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... 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. Show less
