Date of Award
Spring 2025
Document Type
Thesis
Terms of Use
© 2025 Vanessa Amsinger. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. For all other uses, please contact the copyright holder.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Sociology & Anthropology Department
First Advisor
Maya Nadkarni
Abstract
This thesis examines how legal consciousness, self-governance, and social networks shape power, participation, and belonging in the Southwark Queen Village Community Garden in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I draw on theories of legal pluralism and network theory to analyze archival documents, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews with garden members and leadership. I show that gardeners navigate overlapping formal rules and informal hierarchies, appearing in the form of bylaws, land trust agreements, social ties, and embodied practices, that together produce a complex web of legal consciousness inside the space. Mechanisms of self-governance, like plot assignments and leadership elections, often reinforce social hierarchies shaped by race, class, and tenure, while personal networks determine whose voices carry weight in decision-making. This thesis sheds light on community gardens as a microcosm of urban governance, where commons-based spaces simultaneously reproduce and challenge broader systems of inequality.
Recommended Citation
Amsinger, Vanessa , '25, "Law in Bloom: The Roots of Legal Consciousness and Negotiation in Philadelphia Community Gardens" (2025). Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards. 982.
https://works.swarthmore.edu/theses/982
