What does it mean to nurture ‘good intentions between city and country’? Performances of rural–urban relations in community-supported agriculture

Abstract

As community-supported agriculture (CSA) comprises a direct relationship between food producers and consumers, scholars and activists have pointed out its potential to improve rural–urban relations. This paper explores this potential. It complements insights from critical agri-food studies on a ‘rural–urban divide’ with perspectives on the rural and urban as evolving, multiple discursive–material performances. It thus conceptualises CSA as a rural–urban interface in which various performances of the rural and urban enact various different rural–urban relations. Exploring four CSA initiatives in Germany, the paper finds that CSAs can indeed nurture relations of material solidarity between rural producers and urban consumers, and may foster deeper understanding and care between the two. At the same time, the paper finds that CSAs may also (re)produce hierarchical relations between the urban and the rural, and even deepen processes of alienation. The paper thereby emphasises the relevance of stretching investigations of rural–urban relations beyond questions of producer–consumer relations, and beyond questions of ‘relations’. Investigations of rural–urban relations must also consider the kinds of rural and urban identities performed in these relations. It becomes worthwhile asking whether CSA may not only foster rural–urban material solidarity but also create opportunities for rural–urban encounters that transcend the sphere of food; whether CSA may even contribute to the forging of progressive rural–urban alliances that struggle for post-capitalist futures while fighting reactionary political trends.