Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Within the last decades, alternative food production networks (AFN), which oppose the well-documented social, economic, and environmental flaws of the conventional food production system, have received increased attention by scholars. Yet, notions of gender often remain overlooked. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) focuses on creating close relationships between producers and consumers of food by sharing the risks and rewards of food production. This thesis aims to examine gendered labour division in consumer households of CSA by using the Welsh Vale Farm CSA scheme as an example. Examining labour division entails answering the following research questions: How is food work divided between the household members with regards to gender? Which role does receiving a weekly vegetable bag play in the gendered housework with food? Do household members perceive a change in their work with food? In affiliation with Cardiff University’s T-GRAINS research project, face-to-face interviews were conducted and subsequently analysed using the voice-centred relational method. This method consists of three different readings of each interview; each reading focussing on different parts of the narrative. For this research, the readings focussed on the overall plot, the voice of ‘I’ and the socio-cultural domain, which consisted of the socio-cultural and the corporeal domain introduced in Allen & Sachs’ (2007) conceptual framework. The findings of this study suggest that in the predominantly white, middle-class and well-educated households participating in CSA, women take on the majority of responsibility for food work, which aligns with findings of previous gendered food scholarship. Participation in CSA schemes particularly increases the mental care work of the household; however, the women interviewees do not necessarily perceive this as an additional burden. Yet, participation in CSA schemes and the associated increased workload also has implications on doing gender on a household level. Ultimately, I also argue that CSA schemes may be sites of undoing gender as well. The study shows how deeply connected notions of gender and food as a part of care work continue to be in Western societies. Additionally, considering gender as a category in food research may shed a different light on broader phenomena such as AFNs.