An Act of Translation

Sammanfattning: Malmö is an expanding, globalised and multicultural city with the aim to be sustainable and green. Throughout this aim, there is the actuality of negotiating space: space for housing, space for activity and green space for nature. Many different preferences of when, how and why to use public space meet and friction is inevitable. Within this debate of urbanization and nature following the western nature-culture dichotomy, I placed three threads of communication from a local social media group on Facebook. The discussions of the residents are reactions and associations to the unusual appropriation of a public park and the use of foraged resources. I adapt the method of Grounded Theory to approach and analyse the content, create categories thereof and define the overarching phenomenon, ‘Local Community Expanded Through The Internet’. Common for all categories is the use of natural material for the translation of a network, to inform identities and last, to define territory. Inspired by Kärrholms use of Actor-Network Theory to understand territorialisation, I define the network created between the local natural material, the people and the space. Urbanization and a change in practical activities and engagement reinforces our nature-culture dichotomy and causes a growing abstraction of our knowledge about nature. Despite this, I argue that we still use natural material in the urban environment to inform our identities, define territory and create community.