The Urban Gardens of Havana

Seeking Revolutionary Plants in Ideologized Spaces
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-3-030-12659-9
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 101 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 167 g

This book relates stories of everyday life revolving around small-scale urban gardens in Central Havana and focusing particularly on that of Marcelo, a seventy-four-year-old revolutionary and gardener. The urban gardens are contested spaces: though monitored and controlled by Cuban state institutions, they also offer possibilities of crafting life in resistance. The experiences the authors narrate are not ‘thick descriptions,’ linked to larger political issues, but rather rhizomatic observations that highlight the relationships between humans and non-humans within the nature-culture debate. Using these experiences, the authors argue that ‘the political’ reaches beyond the affairs of state and governance and should be seen as an all-encompassing part of life. The authors thereby invite the social sciences to focus on the microscopic and the day-to-day to illuminate how the political affairs of lives can be imagined differently.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Plonska, Ola

Saramifar, Younes

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Studien zu einzelnen Ländern und Gebieten
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Ethnographie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Prologue: Whose Planet is it Anyway?Chapter 1. Introduction: Step into my GardenAnthropological GardeningThe Map into the Garden
Chapter 2. Intervening, Correcting, RewardingHow It All BeganRevolutionary Fruits and Ideologized VegetalbesState CommunismThe Prettiest Garden in TownState Control of Society or Social Control of the State?ConclusionChapter 3. The GardenThe Politics of the GardenSmall, Big, Wide and Narrow: The Urban Gardens of HavanaIntimate ExperiencesNon-human PerformancesThe Human-Non-human RelationshipCaring Collaborations with PlantsChildren of the GardenlandA House is Not a HomeReverberating GardentsTangling Them TogetherChapter 4. Living in a Non-human's WorldThe Nature We Live ByBecoming the Garden(er)Freedom and Some Gentle ResistanceThe Intimate Quality of BeingBodily LearningGently, Contested, Entangled Freedoms?Stories of FreedomEntangling Concluding RemarksChapter 5. Conclusion: Finally, How Does Everything Grow Together?

Über Autor(innen)

Ola Plonska is an anthropologist and junior researcher affiliated with the department of social and cultural anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has published in journals such as the Journal for Cultural Research and is interested in human-nature relationships and the politics of food.

Younes Saramifar is the Post-doctoral Einstein Research Fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. His area of research is material culture of resistance movements and paramilitarism, as well as ecological crisis in precarious conditions of the Middle East.