Eighth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

The last ten years have witnessed the resurgence of small-scale domestic chicken-keeping in many cities around the world as part of a broader rise in urban agriculture. This paper draws on qualitative interviews with domestic chicken-keepers carried out in Sydney in 2014-17 to explore the possibility that this revival might signal something more than just “a pervasive nostalgia for earlier modes of living” (Hamilton 2014: 124). Springboarding off the concept of “practice memory” elaborated by Cecily Maller and Yolande Strengers (2015), it canvasses eight aspects of suburban chicken-keeping that arose from the interviews, using these themes as a means both of understanding chicken-keeping more richly and as the basis for gesturing towards a possible theoretical understanding of elements of social practice that might help make them revivable and durable.