Thierry Boissière studies the social world of urban gardens in Orontes, of which he gives us the technical systems, the socio-professional structure and organization, the close links with the city as well as the evolution over the past fifty years.It illustrates the different facets of the relationship between gardeners and notable landowners, sheds light on their changes in Homs and Hama, highlights the transformations that have resulted in the reversal of power relations under the effect of land reform, and in particular of laws on agricultural contracts and cooperatives. The “time of the notables” was followed by a “time of gardeners”, and today perhaps “a time of town planners”, anxious to develop green spaces for all in cities in full expansion.In a back-and-forth between the two cities, in the variations of scale between the local and the global brought about by the stories and the analysis, the ethnologist thus sheds light on a whole section of the |