Page 68 - ALG Issue 2 2019

London
London
Welcome to our new members...
Deptford Allot & Gdn Association 9 Individual Members
REPRESENTATIVE
Mr Jeff Barber
39 Seagry Road, London E11 2NH 07900 328797 jbarber.nas@gmail.com
MENTOR
Grant Smith
London
0845 478 6351 grantsmith.nas@gmail.com
investment opportunity!
Toogoodtobetrue?Notabitofit.It is with you as you sit and read this. Put this article down and get to the allotment. Go as you are if you have to. Ignore the weather. BUT GO NOW!
Why? Because even before you go through the allotment gate you may well see fellow plotholders showing other parts of their lives – walking
the dog, going to sports meetings,
in a local café or restaurant. People you might otherwise never have had the opportunity or need to speak to if they were not also allotment tenants. Through the gate and then the usual round of talk, gossip and banter relevant or otherwise to the cultivation of fruit and vegetables and the state of the world. It is what Dr. Deborah Burn describes as the default position on allotment sites of a universal informal social co-operation.
So now the confidence trick in the headline and straplines is exposed:
it is not material capital that is in
the frame. That can be found out of course by calculating how much all your crops are worth in monetary terms and the expenses incurred
in growing over the season. A good few assumptions lurk there and the possibly inflated figures of those, who genuinely wish to show how valuable allotments are, can be used by some allotment authorities as a reason to increase rents. This other form of capital is social capital and we all
can invest in it, as it respects neither age, nor gender, nor race, class or ethnicity. Even ‘those also serve who also stand and wait’ will generate their own social capital within the quiet enjoyment of their plot by exercise of an inherent civility and dignity. Others are skilled growers happy to give of their time and knowledge to other allotment holders. That is especially true of new tenants who may get four different ways of doing things from
two long-time growers, all of it given with perfectly good intentions. A sort of initiation test for the novice plotholder. Then the very common exchange of seeds and plants, watering plants
when a neighbour is on holiday
or even helping out a plotholder experiencing difficulties meeting cultivation standards for one reason or another. All of these activities are not organised, therefore are informal; all have groups of people engaged in co-operative behaviour hence they are social. All of the plotholders taking part in any of these interactions will accumulate social capital. Each of them will be seen and thought of as persons with a range of skills valuable to all tenants on the allotment site and will build up their social capital investment and standing in the site.
But where there is an allotment association on the site, especially one charged with the responsibilities of devolved management, the investment in social capital takes on many extra dimensions. Basic on-site social events such as open days, work parties, newsletters electronic or otherwise, BBQs, websites and association shows require the inputs not only of those who volunteer their time to be officers and committee members and organise those events but members to take part in them too. In addition the more formal side of allotment site administration such as rent collection, general meetings of all types, the various stages of cultivation assessment up to and including a formal and separate
Not to be missed!!!!!
No limits – upper or lower!!
Cash it in any time!!
notice to quit, also needs social capital investment and the tacit agreement of the members. Both of these aspects of managing a devolved managed
site call up another set of skills for social capital investment. To start with, a shared view or vision of what the association and site should be able to become and the realisation that, to achieve that end, co-operation is essential. Trying to understand
why a different view is being honestly held, listening not only to what is said but how and why it is being said, and using spoken and written words that go beyond the fetish of assertion will define the culture of the allotment association. Contrary to the reports we have all heard at first or second hand, allotments belong to that group of organisational cultures where it is everybody’s interest to follow the rules. Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, it
is the same type of culture found in political parties or schools. Allotment tenancies are terminated, school pupils are excluded, party members can be suspended or expelled but there are known processes for each of them. Those processes are one reason for getting that more coercive action effected but so is the collective social capital of the officers and members
of the allotment site association. No one but no one welcomes a notice to quit but with enough accumulated social capital investment it can be done without too much confrontation. On direct-let sites the authority is ‘external’ and can be seen as separate from the allotment site. On devolved managed sites, however, difficulties may well emerge if the social costs
of removing a member from tenancy are not met from the accumulated social capital that, individually and collectively, officers and committee members have invested previously. It needs to be enough to retain that on-site default position of universal informal social co-operation.
Does anyone have the job spec. for a social capital asset stripper?
Jeff Barber
68 Allotment and Leisure Gardener