A gendered practice of urban cultivation: performing power and well-being in M'Bour, Senegal

Abstract

This article outlines how a theoretical approach that explores gender as ‘emplaced performance’ can improve the analytical value of gender by drawing attention to (1) the ways in which gender, as a socially and spatially contingent performance, is enrolled in the relationships that create the city, and (2) how the city, as a constantly evolving and dynamic field of interaction for economic, social, and political processes, (re)configures gender. Drawing on qualitative research carried out in M'Bour, Senegal, and through a case study of a form of urban cultivation called micro-gardening, this analysis explores gender as a socially and spatially contingent performance that produces, and is produced by, the city. The analysis brings together performativity studies with scholarship on place to fashion the analytical approach, and specifically draws attention to emplaced performances of well-being and power. Such an approach, because it draws attention to the contingent dimensions of gender, as well as the effects of gender on material worlds, has an improved analytical potential to inform locally relevant development interventions that recognize and consider the multiple ways in which men and women experience and create the city.

Una práctica generizada de cultivo urbano: el poder performador y el bienestar en M'Bour, Senegal

Este artículo describe cómo un abordaje teórico que explora al género como un “performance emplazado” puede mejorar el valor analítico del género llamando la atención sobre (1) las maneras en que el género, como un performance contingente social y espacialmente, está enrolado en las relaciones que crean la ciudad, y (2) cómo la ciudad, como un campo dinámico y en constante evolución de interacción para procesos económicos, sociales y políticos, (re)configura al género. Basándose en investigación cualitativa llevada a cabo en M'Bour, Senegal, y a través de un estudio de caso de una forma de cultivo urbano denominada micro huerta, este análisis explora al género como un performance social y espacialmente contingente que produce la ciudad y es producido a su vez por la misma. El análisis utiliza estudios de performatividad con investigación sobre lugar para formar el abordaje analítico, y presta específica atención a los performances emplazados de bienestar y poder. Dicho abordaje, debido a que presta atención a las dimensiones contingentes del género, así como a los efectos de éste sobre los mundos materiales, tiene un mayor potencial analítico para aportar a las intervenciones de desarrollo localmente relevantes que reconocen y consideran las múltiples formas en las que los hombres y las mujeres experimentan y crean la ciudad.

城市耕种的性别化实践：在塞内加尔的姆布尔展演权力与祉

本文透过关注下列两大议题，概述探讨性别做为“置位的展演”之理论取径，如何增进性别的分析价值：（1）性别做为在社会与空间上的偶发表演，其涉入创造城市的关系之方式，以及（2）城市做为经济、社会与政治过程互动的持续演化且动态之场域，如何（再）组构性别。透过运用在塞内加尔姆布尔市所进行的质性研究，以及一个名为“微型园艺”的城市耕种方式的案例研究，本分析探讨性别做为社会及空间偶然性的展演，如何生产城市，并被城市生产之。本分析结合展演性研究与有关地方的学术研究，以形塑分析的方法，并特别关注福祉与权力的置位展演。本方法关注性别的偶然面向，以及性别对物质世界的影响，因而有着增进分析的潜能，能够提供讯息给相关的地方发展干预，这些干预体认并考虑到男性与女性经历及创造城市的多元管道。

Keywords::

• gender
• place
• performativity
• Senegal
• urban studies
• informality
• urban cultivation

Palabras claves::

• género
• lugar
• performatividad
• Senegal
• estudios urbanos
• informalidad
• cultivo urbano

关键词::

• 性别
• 地方
• 展演性
• 塞内加尔
• 城市研究
• 非正式性
• 城市耕种

Acknowledgements

I would like to especially thank the research participants for their patience, flexibility, openness, enthusiasm, and graciousness. I am also thankful to our friends and neighbors in M'Bour who embraced us upon our arrival and helped make our little corner of the city into a comfortable, friendly place to be. I am grateful to Jim Bingen, Antoinette M.G.A. WinklerPrins, Kristin Phillips, and John M. Kerr for their invaluable advice and guidance in preparing this manuscript. In addition, the feedback from GPC's ‘blind’ reviewers was fantastic and made for a much improved article. And, last (but not least), I am grateful to my two children, Grace and Elijah, who traveled with me and made Senegal their home for nine and a half months. Their presence made the adventure all the more adventurous. This research was funded by an IIE Fulbright Fellowship (2010) and by a dissertation completion fellowship from the Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen) at Michigan State University.

Notes

^1. The idea that environments and people are produced is a well-accepted insight in political ecology (Cronon 1996; Escobar 1996; Robbins 2004; Smith 2008).

^2. This research draws from a larger qualitative study on multiple forms of dry-season urban cultivation, conducted from August 2010 to May 2011. The findings in this article are based primarily on in-depth interviews and participant observation with four micro-gardeners (three women and one man), a focus group of seven women, and attendance at monthly micro-gardening meetings, which typically hosted around 20 micro-gardeners. Formal interviews were also conducted with eight government officials and seven development professionals, which helped to provide an understanding of the urban context within which micro-gardening occurs. This project was determined exempt by the Institutional Review Board.

^3. In much of the literature that explores gender-environment relationships, gender is perceived as being ‘built’ into power-laden social systems and constructions (Saunders 2002). While such studies can provide insight about how institutions and policies are used to concentrate and wield power, such a perspective can enable the reification of gender and obscure the role of agency. Furthermore, a number of authors have critiqued prevailing conceptualizations of gender as being overly Westernized in their orientation, and overly focused on antagonistic and unequal relationships between men and women (Amadiume 1987; Cornwall 2005; Mohanty 1988; Sudarkasa 2005). Such a critique suggests that ways of understanding gender ‘in place’ and as it articulates in particular and contingent relationships are required.

^4. Pratt (2004) writes ‘(Butler's) preoccupation with time also has the effect of ungrounding processes of subject constitutions from the networks of objects and spatial relations – from the full materiality – through which power and knowledge work’ (22). I suggest that, in addition, materiality is itself an articulation of power and knowledge. This becomes an important distinction when considering the constitution of environments and how gendered meanings articulate and are articulated.

^5. A number of political ecologists have used the ‘place’ concept in their research. See especially Biersack (2006) and Escobar (2001, 2008).

^6. Interestingly, this insight that reality is ontologically multiple brings us closer to a view of performance as articulated by John Law and Annemarie Mol. See Law (2004, 2008), Mol (2002), and Mol and Law (2002).

^7. Foucault's technologies of self capture the process whereby individuals: ‘effect by their own means, or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality’ (Martin, Gutman, and Hutton 1988, 18).

^8. As is often the case with urban cultivation, many urban officials consider it to be a temporary and/or ‘backwards’ use of city space.

^9. From an informational pamphlet.

^10. The name of the organization, translated into English, is ‘Enda Third World.’

^11. From its inception, the concept of gender was grounded in a view of the social world as neatly divided between public and private, in which ‘public’ was considered influential and the source of prosperity, while ‘private’ was considered undesirable and unpaid (Saunders 2002). A central goal of the feminist movement in the USA was women's liberation from the private, domestic sphere, which was equated with subordination, and entry into the public sphere; because ‘domesticity’ was seen to be inherently subordinating and confining, this also became a goal for those concerned about women's issues in international development. As a recent example, consider this statement in USAID/Senegal's Gender Assessment (2010): ‘Cultural beliefs typically support the dominance of men in social life, and women are first and foremost expected to be good wives and mothers’ (11). I argue that this perspective overlooks the civic role of households throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

^12.Combretum micranthum.

^13. Per Foucault (1982, 788–789), ‘power is not simply a relationship between partners, individual or collective; it is a way in which certain actions modify others … it is a total structure of actions brought to bear upon possible actions; it incites, it induces, it seduces, it makes easier or more difficult ….’

^14. In general, those living in urban areas rely more on a cash economy than those living in rural areas; this particularity of urban areas enables the acceptance of women working outside the home.

^15. That is, micro-gardening obeys certain regularities: ‘The social game is regulated, it is the locus of certain regularities’ (Bourdieu 1990, 64).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephanie A. White

Stephanie White obtained her PhD from the Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resources Department (now Department of Community Sustainability) at Michigan State University. Her fields of interest include place-based political ecology, agroecology, informal economies, alternative urbanities, and forms of popular and collective resistance. Her dissertation explores urban cultivation in place from a number of different perspectives and through several theoretical lenses, including performativity, practice theory, and resiliency.