Greenwork: The Devaluation of Labor When Caring for Nature

Abstract

Urban greening initiatives frequently promise to support economic growth and to improve environmental conditions for communities with ecological science. Despite these lofty goals, much of the labor required to carry out the quotidian, mundane work of cultivating and maintaining urban nature is provided by unpaid volunteers or low-wage landscapers. Drawing on ethnographic research and 50 in-depth interviews with experts and volunteers who manage greening initiatives in Chicago, this article provides an account for why greening labor is valued in abstract symbolic terms but economically marginalized. Namely, I argue that the everyday labor of greening cities is a distinct form of devalued care work that can be referred to as greenwork. Greenwork is devalued because: (1) urban nature is affectively framed as an invaluable asset to communities, (2) greening initiatives have a stratified labor force with few professional opportunities, and (3) nature is theorized as complex and self-sustaining by experts.

Environmentalizing Urban Sociology

“…So too are the contradictions of market-oriented approaches to “urban sustainability,” “resilience,” and “green urbanism”—from environmental gentrification to the persistence of environmental inequality, hazards, and negative ecological impacts. New work is also emerging at the intersection of culture and political economy that addresses environmental signifiers and socioecological processes in urban environments, from watershed reclamation to housing decay and repair and to the pricing of environmental labor (Bartram 2023; Garrett 2023). Work on sociospatial difference increasingly incorporates environmental issues, including and perhaps especially in terms of the socio-environmental legacies of racial segregation and exclusion.…”