Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
Project Summary
City dwellers are changing the way they eat, live, and socialize and in the process they are
transforming themselves, their homes, and their communities. Staying home to plant a
vegetable patch, knit a sweater, or preserve a batch of jam is becoming the new urban politics
(Hayes 2010). Urban homesteading (UH) is an economically and environmentally politicized
form of household self-provisioning that has become a growing phenomenon in American cities,
especially around notions of economic and environmental resilience (Tortorello 2011). A
geographic perspective is necessary for understanding the self-provisioning practices of urban
homesteaders as a set of unique human-environment relationships that are symptomatic of the
rescaling of environmental and economic responsibility (Katz 2001b, Peck and Tickell 2002), and
productive of new political and economic spaces within the home (Gibson-Graham 2006).
Through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and surveys the proposed
research explores the self-provisioning practices of urban homesteaders, and the impacts of
these practices on social (gender, race, class, friendships, place based communities, voluntary
associations) and economic relations (divisions of labor, local production networks, barter
networks, supply chains, diverse economies) in the Boston metropolitan area at multiple urban
scales (the body, home, neighborhood, city, and metropolitan region).
The intellectual merit of this research stems from its empirical contribution to geographies
of urban agriculture and self-provisioning, feminist political economy, diverse economies, and
critical geographies of home. The research draws on feminist geographic perspectives on home
and political economy to explore self-provisioning practices of urban homesteaders as they
occur across multiple urban scales, in order to develop a multi-scalar understanding of urban
agriculture and self-provisioning. By examining the impact of self-provisioning practices on
social and economic relations at multiple scales within beyond the home this research explores
the role of individuals and households in creating environmental and economic change, and the
role of self-provisioning practices in building resilient urban economies and ecologies that are
more than capitalist (Marston 2000, Gibson-Graham 2006, communityeconomies.org). By
documenting the (gendered, raced, and classed) social relations and alternative economic
relations that self-provisioning is embedded in and enabled by this research contributes to
feminist geographic research on domestic labor and social reproduction more broadly, and
diverse economies in particular (Gibson-Graham 1996, 2006, Katz 2001 a, 2001b, Cameron 2000).
The broader impacts of this research are to inform how policy makers consider the (1)
quality of life, (2) economic resilience, (3) gender equity, and (4) social justice dimensions of
urban agriculture and sustainability. This research will provide insights into: (1) quality of life,
by documenting how urban homesteaders achieve satisfaction and well-being through selfprovisioning; (2) economic resilience, by documenting the role that self-provisioning practices
play in making households and cities more resilient to economic and environmental shocks; (3)
gender equity, by documenting the impact of self-provisioning on gender relations and
divisions of labor within households; and (4) social justice, by documenting how relationships
of (race and class) privilege and social exclusion are challenged or maintained through UH
practices and networks. Furthermore, this research is being conducted during a pivotal urban
agriculture rezoning initiative in Boston (BRA 2012) and is well positioned to inform policy
change in the following ways. The material products of this research (maps of self-provisioning
and the social and economic relations these practices are embedded in and enabled by) will be
distributed to research participants, local sustainability committees, and the Boston
1
Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
Redevelopment Authority with three specific aims: (1) demonstrating the social and economic
impact of these practices across scales; (2) identifying policy changes in urban agriculture
zoning, land use, and food safety law that will benefit the greatest number of urban residents;
(3) identifying self-provisioning practices that can be ‘scaled up’ well beyond the household;
and (4) facilitating a more productive conversation between urban homesteaders and local
policy makers about their shared economies and environments.
Project Description
1. Problem Statement
Urban homesteading (UH) is an economically and environmentally politicized form of
household self-provisioning (e.g. canning, gardening, bartering with friends and neighbors) that
takes place in U.S. cities and has gained significant media attention in the years following the
2007 global economic recession (Muhlke 2009, Higgins 2009, Horovitz 2009). The growth of UH
in the U.S. is evidenced by the increased publication of personal blogs (yougrowgirl.com,
brooklynhomesteader.com, rootsimple.com) and books about UH (Coyne and Knutzen 2008,
2010, Woginrich 2008, Kaplan and Blume 2011), and by an increase in DIY (do-it-yourself)
(packaged facts 2009) and self-provisioning (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008,
2007) more broadly in U.S. households between 2007 and 2011. One of the urban homesteading
movement’s central beliefs is that economic and environmental change can and should begin at
the scale of the home, and that home is an important “site for personal and societal
transformation” (UHL 2012). Through cultivating “lost” domestic skills like gardening, canning,
and arts and crafts, urban homesteaders create new sources of pleasure, subsistence, and leisure
that decrease their reliance on the capitalist economies they find socially and environmentally
harmful and increase their reliance on household and community economies (Hayes 2010,
Woginrich 2008). Self-provisioning is the material means by which urban homesteaders enact
economic and environmental change, by using time, space, and resources differently, and
changing their behavior and participation as consumers in the broader economy.
Women are significant actors in the urban homesteading (UH) movement, especially as
authors of UH blogs and books (Kaplan and Blume 2011, Hayes 2010, Woginrich 2008, Payne
2011, Meredith 2008, Carpenter 2009, Costa 2010, yougrowgirl.com, brooklynhomesteader.com),
and organizers of UH community groups, social networks, and workshops including the Boston
area Urban Homesteaders League (UHL 2012, IUH 2012, The Honeysuckle Rosies). These
observations suggest that gender is a significant variable for explaining how, why, and under
what circumstances individuals, households, and communities practice self-provisioning.
Furthermore the home-based nature of many self-provisioning practices along with historical
ties between femininity and domesticity suggest that increased self-provisioning may reinforce
unequal divisions of labor between men and women in American households. For example, in
2010 American households devoted more of their time to household labor than in previous
years, and women were responsible for the bulk of that labor (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2007,
2008, 2009, 2010, 2011). This research examines the impacts of self-provisioning on social
relations, including, and with a particular lens on gender.
Despite the rise of self-provisioning practices in U.S. cities and the popularity of UH, little
research has explained why these practices are on the rise, who is doing them, or what their
impact is on (gendered, raced, classed) social relations and (non-capitalist) economic relations at
multiple urban scales within and beyond the home. The objective of this research is to examine
how and why individuals, communities, and households in the Boston area UH movement
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Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
practice self-provisioning, and to explain the potentially gendered impacts of self-provisioning
on social and economic relations at multiple urban scales (the body, household, neighborhood,
city, metropolitan region). Through participant observation, interviews, and surveys, we aim to
answer the following questions:
1. What is the nature of self-provisioning among urban homesteaders in the Boston area?
a. Who is doing self-provisioning and why?
b. What kinds of self-provisioning practices are urban homesteaders engaged in?
c. What is the (material and imagined) spatiality of these practices?
2. How are social and economic relations (re)configured under self-provisioning practices?
a. What kinds of social relations (e.g. gender, race, ethnic, and class relations, friendships,
voluntary associations, place based communities) are self-provisioning practices
embedded in and enabled by?
b. What kinds of economic relations (e.g. gender division of labor, barter networks,
supply chains, property regulations, zoning, production, consumption and
distribution networks) are self-provisioning practices embedded in and enabled by?
c. What is the impact of self-provisioning practices on social and economic relations at
multiple urban scales within and beyond the household?
2. Background: Urban Homesteading
Urban homesteaders promote subsistence food and craft production, and a return to a
home-based, family-centered, self-sufficient way of life (urbanhomestead.org, Hayes 2010).
However, it is only recently that the term urban homesteading (UH) has been used to describe
these economically and environmentally politicized forms of self-provisioning. The term
homesteading first came into popular usage in America with the passage of the Homestead Act
of 1862, a policy aimed at spurring American families to settle and colonize the American west
through subsistence agriculture. The term urban homesteading first came into popular usage
with the passage of the Housing and Community Development Act (Urban Homesteading Act)
of 1974 (Smith 1992, HUD), a policy aimed at drawing working families into blighted urban
areas. Through the labor of renovation the investment of sweat equity urban pioneers became
the legal owners of the residential properties they occupied. In 2012 urban homesteading
provides a new way of acting environmentally that is rooted in Jeffersonian attitudes towards
home as a site of economic independence. While homesteading policies in urban and rural
America have facilitated the transformation of labor into property, the UH movement aims to
transform domestic labor into politics, and homes into political spaces (Hayes 2010).
In the Boston metropolitan area UH is a growing movement. In the last two years the Boston
area Urban Homesteaders League (UHL) has grown to 1363 members. The UHL is a community
venture “committed to reimagining the good life as one that is meaningful, pleasurable,
sustainable, and socially just”, through its online and place based social network urban
residents connect with skills, knowledge, resources, community organizations, and one another
at barter events, workshops, and community dinners across the Boston metropolitan area (UHL
2012). Urban homesteaders believe that economic and environmental change can and should
begin at the scale of the home (UHL 2012). The centrality of home as a site for self-provisioning,
social reproduction, and economic and environmental politics points to the necessity of
understanding the (gendered, raced, and classed) social relations and (non-capitalist) economic
relations by which these material and imagined spaces are produced.
The preliminary research we have conducted on the media representations of urban
homesteading reveals the production of racialized, gendered, and classed understandings of
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Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
home and self-provisioning (Bleyer 2011, Stewart 2011, Muhlke 2009). These representations
reinforce binaries between public and private, normalize the experience of home as haven, mask
the gendered divisions of labor and inequalities that occur both within and beyond the home,
and elicit nostalgia for an idealized agrarian past. Frequent references to the book and TV show
Little House on the Prairie, and comparisons between urban homesteaders and the self-sufficient
white pioneers of the American frontier celebrate the history and ideology of rugged
individualism, self-sufficiency, and manifest destiny. Images of white women cradling
backyard livestock or dressed in 1950’s vintage aprons give the movement a white face and a
feminine body and celebrate the memory of a “lost” feminine domesticity. The production of
gendered, classed, and racialized understandings of home is further evidenced by the spatial
imaginaries urban homesteaders employ to talk about their practice. In a recent interview with
the New York Times, Urban Homesteader Kelly Coyne expresses a spatial imaginary of home
that may be representative of others in the urban homesteading movement. “She [Ms. Coyne]
doesn’t care to fret about national politics, peak oil or the coming zombie apocalypse. ‘Within
our control,’ she said, ‘is what goes in the house, in the backyard, in the neighborhood’”
(Tortorello 2011). The spatial imaginaries that motivate urban homesteaders may enable or
constrain broader environmental and economic change. While Ms. Coyne’s image of home as an
autonomous space beyond national politics and peak oil enables her to enact environmental and
economic change in her own backyard and neighborhood, this same spatial imaginary may also
prevent her from attempting to ‘scale up’ those changes through policy change or by engaging
in democratic action with people in places beyond her neighborhood.
These representations of home and self-provisioning have drawn criticism from feminist
and anti-racist bloggers and social scientists. Several have suggested that the “rebranding”
urban agriculture and household self-provisioning as “urban homesteading” serves to exclude
the experiences of urban residents (especially immigrants and African Americans) who have
practiced self-provisioning as a matter of cultural and economic survival long before it was hip
or green and may not have positive associations with images of white pioneers on the American
frontier or white gentrifiers on the urban frontier (Grow and Resist 2011, NPR Marketplace
2010). Feminist scholars have criticized the valorization of traditional notions of femininity
evident in much of the nostalgia laden alternative (local, slow) food writing that attaches food
morality to feminine domesticity. They accuse alternative food writers such as Pollan (2006) of
blaming women (for leaving the kitchen) and feminism (for extending women’s economic
opportunities) for the pathetic state of our food system. Further they argue that increasing
domestic labor through self-provisioning (e.g. gardening, preserving, cooking) in order to effect
change in the broader economy will further burden women at home and reinforce the unequal
gender divisions of labor already present in America, where women remain responsible for the
majority of domestic labor (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011, Deutsch 2011, Matchar 2011).
Household responses to global climate change more broadly have drawn criticism for
relying on the voluntary decisions of racially and economically privileged individuals to lead
more sustainable lifestyles (e.g. consume “better”), and for distracting individuals from
pursuing the structural changes through environmental policies that would require everyone to
reduce their environmental impact (Guthman 2008, Slocum 2007, Kolbert 2009). Recent research
on sustainable lifestyles has overwhelmingly focused on consumption (Evans 2011, Barr and
Gilg 2006, Franklin et al. 2011). By limiting questions of sustainability to consumption choices
we risk further marginalizing those who cannot afford to participate in sustainable
consumption from the environmental movement more broadly (Guthman 2008, Gibson et al.
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Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
2011). The proposed research extends research on sustainable lifestyles to questions of selfprovisioning in order to explore domestic forms of thrift and subsistence as hidden and
undervalued “actually existing sustainabilities” (Krueger and Agyeman 2005).
Each of these critiques offers important insights for building a more socially just UH
movement. However, these critiques also have significant empirical gaps, as few are based on
qualitative research with urban homesteaders, and most rely on discourse analysis of media
representations, food writing, email correspondence, and classroom experiences. This empirical
gap means that we know little about how, why, and under what circumstances selfprovisioning is practiced by urban homesteaders themselves, or its impact on social relations
(gender, race, class) in a particular place, at various urban scales. Understanding the impacts
(positive and negative) of these practices in Boston is necessary for challenging social inequality
within the UH movement, identifying how privilege and exclusion are (re)produced, and
addressing the gender equity and social justice dimensions of urban sustainability more broadly.
UH raises significant questions about the relationship between home, self-provisioning,
(gendered, raced, classed) social relations, and alternative economic relations that will inform
research on urban agriculture, feminist political economy, diverse economies, and critical
geographies of home, as well as policy debates on urban agriculture and sustainability.
3. Theoretical Framework
Geographies of Urban Agriculture and Self-Provisioning
Urban agriculture (UA) has become a policy focus for city governments, food councils,
public health officials, and zoning boards across the country in “shrinking” (Detroit) and
growing cities (Oakland, New York, Boston) alike. In the U.S., UA has been historically
promoted through land use, zoning, and other incentives at both the federal and municipal
scale during times of economic crisis, war, and food shortage (McClintock 2010). Internationally
UA has played a role in economic development projects in the global south, often with
gendered impacts as gardening responsibilities tend to fall more heavily on women (Schroeder
1999, Carney 1993, WinklerPrins and deSouza 2005). In Boston, Mayor Menino and the Boston
Redevelopment Authority have begun the complex process of re-zoning the entire city for
urban agriculture (UA), with the hope that UA will improve the overall health and food
security of the area, and create economic development through green jobs (BRA 2012).
Community groups (including urban homesteaders) are enthusiastic about rezoning for UA for
reasons that include neighborhood food security, access to property for growing food, and
legalizing backyard chickens (JP NET, legalizechickensinboston.org, the food project).
Geographic perspectives on UA have focused on a range of topics including community and
home gardens, local food systems, farmers markets, urban farming, alternative food networks,
community food security, and allotments (Lawson 2005, Crouch 2003, Head et al. 2006, Jarosz
2011). Theoretical perspectives on UA include phenomenological approaches to dwelling in
landscape (Lorimer 2005), actor network theory (Hitchings 2003, Hinchcliffe et al. 2005), urban
metabolism (McClintock 2010), right to the city (Staehli et al. 2002), legal geography of property
(Blomley 2005), neo-liberal governance (Pudup 2008, Rosol 2011), critical race theory (Slocum
2002, Alkon and McCullen 2010), diverse economies (Smith and Stennings 2006), culturaleconomy (Smith 2002, Williams 2001, 2004), and the commons (Eizenberg 2011, Campbell and
Wiesen 2009). UA research explores the multiple kinds of communities, organizational forms,
politics, and economies that arise around urban food production, distribution, and consumption,
as well as the political economies of urban property, land use, zoning, and neo-liberal
governance which enable and constrain UA practices (Staeheli et al. 2002, Blomley 2005).
5
Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
The dominant spaces of UA research are community and home gardens. The community
garden is conceived as a site of resistance, community empowerment, food security, civic
responsibility, neo-liberal voluntarism, transformative human-nature relations, and a commons
(Campbell and Wiesen 2009, Eizenberg 2011, Pudup 2008, Rosol 2011, Lawson 2005, Smith and
Kurtz 2003, Schmelzkopf 2002). The home garden is conceived as a site of identity formation,
sustainability, dwelling, diverse economies, and household self-provisioning, (Bhatti and
Church 2004, Head et al. 2006, Lorimer 2005, WinklerPrins and deSouza 2005, Smith and
Stennings 2006). Self-provisioning is "the unpaid household work undertaken by household
members for themselves or for other members of their household" Williams and Windebank
(2000: 129). Due to the locally specific nature of UA self-provisioning practices many
approaches tend to atomize the scale of the home or neighborhood (Watson and Shove 2008,
Williams 2001, 2004, Williams and Windebank 2003), and very few of these analyses are multiscalar in nature (although see: Smith and Kurtz 2003, WinklerPrins and deSouza 2005). Rarely
do we follow gardeners home to cook a meal (although see: Hayes-Conroy 2010), meet them at
a re-zoning meeting, or map the social and economic networks of people and things that
connect self-provisioning, gardens, kitchens, neighborhood, and city hall. One notable exception
is WinklerPrins and de Souza’s (2005) study of home gardens in Brazil, which shows how
household self-provisioning practices link urban dwellers to economies of affection through the
informal exchange of goods and labor between urban neighbors, and rural friends and family.
The self-provisioning practices of urban homesteaders are practiced at multiple urban scales,
in kitchens, backyards, community gardens, farmers markets, and church basements. Urban
homesteading (UH) allows us to explore UA practices from a multi-scalar perspective, which
shows how different UA practices, people, and spaces are networked, and measures the impact
of different self-provisioning practices on social (race, class, gender, friendships, voluntary
associations, place-based communities) and economic relations (divisions of labor, property,
exchange networks, supply chains, flows of value) across the scales of body, home,
neighborhood, municipality, and metropolitan region. A qualitative study of the UH movement
in Boston will contribute new empirical data and theoretical insights to the diverse and growing
research on UA. A feminist geographic perspective on self-provisioning attunes us to the
relationship between production and reproduction, the everyday space of the home, and the
flows of labor and materials that extend beyond the home to support the broader economies
and ecologies in which they are situated (Katz 2001a, Blunt and Dowling 2006).
Feminist Political Economy, Diverse Economies, and Critical Geographies of Home
Feminist economists have studied individuals and households engaged in the everyday
business of provisioning for life and wellbeing in order expand our understanding of the
economy to include unpaid, informal, and socially reproductive labor (Ironmonger 1996,
Nelson 1993, Nagar et al. 2002,). Historically, socially reproductive labor (including selfprovisioning) has provided care, food, and life to the bodies of wage laborers thereby
reproducing capitalist economies and societies (Massey 1994, Pratt 2004, Katz 2001b). GibsonGraham (1996, 2006) argue that this capitalocentric understanding of household labor, in which
social reproduction is both necessary to and subservient to the needs of capital, has produced a
narrow political and economic imaginary that obscures and devalues non-capitalist practices, as
well as the everyday spaces in which they occur. Drawing on the experiences of mining
households in Australia they show how men and women engaged in self-provisioning are
involved in non-capitalist class processes, and that gendered struggles over labor and the
6
Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
distribution of wages represent domestic class struggles. Through the diverse economies
framework Gibson-Graham develop a language of economic difference that makes visible “the
hidden and alternative economic activities that everywhere abound” (2006: xxiv) in order to
broaden the locations and scales for economic politics (Marston 2000). The diverse economies
framework is a methodology for identifying economic diversity and community assets by
attending to the social relations, what Gibson-Graham (2006) call “class processes” (capitalist,
feudal, communal, independent), through which labor and value are appropriated and
distributed in production, reproduction, exchange, property, enterprise, and finance.
The case of urban homesteading leads us to question the dialectic, but unequal, relationship
between (capitalist) production and (non-capitalist) social reproduction, as homesteaders
choose to structure their lives around the necessities of social reproduction rather than
production. Changes in social reproduction at the scale of the home, have effects on social and
economic relations at other scales (Cameron and Gibson-Graham 2003, Pavlovksaya 2004,
Oberhauser 2005). Cameron and Gibson-Graham (2003) demonstrate how domestic class
struggles over social reproduction at the scale of the household can effect change at other scales.
Examining childcare in Australia, they show how domestic class struggles over time and
resources have given rise to informal cooperative childcare arrangements between friends and
neighbors and shaped policy changes for state supported cooperative childcare. The diverse
economies perspective demands inquiry that considers how economic and political change can
occur at multiple scales, including the household, and how socially reproductive labor can give
rise to diverse economies at scales beyond the household (Gibson-Graham 1996, 2006).
The proposed research uses Gibson-Graham’s diverse economies framework (1996, 2006) to
document and examine the self-provisioning practices of urban homesteaders, the non-capitalist
economic relations and the gendered, raced, and classed social relations these practices are
embedded in and enabled by, and their social and economic impacts at multiple urban scales.
By documenting the impact of self-provisioning at multiple scales this research produces a
better understanding of how individuals and communities create environmental and economic
change, and the role of self-provisioning in building resilient urban economies and ecologies.
The proposed research also fills a gap in diverse economies research by considering how noncapitalist class processes intersect with other gendered, raced, and classed social relations in
ways that may reproduce or challenge social inequality and exclusion at multiple urban scales.
Feminist geographers have emphasized the importance of home and everyday life to
understanding the shifting relationship between production and social reproduction during
times of economic and ecological crisis. Through research on globalization, work, politics, home,
and social reproduction they show how globalization and economic restructuring occur at a
variety of personal and embodied scales (e.g. locality, home, body) and, therefore, why multiscalar analyses are key to understanding both global and local processes (Katz 2001a, 2001b
Marston 2000, Massey 1994, Freeman 2001, Gibson- Graham 1996). The rescaling of social
reproduction, through public disinvestment and privatization, that has accompanied neo-liberal
restructuring in the global North and South points to the necessity of understanding economies
at multiple scales, including the home, and requires geographers to recognize the economic
importance of the self-provisioning practices that occur inside the home (Katz 2001a, 2001 b,
Smith and Rochovska 2007, Smith and Stenning 2006, Pavlovskaya 2004, Oberhauser 2005).
Homes are significant spaces for understanding the relationship between production and
social reproduction, self-provisioning, gender relations, identity formation, and diverse
economies (Bachelard 1958, Pratt 2004, Young 2005, Gibson-Graham 1996, Cameron 2000, hooks
7
Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
1990, Massey 1994, Hanson and Pratt 1995, Tuan 1977, Mallett 2004). However in order to avoid
atomistic accounts of home, feminist geographers are increasingly adopting a critical geography
perspective on home. This perspective explores “home as simultaneously material and
imaginative; the nexus between home, power and identity; and home as multi-scalar” ([Blunt
and Dowling 2006:22] in Brickell 2011: 2). This research will make a significant contribution to
critical geographies of home in the three ways: (1) By exploring the material practices (selfprovisioning) and symbolic means (spatial imaginaries) by which urban homesteaders fashion
their homes as political and economic spaces; (2) by making visible the ways in which selfprovisioning practices and spatial imaginaries of home are gendered, raced, and classed; and (3)
by mapping the social (gender, race, class, friendships, communities, and voluntary
associations) and economic relations (diverse economies, supply chains, production networks)
that self-provisioning practices are embedded in and enabled by, at multiple urban scales.
4. Research Site
Co-PI Morrow will conduct the proposed research on the self-provisioning practices of
urban homesteaders in the Boston metropolitan area (specifically Boston, Cambridge,
Somerville). We have chosen this area based on its commitment to sustainability at multiple
urban scales evidenced by home weatherization initiatives, food policy, green space, tree
plantings, and urban agriculture (re)zoning (city of Boston, city of Somerville, city of
Cambridge), and the existence of multiple community organizations that practice, promote, and
teach self-provisioning who are networked through the Urban Homesteaders League (JP Net,
Ground works, the Food Project, Revision House, UHL). Despite their proximity these cities
have pronounced differences when it comes to zoning for urban agriculture. Somerville, the
most densely populated city in New England (18,405 persons/sq. mile) allows all forms of
urban agriculture including honeybees and chickens (City of Somerville). In Boston chickens are
currently illegal and the city has begun the initial stages of re-zoning for urban agriculture (City
of Boston, legalizechickensinboston.com). In Cambridge chickens are legal, but less tolerated by
neighbors (City of Cambridge, Fennimore 2010). Urban agriculture in each of these cities is
constrained by lack of space, property values, and environmental toxins from earlier industrial
uses, and old housing stock (lead paint) (BRA 2012). Demographically these areas are similar in
home ownership rates and per capita income, but Boston is significantly more ethnically diverse
than Cambridge and Somerville (US Census 2011). Findings from this study will provide a
methodological framework for exploring urban homesteading in other U.S. cities. Co-PI
Morrow is conducting ongoing fieldwork from May 2011 – May 2012 at multiple research sites
in the Boston metropolitan area. These sites include public spaces such community gardens,
church basements, community centers, urban farms, and the private residences of urban
homesteaders.
5. Data Collection (See Fig. 1 Research Schedule)
Data collection will consist of three data types: participant observation of activities
organized by UHL members, semi-structured interviews with 30-40 urban homesteaders about
their self-provisioning practices, and a survey of self-provisioning practices and motivations.
Co-PI Morrow will collect experiential data on self-provisioning, by conducting participant
observation at local educational events (workshops, and skill-shares), social events
(community dinners, bartering events and festivals), and self-provisioning events (garden work
[in home and community gardens], yogurt making [church basement], urban gleaning
[backyards and driveways], cooking, baking, canning [in homes]), organized by a member of
the Urban Homesteaders League (UHL 2012). The UHL is a community venture “committed to
8
Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
reimagining the good life as one that is meaningful, pleasurable, sustainable, and socially just”,
through its online and place based social network urban residents connect with skills,
knowledge, resources, community organizations, and one another at barter events, workshops,
and community dinner across the Boston metropolitan area (UHL 2012). Through the UHL we
will sample a wide range of organizations, individuals, and self-provisioning practices
occurring in different kinds of spaces (homes, community gardens, church basements), at
multiple scales, each with particular legal, social, economic, and geographies and constraints,
including property values, zoning, and food safety laws. The Co-PI will attend between 3-5
events each week. She will find out about these events through the UHL email list (hosted by
the social networking site meetup.com). Past educational events have included workshops on
food preservation (canning), foraging (identifying edible plants and mushrooms), fermentation
(beer, kombucha, and pickled foods), crafts (soap making and herbal medicine making),
backyard livestock, and bee keeping. Past social events have included community dinners,
urban agricultural fairs, and barter events where members exchange and gift extra produce,
homemade wares, and household goods. Past self-provisioning events have included canning
and fermenting produce, bread baking, urban gleaning, and yogurt making.
During the events the Co-PI will record notes about the setting (the space and location) and
the participants (who is there, what they are doing), how many people are present, the
(observable) race, ethnicity, gender, and age of the participants, and the social interactions
between participants (e.g. what roles different individuals occupy, who is talking and who isn’t,
how information is communicated, how decisions are made). In order to collect standardized
economic data on self-provisioning practices the Co-PI will fill out a skills inventory – either at
the research site or immediately after. On the far left of the inventory the Co-PI will describe the
skill or practice, and in corresponding rows and columns she will answer a series of question
about each skill or practice in order to record: knowledge is exchanged (Are skills sold, gifted,
shared, or collectively produced?), divisions of labor (Who is skilled and who isn’t? Who is
doing what?), material inputs (Where do the materials come from? How are they appropriated?
), material outputs (Where do products go? How are they distributed and consumed?). This
economic data will allow the Co-PI to map the flows of labor, materials, property relations, and
skills that make urban self-provisioning possible, and to document the economic relations that
different kinds of self-provisioning practices are embedded in across scales.
Attending these events will allow the Co-PI to document the (gendered, raced, and classed)
social relations that self-provisioning is embedded in, generate social and demographic profiles
of dominant and marginalized identities, and document shared values, beliefs, meanings,
assumptions, and points of disagreement. This will allow her to use the appropriate
terminology and ask more specific questions about particular self-provisioning practices,
values/motivations, meanings and identities in subsequent semi-structured interviews and
surveys. Engaging in meaningful face-to-face conversations with urban homesteaders is
essential for building the rapport and social contacts necessary for recruiting individuals for
participation in subsequent interviews and surveys. After completing the skills inventory the
Co-PI will write up her field notes, in these notes she will produce a detailed account of the
event; and describe the different kinds of social and economic interactions she observed,
discussed, or participated in, especially with regard to existing research themes: gender, race,
class, social reproduction, domestic labor, diverse economies, and economic and environmental
politics. Through participating in self-provisioning practices with urban homesteaders (in their
homes and in shared public spaces e.g. community garden, church kitchen), the Co-PI will learn
9
Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
about the material experience of doing and learning self-provisioning. Through writing up her
field notes the Co-PI will reflect on the embodied experience of learning and doing different
kinds of self-provisioning practices with the group, her own positionality as a researcher, and
begin the first stages of data analysis, and write memos, trends, and preliminary theories
alongside narrative descriptions of events.
Co-PI Morrow will conduct 30-40 semi-structured interviews with men and women she has
met through snowball sampling (Bradshaw and Stratford 2005) at urban homesteaders league
events. If snowball sampling fails to yield a sufficient number of interview participants she will
contact a purposive sample of 40 participants from the 1363 members of the urban
homesteaders league by email to solicit their participation in an interview. She will choose
individuals to contact based on their level of participation in the urban homesteading
movement and their interest in self-provisioning practices. The interviews will be digitally
recorded and last 1-2 hours. When possible the interviews will take place at participants’
homes. If the interview takes place at home Co-PI Morrow will ask participants to show her the
different spaces where self-provisioning takes place (e.g. garden, workshop, kitchen), and to
show her some of the things they have produced through self-provisioning. Conducting the
interviews in participants’ homes will allow participants to make full use of the material culture
of self-provisioning (tools, products, foods, crafts) and other household artifacts in their
narratives and explanations of self-provisioning (Elwood and Martin 2000, Oberhauser 1995).
The interviews will produce data about time-use in the form of “what did you do last week”
interview questions, the (personal, social, economic, and political) significance of particular self
provisioning practices, and the social and economic networks of self-provisioning. The “last
week” interview questions will produce data about the amount of time individuals invested in
self-provisioning in the previous week, the quality of that time, and the motivations, values,
and ethics that influenced decisions about time use. In order to understand the social and
economic networks of self-provisioning interviewees will be asked to discuss where (in the
home, neighborhood) they do particular self-provisioning practices, who they do them with or
for, how much money they spend/save per month doing this practice, how and where they
source their materials, if they produce more goods (food, crafts) than they themselves need, and
if they distribute the surplus they produce to others (via gift, barter, or market). The interview
questions will be structured around the following themes: time-use, practices, experiences,
motivations, urban and domestic space, and social networks. Some questions will ask the
interviewee to consider how their everyday domestic life intersects with events at other scales
such as the global financial crisis. This mix of open-ended and structured questions will allow
the Co-PI to develop a hierarchy of experiences and motivations related to self-provisioning.
A hypertext link to an anonymous survey about self-provisioning practices and motivations
will be emailed to the 1363 members of the urban homesteaders league. The goal is to receive at
least 100 completed surveys, a response rate of 7%. The survey will include a list of selfprovisioning practices (gleaned from interviews and participant observation). Survey
participants will be asked to type the amount of time and money they devote to each practice
per week, each season, over the course of the year and to respond (strongly agree to strongly
disagree) on a likert scale to statements about their experience and motivations for selfprovisioning. This will allow the Co-PI to test out the significance and extent of particularly
idiosyncratic and popular experiences and motivations reported in the interviews.
6. Analysis (see Fig. 2. Analysis Summary)
10
Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
Once the interviews and field notes have been transcribed Co-PI Morrow will open code
them using a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz 2006). The transcribed field
notes and interviews will be imported into N-Vivo 10, where they will be read and open coded
according to the following scheme. First the Co-PI will produce a series of descriptive codes to
denote people and places, action codes to denote practices, narrative codes to denote personal
explanations, and emergent analytic codes that speak to research themes (economy,
environment, space, scale, politics, home, identity). Using this qualitative research software will
allow her to code and re-code a large amount of data, assign multiple codes to one section of
text, and to sample and rank codes according to their frequency. After the first round of coding
the Co-PI will write up a memo (Charmaz 2006) about the relationships between the data,
codes, existing theoretical literature, and the broader social phenomena. This practice of writing
memos and thinking about the data in a new way will likely generate new analytic codes. The
data will then be re-coded using these codes. This iterative practice of coding, memo writing,
and (re)coding facilitates the inductive construction of theory. Selections of speech and writing
that have been coded will be further organized into three distinct clusters of data: Practice,
Time-Use, and Social and Economic geographies of self-provisioning, additional clusters may
be necessary to reflect the data results.
The multiple methods outlined above will allow the Co-PI to triangulate her results and
examine the following categories in greater depth: (1) Practices: inventory, descriptions, and
experiences of self-provisioning (sources: participant observation, interviews, survey); (2) Timeuse: quantity and quality of time devoted to self provisioning, choices made about time use
(sources: interviews, surveys, American time-use survey); (3) Social and Economic geographies
of self-provisioning: the spaces where practices takes place, spatial flows of inputs (labor, time,
materials) and outputs (products, goods, distribution), social networks, and the scale of selfprovisioning (sources: interviews, participant observation). The data sets on (1) practices and (2)
time-use will be analyzed to highlight the different forms of labor, exchange, and property
arrangements that support the lifestyles and livelihoods of urban homesteaders. Analysis of the
(1) practice data sets will yield a hierarchy of different kinds of self-provisioning practices (most
common to least common) that will be weighted according to (2) time-use. Data sets on (3)
social and economic geographies of self-provisioning will be analyzed to produce network
maps with VUE (visual understanding environment software) in order to document the
material, labor, and social inputs and outputs of particular self-provisioning practices in
households. The network map will also document where flows of labor, materials, and value
are appropriated from and how they are distributed within and beyond the household. Using
google maps these network maps will be combined to produce a series of urban maps in which
the social and economic geographies of different self-provisioning practices are represented
spatially, in order to highlight the social and economic networks in which self-provisioning
practices and urban homesteaders are embedded. Self-provisioning maps such as these will
demonstrate the geographic extent and inequality of self-provisioning in the Boston area, by
identifying where people have the most and least access to self-provisioning resources and
assets (property, social networks, community gardens and kitchens). These maps will inform
ongoing urban agriculture re-zoning efforts in the city of Boston. They will also be useful to
urban homesteaders who are interested in further localizing their supply chains, making
alliances with other urban homesteaders, and locating more resources for self-provisioning. One
such map that urban homesteaders have already requested from the Co-PI is a map of urban
fruit (fruit trees and grapevines). This map will allow urban homesteaders to identify property
11
Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
owners with fruit surpluses who they will approach to participate in neighborhood food
processing and preservation schemes.
Throughout the fieldwork Co-PI Morrow will discuss and validate her findings through
participant checks (Kirk and Miller 1986, Morse et al. 2002). One of the advantages of
conducting qualitative research locally is that analysis is an ongoing iterative process, and
proximity to the field will allow Co-PI Morrow to check her analysis throughout all parts of the
research process – collection, analysis, and writing.
7. Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts
This research explores how practices of self-provisioning among urban homesteaders in the
Boston area impact social (e.g. gender, class, race, friendships, place based communities,
voluntary association) and economic relations (e.g. inputs, and outputs, supply chains, diverse
economies, production networks) at multiple scales within and beyond the home (e.g. body,
home, neighborhood, city, metropolitan region). The intellectual merit of this research stems
from its empirical contribution to urban agriculture, self-provisioning, feminist political
economy, and critical geographies of home. By documenting the impact of self-provisioning
practices on social and economic relations at multiple scales beyond the home this research
explores the role of individuals and households in creating environmental and economic change,
and the role that self-provisioning plays in building resilient local economies that are more than
capitalist (Marston 2000, Gibson-Graham 2006, communityeconomies.org). By documenting the
gendered social relations and divisions of labor that self-provisioning is embedded in and
enabled by this research contributes to feminist geographic research on domestic labor and
social reproduction more broadly (Gibson-Graham 1996, 2006, Katz 2001 a, 2001b, Cameron
2000). This research also contributes to critical geographies of home (Blunt and Dowling 2011,
Brickell 2011); in three ways: (1) by exploring the material practices (self-provisioning) and
symbolic means (spatial imaginaries) by which urban homesteaders fashion their homes as
political and economic spaces; (2) by making visible the ways in which self-provisioning
practices and spatial imaginaries of home are gendered; and (3) by mapping the social and
economic relations that self-provisioning practices are embedded in at multiple scales. The
broader impacts of this research are to inform how policy makers consider the (1) quality of life,
(2) economic resilience, (3) gender equity, and (4) social justice dimensions of urban agriculture
and sustainability. This research will provide insights into: (1) quality of life, by documenting
how communities of urban homesteaders achieve satisfaction and wellbeing through selfprovisioning; (2) economic resilience, by documenting the role that self-provisioning practices
play in making households and cities more resilient to economic and environmental shocks; (3)
gender equity, by documenting the impact of self-provisioning on gender relations and gender
divisions of labor within households; and (4) social justice, by documenting how relationships
of (race, class) privilege and social exclusion are challenged or maintained through UH practices
and networks. The material products of this research (maps of self-provisioning and the social
and economic relations these practices are embedded in and enabled by) will be distributed to
research participants, local sustainability committees, and the BRA with three specific aims: (1)
demonstrating the social and economic impact of these practices across scales; (2) identifying
policy changes in UA zoning, land use, and food safety law that will benefit the greatest
number of urban residents; (3) identifying self-provisioning practices that can be ‘scaled up’
well beyond the household; (4) and facilitating a more productive conversation between urban
homesteaders and local policy makers about their shared economies and environments.
8. Dissemination of Findings
12
Oona Morrow, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
Research Proposal: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social And Economic Relations and the Practice of
Self-Provisioning in the City
The completed research will lead to a doctoral dissertation, journal articles, public talks,
and conference presentations. Co-PI Morrow will share the research findings with the academic
community through publications in scholarly journals and presentations at conferences such as
the Association of American Geographers. She will also present the research findings to local
community groups (Groundworks, Growing Center, UHL, JP NET) and local policy makers
such as the BRA, and help to organize events with local community groups (JP Net) that bring
policy makers and urban homesteaders together in conversation.
Fig 1: Research Schedule
Participant
Observation
May 2011May 2012
Interviews
Survey
Analysis
Writing
December 2011July 2012
August 2012
July 2012September 2012
September 2012May 2013
Fig. 2: Analysis Summary
Method
Data Theme
Analysis
Objective
1. What kinds of self-provisioning practices do participants engage in and why?
Participant Observation,
(1) Practices, (2) Time-Use
Grounded theory coding;
Create a typology of selfInterviews, Surveys
Diverse-Economies (DE)
provisioning practices and
Analysis
motivations
2. What is the spatiality of self-provisioning in the Boston area?
Participant Observation,
(3) Social and economic
Grounded theory coding;
Produce a Google Map of
Interviews
geographies of self
Network Analysis
self-provisioning
provisioning, (1) Practices
networks.
3.What kinds of social and economic relations are self-provisioning practices embedded in and enabled by?
Participant Observation,
3) Social and economic
Grounded theory coding;
Create a typology of
Interviews
geographies of self
Gender Analysis; DE
different kinds of social
provisioning, (1) Practices
Analysis
and economic, relations,
and network map.
4. What is the impact of self-provisioning practices on social and economic relations across scales?
Participant Observation,
(3) Social and economic
Grounded theory coding;
Identify which practices
Interviews
geographies of self
Network Analysis; Gender impact scales beyond the
provisioning, (1) Practices
Analysis; DE Analysis
household
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