Jennie Barron
I am a SSHRC-funded doctoral candidate doing research on community orchards as exemplars of new urban commons. I am interested in this new (but also very old) approach to collective self-provisioning and self-governance around land use, and how it relates to neoliberalism, urban/public space and food security. I am drawing on theoretical work on the history and institutions of the commons to see what guidance it can offer to creators and advocates of community orchards (and, by extension, community gardens) and how it may re-frame and challenge existing literature and assumptions about the objectives, meaning and value of these local-scale alternative food initiatives. This work is under the supervision of Dr Patricia Ballamingie.
I come to geography with a very interdisciplinary background, having earned my first degree (Hon.B.ArtsSc) from McMaster’s Arts and Science Programme and then my masters in environmental studies (MES) from York University, where I studied with Dr Roger Keil. The focus of my masters work was the politics and discourses of solidarity work between southern Canadian environmentalists and Aboriginal rights supporters and the Innu of Labrador (Nitassinan).
For my PhD, I am focusing on community-based responses to food insecurity and the question of what it means to adopt a framework of “the commons” as opposed to a charitable one. I am particularly interested in new responses to food insecurity that seek to decommodify food and/or assert a place for food production in public space – for example, public produce gardens, community orchards, food forests, edible landscaping, guerilla grafting (fruit trees) etc.
I live with my husband and children in Nelson, BC, where I also teach in Selkirk College’s Peace Studies Program, and do occasional contract work in community development, social research, and writing. I don’t commute very often to Carleton campus!