Gender and Rurality

Lia Bryant, Barbara Pini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136947278
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

The study of gender in rural spaces is still in its infancy. Thus far, there has been little exploration of the constitution of the varied and differing ways that gender is constituted in rural settings. This book will place the question of gender, rurality and difference at its center.

The authors examine theoretical constructions of gender and explore the relationship between these and rural spaces. While there have been extensive debates in the feminist literature about gender and the intersection of multiple social categories, rural feminist social scientists have yet to theorize what gender means in a rural context and how gender blurs and intersects with other social categories such as sexuality, ethnicity, class and (dis)ability. This book will use empirical examples from a range of research projects undertaken by the authors as well as illustrations from work in the Australasia region, Europe, and the United States to explore gender and rurality and their relation to sexuality, ethnicity, class and (dis)ability.

1
Introduction

Over the past two decades we have witnessed an incredible growth in scholarship on the subject of gender and rurality. Testament to this is the recent publication of a range of edited collections detailing the experiences of men and women living in rural areas of the industrialized West (Bock and Shortall 2006; Buller and Hoggart 2004; Campbell, Bell and Finney 2006; Goverde et al. 2004; Little and Morris 2005). Paralleling this expansion in knowledge has been an increasing interest in questions of inclusion, belonging, and ‘otherness’ in the field of rural social science more generally (e.g. Cloke 1997a, 2006a, b; Cloke and Little 1997). As feminist scholars, we have been delighted and energized by these developments, but we have also experienced a contradictory sense of discomfort and discontent as we reflected upon them. We experienced this early in 2008 when Australia’s newly elected Rudd Labor Government announced a ‘2020’ summit to which one thousand of the nation’s ‘best minds’ were invited to map a policy future for the country. Half of the group responsible for ‘rural Australia’ was women. Clearly, it was no longer accurate to claim, as academics had done merely a decade ago, that ‘rural women are invisible’ (e.g. Alston 1995; Sachs 1996). Again, we rejoiced in this visibility, but our commitment to inclusion meant we also queried, ‘Which rural women are visible?’ When we noted that the women selected to speak on and behalf of rural Australia were, in the main, older, white, able-bodied, married landholders, a sense of unease emerged.

This book addresses these feelings of ambivalence on a number of counts. First, while it seeks to continue the important project of furthering knowledge about rurality and gender, it equally seeks to disrupt it. We disrupt and examine gender and rurality by using data obtained predominantly from Australian farming women and men to argue that experiences of gender and rurality cannot be examined in isolation from other social locations. In this respect, we seek to interrogate categories such as ‘rural woman’ and ‘rural man,’ and explore the ways in which gender coexists and melds with Indigeneity, ethnicities, class, sexuality, disability, and age for women and men living in Australian rural locales. Inherent in this analysis is an examination of power in rural spaces, and the diversity and multiplicity of oppressions, resistance, and agency. As such, the book rejects totalizing claims about male dominance and female subordination. Instead, it seeks to understand and challenge how, at particular times and in specific spaces, inequalities are produced and contested between women and men, and, further, between groups of women and men.

The second way in which this book addresses our contrary reactions to the escalation of work on rurality and gender, and, more broadly, the ‘rural other,’ is through our adoption of a feminist approach to our subject. In particular, we engage the feminist theoretical notion of intersectionality as a means to conceptualize, and give voice to, heterogeneity in the lives of rural men and women. In recent years, feminists have debated intersectionality as a means of addressing the perennially vexed issue of the multiplicity and diversity of women, and, moreover, the historical exclusions of feminism as a political project. It has been seen as a means of moving beyond what Butler (1990) caricatured as the normative means of addressing difference; that is, via an ‘embarrassed etc.’ at the end of a sentence following the naming of ‘gender, race and class.’ Yet, despite the concept of intersectionality being viewed as ‘the most important contribution that women’s studies has made so far’ to knowledge, to date it has been notably absent in the rural social science literature (McCall 2005, 1771).

This book, by adopting an understanding of gender that has variously been described as ‘postmodern feminism,’ ‘third-wave feminism,’ and ‘post-structural feminism’ (Brooks 1997; Colebrook 2004; Zalewski 2000), speaks not just to a feminist audience but to all rural studies academics who, like us, are committed to emancipatory social research. In this framing, gender is viewed as a social process that is relational, dynamic, and historically and socio-politically specific (Witz, Halford, and Savage 1996). This conceptualization of gender is far removed from that which characterizes it as a stable, fixed, and binary entity associated with the biological bodies of ‘men’ and ‘women.’ As Alsop, Fitzsimmons, and Lennon (2002, 79) note, this shift from seeing gender as ‘a process rather than a “role” is intricately connected with ‘the shift from things to words,’ and, more specifically, the notion of ‘discourse.’ Scott (1988, 35) defines discourse as an ‘historically, socially and institutionally specific structure of statements, terms, categories and beliefs.’ There is a range of discourses by which we constitute ourselves as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine,’ but these do not all have equivalent status (Davies and Harre 1990; Weedon 1987). The notion of discourse is intricately connected to power. As St Pierre (2000, 485) explains, ‘once a discourse becomes “normal” and “natural” it is difficult to think and act outside it. Within the rules of a discourse, it makes sense to say only certain things.’ Ramazano

lu (1993) argues that this does not mean that subjects are determined by discourse or without agency. Instead, she asserts that resistance is implicit in the Foucauldian notion of power.

To contextualize the chapters which follow it is important at this juncture to highlight that rural scholarship and explorations of meanings of rurality have largely emerged from Britain and the United States with the Australian context and its conceptualizations of places receiving less attention in theorizations of the rural. There are unique characteristics about Australian rural places that make for different spatial and social relations. Firstly, Australian rural places are characterized by more recent white settlement which occurred through European colonization and the declaring of Australia as ‘terra nullius’. From 1992 Australian courts recognized native title, that is, Indigenous connection to the land via traditional law and title. However, obtaining native title remains difficult and is often contested. The introduction of native title has been an established legal principle in other countries colonised by Britain (Canada, New Zealand, and the eastern US). Nevertheless, Australia, unlike these other countries continues to have no treaty or formal agreement made with traditional owners. This political context excludes Indigenous peoples from their inalienable citizenship rights (see Chapter 2).

Thus, Australian rural places are predominantly constructed as white spaces shaped by white European forms of governance and economic activity like mining and agriculture (Altman 2006). Further, while Australia is one of the most urbanized countries in the world on a par with Japan, the US, and Canada, settlement patterns differ according to states and territories. For example, in Western Australia the greater proportion of the population resides in the capital city of Perth whereas in Queensland the population is more evenly spread throughout rural and urban places. Although rural settlement patterns are heterogeneous (with coastal regions growing and inland communities declining) commonly rural communities are characterized by small populations across vast distances (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] 2007).

Nationally rural economies overwhelmingly rely on sheep and beef production and/or the extraction of mineral wealth (ABS 2007). In rural Australia service sectors, employment opportunities and social relations are shaped by the economic foundations of the community (see Chapter 4). In this book we give particular emphasis to farming communities, however, as we discuss in Chapter 4 with reference to the work of Gibson-Graham (1996), in mining communities and mixed farming/mining communities there are different class and political relations.

In this book we aim to enrich the international literature on rurality by introducing a range of Australian places to explore how the intersections of gender with Indigeneity, ethnicities, class, sexuality, and disabilities reflect the specificities of context.

Thus, we begin the book by asking the question, ‘What is rurality?’ and by enumerating the different ways in which the rural has been theorized. Given our sympathy towards social constructionist approaches, we afford specific attention to explaining how this conceptual lens has been used to deconstruct the concept of the ‘rural idyll,’ and particularly the potential of socio-cultural representations of rurality to create divisions and boundaries. We explain that, in undertaking this work, rural social scientists have largely drawn on the notion of ‘the other’ with very little critique, and further, with little or no reference to the substantial body of feminist work on difference. In light of this neglect, we introduce the term ‘intersectionality,’ and elaborate on its strengths and weaknesses. This review foregrounds a discussion of the book’s methodology and our struggles with what Fine (1994, 72) refers to as ‘working the hyphens’; that is, nominating and representing differences sensitively and reflexively. Before concluding the chapter, we provide a brief outline of the book and the ways in which each chapter seeks to contribute to more polyvocal knowledge about gender and rurality.

WHAT IS RURALITY?

Increasingly, the literature on ‘what is rural’ has become complex and multilayered, raising questions about whether the rural really exists, for whom and how? Is it simply a representation contrived in popular dualisms; that is, rural in opposition to urban? Is it the idyllic versus the backwater? Or is the rural an anachronism for national identities built on representations of the specificities of rurality to place? Paul Cloke (2006c) identifies three significant theoretical lenses through which rurality has been conceptualized: functional; political economy; and social constructionism.¹ We explore these in the subsequent text.

The functional emphasizes land use and small settlements where there is a strong relation between buildings and landscape, and cohesive identities constructed on ‘living as part of an extensive landscape’ (Cloke 2006c, 20). These functional understandings draw on Tönnies’ (1963) classic theorization of rurality that invokes a rural/urban divide, differentiating between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society). Such understandings assume that a rural community is an agricultural community, and that the identities of people that live within rural places are homogenous—specifically white, middle-class males (Philo 1992). Functional understandings of rurality are often represented in state policies and official data collection, which construct the rural on the basis of population size, distance from urban centers, and/or economic activity (agriculture).

The political economy approach emphasizes the differential relationships of places within nations and globally. Political economists with an interest in the rural have focused on the structuring of agricultural production, its relation to consumption, and its impact on rural social relations (Cloke and Goodwin 1992, 1993; Friedmann and McMichael 1989; Goodman and Redclift 1991; McMichael 1995, 1996). Using Actor Network Theories (ANT), rural studies scholars have traced the human and natural networks involved in production, marketing, sales, and consumption of food (van der Ploeg and Frouws 1999; Whatmore and Thorne 1997). McManus’ (2001) study of sausages and networks shows the multiple stages and actors involved in the creation of a sausage: from the calf bought for the feedlot, to what it is fed, and for how long; for which market it is determined; how it is slaughtered; and which parts are bought by which companies, then sold and reproduced into food, and finally sold again to stores for consumer purchase. He traces the ecological impacts, global markets, and consumption patterns. These globalized dimensions and directions of economic and social change in political economy and ANT perspectives have led to questions about the appropriateness of over-focusing on the local, with scholars questioning the concept of ‘rural.’ As Cloke (2006c, 20) says, the ‘localities debate … destabilised the spatial basis for rural studies’ (see also Halfacree 2006).

Social constructionism, the third purview of rurality identified by Cloke (2006c), focuses on negotiated, contested, and lived meanings of rurality, particularly idyllized meanings and the interconnections between constructions of rurality and nature. Bounded terms like ‘rurality’ and ‘community’ carry inherent meanings associated with identities of place on which the social constructionist lens focuses. Geographer Doreen Massey (1987, 1994) has strongly informed social constructionist perspectives on rurality, arguing that spaces are subject to global dynamics without losing the particularity of place. Thus, the social constructionist approach provides spatial analysis that distinguishes and emphasizes the fluidity and hybridity of space and place, and their relation to time (Massey 1994). She argues that any attempt to name place, ‘to establish boundaries, to secure the identity of places, can in this sense therefore be seen to be attempts to stabilize the meaning of particular envelopes of space-time’ (Massey 1994, 5). She goes on to label them as:

… attempts to get to grips with the unutterable mobility and contingency of space-time … For such attempts at the stabilization of meaning are constantly the site of social contest, battles over the power to label space-time, to impose meaning to be attributed to space, for however long or short a span of time. (Massey 1994, 5)

Thus, Massey (1994, 2) shows us that space must always be thought of in time, not as an absolute dimension; that the spatial is ‘social relations stretched out’. This broader understanding of space and the broader social constructionist perspective on rurality can be illustrated through an examination of the notion of the ‘rural idyll,’ as this is a concept that attributes meaning to place and which has a long history in rural studies.

RURALITY AS SOCIALLY-CONSTRUCTED: THE RURAL IDYLL

While the rural idyll is a dynamic concept, four key themes can be identified from literature on the subject of socio-cultural constructions of rurality. First, writers argue that there are some common values and notions associated with social meanings of rurality. These include the centrality of nature, community cohesion, safety and physical gains associated with ‘outdoor’ lifestyles, harmony, permanence, security, inner strength, as well as family values, community cohesion, and an emblematic nationhood (Rye 2006; Short 2006). These qualities and values associated with the rural suggest the countryside is a place ‘untouched’ by the harsh influences of urban life (Halfacree 1993). In sharp contrast, the rural has also been socially constructed as pre-modern—as a ‘backwater,’ ‘dull,’ and ‘traditional’ (Cruickshank 2009; Jentsch and Shucksmith 2004). These dominant meanings, values and emotions associated with rurality are conveyed via a myriad of media from fiction, poetry, art, and music to advertisements, children’s stories, military texts, and films (Bell 1997, 2000; Campbell and Kraack 1998; Horton 2008a, b; Short 2006; Woodward 1998; 2000).

A second key dimension of the rural idyll is that it is shifting, changing, and context-specific. While key characteristics such as beauty and purity continue to be associated with the notion of rurality, they are not fixed or static (Bell 2006). For example, more contemporary notions of the rural include discourses and practices of preservation of the countryside for consumption, recreation, healthy lifestyles, and adventure, primarily by middle-class residents (Bocock 1993; Duruz 1999; Lash and Urry 1994; Miele 2006; Tonts 2005). The partial nature of the rural idyll is also discussed by Berg and Forsberg (2003), who note that work on the phenomena of the rural idyll is largely British, and that material, social, and cultural conditions in a different national context will mediate how the rural is understood and characterized. For example, historically the Australian landscape in popular discourse has been described as the antithesis of the British. It is dry, red, brown; a landscape of bold skies, vast spaces, and sparsely populated towns. Australia’s rural idyll emerged in the 1880s, constructed by Australian-born white settlers, and in particular a generation of city-based writers and artists like Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson, Steele Rudd, and Tom Roberts, who found the ‘real Australia’ in the bush (Hirst 1978). However, as Gorman-Murray, Waitt, and Gibson (2008) posit, cultural representations of rurality in Australia have changed since this time and will be different at specific state, regional, and local scales.

A third theme is that the rural idlyll is critical to defining who is included in, and who is excluded from, rural spaces. As Short (2006, 133) argues, the rural idyll ‘acquires meaning only through the consciousness of, and contradistinction between an assumed “other” which is un-idyllic.’ Those who fit within hegemonic (re)constructions of rurality are the authentic protagonists in rural life; those who do not are marginal, for they are seen as lacking and illegitimate. In an Australian context, this is demonstrated by Pini et al. (2010), who show how engagement in farming becomes a marker of inclusion or exclusion in rural communities. Pini et al. (2010) examined correlations between farming and rurality by exploring the ways in which school teachers perceive students from ‘farming’ and ‘non-farming’ backgrounds. Young people whose families were involved in agriculture are named and described as ‘country’ kids, while this was not the case for young people from mining families. The authors demonstrate that in distinguishing between students in this way, teachers draw upon a range of emotional descriptors. For example, farming, and therefore ‘country kids,’ are industrious, hold traditional values, are well-mannered and unassuming, while ‘mining kids’ are positioned negatively as apathetic and overly concerned with material goods and consumption. Thus, in this respect, students from farming backgrounds are constructed as emblematic of notions of the idealized Australian countryside, while students from mining backgrounds are seen as contrary to such constructions. In this book, we further explore how rurality is conflated with farming in an Australian context, and the construction of the rural subject as principally a white male farmer who farms traditional agricultural commodities (e.g. sheep, beef, and crops; see Chapter 4).

In a study undertaken by Cloke, Millbourne, and Widdowfield (2002, 66) on rural homelessness in the United Kingdom, those who are outside dominant formulations of what/who constitutes rurality are rendered invisible. In summing up the many denials of the existence...