Urban Agriculture as Resistance: A Case of Community Gardening

IIPPE 15th Annual Conference in Political Economy, Ankara, Turkey, 17 - 20 September 2025, (Unpublished)

Publication Type: Conference Paper / Unpublished
City: Ankara
Country: Turkey
Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Capitalist agricultural production, ecological crisis, and concerns about food security and sustainability have created various responses. Urban agriculture is among the responses to the metabolic rift, to the extent that engaging in farming and gardening in urban contexts challenges both the rural-urban divide and the alienation of human from nature. In addition, the practices of urban agriculture are not limited to ensuring access to food or pursuing more environment-friendly but still market-oriented farming methods; but also involve radical forms like reclaiming the commons, establishing solidarity among the community, collective labouring followed by collective consumption, seed sharing, restoring the use value of the products, breaking the commodity chains, and ensuring responsiveness to the local dynamics, thereby contributing also to bottom-up resistance mechanisms.

Neoliberalism deepens the impact of capitalist production on environment in the Global South, due to the pace of changing social relations. As consequences of neoliberal transformation of agriculture and enormous investments in the construction sector, rapid and unplanned urbanization affect the current images of cities in Turkey. Under these processes, Batikent, a district of the capital Ankara, once designed as a project against negative results of unplanned urbanization with its emphasis on urban cooperativism and green spaces, ironically turned into a concrete jungle, with green increasingly locked in the mushrooming gated communities.

As opposite to this image, there is Ilkyerlesim Neighbourhood Garden, an example of urban agriculture initiatives. By focusing on the experiences of people involved in this case, this paper questions the relationship between urban agriculture practices and metabolic rift, neoliberalism, and a possible alternative for market relations. The data has been collected through participant observation and in-depth interviews during the farming season of 2024.