Alternative Food And Neoliberal Capitalism: Community Gardens, Food Justice, And The Creation Of Space In North Carolina

In this thesis I ask a set of questions to understand how community garden spaces function within the food justice movement: How do community gardens create a sense of place and space? How do the sensory experiences of gardening, of eating, and of working in the food system contribute to those spaces? Under what conditions do those spaces promote food justice? Under what conditions do they rely upon and reinforce the neoliberal food regime? I conducted a comparative analysis of food-focused organizations between Boone, North Carolina and Durham, North Carolina, while being attentive to the way issues of identity work within the framework of the research. I focused on community gardens especially. I did this through eight interviews with people who work in the food system, through critical engagement with scholarship, and through participant observation with three organizations, two in Boone and one in Durham. These spaces are shaped by a number of factors, including the creation of community space, the temporalities of the gardens, the sensory landscape and healing practices, and the forms of knowledge implemented in the garden. They are also not insulated from the consequences of neoliberal capitalism and alternative food networks, including the commodification of food, the structure of power in the garden, the privatization of land or use of contested land, and the contexts of the social and natural forces of the garden (e.g. the materials, the people, and the socio-political-economic forces). These spaces simultaneously reinforce, are limited by, and resist neoliberal capitalist forces in the global food regime