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Abstract
My dissertation, titled Words from the Ground: Social Interaction and Communal Solidarity in Community Gardens, looks at social interactions within seven community gardens – collective gardens attended by community members – in Philadelphia. Using mainly qualitative methods, I explore the roles social interactions play in shaping the sense of communal solidarity in the garden membership. By adopting this microscopic approach and borrowing ideas from social linguistics, Words from the Ground seeks to complement the existing literature, which has mostly been looking at the community gardening movement on the organizational and policy levels. As part of the solidarity economy movement, community gardens have great potential in promoting social connection, food sovereignty and environmental sustainability. However, these benefits are never guaranteed. Empirical observations have shown that many community gardens are rather individualistic spaces with limited face-to-face social interactions between garden members, mirroring the modern urban society they are rooted in. In this dissertation, I argue that plants, garden designs and the garden upkeep are key channels for social interaction in community gardens. Using space and objects as their medium, these interactions are characterized by their ability to traverse the lack of physical and temporal copresence between interaction participants. These indirect social interactions play a central role in shaping the sense of solidarity in community gardens, where face-to-face contact is often limited. In addition, by comparing the social impact of personal plots, communal plots and garden meetings, I argue that the discrepancy in the community impact of these three social interaction channels is not only caused by the difference in their content, which varies in their ability in encompassing different ideologies. It is also influenced by the difference in the accessibility of these three interaction channels themselves, where the medium may carry a message of its own. By recognizing and understanding the interactive nature and community-building potential of objects and spaces, we can help community gardens and other institutions to become more socially inclusive, accessible and effective at building healthy communities. And by using community gardens as an analogue for our modern society, I hope Words from the Ground can shed light on how people may build a sense of solidarity and find company in a social environment that is increasingly characterized by physical isolation and individualism.