Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses cognitive framings of nature in the context urban allotment gardening. One particular aspect is to rethink embodiments related to well-being. The ethnographic example about Narva town can valorise here some continuity and tactical modifications in engaging with nature.

Paper long abstract:

Cities bring people together within imagined and materialised environments, where various entities of nature become part of coexistence. Urbanisation influences how people think and do nature. There is challenge to approach nature as multiple coproduction or 'commons' (Hinchliffe 2007, Ingold 2000) in analysing vernacular ecologies bound to cities.

This paper analyses cognitive framings of nature in the context urban allotment gardening. One particular aspect here is to rethink embodiments related to well-being. The city planning models are brought together with embodied stories of gardeners, which are articulated within ethnographic observations, interviews and artistic representations.

The empirical example focuses mostly on summer-house and garden cooperatives in (mostly Russian speaking) Narva city region in north-eastern Estonia. This example can valorise some dimensions of continuity and tactical modifications in engaging with nature and in producing environmental knowledge.

References

Hinchliffe, S. (2007): Geographies of nature: societies, environments, ecologies. Sage, London.

Ingold, T. (2000): The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge, London.