“A problem of resources”: defining rural youth encounters in education, work & housing

Using empirical evidence from a study of rural youth living in a remote region in the West of Ireland, this paper applies a structurationist approach to focus on and explore how young people's scope for action and choice is shaped and mediated. In particular, it applies Giddens's concept of authoritative resources (‘organization of life chances’), social practices and relations to understand the encounters, events and experiences within education, work and housing. The paper concerns how the types of practices and relations encountered within these three arenas tend to problematise the choices and opportunities available for young people. In the late-modern age, these three spheres of life can generate considerable pressures, which, depending on circumstances, are differentially mediated by young people. In conclusion, it calls for policy to engage in more ‘enabling’ terms with rural youth experiencing the negative effects of rural economic restructuring.     

Youth masculinities: compelling male heterosexuality

This article seeks to extend understandings of heterosexual masculine identities through an examination of young men's constructions of what motivates young men to engage in heterosexual practices and relationships, and what not having sex might mean for them. Using the masculinity literature and work on heterosexuality to frame the discussion and to contextualize the findings, it explores the complex dynamics that frame the relationship between masculinity and heterosexuality. Specifically, how dominant or 'hegemonic' discourses of heterosexuality shape young men's identities, beliefs and behaviour. It considers these questions using empirical data from a qualitative study of young people living in close-knit working-class communities in the North East of England, with a specific focus on cultural and social attitudes towards sexuality and sexual practices. Peer group networks are a key site for the construction and (re)production of masculinity and, therefore, an important arena within which gendered social approval and acceptance is both sought and gained. In this article, I explore the reasons why young men engage in specific types of heterosexual practice in order to gain social approval. A central question is the extent to which heterosexuality is compelling for young men. That young men do feel compelled to behave in certain ways sexually, behaviours that they may be uncomfortable with and/or dislike, and the fact that they feel they are restricted in terms of how they can talk about their experiences within their peer group networks, demonstrates the power of dominant discourses of masculinity in everyday life. This is addressed through an examination of the restrictive effects of normative discourses about male heterosexuality, including their privatizing effects, which suggest that youth masculinities are often experienced in ways that are highly contradictory requiring young men to adopt a range of strategies to deal with this.     

A critique of ‘new’ rural local governance: The case of gender in a rural Australian setting

Over the past decade rural social scientists have demonstrated significant interest in documenting the new forms of governance emerging in rural and regional areas. However, little attention has been given to examining the gendered aspects of these new arrangements. This paper takes up the issue of gender and governance in rural areas by reporting on the establishment, membership and practices of a new governing organisation in a local government area in a small rural township in Australia. Men hold almost all positions on the 19-member board of this institution charged with facilitating development in the shire. This is not surprising, given women's exclusion from the male-dominated networks from which appointees are selected. While this numerical dominance is important, it is not just the presence of men's bodies that is of concern to this paper. Also of interest is the way in which hegemonic discourses of masculinity are privileged by board members. This includes an emphasis on competition, entrepreneurialism, and aggression, and a focus on economic concerns over and above social issues. In conclusion, there may be a lot that is ‘new’ in the governance of contemporary Western rural nations, but what is not is that these forms of governance are gendered, just as the traditional state has always been, in a way that excludes women and feminine subjectivities.     

Othering the rural: About the construction of rural masculinities and the unspoken urban hegemonic ideal in Swedish media

Studies within the field of rural geography have lately to a noticeable extent enriched the theme of the creation of masculinities and femininities focussing on social constructions of the rural, as well as social constructions of gender. In this study I aim to discuss some expressed discourses of the rural in order to illuminate the power relation between the urban and the rural and the spatial implications of the construction of masculinities and femininities.Taking three Swedish television productions as a point of departure, I will argue that an urban hegemony exists and that the programmes reveal how rural masculinities are constructed. The aim is firstly to add a spatial dimension to the constructions of masculinities, and secondly to show how media builds up and emphasises a gap between the rural and the urban in these constructions. Cutting-edge media is of interest, as it is active in reproducing certain practices and also in identifying who is following the norm and who is deviating from it. The three television productions highlight the construction of rural masculinities in terms of seeking help and being ‘backward’; that rural men are unequal and traditional as well as deviating and out of place.     

Re-discovering the social: neo-liberalism and hybrid practices of governing in rural natural resource management

Since the 1980s, natural resource management (NRM) in rural Australia has been underpinned by rationalities and technologies of governing that constitute agricultural landscapes and resource managers in economically rational terms. While it is tempting to interpret these forms of regulation as part of a broad shift away from social forms of governing, this paper argues that ‘the social’ remains of crucial significance in understanding how both natural environments and the capacities of individuals to manage these environments are constructed. Drawing upon recent work in the Foucauldian-inspired literature on governmentality and, in particular, Stenson and Watt's (Urban Studies 36(1) (1999) 189–201) concept of hybrid governance, this paper examines how particular representations of ‘the social’ are assembled through strategies of NRM. Using the National Landcare Program (NLP) and Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) as examples, we consider how ‘social’ data is being incorporated into resource management strategies, and how this re-shapes both ‘the social’ and NRM as domains of governance. While the NLP and NHT incorporate concerns about social responsibility, they define these in terms of the capacity of individuals to respond to changing economic circumstances. This effectively defines land managers as socially and ecologically responsible only to the extent that they have the managerial capacities to pursue economically ‘rational’ practices. In concluding, we argue that hybrid practices of governing are indeed evident in NRM in Australia and that the concept of ‘hybrid governance’ requires further attention in understanding how rural spaces are made knowable and shaped as objects of knowledge.     

‘Being called sisters’: Masculinities and black male nurses in South Africa

This study contributes to an understanding of the geographies of masculinities, by demonstrating how black South African male nurses negotiate hegemonic masculinity through citing masculine gendered acts. The research draws on qualitative data gathered from interviews with 15 black male nurses aged between 26 and 50 years who have worked in the paediatric, trauma, orthopaedic, oncology and midwifery fields for a period of not less than two years. It is argued that the colonially imposed hierarchies of race, gender and occupation merge with culturally specific pre‐existing African masculinities, and that this informed how the black male nurses experienced their gender identity in the occupation. The study demonstrates how, because of their career choice, the gender identities of the male nurses were positioned as marginalized and subordinate to the modes of a hegemonic masculinity, a gender identity only available to them momentarily. In this context, it was found that the modes of gender performativity in which the nurses negotiated and subverted their subordinate and marginal status was with the complicity of patients and other healthcare workers. This upheld the more generally assumed hegemony of masculinity in the hospital workplace. The study traces these experiences to the discourses of black masculinities during South Africa's pre‐colonial, colonial and apartheid eras and in the present day. In doing so, this study contributes to an understanding of the geographies of masculinities by demonstrating the locally specific modes of masculine performativity through which black male nurses negotiate their gender in South Africa.     

From ‘sustainable rural communities’ to ‘social sustainability': giving voice to diversity in Mangakahia Valley, New Zealand

Despite widespread interest in the notion of sustainability, little progress has been made towards an understanding of its social dimensions. Nonetheless, the concept of ‘sustainable rural communities’ is embedded in popular, policy and academic discourses, where the needs of ‘rural communities’ are usually equated with those of farm families. Our ethnographic research in Northland, New Zealand illustrates the diverse interests to be found within ‘rural communities'. Interviews and participant observation were undertaken between August 1995 and July 1996 in the Mangakahia Valley. The increasing divergence in the ethnic, class and occupational makeup of the population has brought with it complexities in terms of what can be said to contribute to ‘sustainable rural communities'. We suggest that ‘sustainable rural communities’ be treated as a folk category, and instead, social science discourse should resort to the broader concept of social sustainability, which will have a locally defined content, not a universal definition, but will include elements of livelihood, social participation, justice and equity.     

Masculinity and Meat Consumption: An Analysis Through the Theoretical Lens of Hegemonic Masculinity and Alternative Masculinity Theories

Research has found that men are more likely to choose to eat meat, particularly red meat, when compared to fruits and vegetables. This study examines the theory of hegemonic masculinity and discusses how the consumption of meat assists in the production of a masculine identity. Specifically, eating meat allows one to be seen as masculine, and the avoidance of meat permits one to be viewed as feminine. This narrow depiction of gender pushes alternative masculinities and unique eating habits to the sideline, ignoring the agency individuals possess when deciding the fate of their perceived gender. This paper seeks to discover if men, who participate in alternative eating practices, have the ability to define a new variation of masculinity. Four alternative theories will challenge hegemonic masculinity: multiple masculinities, natural masculinity, protest masculinity, and hybrid masculinities. Three examples will display the way marginalized men consume meat: historical upper‐class male fasting, meat consumption within men's ministries, and the vegetarian practices among men. Overall, this paper analyzes the basic concepts of hegemonic masculinity, the gendered consumption of meat, and questions if marginalized men are redefining the way others perceive their masculinity or if they are, in fact, striving to become exemplars of hegemonic masculinity.     

The Question of Rural Masculinities*

Abstract By way of introduction to this special issue on rural masculinities, we provide an overview of masculinity studies, emphasizing the influential work of Robert W. Connell on hegemonic masculinity. We go on to distinguish between two main avenues of rural inquiry in masculinity studies: studies of the masculine in the rural and studies of the rural in the masculine, or what we also term the masculine rural and the rural masculine. We apply this distinction to the six contributions to this special issue, showing how most of the papers maintain a kind of dialogue between the two. We conclude by arguing that studies of rural masculinities are a contribution rather than an alternative to feminist scholarship in the rural social sciences, and that the topic of rural masculinities provides rural scholarship with opportunities for conducting research in other disciplines.     

A Localized Masculine Crisis: Local Men's Subordination within the Marcellus Shale Region's Masculine Structure

Rural economic decline in the United States has contributed to new situational conditions under which men construct masculinity. Under these conditions, men define jobs and activities that were feminized during periods of economic stability as masculine. One exception to rural economic decline for men is economic growth associated with oil and natural gas development in geographical hot spots throughout the United States and around the world. Employment opportunities in the oil and gas industry largely favor men; however, it is unclear what effect this development has on local men because itinerant extralocal male workers complete most of the labor. This article conceptualizes masculinity as a social structure, and uses economic reports and theoretically distinct literatures on natural‐resource‐based masculinities and energy boomtowns to illuminate how multinational energy companies and a predominantly extralocal, male itinerant workforce in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale region cause adverse situational conditions for local men's constructions of masculinity. Within the new masculine structure, extralocal men's constructions of hegemonic masculinity become more important for defining the local socially dominant masculinity, which subordinates local men's constructions of nonhegemonic masculinities in their own communities. The article concludes with a discussion of how the oil and gas industry's hegemonic masculinity impedes sustainable economic development and community well‐being.     

The Australian Landcare movement: towards ‘post-productivist’ rural governance?

This paper analyses whether the Australian Landcare movement complies with notions of ‘post-productivist rural governance’. The paper argues that Landcare has been a vast improvement on previous approaches to the management of the countryside in Australia, and that it has managed to mobilise a large cross-section of stakeholders. However, the Landcare movement only depicts certain characteristics of post-productivist rural governance. Although Landcare has some elements that fit in with theorisations of social movements, it still depicts many characteristics that show its close affiliation with the state and its agencies (in particular budgetary shackles). Landcare cannot be conceptualised as a fully inclusive movement, and there is little evidence that Landcare has been able to actively shape government policy. However, Landcare has contributed towards changing environmental attitudes, which can be seen as a key precondition for the successful implementation of post-productivist rural governance structures. In particular, Landcare's innovative approach of mutual farm visits, and its emphasis on the demonstration of ‘best practice’, has led to both an increased awareness of land degradation problems and the creation of grassroots ‘information networks’. There has also been some success with regard to Landcare's ability to change attitudes of the wider Australian public. Two important lessons with regard to conceptualisations of post-productivist rural governance emerge. First, individual components of post-productivist rural governance may change at different times, with the attitudinal level most influenced by Landcare, while underlying socio-political productivist structures will take much longer to change. Second, the problem in being able to label Landcare (the most innovative rural programme in advanced economies) as an expression of post-productivist rural governance shows how far away rural programmes in advanced economies still may be from such new forms of governance. The results, therefore, support those advocating that post-productivism may only be a theoretical construct in the minds of academics, rather than an expression of reality on the ground.     

Risking the rural: nature, morality and the consumption of unpasteurised milk

The BSE crisis, concern over genetically modified foods, and E. coli and Salmonella food scares have prompted widespread public disquiet over food safety. For consumers, this has led to a demand for new ‘safer’ foods which are usually ‘local’, ‘natural’ and/or organic. Research into reactions to food risk has to a large degree focussed on this ‘quality turn’. In doing so, there is a danger of failing to fully problematise risk and providing a dualistic appreciation of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ natures, rather than exposing nature's fluid and multiple identities. Moreover, it suggests that consumers always attempt to minimise risk and do not challenge the need to change their behaviour. Instead, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from an English village, the paper uses a case study of unpasteurised milk to analyse why rural consumers continue to buy foods labelled by official scientific discourses as ‘risky’. The paper argues that food risks in rural areas are configured by a concern to protect a rural identity from one implicated in scientific discourses of safety. These identity-related definitions of risk are also constructed by various moral behaviours which are integral to the process of becoming rural. In particular, the paper shows that these moral behaviours include establishing relations with specific forms of nature, maintaining community relations and adopting rural knowledgeabilities which together configure food safety and define rural status.     

Managing disability and enjoying life: How we reframe dementia through personal narratives

Rhetoric referring to Alzheimer's disease as ‘the never ending funeral’ or ‘a slow unraveling of the self’ implies that diagnosed individuals and their families alike are victims of a dreaded disease. Data gathered from web-based surveys with twenty-seven individuals with dementia demonstrate how some persons living with the condition actively negotiate their everyday lives to counter such pejorative assumptions. Grounded theory methods were used to consolidate textual data into overarching themes. Findings depict persons with dementia who do not experience an inherent ‘loss of self’ but rather consciously strive to incorporate a ‘manageable disability’ into their existing identities. Respondents give numerous examples of how they can and do live with dementia. These data portray an empowered identity that suggests the need for a reframing of dementia to challenge the normative victim-orientation and the social disadvantages of such biomedical reductionism.     

Rural studies: Modernism, postmodernism and the ‘post-rural’

In response to Philo [(1992b), Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies8, 193–207), who calls for rural studies to take the study of ‘others’ more seriously, we argue the need to take postmodernism more seriously. The paper focuses upon the production of knowledge about rural areas by academics. In the narrative that we provide here, the ‘rural’ had a strong presence until Pahl's critique of the rural-urban continuum which both diminished the status of the rural and emphasised the role of class in shaping particular spaces. Newby and his colleagues applied class analysis to agriculture, likewise undermining the significance of the rural. Further applications of general social theory, such as the political economy and restructuring approaches, show how modernist rural studies seem to be fighting a losing battle to posit the indispensability of the significance of the urban-rural division as an explanation; articulating and rearticulating the divide within a whole range of processes: economic, social and cultural. Rural social scientists have woven this modernist narrative, but, as Philo shows, one effect has been the neglect of certain social groups, cultures and identities. However, in contrast to Philo, we argue that a rather fundamental reassessment of social scientific approaches to the rural is required if these ‘neglected others’ are to be satisfactorily considered. We believe a ‘sociology of postmodernism’ would offer a more reflexive perspective on the processes which give rise to ‘the rural’. We thus call for an end to the use of universal or global concepts such as ‘rural’ (or the ‘urban’) and for a concern with the way places are ‘made’. This will entail a focus on ‘power’ as certain actors impose ‘their’ rurality on others. We term this the study of the ‘post-rural’.     

Investigations of the british rural middle classes — Part 1: From legislation to interpretation

This is the first of two papers concerned with understanding the causes and consequences of middle class presence in rural areas. This paper explores debates over the future of class analysis and in particular whether it is possible to avoid a dualistic choice between a ‘modernist class analysis’ or a ‘postmodernism’ where class has completely receded from view. Attention is drawn to notions of an ‘interpretative approach’ to class, which while accepting many of the claims of postmodernism still sees value in the notion of class and in conducting class analysis. Drawing on a number of recent discussions of class within and beyond rural studies it is argued that class analysis should be seen as an ‘interpretative accomplishment’ and that attention needs to be paid within it to at least four issues: (i) the processes of knowledge construction and communication; (ii) differences in conceptualisations of power and related concepts such as domination and exploitation; (iii) differences within the processes of class formation; and (iv) the impact of identity recognition on class analysis, class relations and classes practices. In a later paper these issues will be explored in a more substantive manner through consideration of some of the results of research conducted in five locations in rural Britain.     

New masculinities in universities? Discourses,ambivalence and potential change

In this article, we explore forms and possible implications of new masculinities in universities, and elucidate how they relate to hegemonic masculinity. ‘New masculinities’ coins a particular tradition of naming in Nordic masculinity studies. In the Nordic context, gendered social relations are shaped by State policies and equality discourses, which are increasingly embracing father‐friendly initiatives. New masculinities refers to the increased involvement of men in caring practices and especially in fathering. Our empirical study comprises in‐depth interviews with young male academics in a Finnish business school. We elucidate, first, the ambivalence and struggles between masculinities in the discourses of these men and, second, how the construction of masculinities is specific to societal, sociocultural and local contexts. Relations of class, and middle‐class notions of the ‘good life’ in particular, emerge as central for understanding the experiences of these men. Beyond the Nordic countries, we argue that while the change potential of caring masculinity stems from particular contexts, the concept of new masculinities is helpful in capturing the ambivalence and struggles between hegemonic and caring masculinities rather than dismissing the latter as subordinate to the former.     

Hybrid Masculinities: New Directions in the Sociology of Men and Masculinities

Hybrid masculinity refers to men's selective incorporation of performances and identity elements associated with marginalized and subordinated masculinities and femininities. We use recent theorization of hybrid masculinities to critically review theory and research that seeks to make sense of contemporary transformations in masculinity. We suggest that research broadly supports three distinct consequences associated with recent changes in performances and politics of masculinity that work to obscure the tenacity of gendered inequality. Hybrid masculinities (i) symbolically distance men from hegemonic masculinity; (ii) situate the masculinities available to young, White, heterosexual men as somehow less meaningful than the masculinities associated with various marginalized and subordinated Others; and (iii) fortify existing social and symbolic boundaries in ways that often work to conceal systems of power and inequality in historically new ways.     

Men,masculinities, and the politics of development

Gender identity is clearly as much of an issue for men as it is for women. However, that fact is just beginning to be recognized in development practice and mainstream development still takes men's gender identities for granted. While some women may benefit from their position in a patriarchal society, some men are disadvantaged. Certain men benefit more than others in society since gender identity cuts across other forms of social differentiation, including race, age, and economic class. Each man has varying success in conforming to the norms of masculinity, depending upon experience, upbringing, and external context. Agencies and analysts should seriously consider how men's self-perception in society affects development outcomes and challenges existing approaches to work on gender issues. Including men and masculinities in the gender perspective should broaden and deepen the understanding of power and inequality between both men and women as well as in other social relationships, increasing the effectiveness of development interventions.     

The new squirearchy and emergent cultures of the new middle classes in rural areas

In part prompted by a recent spate of media reports this paper explores the emergence of a ‘new squirearchy’ in the English countryside. In doing so, it aims to both illuminate a particular facet of rural social life and help reignite interest in the cultures of rural class. Whilst relationships between rural class and culture were a source of excitement during the 1990s, much of this interest has apparently spluttered if not died, despite class itself remaining very much a live issue for rural dwellers. The paper draws on the findings of an in-depth ethnographic study to highlight the significance of performance and symbolic boundary-marking in the construction and reproduction of social identity. The focus is the activities and sites of ‘the pub’, ‘the hunt’ and ‘the shoot’, which have been key in the emergence of the new squirearchy in the study area. The paper shows the importance of lay classifications based on evaluations of cultural (in)competence and morality, and suggests that the performance and boundary-marking of the new squirearchy in tandem with other identities is evidence of a more extensive, complex and ambiguous ‘culture of middle-classness’ in rural areas.