Leiden University Scholarly Publications

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Vasile, M. (2023)

The silenced paradoxes of urban renewal: morality, welfare reconfiguration and precarious labour in Collective Food Procurement in Turin

Doctoral Thesis
This dissertation takes the reader around different Collective Food Procurement networks in Turin (Italy). Building on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2019 and 2020, I discuss the case of urban gardens (part one), open-air food markets (part two) and food aid initiatives (part three). I analyse related sites, people, practices and narratives and I call for diversifying our outlooks on urban peripheral areas and moving away from incautious optimism around widespread understandings of urban renewal and sustainability. To critically engage with these themes, I focus on civic engagement and morality, which represent red threads throughout the text. In particular, I argue that citizens’ engagement is increasingly mediated by the non-profit sector. This should be problematised in relation to silenced discontent, the exclusion of marginalised practices and limited citizens’ possibilities to be part of actual decision-making. I use morality as a common denominator to...Show moreThis dissertation takes the reader around different Collective Food Procurement networks in Turin (Italy). Building on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2019 and 2020, I discuss the case of urban gardens (part one), open-air food markets (part two) and food aid initiatives (part three). I analyse related sites, people, practices and narratives and I call for diversifying our outlooks on urban peripheral areas and moving away from incautious optimism around widespread understandings of urban renewal and sustainability. To critically engage with these themes, I focus on civic engagement and morality, which represent red threads throughout the text. In particular, I argue that citizens’ engagement is increasingly mediated by the non-profit sector. This should be problematised in relation to silenced discontent, the exclusion of marginalised practices and limited citizens’ possibilities to be part of actual decision-making. I use morality as a common denominator to investigate the similarities and differences between the various cases - and examine their linkages with broader processes such as welfare reconfiguration, precarious labour and gentrification. I highlight how, through morality, certain working cultures, such as low remuneration as part of the non-profit sector, became interrelated with contemporary understandings of urban sustainability.
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Sustainability
Urban renewal
Welfare
Labour
Urban gardens
Food markets
Food aid
Non-profit organisations
Volunteerism
Deservingness
All authors
Vasile, M.
Supervisor
Grasseni, C.
Co-supervisor
Bähre, E.
Committee
Wouters, P.; Barendregt, B.; Spierenburg, M.; Capello, C.; Duncan, J.
Qualification
Doctor (dr.)
Awarding Institution
Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden University
Date
2023-09-06

Funding

Sponsorship
This project received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 724151)