806169

research-article2018
SACXXX10.1177/1206331218806169Space and CultureSamec and Gibas

Article
Space and Culture
1­–14
Urban Political Ecology of © The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
Worth and Value: Enacting sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1206331218806169
https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331218806169
Allotments in Media Discourse journals.sagepub.com/home/sac

Tomáš Samec1 and Petr Gibas1

Abstract
In this article, we propose to expand the field of urban political ecology (UPE) by analyzing the
role of discourse in the production of urban nature. We exemplify our case by analyzing media
discourses and exploring discursive modes of justification and hierarchies of worth mobilized
in socialist and postsocialist struggles over allotments in what is now the Czech Republic. We
unravel particular discursive strategies and arguments used to depoliticize the struggle and justify
the abolishment of allotments. Using the example of allotments, we argue that incorporating
a rigorous analysis of discourse in the scope and practice of UPE and paying close, explicit
attention to how worth and value are mobilized might help us not only to better understand the
complex processes of the production of socio-natures in (neoliberal) cities but also to empower
UPE scholars with tools to further the fight for more just urban environments.

Keywords
urban political ecology, allotments, media discourse, discourse analysis, hierarchies of worth,
Czech Republic

Introduction
Allotments in Central and Eastern Europe are often subjected to the pressures of (re)develop-
ment, an aspect that corresponds to the broader processes of commodification of urban space and
housing (Beswick et al., 2016; Fernandez & Aalbers, 2016; Fields & Uffer, 2016; French,
Leyshon, & Wainwright, 2011; García-Lamarca & Kaika, 2016; Palomera, 2014). Allotments
become part of struggle over the shape and form of urban nature and about what is considered as
valuable or wasteful in a city (Blomley, 2017; Gandy, 2013; Gidwani & Reddy, 2011; Goldstein,
2013). In this article, we explore one such long-term struggle, the one over allotments in the
Czech Republic (and the former Czechoslovakia), and analyze its discursive elements and prop-
erties as they appeared in the media. By doing so, we aim to accentuate the importance of dis-
course performativity in the production and transformation of urban nature and demonstrate its
salience for urban political ecology (UPE). In doing so, we apply a framework inspired by the
cultural economy approach (De Goede, 2005), acknowledging the importance of materiality of
the city (Gibson, 2003; Gür, 2002) and knowledge-generating devices that bring about particular
(urban) reality (Christophers, 2014; MacKenzie, 2006; Weber, 2016) entangled in the process of
(de)valuation and (de)legitimization of allotments in discourse.

1Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

Corresponding Author:
Tomáš Samec, Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Jilská 1, Prague, 110 00, Czech Republic
Email: tomas.samec@soc.cas.cz
2 Space and Culture 00(0)

UPE has become a very productive field, concentrating on the processes of the production of
nature and the ways in which capitalism (and commodification as one of its strategies) produces
unjust urban environments. With its insistence on understanding nature as socially produced and
an emphasis on historical materialist analysis, UPE is successful in unpacking the injustices
inherent in capitalist transformations of urban nature (for overviews, see, e.g., Heynen, 2014;
Keil, 2005; Rademacher, 2015; Zimmer, 2010). Recently, however, appeals to expand the scope
of UPE in a diverse direction have emerged, including suggestions to further incorporate post-
structuralist insights as well (Gabriel, 2014). In this respect, this article strives to tentatively
respond to these appeals by conjoining the perspective of UPE with poststructuralist views of
power as enacted in and naturalized through discourse and cultural representations of urban
nature (Millington, 2013). Unfolding the discursive enactment of allotments helps us further
understand the complex and contingent process of the urbanization of nature and the links
between neoliberal urbanism and the commodification of nature in contemporary cities (Harvey,
1985, 1987). Critically reflecting on the discursive strategies that enable humans to facilitate the
extraction of profit from nature and the land is thus crucial for politicization of the issue of who
should benefit from the gains and what kinds of values are or should be at stake.
The structure of the article is as follows. We outline the theoretical links between UPE and
valuation studies, which enables us to untangle the relations between discourse, materiality, and
policies. In the empirical parts of the article, we describe the characteristics of the data and the
general features of the Czech and Czechoslovakian media discourse on allotments. We then pro-
ceed to analyze the arguments and claims of different speakers as well as the changes that
occurred in time (i.e., particularly during the fall of the socialist state in 1989). We argue that the
mode of justification as performed by the allotment gardeners has essentially remained until the
present day, unchanged since the socialist era. Their justifications have been primarily focused
on the value of their work, which materializes in the allotments in terms of both what they pro-
duce (e.g., fruit and vegetables) and cultivation of the land and the (urban) environment in gen-
eral. This “traditional” discourse may be contrasted with the “new” discourse that has emerged
during the postsocialist, neoliberal transformation and has been expressed by city officials and
local politicians who have pressed for the abolishment of allotments in Czech cities. This new
rhetoric justifies the commodification of urban space and its transformation into a financial
resource. We demonstrate how within these discourses various actors have employed contrasting
strategies of the (de)politicization of allotments.

The Role of Media Discourse in (De)valuating Allotments

Allotments—garden colonies, as they are referred to in the Czech context—represent plots of
land divided into small productive gardens cultivated by individual gardeners and their fami-
lies. In the Czech Republic, they are usually fenced off and accessible only to the members of
the garden colony. Allotments started to appear throughout industrializing Europe by the end
of the 19th century (Delwiche, 2006; King, 2014; Leppert, 2009), first appearing in the then
Czech lands prior to World War I. While they can be found across the continent, allotments in
Central and Eastern Europe bear specific cultural representations and understandings, espe-
cially with respect to the state socialist period (characterized by the rule of the Communist
Party in 1948, 1989 in Czechoslovakia). Building on the prewar history of productive cultiva-
tion of urban land, the socialist state encouraged allotments as a means of (self-)provision in
the times of post–World War II shortages as well as healthy recreation for the workforce (Gibas
et al., 2014; Stenning, Smith, Rochovská, & Świątek, 2011). Allotments were founded on pub-
licly owned land (including the land nationalized after 1948) and rented to gardeners, often on
a long-term basis. Gardeners often developed a particular attachment to their gardens and used
them for recreation and small-scale production of fruits and vegetables in short supply in the
Samec and Gibas 3

(socialist) market (Gibas et al., 2014). This has changed after 1989, when gardening, including
produce production, became predominantly a matter of recreation (Jehlička, Kostelecký, &
Smith, 2013).
Because allotments proliferated during socialism, after its fall they have become closely associ-
ated with the socialist regime (Gibas & Boumová, in press; see also Pauknerová & Gibas, 2011). At
the same time, allotments have faced a growing pressure for displacement, especially in large cities.
The newly established postsocialist order brought about vast changes to the economy owing to res-
titutions, that is, the return of property, including land, nationalized during the socialist era to its
previous owners, and privatization, that is, the sale of publicly owned properties, including housing
and publicly owned urban land, which was advocated for as economically preferable by economists,
politicians, as well as international bodies (World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European
Union) supervising the transition to liberal democracy and capitalism (Myant & Drahokoupil, 2010).
These economic policies together with a symbolical rejection of “communism” and anything related
to it, in turn, affected allotments and fueled struggles concerning urban gardening.
The case of Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic, is a salient example, representing
a city that gradually attracted local and international capital and investments. It is estimated that
between 1989 and 2009 nearly a half of the area covered by allotments had been transformed,
giving way mainly to housing construction and public green spaces (parks), often neighboring
private development projects (see Gibas et al., 2014; for an analysis of one particular example of
transformation, see Pauknerová & Gibas, 2011). In some cases, allotments were simply abol-
ished without an immediate replacement, resulting in the unused spaces being taken over by
urban wilderness.
The struggle over allotments concerns the existence, role, and form of nature in the city; at the
same time, however, we demonstrate that it often revolves around the subjectivities of those who
are seen as having a right to use the spaces in question. The public discussions embody different
and often opposing modes of justification while invoking certain moral orders (Fourcade &
Healy, 2007), and thus certain hierarchies of worth (Lamont, 2012). It is the rivalling and oppos-
ing hierarchies of what is (un)worthy, valuable, and wasteful that is at the center of our interest.
We aim to demonstrate how specific diverse modes of justification are mobilized and how the
identities and subjectivities of the actors—in our case, gardeners—are enacted, formulated, and
contested on the grounds of values and ideas about worth and, in turn, contribute to (de)politiciz-
ing certain issues concerning the transformation of urban natures—or, in our case, the abolish-
ment of allotments. Our contribution based on rigorous discourse analysis provides a nuanced
understanding of the workings of power behind the processes of the urbanization of nature and
its link to the extraction of profit in and from cities. To illustrate our approach, we explore how
urban nature, and more specifically allotments, has been enacted in media discourse during the
socialist (1948–1989) and postsocialist/contemporary (1989 to present) eras in the former
Czechoslovakia and its successor state, the Czech Republic.
We comprehend media discourse as a site where imaginaries regarding allotments are formu-
lated, values expressed, and practical steps justified or contested. In this sense, we understand the
(media) discourse not merely as a descriptive representation of reality but as a performative part
of reality (Austin, 1975; Clarke, 2012; Morris, 2016; Profant, 2010; Weber, 2016). In other
words, we perceive the texts (media articles) as making a difference to the perception of urban
nature and allotments, and constituting a cultural framework for further development of urban
policies and the management of cities. The articles are performative by (a) setting up and respond-
ing to certain moral hierarchies of worth (Bandelj, 2009; Lamont, 2012), (b) promoting certain
(urban) imaginaries (Gabriel, 2014; Millington, 2013), (c) enacting particular identities in con-
nection to belonging to a certain place (Benson & Jackson, 2013), (d) providing vocabulary for
formulating policy (Hunter & Nixon, 1999; Jacobs & Manzi, 1996), and thus (e) enabling practi-
cal actions such as redevelopment of allotments into new housing, which may then be turned into
4 Space and Culture 00(0)

tradable commodities. However, the limitations of an interpretative, discourse-oriented approach

mean that it is impossible to make causal links between the arguments used in the media and the
development of policies and politics of urban nature and allotments. We, rather, understand the
attribution of value to urban nature (allotments) as a contingent process that might be traced in
various sites of the discursively performed cultural practices inscribed in the media, art, litera-
ture, education, expert documents, and popular culture.1

Allotments Through the Prism of Urban Political Ecology

UPE brings together urban studies and contemporary (predominantly Anglo-Saxon) urban geog-
raphy with political ecology. It is a school of critical thought striving to understand the ways in
which urban space and urban nature are produced and how they formulate an understanding of
inherent injustices produced in contemporary as well as past urban environments (Heynen, 2014,
2016; Keil, 2005; Swyngedouw & Heynen, 2003; Zimmer, 2010). The ultimate objective of UPE
is not only to understand the processes of the urbanization of nature but also to further formulate
a vision of more just urban environments (Heynen, Kaika, & Swyngedouw, 2006). Various UPE
studies have understood the spaces of urban metabolism and circulation (e.g., water infrastruc-
ture) as material expressions of power relations, which can be used as a prism to unpack how
power operates in an urban context (e.g., Gandy, 2004, 2005; Kaika, 2005; Swyngedouw, 2006,
2015). At the same time, a historical–material perspective allows for elucidating the interconnec-
tion between material culture and the social and political discourses underlying the process of the
production of urban environments (Gibas, 2013; Gandy, 2003; Kaika & Swyngedouw, 2000).
Recent attempts, however, have been made to move UPE beyond the focus on urban metabo-
lism and to widen its scope and applicability. Lawhon, Ernston, and Silver (2014) argue in favor
of “provincializing” UPE by looking beyond the theories and experiences of the Global North
(see also Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2015; Rademacher, 2015; Swyngedouw & Kaika, 2014). We
second this commitment, along with calls for more empirical groundings of UPE and for enrich-
ing it with poststructuralist insights, and concentrate on the socio-natural urban spaces of allot-
ment gardens in the Czech Republic, located on what some have termed the global or European
“semi-periphery” (Blagojevic, 2004). We also attempt to broaden the field of UPE by incorporat-
ing into the discussion the role of discourse in enacting links between material places, identities/
subjectivities, and the perceived worth and value of subjects (i.e., allotment gardeners) and
objects (i.e., allotment gardens) that are present in certain urban spaces.
Allotments represent a historically specific, social and physical nature that is infused with
socially significant relationships and represents an outcome of a continuous process of social
appropriation and transformation of nature. At the same time, the position and status of allot-
ments in the city are an outcome of the continuous (re)negotiation of the politics of urban plan-
ning and development, which has been, since the fall of socialism, marked by the rise of a new
mode of governance, the “entrepreneurial city” (Eizenberg, Tappert, Thomas, & Zilans, 2016).
The entrepreneurial ethos of the new urban management aims to extract the value from the land,
attract the upper- and middle-class workers through housing construction, and densify the city’s
development (Eizenberg et al., 2016). In this inherently neoliberal mode of governance, the state
has come to act as a proxy for financial interests by promoting the idea of the “free market” and
creating the appropriate “conditions, laws and institutions necessary for its operation” (Olssen &
Peters, 2005, p. 315). Such a development is not exclusive to postsocialism, however; in Central
and Eastern Europe, it has become closely interlinked with anticommunism, in which references
to the socialist past as something unquestionably wrong, unworthy of any consideration, and
inherently dangerous have been used as a powerful discursive device for furthering a neoliberal
agenda (Chelcea & Druta, 2016). Allotments, often perceived as remnants of socialism, have thus
become deemed obsolete as well as standing in the way of urban development.
Samec and Gibas 5

In this new reconfiguration of what is (un)worthy, proponents of entrepreneurial governance

see allotments as wastelands—as places that prevent “capitalist value production” (Goldstein,
2013, p. 363). The concept of “speculative urbanization,” a process of transforming (seemingly)
wasteful spaces into places for generating value (Gidwani & Reddy, 2011, p. 1643), further unfolds
the reshaping of cities, in which (urban) nature is reduced to a reservoir for the extraction of value.
Paradoxically, in a different hierarchy of worth (Lamont, 2012), allotments could be perceived as
the absolute opposite of wastelands—cultivated and nurtured places with a particular ecology and
aesthetics that bring up the value of such marginalized places (Bell et al., 2016; Gandy, 2013).
These hierarchies may compete or correspond, although the underlining principle is the same:
Certain subjects, objects, or their arrangements are more valuable (than others) and hence deserve,
for example, a place in the city, public promotion, financial funding, or respect in general.
Discursive practices and strategies are extremely important in establishing the basis of what is
being perceived as valuable or wasteful, what arguments might be used in the debate and the sym-
bolic competition between the hierarchies of worth, for they may invoke vivid and urgent imagi-
naries of the death, decay, or rebirth of the city (Gibson, 2003) or tropes of a decent life and a safe
space for living (Polanska, 2010). For example, the ability to enact someone’s private interest
(e.g., the extraction of profit from a certain space) as public interest has profound consequences.
Therefore, we also wish to showcase the merits of approaching discourse with methodological
rigor. While the previous paragraphs outline the general themes present in the examined discourse,
we strive to dissect the actual strategies deployed. Such a nuanced discourse analysis not only may
enable UPE scholars to understand the complex processes of the production of socio-natures but
may also empower them with tools to further the fight for more just urban environments.

Data and Methods of Analysis

Our argument results from an extensive qualitative analysis of 215 media articles (54 from the
socialist era and 161 from the postsocialist era). For the discourse from the socialist era, we have
analyzed the main daily official newspaper, Rudé právo, issued by the Communist Party. For the
postsocialist contemporary era, we have focused on four major newspapers and have examined a
tabloid (Blesk), the center-right liberal press (MF Dnes, Hospodářské noviny), and the center-left
press (Právo). We developed a set of categories2 applying to the segments of articles that argued
for (i.e., justified and legitimized) or against the practice of urban gardening and allotments.
Consequently, we focused on the modes of justification, whether enacted by (1) activation of
affective language (e.g., performance of nostalgia, appealing to the emotions of readers, etc.); (2)
references to certain technological and/or knowledge-producing devices, for example, the urban
plan (see Christophers, 2014, 2017; MacKenzie, 2006; Uitermark, Hochstenbach, & Van Gent,
2017; Weber, 2016); or (3) the implicit assumption that the given argument is self-evident among
the community of speakers and readers. Moreover, we observed in which contexts and by whom
and how these justifications were performed, and we have also taken into consideration who or
what is missing in the media accounts.
The articles from the socialist era surprisingly comprise more “letters from readers” and criti-
cal commentaries from “ordinary readers” than the contemporary accounts. Such social com-
mentary was often critical of the latest developments in society. However, such a critique had to
acknowledge at all times certain limits. For example, it was possible to criticize the distribution
of food from allotments, but it was certainly not acceptable to criticize the Communist Party or
the political system as such. Criticism was possible only if it was strictly depoliticized (see
Hájek, Dlouhá & Samec, 2014, for more on the strategical (de)politicization of public utterances
and actions during the socialist period; Wilson & Swyngedouw, 2014, for an overview of depo-
liticization in various contexts). The only long-term struggle featured in the socialist media was
over the supposed form of allotments. The “cottage-like” character of certain allotments, with
6 Space and Culture 00(0)

buildings resembling weekend houses rather than allotment sheds, was criticized throughout the
1980s. Unlike allotments, cottages, especially those in and near the city, were denounced as a
selfish indulgence, contrary to the collectivist spirit of socialism, and illegal if built on land des-
ignated for allotments. Articles from the postsocialist period (1989–2016) were more heteroge-
neous in terms of the genres and themes covered in relation to allotments. The genres ranged
from short informative news, to longer articles containing stories about the struggle between
allotment gardeners and (local) politicians, to texts that covered the legislative processes linked
to restitution laws and parliamentary proposals for “allotment gardener laws.” Our analysis is
national in scope as we analyzed media representations covering the whole country. However,
many articles concentrated fully or partially on Prague and Brno, where the struggles over allot-
ments have been more vigorous than elsewhere, because of the developmental pressures and land
prices. In the following sections, we explore in detail the speakers’ strategies of justification and
valuation of allotments and of their devaluation.

Modes of Justification and Valuation of Allotments

Allotments in the socialist media discourse were almost unequivocally depicted and perceived as
morally worthy both by journalists and by readers who wrote letters to the editorial office of Rudé
právo. The main critique concerned the contestation of the practice of certain people deliberately
taking advantage of the system and building a cottage house on an allotment lot. The only case
where allotment gardeners were criticized and devaluated was when their subjectivity was
enacted as “cottage people.” Even though allotments and the practice of urban gardening during
the socialist era were established as implicitly valuable, the articles used various ways to rein-
force the performance of the worth and moral correctness of allotments. We identified four cat-
egories of how worth was ascribed to allotments: (1) positive attributes (self-)ascribed to
allotment gardeners: diligence, dedication to hard work, activeness, collectivism; (2) positive
effects of gardening on allotment gardeners: meaningful use of time, relaxation and recreation (in
nature); (3) positive effects on society and the community: distribution of the surplus from gar-
dening (fruits and vegetables), utilizing land that would otherwise be left abandoned; and (4)
adherence to official policies and the Communist Party as well as favorable cooperation between
local officials and allotment gardeners. In a certain sense, the positive attributes of gardeners (as
subjects) and gardening (as a practice) reflected what was understood as worthy in the (official)
discourse of the socialist society: hard work, collectivism, loyalty to the community (and implic-
itly to the Communist Party). Allotments may be understood as serving as a representation of the
socialist ideal, and thus, when allotments were approved, implicitly the socialist moral hierar-
chies and political networks were confirmed as well.
Allotments were thus not valued primarily for their role in urban ecology. Their role as a
“green space” was formulated in the context of bringing about positive effects on allotment gar-
deners or even society as a whole as they were spaces used for the production of surplus vegeta-
bles and thus were an effective and productive use of the land. However, the importance of
allotments to “the city” or cities in general was not formulated; this is an aspect in direct opposi-
tion to the official socialist urban planners’ discourse, where allotments figured as important
natural spaces and as an inherent part of urban nature (Gibas, Boumová & Samec, 2016). The
link between allotments and the city was thus in the socialist media discourse rather weak and
was overshadowed by the critique of “cottages,” which were seen as encumbering the potential
of certain (urban) spaces in terms of both excessive construction and disruptive aesthetics.
The shifts during the 1990s from socialism to postsocialism were enormous in terms of how
wealth accumulation and the means of ownership of housing and enterprises were transformed—
this was primarily due to the process of privatization and expansion of (financial) capitalism.
With respect to allotments, this led to a steady drop in their numbers. Allotment gardeners were
Samec and Gibas 7

afforded a rather significant proportion of space in the media after 1989. They were asked by
journalists to share their opinions either in articles that dealt with some dispute or affair (e.g.,
when allotments were about to be demolished) or when allotments were referred to in an appar-
ently noncontroversial context (e.g., reporting on the “allotment lifestyle”). However, the propor-
tion of articles dealing with controversies regarding the struggle over the appearance of the city
and the existence of allotments were significantly higher than of those that teased out their
“romantic,” nonproblematic version of reality. When allotment gardeners were given a voice,
they reiterated the arguments that had been present in the socialist discourse. Allotment garden-
ers—including also the representatives of the Czech Union of Allotments and Leisure Gardens
(Český zahrádkářský svaz)—argued that (1) they invested a lot of effort and work to take care of
and cultivate allotments over a long period of time; (2) such effort is favorable (healthy and
meaningful) to the allotment gardeners themselves; (3) allotments play an important role in urban
ecology by bringing “green spaces” to cities; and (4) they have helped cultivate the soil on estates
where allotments are present. The modes of justification have remained practically unchanged
since the socialist era, with one main exception: The public good brought about by allotments is
newly contextualized as bringing good to the city as opposed to bringing good to the despatial-
ized general common space or community.
Allotment gardeners have attempted to moralize their actions and the particular materiality of
space by way of domestic and familial arguments rather than by using the logic of market effec-
tiveness; they have also often attempted (the question is whether intentionally or not) to arouse
certain emotions in (potential) readers. References to their long-term efforts, to their emotional
attachments to “their” plots of land, and to the result of their hard work materialized in the growth
of trees, cultivated land, and harvesting of fruits and vegetables clearly had an affective nature as
allotment gardeners employed expressive language and attempted to elicit empathy from readers.
Connecting discursive persuasion and justification with the material resembles Judith Butler’s
(2010) idea of the performativity of words embedded in practices by reiterating statements and
connecting them to a meta-textual reality. In other words, allotment gardeners did not simply
justify their actions solely on abstract moral grounds or via “objective” statistical data and other
technological devices, but instead, they enclosed their accounts with their practical experi-
ences—their everyday life in the allotments. Gardeners attempted to formulate their identity as
that of subjects partaking in an activity valuable both to them and to other inhabitants of the city.
The components of this identity were formulated on moral grounds. Gardeners evoked allot-
ments and gardening not as merely a private matter but as a matter of the public good; primarily,
this sentiment was evoked when referring to the ecological and educational role allotments play
for cities and people, especially, children. They also, rather unsuccessfully, mobilized some eco-
nomic arguments, especially one emphasizing the economic effectiveness of allotments as a way
of maintaining urban nature, as expenses are covered by the gardeners, who have to pay rent for
the plot to the city council. We now turn to the discursive strategies that conceived the allotments
as wasteful and devaluated their contribution to the city’s development and the public good.

Strategies of Devaluation of Allotments

The groups that contested the version of reality in which allotments (should) proliferate and have
a prominent place in the urban landscape were not, as intuition may suggest, developers or new
owners of the urban land. Rather, it was officials and municipal clerks together with local politi-
cians who promoted a completely different management, governance, and utilization of urban
space. One notable theme within a broader public discourse of planning and development has
become envisioning new housing construction intended for “young families,” that is, the promis-
ing middle-class workers, voters and taxpayers.3 The theme has helped the city representatives to
further the vision of the “entrepreneurial city,” the city that competes to attract (young) skilled
8 Space and Culture 00(0)

workers (Eizenberg et al., 2016). A vision of new construction has been used also to argue for
abolishing allotments; it has been employed as an unquestionably sound, depoliticized argument
without the need for further justification. In another type of argument, demolition of allotments
was legitimized by referencing their semiprivate character. Allotments were presented as a public
space privatized by gardeners—a closed circle of private individuals who benefit from publicly
owned land and prevent other people from, for example, crossing the estates or enjoying the
“green.” Moreover, officials often referred to the “urban plan,” which expounds specific use of
the land and is legally binding, to contest allotments. They used the plan as a means for indisput-
able justification (e.g., to justify the construction of new housing)—the components of the urban
plan are unquestionable because of their legal status.
These strategies of justifying housing construction and the abolishment of allotments rely heav-
ily on the neoliberal approach to urban planning and urban land, which is hardly questioned in the
media. Politicians have posited allotments as the result of unjust “privatization” of public space by
gardeners. The same politicians, however, advocated for the privatization of land by means of pri-
vate housing construction. No one in the analyzed media discourse has ever pointed out this para-
dox. In certain cases, local gardeners were successful in initiating opposition to the redevelopment
of land, but no common successful discursive strategy was adapted universally that would chal-
lenge the (re)privatization of land as such. The inability to challenge the neoliberal and entrepre-
neurial mode of governance and land use on a national, rather than just local, level may be explained
by the fact that turning the land into a tradable commodity has been perceived as a just way to treat
public land in the postsocialist period. Relatedly, the market has been widely depicted as an impar-
tial, proper arbiter accessible to all, provided one tries hard enough to earn money—and this has
been the case in the broader public discourse as well. Thus, allotment gardeners have not succeeded
in significantly challenging the position of the free market as a superior impartial mechanism.
With the rise of the postsocialist transformation, the understanding of officials and local politi-
cians behind the organization of urban space has clearly shifted to viewing these spaces as a
potential economic resource. New actors and interests appear—developers, the construction
industry, and/or speculative owners of land—and with them a new media trope: the figure of the
developer, who grabs the land and transforms the green into the concrete and thus devaluates it
(according to the gardeners). These interests, however, are described rather briefly in the media
discourse, and even the figure of the developer appears only in several articles related to the
struggles over the fate of individual allotments, where the developer is portrayed in a negative
light. Another justification used for demolishing allotments comprised the categories of safety/
danger (i.e., labeling allotments as places of criminality and places with a concentration of home-
less people) and aesthetic devaluation (i.e., nonuniformity and low quality of the bungalows in
the gardens); both categories represent (de)legitimization as a narrative of urban decay associated
with specific places (Weszkalnys, 2007). However, the sentiment surrounding the danger related
to homeless people and the possibility of criminal activities was also employed as a justification
for preserving allotments as places that provide social control over the space, even encompassing
the possibility of a social policy with practical solutions (e.g., providing shelter for people with-
out home). Nevertheless, such efforts to label allotments as safe and aesthetic places were less
common and most likely were not successful when challenging the rhetoric of economically
“rational” urban planning. To summarize, market logic has been presented as unquestionable,
both implicitly—by the presumed imaginary of “new housing construction,” which should
always be a priority (see Polanska, 2010, p. 425, for the trope of urban “investment”)—and
explicitly, by stating that allotments are not appropriate to the character of the (inner) city in
general—especially in Prague, which strives to become a European metropolis. Perceived as
socialist and thus antithetical to such transformation of the city, allotments have become easily
discursively framed as surplus and taking up the space required for new construction, which is
well justified by the forces of the free market.
Samec and Gibas 9

Discussion
Ultimately, the question up for discussion when evaluating the various strategies of allotment
gardeners in relation to urban policies, politics, and rivalling imaginaries of the city is whether
the residual and “traditional” discourse of allotment gardeners is able to compete with this new
discourse of effective, commodified usage of space, a discourse that is often presented as indis-
putable and as a self-evident benefit for the municipality and for citizens, as well as an unspoken
benefit for developers and investors. With the fall of socialism, a change in the moral positioning
of the subjects, namely gardeners, appeared. Although the content of their subjectivity did not
change much, the discursive settings in which gardeners as subjects and allotments as objects
exist, changed profoundly.
During the socialist regime, allotment gardening was politicized because of the connection
between the positive values attributed to the activity of gardening and the political framework of
the communist Czechoslovakia that it was proclaimed to represent. By means of such a link,
allotment gardening was rendered as morally virtuous. Allotments were evoked as places valu-
able to the socialist city, not so much because of their natural properties but, rather, because of
their relation to what was perceived as proper use of urban space for various reasons, including
political. After the fall of socialism and the onset of neoliberalism in urban planning and politics,
the settings and modes of justification changed profoundly. City officials started to see allotments
as wastelands (Gidwani & Reddy, 2011; Gandy, 2013; Goldstein, 2013) as they do not generate
profit. The space was framed as being supposed to generate financial value extracted by means
of the market, which would bring money to the municipal budget and private companies. This is,
in essence, a modernistic idea of land and nature as a resource to be extracted with the particular
mechanism of enclosure (Goldstein, 2013). This idea currently encompasses various processes of
displacement, from allotments to the evictions of marginalized people (Desmond, 2016; Gidwani
& Reddy, 2011), which allows one to “clear” the land and turn it into a commodity traded on the
market (see Christophers, 2016, for a thorough discussion on land as a commodity).
Thus, although gardeners continued to formulate their identity on moral grounds, such a strat-
egy proved ineffective in politicizing the issue. In this instance, politicization encompasses the
ability to articulate one’s private interest as corresponding to or advancing the public interest (see
Gibson, 2003). Contrary to what might actually help the debate on urban nature and allotments,
the issue has become depoliticized on the level of media discourse because of the newly emerged
modes of justification on the side of the public administration. Representatives of the city suc-
ceeded in framing the debate as a partially technical issue of planning for a more economically
effective and justified use of urban space. At the same time, it was the political representatives
who spoke out against allotments and were in favor of developing urban land and thus helped
mask the real actors and interests involved in this process. This effectively helped obscure the
very political nature of the debate over allotments in Czech cities as well as the processes reshap-
ing cities after the fall of socialism.

Conclusion
In this article, we adopted the perspective of allotments as historically emergent and contingent
socio-natural spaces of urbanization of nature embedded and represented in specific discourses.
These discourses and their change over time underlie and have a capacity to shape and form
the process of the production of this particular type of urban environment. At the same time, as
we have demonstrated, certain discourses normalize particular ideas surrounding value and
worth (e.g., the value of new housing construction) and, in this sense, help embed the allot-
ments within a particular understanding of the city where dense housing construction has a
priority over nature. Thus, these discourses promote the potentially uneven and unjust politics
10 Space and Culture 00(0)

of urban space in terms of who benefits from certain functions of urban space. The unevenness
of the benefits is rarely mentioned in official policy documents or in the political discourse,
whereas it is (rather implicitly) present in the media articles that give voice to the perspective
of allotment gardeners.
Allotment gardeners in their accounts mobilized arguments and imaginaries that endured
across two different historical eras. From the socialist era until the present day, allotment garden-
ers have valued their hard work of cultivating the land, which results in the following positive
outcomes: (1) for them—useful spending of leisure time combined with fruit and vegetable pro-
duction and (2) for others—the ecological impact of allotments on the city, which provide more
green spaces and have an educational function for children by bringing them closer to nature. In
contrast, the actors representing the new market logic in discourse (i.e., local politicians and
public officials) have developed a completely new set of arguments that bring together the
implicit need for economic effectiveness, the imaginary of a successful city achieved by (new)
housing construction and the “objective” knowledge device—the urban plan. Although allotment
gardeners were capable of using some arguments within the framework of economic effective-
ness, the core of each respective group’s argument missed the other’s considerably.
We have presented the socialist and postsocialist modes of justification and contestation of
allotment gardens in the media discourse. We have embedded our argument within the frame-
work of UPE in an attempt to show that the discussion of the role of the discourse on urban
nature in the city based on a methodologically rigorous analysis might provide insight into the
processes of production of an (un)just city in general. In other words, we have outlined the par-
ticular case of media discourse on allotments in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic as an
example of exploring how the discursive production of nature in the city works in detail. By
looking at the attempts of various actors to justify certain usage of urban space, we have identi-
fied the ability to politicize and depoliticize the arguments as being crucial to this process; in
other words, the capability to present either explicitly or implicitly a certain matter as a political
or nonpolitical (i.e., expert or technical) issue is fundamental. These rhetorical techniques of
(de)politicization may obscure the ideas surrounding the just and fair use of urban space and
may thus contribute to the production of an unjust urban environment. At the same time, we
fully acknowledge that stating what exactly is a just (or unjust) city should ideally be a matter
of explicit political discussion.
We have argued and exemplified that to look in more detail at the discourse and the ways
(techniques and strategies) in which value is constructed may very well be a productive way to
extend the scope of UPE. This is so for at least two reasons. First, it can help us understand the
ways in which certain issues are politicized or depoliticized, why and with what impacts. Second,
if UPE is to help with producing just urban environments, it needs to engage with practice and
therefore needs to formulate concrete, particular, localized solutions employing discursive strate-
gies tailored to local specificities. Understanding the minute workings of power through dis-
courses can be a start for going from theory to practice. It can help with formulating practical
solutions or strategies challenging the capitalist modes of transformation of nature and move
UPE further toward its goal of facilitating the production of more just urban environments.

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and Blanka Nyklová for their valuable comments on the
earlier versions of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or pub-
lication of this article.
Samec and Gibas 11

Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article: The research for this article has been supported by Grant No. GA16-06077S awarded by
the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic.

Notes
1. We would like to thank one of the reviewers for suggesting the relevance of other forms of representa-
tions than media discourse.
2. These were, namely, genre (of the article), speakers (who is given a voice), actors (mentioned in the
article), general themes (of the article), expressive/technical language, evaluation of allotment garden-
ers (positive, negative), and contextualization of the article.
3. These new housing developments differ in terms of scope (usually according to the size of the city in
question) but were in majority to be carried out by private companies and not by the municipalities and
were meant for the upper and middle classes. These were not social and/or public housing projects.

ORCID iD
Tomáš Samec   https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4378-0732

References
Angelo, H., & Wachsmuth, D. (2015). Urbanizing urban political ecology: A critique of methodological
cityism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(1), 16-27.
Austin, J. L. (1975). How to do things with words. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Bandelj, N. (2009). Emotions in economic action and interaction. Theory and Society, 38(4), 347-366.
Bell, S., Fox-Kämper, R., Keshavarz, N., Benson, M., Caputo, S., Noori, S., & Voigt, A. (Eds.). (2016).
Urban allotment gardens in Europe. New York, NY: Routledge.
Benson, M., & Jackson, E. (2013). Place-making and place maintenance: Performativity, place and belong-
ing among the middle classes. Sociology, 47, 793-809.
Beswick, J., Alexandri, G., Byrne, M., Vives-Miró, S., Fields, D., Hodkinson, S., & Janoschka, M. (2016).
Speculating on London’s housing future: The rise of global corporate landlords in “post-crisis” urban
landscapes. City, 20, 321-341.
Blagojevic, M. (2004). Creators, transmitters, and users: Women’s scientific excellence at the semiperiphery
of Europe. European Education, 36(4), 70-90.
Blomley, N. (2017). Land use, planning, and the “difficult character of property.” Planning Theory &
Practice, 18, 351-364. doi:10.1080/14649357.2016.1179336
Butler, J. (2010). Performative agency. Journal of Cultural Economy, 3, 147-161.
Chelcea, L., & Druta, O. (2016). Zombie socialism and the rise of neoliberalism in post-socialist Central
and Eastern Europe. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 57, 521-544. doi:10.1080/15387216.2016
.1266273
Christophers, B. (2014). Wild dragons in the city: Urban political economy, affordable housing develop-
ment and the performative world-making of economic models. International Journal of Urban and
Regional Research, 38, 79-97.
Christophers, B. (2016). For real: Land as capital and commodity. Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers, 41, 134-148. doi:10.1111/tran.12111
Christophers, B. (2017). The performativity of the yield curve. Journal of Cultural Economy, 10, 63-80.
Clarke, C. D. (2012). Financial engineering, not economic photography. Journal of Cultural Economy, 5,
261-278. doi:10.1080/17530350.2012.674964
De Goede, M. (2005). Virtue, fortune, and faith: A genealogy of finance. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Delwiche, P. (2006). Du potager de survie au jardin solidaire: Approche sociologique et historique [From
the kitchen garden to the solidarity garden: Sociological and historical approach]. Namur, Belgium:
Éditions namuroises.
Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and profit in the American city. New York, NY: Broadway Books.
12 Space and Culture 00(0)

Eizenberg, E., Tappert, S., Thomas, N., & Zilans, A. (2016). Political–economic urban restructuring. Urban
allotment gardens in the entrepreneurial city. In S. Bell, R. Fox-Kämper, N. Keshavarz, M. Benson,
S. Caputo, S. Noori & A. Voigt. (Eds.), Urban allotment gardens in Europe (pp. 91-112). New York,
NY: Routledge.
Fernandez, R., & Aalbers, M. B. (2016). Financialization and housing: Between globalization and varieties
of capitalism. Competition & Change, 20, 71-88.
Fields, D., & Uffer, S. (2016). The financialisation of rental housing: A comparative analysis of New York
City and Berlin. Urban Studies, 53, 1486-1502.
Fourcade, M., & Healy, K. (2007). Moral views of market society. Annual Review of Sociology, 33, 285-
311.
French, S., Leyshon, A., & Wainwright, T. (2011). Financializing space, spacing financialization. Progress
in Human Geography, 35, 798-819.
Gabriel, N. (2014). Urban political ecology: Environmental imaginary, governance, and the non-humans.
Geography Compass, 8, 38-48.
Gandy, M. (2003). Concrete and clay: Reworking nature in New York City. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Gandy, M. (2004). Rethinking urban metabolism: Water, space and the modern city. City, 8, 363-379.
Gandy, M. (2005). Cyborg urbanization: Complexity and monstrosity in the contemporary city. International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29, 26-49.
Gandy, M. (2013). Marginalia: Aesthetics, ecology, and urban wastelands. Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 103, 1301-1316. doi:10.1080/00045608.2013.832105
García-Lamarca, M., & Kaika, M. (2016). “Mortgaged lives”: The biopolitics of debt and housing finan-
cialisation. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41, 313-327.
Gibas, P. (2013). Uncanny underground: Absences, ghosts and the rhythmed everyday of the Prague metro.
Cultural Geographies, 20(4), 485-500.
Gibas, P., & Boumová, I. (in press). Urbanization of nature in a (post)socialist metropolis: Urban political
ecology of allotment gardening. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.
Gibas, P., Boumová, I., & Samec, T. (2016). Zahrádkaření v Tisku a Plánech: Pražské Zahrádkové Osady
Pohledem Územního Plánování a Médií [Gardening in Newspapers and Plans]. Prague: Sociologický
ústav AV ČR, v.v.i.
Gibas, P., Matějovská, L., Novák, A., Rolfová, E., Tvardková, V., Valešová, I., . . . Veselý, M. (2014).
Zahrádkové Osady: Stíny Minulosti, Nebo Záblesky Budoucnosti? [Urban Allotmnets: Shadows of the
past of flashes of the futures?] Prague: Univerzita Karlova.
Gibson, T. A. (2003). The trope of the organic city: Discourses of decay and rebirth in downtown Seattle.
Space and Culture, 6, 429-448.
Gidwani, V., & Reddy, R. N. (2011). The afterlives of “waste”: Notes from India for a minor history of
capitalist surplus. Antipode, 43, 1625-1658. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2011.00902.x
Goldstein, J. (2013). Terra economica : Waste and the production of enclosed nature. Antipode, 45, 357-
375. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01003.x
Gür, B. F. (2002). Spatialisation of power/knowledge/discourse: Transformation of urban space through
discursive representations in Sultanahmet, Istanbul. Space and Culture, 5, 237-252.
Hájek, M., Dlouhá, M., & Samec, T. (2014). ‘Watch out for politics’: Exit, voice and other strategies of
discontent in late Czech socialism. Journal of Political Power, 7(3), 393-411.
Harvey, D. (1985). The urbanization of capital: Studies in the history and theory of capitalist urbanization.
Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Harvey, D. (1987). Flexible accumulation through urbanization: Reflection on “post-modernism” in the
American city. Antipode, 19, 260-286.
Heynen, N. (2014). Urban political ecology I: The urban century. Progress in Human Geography, 38, 598-
604.
Heynen, N. (2016). Urban political ecology II: The abolitionist century. Progress in Human Geography,
40, 839-845.
Heynen, N., Kaika, M., & Swyngedouw, E. (Eds). (2006). The nature of cities: Urban political ecology and
the politics of urban metabolism. London, England: Routledge.
Hunter, C., & Nixon, J. (1999). Housing tenure, discourse and debt: The role of language in tenure stigma-
tisation. Housing, Theory and Society, 16, 167-180.
Samec and Gibas 13

Jacobs, K., & Manzi, T. (1996). Discourse and policy change: The significance of language for housing
research. Housing Studies, 11, 543-560. doi:10.1080/02673039608720874
Jehlička, P., Kostelecký, T., & Smith, J. (2013). Food self-provisioning in Czechia: Beyond coping strategy
of the poor: A response to Alber and Kohler’s “Informal Food Production in the Enlarged European
Union” (2008). Social Indicators Research, 111, 219-234.
Kaika, M. (2005). City of flows: Modernity, nature, and the city. London, England: Psychology Press.
Kaika, M., & Swyngedouw, E. (2000). Fetishizing the modern city: The phantasmagoria of urban techno-
logical networks. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24, 120-138.
Keil, R. (2005). Progress report: Urban political ecology. Urban Geography, 26, 640-651.
King, B. (2014, November 15). Brief history of allotments in England. Retrieved https://bkthisandthat.org.
uk/brief-history-of-allotments-in-england/
Lamont, M. (2012). Toward a comparative sociology of valuation and evaluation. Annual Review of
Sociology, 38, 201-221.
Lawhon, M., Ernstson, H., & Silver, J. (2014). Provincializing urban political ecology: Towards a situated
UPE through African urbanism. Antipode, 46, 497-516.
Leppert, S. (2009). Paradies mit Laube: Das Buch über Deutschlands Schrebergärten [Paradise with arbor:
The book about Germany’s allotment gardens]. Munich, Germany: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.
MacKenzie, D. (2006). Is economics performative? Option theory and the construction of derivatives
markets. Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 28, 29-55.
Millington, N. (2013). Post-industrial imaginaries: Nature, representation and ruin in Detroit, Michigan.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37, 279-296.
Morris, J. H. (2016). The performativity, performance and lively practices in financial stability press confer-
ences. Journal of Cultural Economy, 9, 245-260. doi:10.1080/17530350.2015.1136831
Myant, M., & Drahokoupil, J. (2010). Transition economies: Political economy in Russia, Eastern Europe,
and Central Asia (1st ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Olssen, M., & Peters, M. A. (2005). Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy:
From the free market to knowledge capitalism. Journal of Education Policy, 20, 313-345.
doi:10.1080/02680930500108718
Palomera, J. (2014). How did finance capital infiltrate the world of the urban poor? Homeownership
and social fragmentation in a Spanish neighborhood. International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, 38, 218-235.
Pauknerová, K., & Gibas, P. (2011). The Struggle over Nature and Relaxation in (Sub)Urban Space: The
Case of Garden Colonies in Kbely, Prague 19. Urban people, 13(2): 221-233.
Polanska, D. V. (2010). Gated communities and the construction of social class markers in postsocialist
societies: The case of Poland. Space and Culture, 13, 421-435.
Profant, T. (2010). Fair Trade z pohľadu postrozvojového prístupu [Fair trade from the post-development
perspective]. Mezinárodní vztahy, 45, 71-98.
Rademacher, A. (2015). Urban political ecology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 44(1), 137-152.
doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-014208
Stenning, A., Smith, A., Rochovská, A., & Świątek, D. (2011). Domesticating neo-liberalism: Spaces of
economic practice and social reproduction in post-socialist cities. New York, NY: Wiley.
Swyngedouw, E. (2006). Circulations and metabolisms: (Hybrid) natures and (cyborg) cities. Science as
Culture, 15, 105-121.
Swyngedouw, E. (2015). Liquid power: Contested hydro-modernities in twentieth-century Spain.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
Swyngedouw, E., & Heynen, N. (2003). Urban political ecology, justice and the politics of scale. Antipode,
35, 898-918.
Swyngedouw, E., & Kaika, M. (2014). Urban political ecology: Great promises, deadlock . . . and new
beginnings? Documents d’Anàlisi Geogràfica, 60, 459-481.
Uitermark, J., Hochstenbach, C., & Van Gent, W. (2017). The statistical politics of exceptional territories.
Political Geography, 57, 60-70.
Weber, R. (2016). Performing property cycles. Journal of Cultural Economy, 9, 587-603.
Weszkalnys, G. (2007). The disintegration of a socialist exemplar: Discourses on urban disorder in
Alexanderplatz, Berlin. Space and Culture, 10, 207-230.
14 Space and Culture 00(0)

Wilson, J., & Swyngedouw, E. (2014). The post-political and its discontents: Spaces of depoliticization,
spectres of radical politics. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.
Zimmer, A. (2010). Urban political ecology. Theoretical concepts, challenges, and suggested future
directions. ERDKUNDE, 64, 343-354.

Author Biographies
Tomáš Samec, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy
of Sciences and. He focuses on discursive financialization in the housing context and the qualitative meth-
ods of analysis of economic discourses, predominantly a combination of discourse and narrative analysis.
Petr Gibas, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of
Sciences. His scholarly interest covers issues of home and its relationship to housing, material culture stud-
ies of home, the nonhuman in social sciences, phenomenological geography, and, last but not least, city,
urban planning, and the negotiation of city spaces, especially those connected to the experience of homey-
ness and the production of nature.