Cox, Elizabeth Louise (2024) Navigating the Plot: Unearthing women’s stories at the allotment. Doctoral thesis, York St John University.

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Abstract

Navigating the Plot contributes to academic literature within the social sciences, human geography, gender studies, and critical plant studies by exploring the allotment as a gendered space. Specifically, this thesis interrogates women’s experiences at the allotment, looking to the
ways they are influenced and affected by and through their gender.

Working within a feminist epistemology I explore women’s stories at the allotment, giving voice to their experiences and histories within these spaces, and adding to a lean discourse exploring this landscape through a gendered lens. Using ethnography, creative methods, and semistructured
interviews with nineteen allotment holders who identify as women in the north of England, I contribute new ways of perceiving and understanding this space, with a fresh focus
upon the ways women move, exist, and feel within their plots as individuals, with others, and alongside the more-than-human.

Through this thesis I illustrate new insights about women and the allotment across three main areas: (i) bodies, (ii) becoming, and (iii) belonging. From discussing experiences of menstruation at toilet-less allotments through to disseminating complicated relationships with slugs, I
demonstrate the intricate ways gender can dictate and orientate embodied experiences at the plot across the physical, the self, the emotional, the political, and the philosophical, whilst untangling messy webs of interconnected ideas and theory.

From soil to plate and from bulb to vase, the bounties of the allotment are enjoyed by many, yet this piece of feminist research shows how, for women, these spaces are ones of radical transformation, resistance, and experience. This creative, visual thesis enriches our understanding
of an environment historically rooted within masculinised tradition, whilst disrupting and deconstructing allotment stereotypes and uncovering insightful, meaningful and nuanced ways of seeing, knowing and perceiving these colourful, lush, growing spaces.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Status:	Published
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
School/Department:	York Business School
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/11275

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