Lifecourse commoning: Retirement and de-alienation in urban gardens

Hanmer, Owain

Abstract

Despite being a unique aspect of ageing in capitalist societies, retirement has been neglected within critical research. As a disruption in people’s relation to the capitalist political economy, retirement can be framed through a productivist lens of loss or ruin. Yet, in this article, I explore the practices of commoning that emerge amongst retired urban gardeners which defy and resist this capitalist logic. I argue that retired gardeners practice forms of de-alienation, which are the processes and practices of rehabilitation and repair following decades of alienation that have become imprinted on people’s bodies, minds, and social lives—and much more—throughout the lifecourse. Through the inter-relationship between social, spatial, and creative de-alienation, retired urban gardeners generate and sustain more-than-capitalist subjectivities and experiment with alternative value practices. In doing so, the article introduces the concept of lifecourse commoning, which considers the way that practices of commoning might emerge, recede, or change shape as people’s relation to capitalism changes through the lifecourse.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 15, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Jan 13, 2025
• Publication Date: Jan 13, 2025
• Deposit Date: Dec 19, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 28, 2025
• Print ISSN: 1492-9732
• Publisher: University of British Columbia, Okanagan
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 62–85
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v24i1.2436
• Keywords: commoning, retirement, urban gardens, lifecourse, de-alienation, allotments
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/13536304