Seeds Sown into Me: An Autobiographical Narrative Inquiry into the Leisure Experiences of one Community Gardener

• Author / Creator

  Dubnewick, Michael J

• This autobiographical narrative inquiry takes the reader alongside my familial stories of gardening and my lived experiences across three community gardens in Edmonton. By focusing on my experiences of gardening I demonstrate the power of narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) as an approach that tends to the descriptive and paradoxical dynamics of leisure practice by providing alternative narratives to dominant conceptualizations of gardening. The institutional, community and personal narratives of gardening that wove in and through my experiences of gardening are used to show how leisures are polythetic constructions situated in contexts with people, cultures and communities (Fox & Klaiber, 2006). As the narratives in this thesis illustrate, gardeners continually negotiate tensious landscapes and stories of gardening. To ignore the rich and multivariate experiences of gardeners amongst the meta-narratives of gardening is to silence the moments of discomfort, dissent and alternatives in the diversity of lives lived.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Narrative inquiry
  • Leisure
  • Community gardens
  • Community

• Graduation date

  Fall 2013

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3ST7F530

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.