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Growing utopia – undoing risk through self-sufficiency and urban gardening?

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  • Elin Montelius

Abstract

This paper analyses how the utopia of self-sufficiency functions as a response to risk and uncertainty. Recent decades have witnessed the proliferation of risk. Risk has become a way to understand and govern individual lives and society that reproduces existing inequalities whilst producing inequality due to its co-articulation with race, class and gender. Risk also distributes responsibility since every individual is made responsible for the management of the ever-increasing risks we face in modern society. In Sweden, the interest in gardening and cultivating vegetables has become more common, often motivated by ideals about self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency becomes a way of dealing with ecological risk and uncertainty. However, the narrative of self-sufficiency also upholds an imaginary of a different society and a different future, and thus has distinct utopian features. By looking at the growing trend of self-sufficiency through the lens of intersectional risk theory, this article analyses the doing and undoing of risk through narratives of self-sufficiency, and the ways that narratives of utopia can be a way of undoing risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Elin Montelius, 2024. "Growing utopia – undoing risk through self-sufficiency and urban gardening?," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(9), pages 1106-1118, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:27:y:2024:i:9:p:1106-1118
    DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2023.2299840
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