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The Russian Urban Grower: Representations and Practices

2015; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-319-11614-3_5

2197-1749

Louiza M. Boukharaeva, Marcel Marloie,

Agricultural Development and Policies

Contrary to common belief, urban gardening is not fundamentally explained by the legacy of the rural past. In his work Dr Zhivago, Boris Pasternak was able to express how contemporary Russian gardeners inherited cultural representations from classic literature and events of the War. Gardening is a component of a peaceful way of life, contributing to the need to ensure food safety, and a place where a person can rest, replenish his or her health, and create freely. It is also a convenient place for people to get away from it all, to pursue a spiritual quest, to find their own identity, and to find their place in the world. The Urban Grower also inherits the knowledge and practices transmitted by the school system and scientific literature. The holistic representation of soil as a living natural body, propagated by Vasily Dokuchaev and his successors, remains a foundation of current biological agricultural practices. There is therefore a sociological, institutional, and cultural foundation for the development of a distinctive city-dweller as an actor in working the soil. The future reproduction of this model depends largely on orientations of the educational system.