The growing human population is concentrating in urban environments across the globe, leading to urban expansion and densification. Consequently, political debates and social movements concerned with urban planning and land use have increased in relevance. Conflicts over urban space arise where people problematise and challenge dominant land-use rationalities, so it follows that one way of critically analysing dominant rationales of urban land use is to examine them in relation to collective action that challenges these norms.

One example of counternormative practice are collective gardens, a subset of community gardens characterised by collective management and publicly-oriented programming. Because their use of urban land and collective social organisation appear inconsistent with the privatisation and free-market economy of neoliberal capitalism, studying collective gardens has implications for understanding these places as products of political forms of sensemaking, expressing grievances and demands that respond to the dominant political-economic context of contemporary urban life.

Based on this understanding, this study explores discourses about the political significance of collective gardens as places where alternative norms of urban life are developed. What senses of place can be understood to be nurtured in relation to collective gardens, how does this manifest, and what is conveyed about citizenship and urban life in neoliberal capitalist contexts? These questions are investigated through a political discourse framework, supplemented by discursive theories of aesthetics, narratives, and sensemaking to learn about the meanings attributed to collective gardens as constituted within wider social contexts.

The aesthetics of collective gardens are explored through multi-sited research at gardens across Germany and Sweden to analyse how urban space is materially reimagined. The study then turns to case studies in both nations to explore narratives – first to understand how local history sets up problems that are solved by the establishment of each garden, then to analyse how they are portrayed in discourses about urban development and social life. The study examines how the social critiques being fostered in these places convey a particular ethos of democratic citizenship, as well as how complex relationships to responsibility create situations where collectives resist neoliberal capitalist rationalities while also contributing to their objectives.

En växande befolkning koncentrerar sig alltmer till urbana miljöer världen över. I kölvattnet av den utvecklingen har både politiska debatter om stadsplanering och markexploatering, och sociala rörelser som mobiliserar kring frågor som rör användning av stadsmiljöer, fått ökad relevans. När medborgare ifrågasätter rådande normer som styr hur det urbana rummet organiseras kan dock konflikter uppstå. En väg mot att bättre förstå vad som står på spel i sådana konflikter är att undersöka kollektiva aktiviteter som på olika sätt utmanar dominerande normer om urbant liv.

Den här avhandlingen närmar sig dessa frågor genom att empiriskt undersöka så kallade tillsammansodlingar, det vill säga gemensamma trädgårdar vars tonvikt ligger på kollektiv förvaltning och utåtriktade kulturaktiviteter. Deras verksamheter inrymmer både markbruk och social organisering som på olika sätt utmanar och/eller utgör alternativ till nyliberala normer, privat ägande och marknadsekonomi. Genom att studera tillsammansodlingarnas plats i, och relation till, nyliberala städer bidrar avhandlingen med kunskap om hur trädgårdarna kan förstås som en kritik mot den rådande politiska och ekonomiska ordningen samtidigt som de gestaltar möjliga framtida alternativ.

Mot den här bakgrunden syftar avhandlingen till att undersöka diskurser om tillsammansodlingarnas politiska betydelse, samt hur de kan förstås som platser där alternativa normer uttrycks och praktiseras. Utifrån ett teoretiskt ramverk som kombinerar politisk diskursteori och teorier om estetik, narrativitet och meningsskapande besvaras följande frågor: Vilka ”platskänslor” ger trädgårdarna upphov till? Hur uttrycks dessa? Vad förmedlar trädgårdarna om samtida normer om och – konkreta och föreställda – alternativ till samtida medborgarskap i urbana miljöer?  

Tillsammansodlingarnas estetik undersöks genom observationer av ett större antal trädgårdar i Sverige och Tyskland, då med analytiskt fokus på deras konkreta utformning och användning av material. Därefter undersöks två specifika trädgårdar i Stockholm och Berlin. Dels undersöks trädgårdarnas respektive ”platshistorier” och hur dessa beskriver olika problemformuleringar som odlingarna ska bidra till att lösa. Dels undersöks på ett mer övergripande plan vilka diskurser om det urbana rummet och urbant liv som kringgärdar trädgårdarna. Utifrån detta argumenterar avhandlingen för att trädgårdarna styrs av ett slags demokratiskt etos, men problematiserar också deras komplexa och till viss del motsägelsefulla relation till nyliberal rationalitet.

Collective gardens – in which individuals work collectively to cultivate and care for a common gardening area – have become a growing phenom­enon in recent years. At these sites, the cultivation of community is often as important as the cultivation of organic, local produce. However, obser­vation and digital research carried out in the context of a transnational study of such gardens demonstrates that this community is not limited to human participants, but instead also includes other animal species at these sites. The article investigates the relationships cultivated with one such group – insects. How might we understand the interest shown by gardeners in building hotels and cafés, sowing meadows and arranging festivals for insects? Do participants only see insects for their use­value, or is there something more occurring in the relationship they cultivate, and how it is represented and discussed?

Beginning with a discussion of the built environment of the studied col­lective gardens, the article analyses how certain design choices are spe­cifically oriented towards the use and benefit of insects – especially bees. Progressing from physical space to digital space, the empirical discussion then investigates this interest in bees and their welfare further through several paradigmatic examples. In so doing, discourses communicated in manifestos, social media and news interviews are analysed. This is done in order to explore the worldviews from which individuals and groups un­derstand the importance of bees, as well as the backgrounds that influence their actions and the fantasies for the future that provide a focal point to­wards which to orient their efforts. Finally, I contrast the discourses about bees with the lack of similar discourse about another group of insects which are readily observable at many sites – wasps. I discuss how differing cultural heritages related to each affect how they are valued and reflect on the possibilities available to us as humans to see ourselves and our future as being dependent on one species, while being comparably indifferent to the presence and important contributions of the other.