Farm diversification into tourism - Implications for social identity?

-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.Research Council of Norway and the Agricultural Agreement Research Fund, Rural Tourism and Traditional Food in Norway (HANEN) and Sparebank1-SM