Tag: community

Collaborating Bodies: Community Gardens and Food Forests in Central Texas

Almost every aspect of life on earth interacts with soil. Soils are old. Soils take time to develop from their parent material. Soils embody life itself. Yet, the concept of soil varies depending on the epistemic culture applied to define what soil is. Often soils exist in states of naturalness or unnaturalness. For example, Minami (2009) describes the Chinese compound character for agricultural soil 土壤 (tǔ rǎng), the first character (tǔ) represents soil in its natural state, and the second character (rǎng) represents soil once it has been broken up for agricultural purposes. Here, an interesting dichotomy presents itself: soil as it is and soil as it is once altered by human intervention. This dichotomous classificatory system describes changes that result from soil processes interacting; however, curiously, soil in only one category is the product of perceived human interaction. (read more...)

From Bin to Bank: Recycling Household Waste in Urban Indonesia

Every Thursday at 9 o’ clock in the morning, housewives from a residential neighborhood on the outskirt of Jakarta gather at their usual spot at the “Love Earth” waste bank (bank sampah). It is a small lot in the corner with a humble setup with a hut, a shed, and sacks of recyclables. Whoever arrives first begins sweeping the area and wiping the table, often damp from the last night’s rain and scattered with fallen leaves. One after the other, more women trickle in, each carrying a bag of recyclable waste from their households on foot, on motorcycles, or, more rarely, in cars. At times, items left by their neighbors—bundles of empty water gallons, piles of flattened cardboard boxes, or bottles of used cooking oil—wait to be weighed and sorted. The volume and the types of recyclables gathered each week may vary; yet food, tea, and chatter are invariably shared among those present. (read more...)