From the ground up: Community gardens in New York City and the politics of spatial transformation.
Item
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Title
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From the ground up: Community gardens in New York City and the politics of spatial transformation.
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Identifier
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AAI3325374
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identifier
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3325374
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Creator
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Eizenberg, Efrat.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Roger Hart
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, General | Urban and Regional Planning
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Abstract
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Since the scholastic "spatial turn" of the 1970s, research on the urban environment, environmental social movements, and the transformative power of space has been extensively developed. This dissertation expands on existing literature by examining community gardens in New York City and the various organizations that support and oversee them. The dissertation describes the process of the production of space of gardens as taking place at three inter-related levels: individual, collective, and institutional. It show how in each level everyday practices, social interactions, interactions with the environment, and generation of knowledge in regards to space and the community complicate the awareness of residents, develop their political consciousness and constitute them as important social actors in the urban scene.;With this multi-level analysis the dissertation registers a wide range of experiences and draws the connection between levels that are usually treated separately in social sciences. Each level is shown to be dependent on the others for its continuation, each informs the other and together they establish an autopoatic force.;The work argues that through a three-level process of production of space a new type of residents evolves--"organic residents". These urbanites constantly engage with their environment, find their own ways to make it a supportive environment for their collective needs, and produce it in their own image. Community gardeners as organic residents claim their right to the city, act to fulfill their vision of the city, and utilize the special potential of the locale to constitute themselves as powerful social actors within the urban scene.;A multi-methods qualitative approach that includes participant observation, in-depth interviews with gardeners, activists and representatives of support organizations, media and archive research, and database analysis, was used to assemble a contemporary ethnography of community gardens and to capture the potential of space to generate a cycle of development of political consciousness among urban residents, and to reproduce them as a different type of urbanites.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy Restricted.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.