Different farmers, different views: understanding policy feedback and symbolic stratification in Italy and Sweden

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has become one of the EUs most contested policy areas. But despite widely observed patterns of rural resentment and farmers’ resistance to environmental policies, few studies have examined the CAPs political consequences beyond recent farmers protests. Drawing on policy feedback theory, Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic fields, and scholarship on sociotechnical imaginaries, this paper offers an interpretive policy analysis based on interviews, participatory observation, and digital ethnography in Sweden and Italy – two contrasting contexts of EU agricultural governance. The study introduces the concept ‘symbolic stratification’ to explain patterns in farmers’ reactions to the EUs promotion of an entrepreneurial farmer ideal. It offers a typology of four different farmer identities – entrepreneurial, traditional, environmentally caring, and resentful – the relative standing of which is significantly affected by EU policies. The findings have bearing on the EUs legitimacy in rural areas and Europe’s capacity to transition to sustainable food production.