Digging through urban agriculture with feminist theoretical implements
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article considers the value of using tools from feminist theory to explore the efforts of urban agriculture initiatives that practice to some extent outside the formal economy. Such a lens looks beyond the presence of women in specific projects to the value, extent, purpose, and principles of these projects’ efforts. These community-based food initiatives strive to provide alternatives to dominant food production practices, but their efforts are often constrained by limited access to financial, labour, time, and political resources. Despite parallels between their work and what has traditionally been dubbed “women’s work,” the feminization of urban agriculture initiatives in Canada has received little attention in the academic literature. In this article, I revisit a case study of Durham Integrated Growers (DIG), an umbrella organization supporting urban agriculture projects, practices, and values across Durham Region, Ontario. This case study represents one of several conducted through Nourishing Communities Research Group to explore the potential of food systems groups working in the social economy to benefit local communities and the environment. This earlier research on DIG revealed themes involving the need for community expertise to be recognized, the role of public policy, the effects of relying on unpaid labour, and the centrality of building community. By exploring these themes within feminist framings of knowledge, work, power, care, and community, I find many areas where DIG’s work could be better understood through feminist theoretical lenses. Although more study is required on a broader range of community-based food initiatives, this research suggests that a feminist theoretical lens may provide a useful resource for illuminating and revaluating the practical, educational, and relational efforts of those working in them.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.070 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".