A Slow Food commons: cultivating conviviality across a range of property forms

This chapter explores the relationship between property and food in identifying food commons. Applying a diverse economies framing, this chapter considers how food commons can be amplified through a range of property forms, providing an alternative to the commoditization of food and its inputs such as natural resources. This chapter presents research with a Slow Food convivium in Mildura, Australia, a global commodity producing area experiencing threats to the viability of its water source, the Murray River. Drawing upon ethnographic and participatory mapping insights, this chapter considers how a food commons is evoked through Slow Food practices. The chapter discusses how Slow Food Mildura is inspiring convivial relations with resources through culture and enabling a diverse economy to grow alongside a corporatized agricultural landscape. Findings suggest how material (food/resource) and immaterial (knowledge/culture) commons are reciprocally activated through the sharing of multiple forms of property and foster new socialities with food.