Political engagement in urban agriculture: the power to act in community gardens of São Paulo

Author(s)

André Ruoppolo Biazoti

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Piracicaba.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALA/BC)
• Defense date: 2019-12-17

Examining board members

Marcos Sorrentino; Ivana Cristina Lovo; Valeria de Marcos; Alessandra Buonavoglia Costa Pinto

• Advisor: Marcos Sorrentino

Abstract

In recent years, urban agriculture has proven to be an important solution to numerous issues related to the promotion of food security, poverty eradication and sustainability in general. Recently, the city of São Paulo has stood out for presenting an innovative social process of creating and consolidating community gardens autonomously and self-managed by citizens, using social networks to organize and articulate practices and interventions in an activist manner. These groups present horizontal forms of organization that confront bureaucratized practices of the State, generating conflicts in the management of public spaces and in the recognition of these initiatives by the Government. The research methodology is composed by a phenomenological ethnography based on documentary analysis of primary and secondary data, semi-structured interviews with open questions and participant observation in community gardens, joint-work practices, meetings and events. The research investigates the political engagement in the existing community gardens in São Paulo, bringing a perspective from the increase of the power to act of the subjects until their contribution to the democratization of the management of public spaces in the city, expanding the functions of urban gardens beyond food production. From Spinoza\'s philosophy, it is possible to consider that, in the various meetings promoted by these groups, there are affections that empower subjects to engage in significant changes for local territorial management, increasing their capacity to affect and to be affected and enabling the formation of an expanded collective of action, a multitude, which institutes unique forms of management that confronts the established powers. Citizens, as they actively participate in the production of their own food, even if in a symbolic way, engage in order to build the commons as an alternative logic to public and private property, valuing the use of spaces in their social function and constructing rules for the management of territorial resources through an instituting practice. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/14301-3 - Political engagement in urban agriculture: the power to act in the community gardens of São Paulo
• Grantee: André Ruoppolo Biazoti
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master