Admittedly, my research has not been progressing as swiftly or smoothly as I’d like it to. It has been difficult to recover the same energy and excitement I had felt toward my original plans (conducting an ethnography of an organic and artisanal farmers market in Dakar, Senegal). I’m struggling to enter into a research-minded headspace and to make room for this project after having diverted nearly all of my attention and concentration to what’s been happening across the country these past few weeks.
Moreover, when I have sat down to work on this project, I’ve been discouraged, whether it’s struggling through an academic paper on perceptions of urban agriculture in Dakar written in French (which I am capable of reading, albeit at a much slower pace) or finding myself exasperated after trying to find a source on city micro-gardens that’s not a UN or NGO report/policy brief (some of which I do intend on including in my literature review) or constantly refreshing my email hoping that one of my potential interviewees has responded to my message. More generally, I worry that my research goals are too broad and don’t correspond well with my proposed line of questioning.
What I’ve had more luck engaging with and what has subsequently inspired some potential research/interview questions is my morning gardening ritual that I share with my mom. It has become part of my daily routine to step outside after breakfast to water and check on our little growing seedlings that will (hopefully soon) become lush green patches of spinach, lettuce, and basil. As novice vegetable gardeners, we were both nervous that our minimal knowledge and efforts would yield disappointing results, but all is well and healthy so far—and slow. Cultivating this garden is no doubt teaching me a lesson of patience, but it’s also telling me something about joy and sharing and mutual care.
“People often ask me what one thing I would recommend to restore relationship between land and people. My answer is almost always, “Plant a garden.” It’s good for the health of the earth and it’s good for the health of people. A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate—once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
My ongoing experience with suburban backyard gardening overlaps with some of the themes and sentiments I have encountered in both my casual and academic readings on agriculture and food systems, which I hope to incorporate into my research agenda. My research goals still center around the basic question of why urban residents farm the city, and I maintain the belief that urban agriculture delivers benefits beyond food and economic security in Dakar. I am thinking about how questions of joy, healing, and regeneration could be woven into my exploration of the intersections between urban agriculture, social reproduction, and ecological relations, and particularly into conversation with existing literature on everyday practices of urban resistance and the new constellations of power and collective solidarities that subsequently materialize.