Farm diversification into tourism - Implications for social identity?

Abstract

This article deals with how diversification and transformation of farming into tourism may influence the social identity of farmers. Based on a study of 19 farms run by couples engaged with agritourism, it shows how the development of tourism on the farms can be understood in a perspective of repeasantization; and how the couples draw on their farm work, culture and place to situate themselves in a new working role. Through food, stories, activities and themselves as hosts they mediate a strong farm identity. The article also explores how identities change through identifying three processes by which the ‘new’ work of tourism may destabilize identities. One is a shift in the meaning of farmer identity. Another is the gradual change towards a new master identity, and thirdly it finds a multiplicity of identities practiced as serial identities that shift as they relate to various social memberships and settings.