Gender and Rural Geography

Jo Little

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317877691
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography

Gender and Rural Geography explores the relationship between gender and rurality. Feminist theory, gender relations and sexuality have all become central concerns of geographical research and significant progress has been made in terms of our understanding of both the broad relationship between gender and geography and the more detailed differences in the lives of men and women over space. The development of feminist perspectives and the study of gender relations in geography, has, however, been fairly uneven over the discipline. Both theoretical and empirical work on gender has tended to be concentrated within social and cultural geography. Moreover it has been directed largely towards the urban sphere.

1 Introduction

In 1986 I wrote an editorial in the Journal of Rural Studies entitled 'Feminist perspectives in rural geography' (Little, 1986). This was an introductory paper, the purpose of which was to draw attention to the lack of published material on either gender issues or women's lives within rural geography. The paper was based on my knowledge of mainly British and North American geography and argued that the burgeoning of feminist perspectives in other parts of geography was setting rural geography apart and confirming it as one of the discipline's least progressive subject areas. I acknowledged the work that did exist (for rural geography at the time wasn't totally devoid of feminist enquiry) but stressed the need for research which not only provided detail on the patterns of gender difference and inequality in rural society but also sought to apply feminist perspectives to theoretical and conceptual debates within rural studies.

The mid-1980s was a significant period for the development of feminist approaches in geography, as I outline in Chapter 2. A concern with documenting the nature of women's lives in different places was being replaced by a recognition of the importance of gender as a factor in explaining patterns of inequality (see Bowlby et al., 1989). Feminist geography was arguing the need to explore patriarchal power relations between men and women as the basis of understanding gender difference and, in particular, women's subordination. Although still rejected by some, feminist perspectives were increasingly being recognised for the major contribution they were making to geographical knowledge. It was in this broad context that my article criticised the absence of feminist approaches in rural geography and urged those working in rural studies to challenge the patriarchal nature of both the content and approach of the sub-discipline.

By not embracing the developments emanating from feminist approaches, it was argued, rural geographers were failing in two key ways. Firstly, and quite simply, they were neglecting the particular experiences of women in rural areas; gender studies had established a 'geography of women' which, while rightly criticised later for adopting a somewhat isolated and untheorised approach, demonstrated the wide range of issues which became foregrounded when the focus of geographical research shifted to women's lives. Thus, issues such as accessibility, domestic labour, community services and labour market relations, provoking excitement elsewhere, were largely ignored in the rural context. Rural geographers were failing to grasp an important opportunity to identify the patterns of women's lives in the rural community and to develop a better understanding of the manifestations of gender inequality in the countryside. Secondly, the absence of a specifically feminist approach ensured that the role of gender in broader social relations within the rural household and community was being overlooked, and as a result understanding of the community itself and the power relations within it was weakened. The lack of theoretical consideration given to gender relations within the rural community also meant that the specific contribution a rural perspective could make to debates on the form and direction of patriarchy went largely unrecorded.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s gender studies in rural geography began to make up ground. From an initial focus on farm women and their role in agriculture, studies of rural women started to filter into other areas of rural geography and feminist perspectives shifted debates from women's lives to gender relations. Mainstream issues of interest to rural geographers – labour markets (Little et al., 1991), the rural community (Middleton, 1986; Stebbing, 1984), tourism (Bouquet, 1987) and the environment (Sachs, 1994) – were examined through the lens of gender and increasingly attempts were made to move away from a strict compartmentalisation of women's lives to an appreciation of the broader relevance of gender. As the volume of work on gender increased so did its status within rural geography. But although chapters in edited collections and papers in key journals began to appear, feminist studies in rural geography remained somewhat marginalised and isolated, described, even into the 1990s, by Whatmore et al. (1994) as a 'fugitive literature'. Only in the late 1990s has work on gender become part of 'mainstream' rural geography. Gender and Rural Geography is a product of this move and of the rich and varied debates that have, with growing confidence, found their way into the core of the sub-discipline.

The inspiration for this book comes partly from the history of the study of gender and rural geography but also from what remains unsaid. While a lot of ground has been covered since my 1986 article, there are still major gaps. Moreover, the work that has taken place has been somewhat fragmented and scattered. This book is, first, an attempt to bring together the various studies of gender and rural geography that have been undertaken and to draw out some key arguments from this work. Existing research has, as indicated, tended to take a somewhat fragmented approach and there is a need for ideas from this work to be collected together in a single critical account. Second, the book introduces some new material from my own research on key issues such as rural employment, community and governance. It seeks to set this material within existing debates but also to use it in the presentation of new conceptual ideas. Third, the book will include some more recent ideas from both feminist and rural geography in the examination of rural gender issues. In particular it will develop current interest surrounding gender identities, sexuality and embodiment in the context of socio-economic relations within the contemporary countryside. In so doing the book will also engage with some more recent research directions in rural geography emerging from the adoption of 'new' cultural approaches. Although aiming to bring together a diverse body of research, established and more recent, the book cannot claim to be comprehensive. There has clearly been a need to be selective in terms of both the themes addressed and the illustrative research upon which these themes draw. Hopefully, however, the book, in its review of past work, provides a substantive and detailed commentary on gender and rural geography and starts to explore some important new directions in a way that can be used as a springboard for future research.

Chapter 2 examines the development of theoretical ideas from feminist geography within which rural gender studies have been framed. It shows how the debates taking place within the discipline more widely have been applied to (and have influenced) the direction of feminist research in the rural context. The chapter traces the different phases of feminist thought from early work on gender roles through to the current focus on gender difference and gender identity and on the uncertainty surrounding the relevance of categories based on sex and gender. In establishing the background to the study of rural gender issues it is important, as well as looking at the development of feminist theory, to consider how changes in the research agenda of rural geography have been reflected in the scope and direction of work on gender. Since the 1986 article referred to above was written, rural societies and economies of the developed world have undergone a series of transformations, many of which impact on the issues that concern us in this book. Feminist geography has moved on but so too has rural geography; there have been shifts in the study of rural areas as well as in their character. What is of interest here is how the different dimensions of change and the different perspectives on that change have interacted. The following section outlines some of the relevant aspects of the recent transformation of rural societies and how these have come to be understood through the changing academic discourses of rural geography.

Geography, rurality and change

There have been a number of academic studies charting the development of rural geography; from the descriptive land use studies of the 1960s and 1970s, through political economic perspectives on restructuring, to post-structuralist approaches to constructions of rurality and considerations of otherness, rural geography has been subject to extensive reflection both in the UK and overseas (see, for example, Cloke, 1989, 1997; Phillips, 1998a, 1998b; Philo, 1992; Troughton, 1995). The need to reassess past directions in rural geography may be interpreted as profound interest in the histories of the sub-discipline but it also reflects the dynamic nature of the subject area itself.

Paul Cloke (1997) identifies a number of different phases in the development of rural geography and in the status of rural studies within the wider discipline of geography. He notes the centrality of the study of rural areas to the regional focus of geography in the first part of the twentieth century and the emphasis that was placed on the classification of agricultural and rural landscapes in the development of geography as a spatial science. The dominance of agriculture in the economy also ensured the prominence of rural studies. Rural communities excited little research interest, beyond the classification of settlements, and even as geographers started to become more fascinated by social scientific issues, particularly welfare and deprivation, the lives of rural people and the operation of rural society were largely overlooked. Geography from the 1960s became increasingly focused on towns and cities, encouraged by the scale and visibility of urban issues and the rapidly growing and sophisticated research agenda of urban studies (Cloke, 1997).

As authors such as Philo (1992) and Phillips (1998a) have pointed out, rural geography in the 1960s and 1970s was 'deserted of people' (Philo, 1992: 200), preoccupied by measurement and spatial classification. Settlements were 'explained' according to location models based on agricultural land use and economic rationale. Social relations, seen as deriving from the organisation of agriculture and dominant economic interests, were 'naturalised', harmonious and universal (Phillips, 1998a). Even studies of migration and counter urbanisation did not focus, as Phillips notes (1998a), on the lives of rural people or on the political and contested nature of population change. Rather, they attempted to identify and explain migration trends in relation to certain 'universal laws' based largely on economics:

[D]epopulation was seen to be the result of economies of scale and cumulative advantage of the process of centralisation, while counterurbanisation was explained as the outcome of such laws as the maximisation of individual preferences, economic cost maximisation and the balancing of demand and supply. (Phillips, 1998b: 126)

There was, at this time, little interest in the development of theoretical understandings of rural space; where theory was used it was confined to the work of agricultural economists (Marsden, 1998).

During the 1980s, however, major changes occurred in the study of rural economies and societies of developed countries, changes that were inspired both by the processes of transformation affecting rural areas and by the willingness of those involved in rural research to adopt new theoretical perspectives. Rural geographers recognised the far-reaching changes associated with the processes of rural restructuring and in so doing accepted the need for new theoretical approaches to understanding the nature and influence of these processes. As Marsden notes:

Since the early 1980s it has become increasingly clear that rural areas, both in the United Kingdom and in the advanced world, have been caught up in a much more complicated national and international political economy: a period of social and economic restructuring which has become highly diverse and fragmented. (1998: 15)

He goes on to identify the different ways in which social and economic restructuring, and its implications for rural areas, have been interpreted in the various theoretical frameworks employed by rural geographers.

Initially, research on rural restructuring focused on the economic relations surrounding agriculture. Work by rural geographers sought to understand the background to agricultural production in developed countries and to examine, in particular, the significance of changes in the power and policy networks surrounding food production. Thus attention was directed to the vertical and horizontal linkages between different elements of the agricultural industry in an attempt to show how decision-making on the farm was related to the global patterns of investment and control (see Goodman and Redclift, 1991; Marsden et al., 1993). Research focused on a range of issues including the changing nature of the labour process, agricultural land and property relations, and national and international farm policy in identifying the uneven effects of what became termed the 'farm crisis'. The end of the 'productivist era' of farming was occurring, with huge implications for the farming industry and for the economies of rural areas generally.

In identifying the nature and effects of restructuring, rural geographers began to look at the relationship between agriculture and other aspects of the rural economy and society. It had become clear that the complicated processes of change taking place were intricately related and that they both stemmed from and contributed to broader shifts in the production and consumption of rural spaces. As well as major changes in the farming industry, new demands were being placed on the countryside by a combination of industrial relocation, migration patterns, leisure practices and environmental concerns. The relationship between the factors involved in this transformation from production to consumption inevitably varied from place to place and rural geographers argued for research to identify not only the international and national patterns of change but also the more localised manifestations. They also recognised, as Marsden (1998) notes, the need for theoretical approaches to be adapted to recognise the different demands on the countryside and, in particular, the realignment of state-society relations.

Food, the environment and the pressure for amenity are creating new and uneven demands on rural space; the accommodation of much broader consumption concerns, beyond those dealing simply with production, have begun to foster new types of rural and regional development. These new demands ... owe their origins to a disparate array of forces both within and beyond state control and guidance. (Marsden, 1998: 16)

Marsden et al. (1993) suggest that to understand the 'developmental trajectories' of rural regions in developed economies we must examine four main sets of parameters. These are first, the structure of the local economy – its buoyancy and diversity; second, the demographic structure, particularly the importance of middle-class inmigration; third, politics, participation and the influence of the local state; and fourth, local cultures including attitudes to land ownership and property and ideas of community. In investigating these parameters, they suggest, it is possible to identify four broad 'types' of contemporary countryside. These they refer to as the preserved countryside, the contested countryside, the paternalist countryside and the clientist countryside.¹ This framework clearly allows the relationship between the different parameters of change to be interrogated and enables rural places to be seen as the result not of the transformation of discrete, isolated practices and policies affecting either agriculture or the community or the environment, but as the outcome of the combination of all these factors within specific locations.

1 The identification and discussion of ideal types by Marsden et al. (1993) relate specifically to British rural areas, although none of the characteristics identified is unique to this country.

This typology also demonstrates the importance of recognising the uneven nature of processes and outcomes of rural restructuring. While it stresses the interrelatedness of social and economic factors and encourages the exploration of social and cultural practices in the context of contemporary rural restructuring, it prioritises, in the detail of explanation, the economic and policy-related factors. In addition to the type of work which contributes to (and stems from) this political economic perspective on rural change, geographers have recently become influenced by the development of socio-cultural approaches within the discipline and their application to rural studies.

Phillips (1998a, 1998b) has provided a reading of the development of rural research from the perspective of social geography. He records the contribution of early rural sociologists to the understanding of the rural community and shows how geographers took up ideas on the relationship between urban and rural settlements in seeking to understand the nature and implications of population change in different localities. Phillips (1998b) notes how the development of political economy approaches in rural geography in the 1980s focused attention, for the first time, directly on social class. How class is conceptualised has subsequently been the subject of debate within contemporary rural geography – Phillips himself identifies five different approaches to a class analysis, all of which draw on Marxist political economy. Such debates have considered issues such as the changing nature of property relations in rural areas, the role of employment and capital-led social change.

The sorts of transformation taking place in the restructuring of rural areas are clearly central to the class structure of rural areas. They also support – so it has been argued (see Cloke et al., 1995) - a new understanding of class formation; one that is not 'grounded in production' (Murdoch and Marsden, 1994). The shift from production to consumption identified as central to the process of rural restructuring has directed debate towards the influence of different class fractions in controlling access to rural space. This debate has included a recognition of the importance of aspirational factors in migratory decisions and, in particular, the role of constructions of rurality in the consumption of rural spaces. Cloke et al. (1995) have suggested that changes to the class structure of rural areas emanating from the national and international division of labour and the replacement of a manufacturing-based with a service-based economy, have been overlain by

social relations based on things such as skills and qualifications, consumption decisions and political power created through corporations and state bureaucracies. These social relations are seen to lead to new sources of social power in addition to those produced from the capital-labour relation, and to the emergence of a new service class able to utilise these new sources of power. (Phillips, 1998a: 38)

Class analyses have been highly important to both the direction and output of rural geographical research. A focus on social class helped to question the early use of rurality as a causal factor in the occurrence of rural deprivation and poverty (Bradley, 1986) and served to highlight the dis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Feminist theory and rural geography
• 3. Gender, nature and the rural landscape
• 4. Gender and the rural community
• 5. Gender, employment and the rural labour market
• 6. Power, gender and rural governance
• 7. Gender, sexuality and rurality
• 8. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index