Cuban counterpoint of the public and the private: Reflections on the making of urban agriculture sites in Havana, Cuba

This dissertation examines the processes involved in the social production of specific urban agriculture sites associated with the post-1989 restructuring of the Cuban economy, a restructuring characterized, among other things, by the transfer of state responsibilities in the area of food security to the private or non-state sector.

The data upon which the analysis is based derives from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the city of Havana from December 2000 to July 2002. The methodology entailed archival and library research, as well as participant observation and interviews with state officials, urban planners, agricultural extension workers, environmental activists, and urban farmers.

The analysis presented draws on Henri Lefebvre's insight that an in-depth consideration of the interconnections between the physical, the symbolic, and the lived dimensions of space can reveal much about the landscapes of power in any given context. Thus, a consideration of the social production of specific sites associated with primary food production in Havana reveals significant points of ideological and political tension within contemporary Cuba. Far from being mere stages for social action, urban agriculture sites in Cuba are shown to constitute the means, the medium, and the ends of real struggles; struggles that are not just over access to food and the resources to produce it, but also over ideas on how such access should be organized.