Urban Farm DB
Research catalogue
Database research record2020·United States (Chicago)

Reconciliation and Resistance from the Ground Up: The Power of Affect in Chicago’s Community Gardens

Olivia Lee

Johns Hopkins University eBooks

Urban Farm DB summary

This study, drawing on affect theory, examines community gardens in Chicago's low-income, primarily Black South Side neighborhoods. It argues that while these gardens offer a spatial break from violence, they appear unable to fully counteract the ongoing marginalization by race and socioeconomic status. The gardens represent a quiet, nascent resistance against neoliberal injustices through intimate human-nature interaction.