Doctoral Dissertation Research: Urban Homesteading: Changing Social and Economic Relations and the Practice of Self-Provisioning in the City.

这篇博士论文研究了围绕城市自给自足实践发展的社会和经济关系。近年来，以家庭为基础的小规模农业等自给自足做法在美国城市显示出明显的增长。作为鼓励城市可持续发展的一种手段，全国各地的地方市政府一直在相应地重新调整土地使用、分区和食品安全政策。自给自足在城市农民中尤其普遍，他们正在恢复以食物为导向的园艺、食物保存和家禽饲养等家庭农业技能，以培养家庭和社区的复原力。尽管目前自给自足做法在美国兴起，城市宅基地很受欢迎，但很少有研究试图完全解释为什么这些做法在上升，谁在实践它们，以及它们如何影响城市环境中社会和经济关系中的性别、种族和阶级动态，包括家庭和家庭。通过参与者观察、半结构访谈和对波士顿地区城市宅基地主的调查，本博士论文研究项目旨在回答以下问题：(1)波士顿地区城市宅基地户自我供给的本质是什么？(2)自我供给实践嵌入并促成了什么样的社会和经济关系？(3)自我供给对不同城市规模的社会和经济关系有何影响？该项目与城市农民联盟和其他致力于城市可持续发展和食品正义的社区组织合作，对不同类型的空间(住宅、社区花园、礼拜场所)中发生的广泛的个人和自我供应做法进行了采样，每个空间都有特定的法律、社会、经济和环境限制，包括财产价值、工业毒素、分区和食品安全法律。这项研究通过询问自给自足创造了什么新的自然关系来促进人类-环境地理学，并通过考虑这些活动如何促进当地经济的多样化来促进经济地理学。它还通过考察城市宅基地扩展和重塑家庭工作的性别关系的方式，对女权主义关于家庭劳动和社会再生产的地理研究做出了更具体的贡献。这项研究的结果将引起政策制定者的兴趣，因为他们正在考虑都市农业和可持续发展的生活质量、经济韧性、性别公平和社会正义方面。这项研究将每天对城市可持续发展在实践中对城市居住者意味着什么进行记述？生活体验、空间实践和态度。研究成果将通过公开讲座、社区论坛和互动网站与参与者和当地政策制定者分享。这项研究还将确定土地使用、分区和食品安全法律方面可能的政策变化，这些变化将使从事各种城市宅基地实践的城市居民受益。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该项目将提供支持，使有前途的研究生能够建立独立的研究生涯。

This doctoral dissertation project examines the social and economic relations that develop around urban self-provisioning practices. In recent year self-provisioning practices such as home-based small-scale agriculture have exhibited visible growth in U.S cities. Local municipal governments across the country have been refashioning land-use, zoning, and food safety policies accordingly, as a means of encouraging urban sustainability. Self-provisioning is especially prevalent among urban homesteaders who are reclaiming domestic agrarian skills such as food-oriented gardening, food preservation, and the keeping of poultry, to foster household and community resilience. Despite the current rise of self-provisioning practices in the U.S. and the popularity of urban homesteading, little research has sought to fully explain why these practices are on the rise, who is practicing them, and how they affect dynamics of gender, race, and class in social and economic relations within urban environments, including the home and household. Through an integration of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and surveys of urban homesteaders in the Boston area, this doctoral dissertation research project aims to answer the following questions: (1) What is the nature of self-provisioning among urban homesteaders in the Boston area? (2) What kinds of social and economic relations are self-provisioning practices embedded in and enabled by? (3) What are the impacts of self-provisioning on social and economic relations across various urban scales? Working with the urban homesteaders' league and other community organizations committed to urban sustainability and food justice, this project samples a wide range of individuals and self-provisioning practices occurring in different kinds of spaces (homes, community gardens, places of worship), each with particular legal, social, economic, and environmental constraints, including property values, industrial toxins, zoning, and food safety laws. The research contributes to human-environment geography by asking what new relationships with nature self-provisioning creates, and contributes to economic geography by considering how these activities contribute to the diversification of local economies. It also makes more specific contributions to feminist geographic research on domestic labor and social reproduction by examining the ways in which urban homesteading expands and reworks the gender relations of work in the home. Findings from this research will be of interest to policy makers as they consider the quality of life, economic resilience, gender equity, and social justice dimensions of urban agriculture and sustainability. The research will produce an everyday account of what urban sustainability means in practice, in terms of urban homesteaders? lived experiences, spatial practices, and attitudes. Research findings will be shared with participants and local policy makers through public talks, community forums, and an interactive website. The research will also identify possible policy changes in land use, zoning, and food safety laws that will benefit urban residents engaged in a variety of urban homesteading practices. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this project will provide support that will enable a promising graduate student to establish an independent research career.