Baking together: caring and commoning in a community baking initiative

This paper explores the material and immaterial relations of collective breadmaking in a small community bakery program in Narrm/Melbourne. The case study of High Rise Bakery is developed through a ‘follow-the-thing’ approach employing participant observation, material audit, and interviews. Using this approach enabled a consideration of relations across key nodes in the initiative’s socio-material network, from the growing of grain to the eating of bread. Drawing on work on care and commoning, breadmaking is found to be a collective (more-than-human) process that is deeply tied to people’s care about and for self, food, and community. Further, re-ordering the food system into an infrastructure more supportive of social and environmental well-being was a shared preoccupation. A sense of interdependency and shared responsibility underpinned participants’ engagements in the initiative and efforts to challenge dominant food system ideals (e.g. individualism, commodification) while building the relations of caring and commoning.