About 17 years after hearing the story of my father being interrogated by the police in Communist Poland, I travelled to Cuba to learn about the everyday life of urban gardeners who still lived under socialism. I was interested to find out how people cope with the incessant gaze of the Cuban state while living in a controlled environment. I searched for possibilities of freedom in interactions with the non-human environment. I wanted to learn how the garden, plants and gentle lives of the gardeners become fragile or resilient under the constant gaze of the all-encompassing state.
My fatherās stories of the iron fist of Communist Poland echoed in my mind while I was walking through half-empty grocery stores in Havana, while I saw Cubans struggling to find everyday goods or queuing endlessly for basic foods. These experiences and observations in Cuba became the stories that I later shared with my family and that triggered new insights and discussions. Both the story from my childhood and these new experiences merged and revealed the world to me in a different manner. However, more importantly, it exposed me to myself in a new light.
It is through small places that we, as anthropologists, can speak of large issues (Eriksen 2001). In Cuba, I sought out very particular small places, namely, the small-scale urban gardens of Havana. I did so to be able to speak of ānatureā, biodiversity and embodiment and highlight what freedom is there. These gardens reflect more about the world that generated them than one could imagine at first glance. They are more than just ideological or political reflections of Cuban culture and history: they are the realms in which meanings are constructed and worlds are imagined.
Throughout our stories you will get to know these realms, these worlds, their inhabitants and the practices that make up their lives. We do not intend to present overestimated generalizations, but we will tell you the unique stories of unique people. These narratives will highlight how nature, gardens and gardening are political in their configurations through an anthropological questioning of daily life in a place where we do not usually expect to find anything political. We aim to reveal the different faces of that-which-is-political and how it can be perceived at a microscopic level via day-to-day encounters.
Anthropological Gardening
Our anthropology and ways of seeing, simply and for all intents and purposes, are imperfect and stutter while articulating how the world is seen by those who share their stories with us. We have stepped away from the āstandard methodā (Law 2010) and remained open to new turns and unexpected steps by finding opportunities to adapt to the irregular or indefinite. We agree with John Law, who stressed that it would be a moralist assumption to say that if methods are executed properly, then a particular ātruthā will be discovered. We chase after human and non-human lives which are uncertain and undefined in their configuration. Therefore we advocate that anthropological methods are often deliberately slow, uncertain, risky and troubling (Law 2010; see also Geertz 1998). We write about the garden and gardeners in the manner of a gardener. We commit to anthropological gardening by constant care, reflexivity and a theoretical check-up. We keep thinking of one theory and one methodāto behave like a gardenerāand of how life speaks before it is spoken about through collaboration rather than the rendition of field observations. Anthropological gardening has become, here, our method of seeing and writing to show how life emerges and slips ahead of us before even we try to imagine what it means to live.
An adaptable method is especially necessary in an environment like Cuban urban gardens. I worked with the gardeners who do not work with time schedules, which made setting appointments difficult. I quickly realized that the only way to learn was to simply spend as much time as possible in the gardens, hoping for the conversations to occur in between the pruning, harvesting or cleaning. As the gardens were workplaces where gardeners engaged with their work every day, all day, for me there was not that much to do there. Although I very often offered to help, this was rarely accepted. Fortunately, Marceloās garden was a very particular one, which made it easy for me to spend a lot of time there as it was furnished and equipped for social gatherings. There were regular chairs, rocking chairs, tables, crates, drinks and food. He often took breaks from his work, creating opportunities for our conversations. In his garden it was possible for me to sit, relax, read, talk to his friends and visitors, play with his dogs, help him with groceries or sit in a rocking chair while he was cutting flowers and chat with him. His garden became the second home to which I went daily, a place to be with a friend, a place to learn, talk and escape the heat of the city.
Of all the interviews that I conducted during my fieldwork, not one happened as initially planned. It was difficult to set up meetings, arrange times and stay in touch, as many gardeners did not have cell phones. Also, my appointments with state officials were constantly changed. Hence, the only method that worked was to adapt to all situations, regardless of how messy they might have appeared initially, follow the flow given to me by the vibrant city and visit the various gardens as often as possible. Frequently, the person whom I wanted to speak with was not there or was busy, which I had to simply accept and try again the next day. These unusual differences between the Netherlands, where I had come from, and Cuba, characterized my ethnographic research. Hence, my fieldwork was like the life John Lennon et al. (1981) referred to when he sang ālife is what happens to you while youāre busy making other plansā.
I was given access without too many questions because of my interest, as a female European researcher, in Cuban urban agriculture. My gender in the field helped me on the one hand but also threw up challenges. Beforehand I expected to be able to help and volunteer in the gardens, learn about the practices of gardening myself and thus contribute in a way. However, that was not accepted by any of the gardeners I spoke to. I assume that it was a combination of me being a woman as well as a foreign guest who should be treated as a guest and not a worker. Moreover, it might have proved inefficient for some gardeners, as explaining me what to do would cost them more time than simply doing the work themselves.
Throughout this book you will get to know the male gardeners with whom I worked. You will become familiar, in particular, with Marcelo and Samuel, the two main characters of our stories. This was not something that I had decided initially but, rather, something that evolved during my fieldwork. Although there are many more male than female urban gardeners, I did not deliberately exclude women in my journey but the progress of my journey meant that I did not meet any female gardeners. I did speak about the lesser presence of women in the gardens to state officials, who immediately referred me to a government project that they had launched. The campaign encouraged women to engage with urban agriculture. They showed me posters of the campaign, which were designed as comic stories and had the message that it was a good cause for both men and women to engage in urban agriculture together. The goal was to empower women and fight the cultural assumptions that women do not belong in urban gardens.
I will not neglect the fa...