Moderator/Comments: Irina Velicu (CES)


About

Queer rural studies invite us to examine how gender and sexual relations organise agri-food systems. These studies offer critiques of heteropatriarchy in agri-food systems and identify strategies employed by queer farming people to secure thriving livelihoods in the countryside. Community supported agriculture (CSA) is an agri-food supply scheme that can be seen as a political space where emancipatory strategies are lived out. However, the impact of CSA on queer people's agency in rural agri-food systems remains uncertain. This study investigates whether and how queer people in a rural CSA feel (dis)empowered to become active participants. The experiences of 11 queer participants of a CSA in rural Alentejo, southern Portugal, serve as case study. Data are collected through participant observation, semi-structured interviews and a focus group with CSA participants and analysed through Open Coding, followed by Focused Coding. The results show that CSA can catalyse the empowerment of queer people by enabling queer participants to construct agri-food systems that reflect their interests and goals, while feeling self-confident to express queerness. CSA brings the boundaries between public and private spheres closer together and can generate contradictory experiences of empowerment. Although CSA creates reciprocal and collaborative relationships between participants of different gender and sexual identities, this initiative can reproduce a segregative agri-food system.


Bio note 

Guilherme Raj (he/his) is Brazilian, born in Rio de Janeiro, and is in the final year of his PhD at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. His research is focused on power relations within grassroots communities in the agri-food sector, and how such relations influence processes of social transformation that emerge from these collective dynamics. In particular, transformations towards (a) post-capitalist labour relations, (b) queer empowerment in rural agri-food systems, and (c) greater appreciation of the role of women producers in building collective experiences. Guilherme is a member of the integral cooperative Rizoma in Lisbon and is involved with different CSAs in Portugal and Italy in the scope of his research.
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