THROUGH A GENDER-TINTED LENS: RE-EXAMINING COMMUNITY GARDENS AS (UN)THERAPEUTIC LANDSCAPES FOR SENIORS

Abstract

In the burgeoning field of research on therapeutic landscapes in examining the relationship between ageing and place, there remains a dearth of literature unveiling how embodied experiences in supposedly therapeutic landscapes are socially differentiated, especially along gender lines. Concomitantly, the interrelations between gender and ageing continue to be highly debated in the wider gerontological literature. As such, through a ‘feminist nomadic perspective’ and qualitative methods (i.e. discourse analysis, participant observations and photo-elicitation interviews), this thesis turns to looking at the gendered ways health is enacted in community gardens through performances by seniors in Singapore. Notwithstanding the State-led imagination of community gardens as therapeutic landscapes, the primary findings indicate that community gardens become therapeutic in the ‘doing’ as the seniors themselves (1) engage actively with the environment, and (2) negotiate with the hegemonic biomedical discourse of ageing. However, I argue that these individuals perform health in gendered ways and in some cases, the therapeutic potentiality of the space for some individuals is further undermined by other intersecting social relations (i.e. race, religion, role in the garden, disability). This not only unveils the ambivalent nature of therapeutic landscapes, but also underscores the salience of gender identity when one negotiates with one’s ageing body. Overall, this thesis seeks to reinstate the need to remain cognisant of gender and other intersecting social relations that shape one’s therapeutic landscape experiences. It is by examining the performing of health against the complex webs of power relations which the body is caught up with that future studies will better grasp the dynamic nature of the relations between place and health, therein also ageing identities.