In this paper we seek to understand the interplay
between increasingly widely held concerns about the hegemony of industrialized agriculture and the emergence of
counter-hegemonic activities, such as membership of community supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives. Informed by
Blackshaw’s (Leisure, Abingdon, Routledge, 2010) work on
‘‘liquid leisure,’’ we offer a new leisure-based conceptualization of the tactics of counter-hegemony, arguing in the
process that food politics offers a rich site for new, transitional identity formation. Using a case study of a wellestablished community farm in southeast England, we
demonstrate how the community members devote themselves to transient and inconsequential activities as a means
of attempting to realize a larger self-related identity project.
We also demonstrate how the seemingly close inter-personal
bonds typical of CSA may not reflect the permanence
accorded to them, with members able willingly to leave these
communities once they can no longer progress their identity
project. We conclude by arguing that our findings are
emblematic of society in transition, with people moving well
beyond the work/leisure activity into a world in which they
embody the idea and the practice of being an active co-producer—in our case, of food. While recognizing that this does
not necessarily mean that there is simple causality between
practice and identity formation, we do argue that there is
evidence of an increasing relationship between activity, time,
and the performance of a new form of civil labor practice.