Browsing by Author "Conradson D"

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    Cultivating commoners: Infrastructures and subjectivities for a postcapitalist counter-city
    (Elsevier B.V., 2023-12-01) Dombroski K; Conradson D; Diprose G; Healy S; Yates A
    In this paper, we investigate how infrastructure and care shape commoner subjectivities. In our research into an urban youth farm in Aotearoa New Zealand, we heard and observed profound tales of growth and transformation among youth participants. Not only were our interviewees narrating stories of individual transformation (of themselves and others), but they also spoke of transformations in the way they engaged with the world around them, including the land and garden and its many species and ecological systems, the food system more generally, the wider community and their co-workers. Such transformations were both individual and collective, having more in common with the collective caring subject homines curans than the autonomous, rational work-ready subject of homo economicus. Using postcapitalist theory on commons, commoning and subjectivity, we argue that these socio-affective encounters with more-than-human commons enabled collective, caring commoner subjectivities to emerge and to be cultivated through collective care in place. We suggest that the commons can be thought of as an infrastructure of care for the counter-city, providing the conditions for the emergence and cultivation of collective caring urban subjects.
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    Delivering Urban Wellbeing through Transformative Community Enterprise
    (2019) Dombroski K; Diprose G; Conradson D; Healy S; Watkins A
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    When Cultivate Thrives: Developing Criteria for Community Economy Return on Investment
    (University of Canterbury, 2018-04) Dombroski K; Diprose G; Conradson D; Healy S; Watkins A
    Urban communities around the world are using farming and gardening to promote food security, social inclusion and wellbeing. For Christchurch-based Cultivate, urban farms are not only physical places but also incorporate an innovative community economy premised on using common resources such as vacant urban land and green waste, to offer care for urban youth. Cultivate’s two urban farms are an important aspect of this care, for it is here that supportive and informally therapeutic environments are co-created and experienced by youth interns, urban farmers, trained social workers and volunteers. Cultivate’s urban farms are innovative examples of creative urban wellbeing initiatives that may be valuable for other organisations seeking to promote youth wellbeing and social development, both across New Zealand and further afield. To document and measure the holistic impact of Cultivate, we used a collaborative approach with Cultivate stakeholders to further develop an existing assessment tool: the Community Economy Return on Investment (CEROI). The project will finish in November 2018 with a series of workshops with urban designers to test and promote the use of the tool as a method for communicating the non-monetary return on investment to a wider community involved with other urban wellbeing projects.