The Two ‘Ages’ of Modernisation of Allotments: Changing Moral and Aesthetic Models

Abstract

This chapter sheds light on the principle transformations to allotments taking place in Western Switzerland since the middle of the twentieth century. Based on a methodology combining an analysis of both written and spoken sources, it focuses on two periods (1950–1960 and 2000–2010) characterised by notable regulatory changes, demonstrating the extent to which the action taken by ‘reformers’ of these green spaces is grounded in different moral and aesthetic models, the nature of which mutates over time. Firstly, faced with the spectre of the rural wasteland in an urban setting, this chapter documents the transition, in the mid-twentieth century, of the traditional allotment into a clean, tidy familial pleasure garden. Secondly, we see how, throughout the 2000s, these reforms are undertaken with a view to rethinking the spectacle of the formal garden (in favour of a much more fluid style), and its use (‘less privatised’) in a context where new forms of urban gardening (community gardens), ‘taking up less space’ and ‘more integrated into the urban fabric’, continue to thrive. Finally, the chapter seeks to understand how the social history of these two ‘ages’ of modernisation of allotments can be interpreted as a long process of dual construction based, on the one hand, on a succession of off-putting images produced by the ideological and moral configuration dominant from one historic context to another and, on the other hand, on a process of social regulation and normalisation applied to communities perceived as marginal to or unaffected by mainstream concerns.