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In this article I explore how the possibilities for commoning and conviviality through small-scale urban farming initiatives intertwine with neoliberal trends. I do this by recounting the trajectory of a small rooftop garden in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark. Drawing on ethnographic research in and around this garden, I show how such communal, anti-capitalist, eco-social endeavors are thoroughly entangled in the city's neoliberal turn over recent decades. Various manifestations of neoliberalism, ranging from formalization processes to austerity pressures, articulate with convivial urban farming initiatives in contradictory and recursive relationships that both nurture and endanger these local initiatives. I describe for example how formalization engenders legitimacy but also homogenization and how green initiatives are celebrated while undermined by austerity measures. This happens within a broader context of neoliberal labor, food systems, and housing policies and politics that subvert convivial urban farming efforts in multiple and often unacknowledged ways. Finally, I forward the view that attending to such contradictory and complex realities of and surrounding urban farming is essential to illuminating the iterative relations between context and practice, and the actions required at multiple scales to nurture and expand the possibilities for urban commoning and conviviality, including through farming.Key words: the commons, urban farming, neoliberalism, Copenhagen

Timber legality trade restrictions and verification are a bundle of contemporary mechanisms triggered by global concerns about forest degradation and deforestation. The European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade initiative is a significant effort to not only screen out illegal timber and wood products from the EU, but also support trading partner countries to improve their legality definitions and verification processes. But by using bilateral agreements (Voluntary Partnership Agreements) as a key mechanism, the EU legitimizes trade partner nation-states as the authority to decide what is legal. We engage in a theoretical debate about the complexities of the meaning of legality, and then analyze empirical data collected from interviews in Ghana, Indonesia, Vietnam and Europe with policy, civil society and industry actors to understand how different actors understand legality. We find hegemonic notions of Westphalian statehood at the core of 'global' notions of legality and often contrast with local understandings of legality. Non-state actors understand these hegemonic notions of legality as imposed upon them and part of a colonial legacy. Further, notions of legality that fail to conform with hegemonic understandings are readily framed by nation-states as immoral or criminal. We emphasize the importance of understanding these framings to elucidate the embedded assumptions about what comprises legality within assemblages of global actors.Key words: FLEGT, timber legality, hegemony, power, globalization

Timber legality trade restrictions and verification are a bundle of contemporary mechanisms triggered by global concerns about forest degradation and deforestation. The European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade initiative is a significant effort to not only screen out illegal timber and wood products from the EU, but also support trading partner countries to improve their legality definitions and verification processes. But by using bilateral agreements (Voluntary Partnership Agreements) as a key mechanism, the EU legitimizes trade partner nation-states as the authority to decide what is legal. We engage in a theoretical debate about the complexities of the meaning of legality, and then analyze empirical data collected from interviews in Ghana, Indonesia, Vietnam and Europe with policy, civil society and industry actors to understand how different actors understand legality. We find hegemonic notions of Westphalian statehood at the core of 'global' notions of legality and often contrast with local understandings of legality. Non-state actors understand these hegemonic notions of legality as imposed upon them and part of a colonial legacy. Further, notions of legality that fail to conform with hegemonic understandings are readily framed by nation- states as immoral or criminal. We emphasize the importance of understanding these framings to elucidate the embedded assumptions about what comprises legality within assemblages of global actors. ; Peer reviewed