McCarron, Sean. "Flexible Fare: Negotiating Civic and Market Meanings in an Urban CSA". ASA Paper Submission 2013.

Community-supported agriculture (CSA) has become a central feature in an alternative food movement that has the potential to resist many ills of a globalizing and industrializing food system. Additionally, many scholars and activists view CSA as a revitalization of civic engagement. However, much survey and interview research on CSA schemes reveals participants are aware of, but fail to use activist or civic discourses to describe their involvement. This study uses participant-observation data to move beyond categorical understandings of CSA participation and examines the meanings with which participants organize and understand an urban CSA scheme. By engaging in ongoing cultural work, the participants at Still Water Farms' CSA are able to emphasize communal bonds over market ties, and deemphasize market principles, such as a price mechanism. This work demonstrates the need to understand the categories conventional, alternative, market, and civic as cultural accomplishments on continua and variable across settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]