Community Gardens Introduction. Anthropology

Community Gardens Introduction
The term community garden is commonly used in America, New Zealand, Canada, and many countries of Europe to mean some parts of land that is collectively established and gardened by the communities (ACGA, 2007). Although garden and Community may not appear to have any relationship with urban setting and even the subject of anthropology, Sokolovsky (2008), in his work, Civic ecology, Urban Elders, and New York City’s Community Garden Movement notes that community gardens in cities of Europe and New York became very significant especially for the dwellers in various ways.
This paper will briefly describe the history of community gardens, evaluate their benefits for people and cities, identify the forces that oppose them, and lastly, describe a community garden in London city.
Benefits of Community gardens
In establishing and maintaining community gardens, various alliances were established across economic, generational, and ethnic lines. These alliances were mostly established in troublesome and harsh times. In the case when the elders failed to obtain sufficient help from the city authorities, or in the event when such a situation required instant action, the elders and community members opted to initiate their own projects (244). The elders could team up with the younger generation and members of the immediate neighborhood in establishing the projects or protecting the existing ones from outside invasion (245). These actions therefore, acted as civic ecology in the sense that the community members employed collective actions in making any available space to be beneficial to the residents. Moreover, these actions regularly promoted and enhanced the involvement and social inclusion of the community members, thus further promoting unity and social cohesion. Apparently, Community gardens in Europe were beneficial in that they could be used by the community members for crop farming purposes and therefore, supplementing the...