Document Type
Honors Project - Open Access
Abstract
“Lawn dissidents” are people who violate norms of turfgrass yards often found in suburbia. This thesis uses ethnographic methods to examine how these subjects’ sustainability-oriented lawn alternatives create meaning by manifesting values and performing identities. I argue that such lawn alternatives operate as positional goods that inscribe exclusion into landscapes. “Green” yardscapes yield social and environmental benefits to “dissidents” while burying the ways capitalism codes lawn alternatives, enacting a regime of whiteness no better for equity and inclusion than suburban lawns. Nonetheless, I turn hopefully to sharing economies as tools to expand sustainability initiatives beyond elite, eco-conscious whiteness.
Recommended Citation
Lebowitz, Amy, "Lawn Dissidents: Performing Whiteness Through Sustainability in Urban Residential Yards" (2015). Geography Honors Projects. 45.
https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/geography_honors/45
Included in
Environmental Studies Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Geography Commons, Urban Studies and Planning Commons
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