Doctoral Thesis

Urban agriculture in Santiago emerged as a collaborative initiative of civil society to raise awareness about the cities' different social and environmental problems. However, it is unclear how the neoliberal economic, political, and social scenario in Chile, which promotes corporatism, allowed actors' participation in projects when they were constantly excluded from sustainability and urban planning decisions. Despite their disadvantaged position, community actors use urban agriculture as their fighting symbol to communicate their ideas of the environment and society. The Santiago case analysis is used to understand the connections formed between the actors related to urban agriculture projects and to unravel their discourses and story-lines about society, the environment and traditions that have been taken for granted in the context of neoliberalism. Anchored in the Governance Networks and Hajer’s Discourse Analysis approaches, this research examines the networks, discourses and story-lines resulting from the emergence of urban agriculture projects in Santiago de Chile by linking social and environmental ideas with the neoliberal transformation driven by the development of new partnerships between actors. The findings suggest a strong relationship between civil society actors as they view urban agriculture as a form of social connection instead of food production. The social aspect emphasizes the circulation of knowledge and experiences between actors and the population outside the urban agriculture groups and modifies space and territory’s perception and purpose. Instead, there is a weak and sometimes broken connection between civil society and the state and private sector. As groups perceive other actors use sustainability as a business for their economic benefits, they are heavily influenced by capitalism and lack environmental awareness.