Joint work as a political tool: urban agriculture and citizenship.

Abstract

São Paulo is experiencing a rich moment of creation and discovery of community vegetable gardens spread throughout the city, maintained by people, collectives and social groups interested in the urban production of food. These vegetable gardens are structured through periodic collective work that not only foster food production for one’s own consumption, but community practices of shared management of public spaces, encouraging the production of the commons as a political principle of self-government. In this article, will be analyzed the practices of mutirão as political tool for local development, established in some community vegetable gardens in the city of São Paulo, members of the newly created Union of Community Vegetable Gardens of São Paulo. The mutirão is observed as a practice that has in itself a political and insurgent character that builds bonds of trust and reciprocity, enabling the dialogue and the construction of utopias of a city in which one wishes to live and allowing the local articulation of resources and strategies in order to face the private and public appropriation of the city's territories. In this way, the present article dialogues directly with the theme of urban interventions, public management and community participation aiming, mainly, the insurgent creation of decision-making processes of participatory management.