Leonie Guerrero Lara presents at Alternative Futures & Popular Protest conference

On 7 June 2021 Leonie Guerrero Lara presented her paper ‘CSA as a social movement: a comparative case study of the national networks in Germany and Italy‘ at the Alternative Futures & Popular Protest conference, hosted by the University of Manchester.

Abstract: Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), a grassroots-led alternative model of food production and consumption, has been spreading in Europe (2,783 initiatives in 2015) – and concomitantly, the research on this subject is increasing. However, most research has focused on the practices performed by single CSA initiatives, while the political dimension of CSA networks as social movement organizations has been overlooked. To address this gap, we analyse the national CSA networks in Germany and Italy from a social movement perspective, comparing their framing, action repertoires, political opportunities and resources, in particular with regards to their position towards capitalism and capitalist agri-food systems. It is relevant to compare these two networks due to their different timing and context of emergence, degree of formalisation, and cross-fertilisation between the movements. We draw on archival documents and participant observation of the CSA networks and semi-structured interviews with representatives of each CSA network and of CSA initiatives in the respective countries. Our findings show that the two CSA networks have developed different frames: the German network envisions a paradigm change within agriculture to strengthen peasant farming, while the Italian network targets the market paradigm more broadly by imagining and practicing an alternative economic model. Yet, neither network has significantly engaged with critiques of capitalism. We found marked differences between the two CSA networks regarding the capacity to mobilise resources and to leverage political opportunities – both are much higher in the older and more professionalised German network. Furthermore, this study illustrates how political strategies, such as solidarity based payments, have travelled across movements through connections between local initiatives, i.e. the Gartencoop, in Freiburg, Germany and Arvaia, in Bologna, Italy. The social movement perspective adopted in this paper provides new insights into how national CSA networks organise for political impact and their potential to play as a political actor.