Justice and care in the city: uncovering everyday practices through research volunteering

Abstract

In urban theory our knowledge of actually existing justice practices in the city are limited. In contrast, our collective knowledge of the ways an ethic of care is practised is better developed. In this paper I argue for the need to value care in conceptualisations of the just city by mobilising the unification of care-thinking and justice-thinking in a way that accepts that both care and justice may (or may not) be practised as situated responses to injustice and neglect, and as other ways of doing/thinking/being the city. I argue that researcher volunteering can help reveal actually existing justice and care in the city in their situated context. Drawing on a research project that documents everyday practices of care and justice at Alfalfa House Food Cooperative, Sydney, Australia, I use the example of waste to explore the ways actually existing care and justice are practised. My aim is to expose how, within everyday urban community organisations, the transformative and relational expressions of care and justice can be revealed through researcher volunteering. By focusing on the actually existing expressions of care and justice in the city we might begin to see how the just (and caring) city is being made and remade in the here and now.

Urban commons are more‐than‐property

“…Drawing on a politics of possibility (Gibson-Graham, 2006), the research aimed to uncover everyday practices of care and justice in urban commons in order to argue for a grounded and contextual understanding of how the city can be a site of care-full justice (Williams, 2016(Williams, , 2017a(Williams, , 2017b. I draw on the example of the Women's Library in Newtown to extend our thinking on the nature of urban commons and their relationship to property in the Australian context.…”

“…Researcher volunteering provides an avenue for researchers to engage in the everyday practices that constitute particular organisations and is often coupled with interviewing in order to provide multiple perspectives (Cloke, Johnsen & May, 2007;Conradson, 2003;Jupp, 2007;Williams, 2016). The empirical material draws on field reflections written over a 15 month period in 2009-2010 during which I volunteered fortnightly at the library and conducted interviews while on-site or at nearby cafés.…”

“…To do so, I use examples from seven interviews with volunteers and managers 1 and from 15 months of participant observation via fortnightly researcher volunteering in 2009-2010. Drawing on a politics of possibility (Gibson-Graham, 2006), the research aimed to uncover everyday practices of care and justice in urban commons in order to argue for a grounded and contextual understanding of how the city can be a site of care-full justice (Williams, 2016(Williams, , 2017a(Williams, , 2017b. By documenting mundane practices of commoning such as cleaning, making cups of tea, accessioning books, and organising events, it is possible to understand how spaces such as the Women's Library can become generative sites of care and justice in the city at particular moments and through the enactment of their ethos.…”

“…The empirical material draws on field reflections written over a 15 month period in 2009-2010 during which I volunteered fortnightly at the library and conducted interviews while on-site or at nearby cafés. Researcher volunteering provides an avenue for researchers to engage in the everyday practices that constitute particular organisations and is often coupled with interviewing in order to provide multiple perspectives (Cloke, Johnsen & May, 2007;Conradson, 2003;Jupp, 2007;Williams, 2016). The knowledge gained is therefore uniquely grounded in space and time, enabling partial insights into commoning practice and property relations.…”

“…The knowledge gained is therefore uniquely grounded in space and time, enabling partial insights into commoning practice and property relations. The research developed a conceptualisation of care-full justice that is contextual, mediated, everyday and performative to see if it was possible to reveal the generative nature of urban commons as sites where other ways of doing/being/thinking the city were practiced (for further consideration of methods and theory, see Williams, 2016Williams, , 2017aWilliams, , 2017b.…”