Gardening Relationships with the World

Sammanfattning

This thesis explores the intertwinement between the commoning practices of an urban permaculture community garden and more-than-human relations through multispecies ethnography in Copenhagen, Denmark. By centering the lived experiences and practices of gardeners, this study learns from and illuminates real-life practices and perspectives on what it means to be entangled in the ecosystems. Through a theoretical framework of the commons combined with a critical phenomenological approach, I deploy an analytical focus on affect to unfold the more-than-human encounters in the garden. Moreover, I draw on eco-feminist conceptualizations of reproductive labor to examine the political and economical structures of power that the garden is embedded in. I argue that the relationship between gardeners and garden is characterized by reciprocal regeneration, and I show that particular conditions of the garden nurture this relationship. Moreover, I shed light on neoliberal enclosures and devaluation of reproductive labor that create barriers for humans’ participation in the practices of commoning and earthcare labor.