Authors

Discussion

This research is interested in the potential of examining community gardens as a site of ‘everyday creativity’ that offers a prefigurative politics embedded in care and the feminist commons. Community gardens are an emerging site of analysis in the post-socialist context, and corresponding research tends to focus on the wellbeing and health benefits of community gardens. This talk argues that such approaches reproduce a de-politicised environment and aims to offer an alternative site of departure embedded in care and the feminist commons. The historical underpinnings of state socialism in Prague and the so-called ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama, 1992) gave rise to an ideological hegemony reflecting Thatcher’s ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA). As such, critiques of neoliberalism have been deemed as ‘backward’, resulting in the emergence of a ‘depoliticised’ environment. This talk argues that community gardens offer a useful empirical site of (re)politicisation as they disrupt privatisation, marketisation, and individualisation and challenge the false dichotomy of the public/private divide. This talk demonstrates how the theoretical frameworks of ethics and politics of care, everyday creativity, and feminist commons enable a critical and (re)politicised analysis of community gardens in Prague that nurtures a meaningful challenge to the current hegemony and supports a mode of imaging new social relations that fosters equitable access to care, community, and resources.