{"id":117407,"date":"2025-03-07T08:29:35","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T08:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/anthropology\/acting-locally-vegetable-gardening-in-southern-illinois-foodanthropology\/"},"modified":"2025-03-07T08:29:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T08:29:35","slug":"acting-locally-vegetable-gardening-in-southern-illinois-foodanthropology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=117407","title":{"rendered":"Acting Locally \u2013 Vegetable Gardening In Southern Illinois \u2013 FoodAnthropology"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Home gardener Calvin harvests mustard greens for friends from church. Photo by Aimee L. Trojnar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PhD thesis by Aimee L. Trojnar, Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, 2024.<\/p>\n

Reviewer: Virginia D. Nazarea (University of Georgia)<\/p>\n

This dissertation consists of, in the author\u2019s words, \u201cgranular\u201d ethnographic studies of community gardens around Carbondale, Southern Illinois, through the lens of the theory of practice. More specifically, the author engages Tim Ingold\u2019s notion of \u201censkillment\u201d and occupying a place through increments in knowledge, sentiment, and experience. In seven chapters, she describes the perspectives and motivations of local gardeners who were participating in community gardens as they encountered and engaged with expanding multispecies worlds and embellished their own versions of ecological embeddedness and activism.<\/p>\n

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Tobacco hornworm on a tomato plant. Photo by Aimee L. Trojnar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is a lot of original contribution to be garnered here, from the anthropological and broader theories she marshals in relation to the study of human engagement with gardens to the rich, particularistic ethnography that brings out the personal histories and trajectories of the gardeners. Delving into local understandings and actions relating to \u201cpollinators\u201d, \u201cweeds\u201d and \u201ccompost\u201d, she presents the multispecies complicities as \u201chabitus\u201d (defined, following Pierre Bourdieu, as the \u201cdurably installed generative principle of regulated improvisation\u201d (11). Never stagnant, and rarely thwarted, the gardeners discarded and incorporated opportunistic and wily elements into their assemblages, what she describes as \u201cthe tangle of interacting species and other contributing components involved in vegetable gardening \u2026 along with the many changes that occur through multiple iterations of a garden\u201d (18). There are no comparative tables here nor flow charts or easy generalizations, as the author highlights \u201cthe openness of the gardens to varied forms of connection and participation centered on gardening practices [that] allow them to cultivate a diverse network that depends less on shared ideology than many activist organizations do\u201d (21).<\/p>\n

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The author\u2019s son enjoying one of the last garden tomatoes of fall. Photo by Aimee L. Trojnar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The author had introduced her research by referring to the \u201cplant blindness\u201d that people growing up in modern contexts of mass production and ultra-processing tend to develop. Towards the end, she brings up this theme again as she conjures, following Sarah Elton, \u201cthe illusion of a world without limits: the seasonless supermarket, the food court, the all-you-can-eat buffet\u201d (239). Gardens and gardening can be promoted as affective and effective antidotes to these cataracts of modernity as they foreground interdependencies, vulnerabilities, and co-temporalities. The author succeeds in detailing how \u201cmaterial engagement provides clues about how people cultivate connectedness\u2014whether within a human community or an ecosystem\u2014despite living in social conditions that often invite disconnection\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Praying mantis on celosia at Red Hen Community Garden. Photo by Ruth Hoak.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Home gardener Calvin harvests mustard greens for friends from church. Photo by Aimee L. Trojnar. PhD thesis by Aimee L. Trojnar, Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, 2024. Reviewer: Virginia D. Nazarea (University of Georgia) This dissertation consists of, in the author\u2019s words, \u201cgranular\u201d ethnographic studies of community gardens around Carbondale, Southern Illinois, through the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":117408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11767],"tags":[12845,15290,707,20184,31984,22701,3677],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-117407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","tag-acting","tag-foodanthropology","tag-gardening","tag-illinois","tag-locally","tag-southern","tag-vegetable"],"yoast_head":"\nActing Locally \u2013 Vegetable Gardening In Southern Illinois \u2013 FoodAnthropology - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=117407\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Acting Locally \u2013 Vegetable Gardening In Southern Illinois \u2013 FoodAnthropology - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Home gardener Calvin harvests mustard greens for friends from church. 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