easily accepted into the group. This is speaking from my own experience as a new volunteer, but also from the observation of other new volunteers joining the group. What I found very striking is that it the arrival of a new person never really caused a stir. There is no public announcement of the new person and his or her name. Mostly the volunteers only really show interest and introduce themselves when they happen to be proximate to the new person. I interpreted this not so much a sign of disinterest, but as a sign of quick acceptance.
As I began spending time in the garden I noticed that people did not discuss their reasons for coming to the garden. I was curious to know those reasons, so I asked
around a bit and it became apparent that all the volunteers came to the garden because they thought it was a ‘good initiative’. However, ‘good’ meant something different to everyone. One volunteer told me that she came to the garden because it was a good place to meet people from the neighbourhood, while another volunteer especially valued the fact that Voedseltuin IJplein produces organic food for a good cause. Simultaneously I was reading more and more academic literature about the community garden in which effects of community gardening were described and success was assessed. Did community gardeners experience a hightened sense of community? Did community gardeners have decreased risks of heart problems? It became clear to me that there was a more interesting and less researched question to ask. I started to wonder whether different ideas about the ‘good community garden’ leads to different ways of engaging with the practice. Looking for the various ways in which a community garden is considered ‘good’ is a style of practicing empirical ethics (Pols, 2004). I decided to ask the ethical question ‘What is a good community garden?’ in order to find out according to which ideals the volunteers justify their actions when they are participating in the community garden.
During my fieldwork I took in as much information as possible. In order not to draw too much attention to the fact that I was collecting information, I chose to take a few moments each day to drop my task and write down all my observations from the preceding hour(s) in a notebook. Once I was home after an afternoon of fieldwork, I would enter everything in a digital file and elaborate some more on the notes I took that afternoon. Among other things I wrote down information about which tools we were using, which gardening practices volunteers engaged in, what people were talking about and how they behaved in the garden. Shortly after I started my fieldwork, I was able to attend the five-‐week gardening course that was set up especially to educate the volunteers on what it takes to run a garden like this. It was a great opportunity to learn more about the technical and organisational details that I otherwise would not so easily have learned during such a short time of participation in the field. It opened my eyes to caring practices that I otherwise might not have recognised.
In two months the garden had come to feel like home to me. It was as if the people had been my neighbours for years and gardening had been a lifelong hobby of mine. When at that point I asked the volunteers whether I could interview them, they were not only willing, but even eager to help me with my research. With the exception of
one volunteer, everybody gave me permission to interview them. In the course of two weeks I interviewed nine volunteers. The interviews were semi-‐structured and they all lasted between fourty five an ninety minutes. I conducted the interviews in the repository, as it was a quiet space and it would not require the volunteers to travel further than usual. The topic list for the interviews (see Appendix I) contained some basic questions pertaining to the volunteers’ current living and working situations, but mainly consisted out of questions that would invite people to express their valuations of the garden. By asking how the volunteers spend their days, for example, I hoped to get a sense of what they think is important. I also asked if there was any aspect of the current situation in the garden that they disliked or if there was anything that stood in the way of a pleasant community gardening experience. I also asked point blank what they thought was good about Voedseltuin IJplein. By approaching the topic from different angles and letting them elaborate on issues that seemed important to them, I tried to get a comprehensive idea of what the volunteers thought was good about the community garden (see Appendix II). As the interviews were all held in Dutch, the quotes that I use in the following chapters are all translated from Dutch into English.
In the school of pragmatic sociology, we look at how volunteers justify their values and coordinate their actions accordingly. This happens along the lines of a certain set of registers. Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) identified six registers: the inspired register, the domestic register, the famous register, the civic register, the market register and the industrial register. Heuts (2011) conducted his research on the good tomato with these orders as his starting point. He intended not to try to fit their data into these exact registers, but went into the field with an open attitude. He let his data speak and identified five new registers by method of inductive reasoning. The monetary register, the handling register, the historical register, the naturalness register and the sensual register came out of this analysis. There was no overlap with the earlier identified registers by Boltanski and Thévenot.
In my search for the registers of valuing related to the community garden, I adopted an approach similar to Heuts’. In the analysis of my data, I attempted to be as open-‐minded as possible. While keeping in mind the registers that were defined by Boltanski, Thévenot and Heuts, I made sure not to let my vision be clouded by them in search of possible new registers. I analysed the field notes and interviews by looking for similarities between valuations. These valuations could be explicitly uttered in the interviews or in the field, but they might also be recogniseable by observations of people’s actions. Whenever valuations were similar, they belonged to the same register. As the practice of community gardening is located between Boltanski and Thévenot’s production practices and Heuts’ consumption practices, I expected to find at least some overlap. Even more so in the last case, because we are both dealing with food related practices.
I identified seven registers, of which one is novel. Four of the registers have been taken from Boltanski and Thévenot: the civic register, the industrial register, the inspirational register and the register of fame. The two registers taken from the research of Heuts were the naturalness register and the aesthetic register. The register that emerged out of this research is the sustainable register. In describing the registers I will try to be elaborate, yet concise, touching upon the most important finding in each register. The key words that characterise the valuations in each register will be italicised.
3.1 The Civic Garden
“I have never done something like this. Well, I used to do life drawing with a bunch of people and we used to arrange our models ourselves. But life drawing is such an individual thing, really, that is not something that can merely exist when you do it together. That is what I really value about this.” – AV
“That is when we put up a little sign saying: “Everybody is welcome in the garden, but we do the gardening with each other and for each other.” -‐ FR
Whereas Thévenot quickly passes through this register in the case of the good road, the civic register is one of the key registers in the case of the good community garden. In the civic register the quality of being collective is the most important objective. The fundamental subject is the collectivity. The collectivity exists because of the connections between a group of individuals. Whether you read the statement on the website, watch a promotional video or just talk to one of the volunteers, you will immediately notice that (one of) the key objective(s) of this garden is to create an outdoor space that can serve as a social meeting place. Many of the volunteers became interested in the garden because of this civic framing of the good. The garden serves as a place where people meet and converse with each other. Moreover, the garden is a place where people work together, collaborate. They share responsibilities, just as they share crops. In this register, communication is a valuable good. Evaluation is related to ways in which the garden enables positive contact and communication. Evaluations are made on the basis of the openness and accessibility of the garden, its volunteer population and the extent to which it enables, encourages and sustains connections between people.
One of the ways in which the community garden is good in this register has to do with its capacity to unite people around a common interest. Its physical manifestation is vital to the collective person because it gives presence and permanence to the collective person. The garden provides a space in which people can join and cooperate around their common interest: gardening.
“The sum of being outside with the plants, the soil and the people around you. They are almost inseperable.” – GS
Most imporantly, the space should be outside. Being outside permits the gardening practices to be carried out. In order to be used by as many local inhabitants as possible, the garden nearby the homes of its volunteers is good. Furthermore, a good community garden should be big. Several volunteers referred to the spaceousness of the garden:
“It is close to my home and I can really dig into the ground with my hands, that is something I cannot do in my own garden, everything is so tiny in there. Here I can experience the spaciousness.” – AT
“I have a garden myself, but that is just fiddling. This is so nice and clear. Large beds to plough through and big – everything is big.” – AV
“This garden is so big, there is enough space for everyone. I recognise that very much. Big enough for all the different capabilities and ways of handling the garden. There is enough space, you don’t have to fight for your own little part.” – AT
The small gardens of the volunteers themselves did not satisfy the need for space. A big garden ensures that everyone can experience the room and spaceousness of it, even when there are a lot of people in the garden. The need for space is relevant in the civic register, because it allows peaceful collaboration. Some people enjoy talking a lot, others enjoy working in silence, some people are perfectionists and others have no idea what they are doing. AT told me that sometimes she becomes irritated by the sight of someone working inefficiently and that the spaceousness enables her to continue working in another part of the garden and let go of her frustrations.
“I think it is incredibly good that it is such a public space, that it is not bounded by locks and high fences and that it consequently commands a kind of respect.” – AV
“That is what I like about it, that we don’t all have our own things, but that it is open and that it belongs to nobody and also to everybody.” – FR
Another focus of evaluations in this register is openness. The physical space of the community garden was unanimously considered good because of its open character. The openness is characterised by the absence of high or locked fences. As only the collective person is of importance in this space, the garden should not contain separate parcels for separate individuals. Instead, it should be an undivided space.
