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Contesting Neoliberal Urbanism in Glasgow's Community Gardens: The Practice of DIY Citizenship
Author(s) -
Crossan John,
Cumbers Andrew,
McMaster Robert,
Shaw Deirdre
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
antipode
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.177
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1467-8330
pISSN - 0066-4812
DOI - 10.1111/anti.12220
Subject(s) - polity , citizenship , neoliberalism (international relations) , hegemony , sociology , politics , transformative learning , state (computer science) , political science , gender studies , environmental ethics , public administration , political economy , law , pedagogy , philosophy , algorithm , computer science
In this journal, it has been suggested that citizens practising community gardening “can become complicit in the construction of neoliberal hegemony”. Such hegemony is maintained, it is argued, through the day‐to‐day work of neoliberal citizen‐subjects, which “alleviates the state from service provision”. In this paper we acknowledge that community gardens are vulnerable to neoliberal cooptation. But, even where neoliberal practices are evidenced, such practices do not define or foreclose other socio‐political subjectivities at work in the gardens. We contend that community gardens in Glasgow cultivate collective practices that offer us a glimpse of what a progressively transformative polity can achieve. Enabled by an interlocking process of community and spatial production, this form of citizen participation encourages us to reconsider our relationships with one another, our environment and what constitutes effective political practice. Inspired by a range of writings on citizenship formation we term this “Do‐It‐Yourself” (DIY) Citizenship.