What’s in the Share?

Materialising Tensions Between Strategic Action Fields of Food Sovereignty and Organic Market in Community Supported Agriculture

Abstract

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has long been framed as a solidarity-based alternative to industrial food systems. While initially grounded in collective financing and risk-sharing, CSA partnerships can also reflect market-based norms, such as pricing benchmarks, quality expectations, and consumer satisfaction. In this paper, we investigate how CSA initiatives navigate these competing tensions by positioning themselves between two strategic action fields: the field of food sovereignty and the field of organic agricultural markets. Drawing on the theory of strategic action fields, we analyse weekly CSA shares as a material manifestation through which these tensions become visible. Analysing data from twelve CSA partnerships in France, including weekly share monitoring and interviews with producers, we examine how the content, diversity, and pricing of the shares reflect negotiated compromises between solidarity ideals and market expectations. The results show that while not isolated from market pressures, CSA producers adopt hybrid strategies that allow for both economic viability and partial decommodification. We argue that the CSA share, as a material manifestation of an interfield position, contributes to stabilising CSA as a hybrid, evolving field within alternative food systems.