Paper short abstract:

Community-supported agriculture and urban gardening are becoming more and more popular in Croatia. People get involved in such a practice due to various and different reasons. Some are aware of the utopian nature of their activity, while others point to its exclusionary features.

Paper long abstract:

Community-supported agriculture and urban gardening are introduced in Croatia by growing number of practitioners in various regions and cities. As the results of a research reveal, the reasons of actors' engagement in such practice vary - from existential needs in the times of crisis for some to the alter-globalization activism for the others. Whatever the reasons for such practices are, CSA represents just a small market niche, while the urban gardening has not been perceived as a serious threat to the market. However, the movements are becoming more and more popular, despite (or precisely because of) the fact that they are both perceived as more or less utopian. As Maskalan noticed, every modern utopia, if wanted to be taken seriously, has to take into account benefits for the whole globe (Maskalan 2009: 510). This kind of utopia is called the ecological one or ecotopia (as Ernest Callenbach named the imaginary state whose main concern was ecology (Callenbach, 1975)). Constant care about the ecology makes CSA and urban gardening perfect building blocks for constructing such contemporary ecotopia. However, one has to take into account the ambiguous position CSA and urban gardening have - on the one hand they try to provide alternative to the current agricultural and economic models, and on the other they try to become more widespread, thus becoming less alternative. Beside that, CSA has the additional label of being a "class thing". This could prove to be a danger for these emerging utopias, giving them an exclusionary feature.