|
The bodies encountered in this study reveal interesting manifestations of concepts such as community and local embeddedness. Several gardeners referred to the strong sense of community felt within their gardens, with gardeners identifying strongly with these spaces. The experiences of individuals participating in the University of New South Wales Permaculture Community Garden and the Women’s Community Garden, however, revealed that gardeners need not represent spatially concentrated communities – these gardens draw members from both the local area and the wider metropolis, even when the members have gardens closer to their places of residence and/or work. In such instances, philosophical underpinnings of the garden, and prior social or emotional attachment with other gardeners, the garden itself or associated bodies such as the University, were cited as reasons for engaging with the garden. Such communities therefore represent communities of interest or historical attachment, which, while not localised, nonetheless perceive the garden as a vital focal place and as emotionally ‘local’. These are often based on participants’ pursuit of a space in which to enact philosophical or emotional values 1.
The group proposing the Macdonaldtown garden perhaps best illustrates this phenomenon, in that group members heavily identify with and centre around Paddington and Darlinghurst, with few aware of the nature or location of the proposed garden site. However, the group itself is strong and willing to engage with other spaces and groups; several members are currently utilising offered space within the Waterloo Community Garden, which was suffering from reduced membership numbers. This arrangement provides the Macdonaldtown gardeners access to the desired benefits of gardening and community interaction, and helps reinvigorate the Waterloo garden. This stands in contrast to the Department of Housing (DoH) garden communities, which reveal intense spatial concentration; many gardeners were documented as not visiting the Waterloo Community Garden, perceiving it as too far away 2. Recent efforts by the SSC Community Gardens Officer have started to address this, such that increased numbers of DoH residents are now engaging with the Waterloo garden while negotiations with DoH for more land proceed. The intense spatiality of the DoH garden groups may reflect the proximity of the gardens to the members’ residence; as the gardens are at the base of the residential blocks, members may not see a need to travel further. Additionally, these gardens were initiated to cater for DoH residents, so the membership basis is more spatially concentrated than a community of interest such as aspiring permaculturalists or ecofeminist vegan and vegetarian lesbians, although the spaces or places of all of these communities can be seen as local, interpreting this as ‘close to the heart’. Hence, while members all identified these gardens as local community spaces, they represent widely differing community bases and spatialities. There are wider issues emerging from this in terms of sustainability, as many gardeners access the ‘community of interest’ gardens by long-distant private transport. This reflects wider infrastructure issues such as the need for greater public transport throughout Sydney; however, the consideration of such issues is not the focus of this study. Assessment of the ways in which members gained access to the gardens revealed complex, variant patterns of information flows, dependent upon individuals, technologies and the relationships between these, often as affected by coincidence. Figure 4.1 shows one representation of some of the information flows and channels of access encountered in the study: this is a complex web. One forum which provides a useful illustration of this, is the role of electronic communication channels such as email and the Internet. While some perceive these as channels for open access and freedom of information and exchange 3, an assessment of the use of this forum within urban community gardeners reveals that this is not so. Several garden contacts do not have access to email, either through participants’ personal choice or their economic and social circumstances. As a result, the garden group may miss announcements and experience reduced access to the wider bodies of information possible. Attempts to remedy this included investigating the coordination of interpretation services with computer access for non-English speaking DoH residents and an exploration of other modes of communication. Figure 4.1. Map of some of the networks encountered. The spatiality of such flows is complex. As documented, many local gardeners found the Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network (ACFCGN) via a Vancouver-based website and many contacts for the study, while located in Sydney, were initially established through a permaculture discussion list housed in the USA. Hence, a network such as ACFCGN or urban community gardeners in Sydney, is far from spatially localised. Further, such networks do not consist of humans alone; the role of technology in such a network is vital and itself representative of a multiplicity of other agglomerations. Consideration of access to technologies such as email and the Internet does not simply involve the interaction between a human and a computer; it is also contingent upon the associations, circumstances and histories manifest in each of these bodies. As such, a full contemplation of the network of community gardeners within Sydney involves consideration of the histories and context of all aspects of these. |
||||||||||
<< email:lcrabtre@*SPAMBINGLER*els.mq.edu.au >> NOTE: Remember to delete the expression *SPAMBINGLER* from the address before sending the email. << honours index >> << phd index >> << home >> << to top of page >> |
|||||||||||