Rural Gender Studies

Neste dossiê, propomos explorar a combinação entre o tema da casa (ou da domesticidade), na esteira de uma trajetória consistente nos estudos do rural, e a questão da corporalidade (incluindo classificações da comida; comensalidade e consubstancialidade; construção da pessoa; criação de intimidade), particularmente presente nos estudos voltados aos povos indígenas e de matriz afro. Sob a ampla rubrica dos "povos tradicionais", abre-se a possibilidade de novas combinações entre temas clássicos da narrativa agrária e uma série de situações antes postas como marginais pelo paradigma do campesinato. O enfoque etnográfico-entendido aqui a um só tempo como técnica de campo e método de análise-promove recombinações, cruzamentos criativos entre as diferentes tradições disciplinares voltadas a povos intimamente ligados à terra e ao território. Assim, somando-se à seleção dos artigos elaborados para este dossiê, apresentamos duas preciosidades que-diferentes entre si no tocante aos debates teóricos aos quais se remetem-servem-nos ao intuito de homenagear recombinações etnográficas que hoje nos inspiram no caminho dessas discussões: uma entrevista exclusiva com Ellen Woortmann e um artigo escrito por Jeanne Favret-Saada e Josée Contreras em 1990. Boa parte dos artigos aqui reunidos tem origem no Simpósio Pós-Graduado (SPG) "Casa, comida e gênero: olhares etnográficos", realizado no 41º Encontro Anual da Anpocs, em outubro de 2017. Não à toa, é sobretudo através do viés de gênero que o cruzamento temático entre casa e corporalidade promove uma discussão crescente e atépoucoatépouco tempo

This chapter examines the reported school experiences of same-sex attracted and gender-diverse Australian teenagers from regional, rural and remote Australia to explore the impact of discourses  of gender and sexuality.  In particular, this chapter presents an analysis of data from the author’s national survey on gender-climate in secondary schools, the "Free2Be?" project, using theories of gender and sexuality to guide interpretation. Although much research in gender and sexuality relies on qualitative methodologies, this chapter suggests that quantitative research can reveal large scale patterns that have implications for the ways that schools are organised and for the work of teachers in supporting young people.  To begin, this chapter contextualises sexual and gender diversity in schools, the impact of discriminatory practices on student outcomes, and regional/rural Australia as a location of interest for such study.

Mid-20th-century pansy comedian and female impersonator Ray Bourbon’s biography and stage materials suggest a disdain for “wide-open spaces” and queer ambivalences about the rural and the open road as sites of threat and danger. The performer’s struggle reflected larger concerns for many queer men, especially traveling professional female impersonators. Often relying on long trips to small towns in order to find work, impersonators were vulnerable to a host of legal and socio-cultural repressions with little recourse. This essay further suggests how the increasing visibility and masculinization of gay identity and culture in the mid century related concepts of nature, freedom, and rurality, and how this, in turn, further marginalized effeminacy in “wide-open spaces.” Examining how impersonators negotiated the natural and built environments of small towns and roadsides raises new questions about historical and contemporary understandings of the “natural” and “wide-open” as necessarily libratory sites, particularly for men.  Understanding why Ray Bourbon would say “To Hell with the Range” highlights the need for nature and place to be treated as historically and culturally specific sites of gendered and sexualized power relations, countering America’s universalizing masculinist romance with the open road and the rural.

Der ländliche Raum wird zunehmend als defizitär entworfen: Überalterung, Abwanderung und Rückbau der Infrastruktur markieren diesen Defizitdiskurs. Parallel hierzu steht eine Metanarration von der Entagrarisierung und Entbäuerlichung des Landes in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Am Beispiel von Niedersachsen, dem zweitgrößten Bundesland im Norden der Bundesrepublik, beleuchten die vorliegenden Beiträge einige Aspekte der  Entwicklung im ländlichen Raum seit 1945. Unter  einer kulturanthropologischen Perspektive erweist sich der ländliche Raum als weitaus vielfältiger als die gängigen Narrationen erwarten lassen. Die Beiträge zeigen die Potentiale herkömmlicher Forschungsfelder wie etwa die Erforschung ländlicher Baukultur. Zugleich demonstrieren sie, wie der ländliche Raum für innovative Fragen kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschung etwa im Bereich der Migrationsforschung, der Human Animal Studies, der neuen Wissensforschung oder der Geschlechterforschung ein wesentliches Untersuchungsfeld darstellt.

Mit Beiträgen von Christine Aka, Regina F. Bendix, Broder-Heinrich Christiansen, Sandra Eckardt, Michaela Fenske, Dorothee Hemme, Nils Kagel, Gabri Machini-Warnecke, Sadhana Naitani, Claudia Oltmanns, Jana Pasch, Michael Schimek und Thomas Schürmann.

In the monograph (written in the Slovenian language), intergenerational relationships are discussed along the lines of demographical anthropology (Chapter 1). The academic debates have proved the longevity of this research topic; however, the relationships among generations are constantly rejuvenated in discussions on social consequences and repercussions of current demographic trends, particularly of low fertility and population ageing. In the context of the latter discussions, the reader is informed about biased academic representations of the life of old people in the past which as a rule have forged simplistic images on unquestioned supportive relationships among the generations, living in extended multigenerational farm families under ‘the same roof’, in contrast to people from urban settings.
Chapter 2 summarizes the recent discussion on the complex nature of intergenerational relationships and the established approaches of studying this issue. Confronting the observers of various epistemological and methodological backgrounds it brings to the fore a classical research dilemma of whether the relationships of solidarity, conflict or ambivalence among generations are a matter of individual experience or social structure, or else, how to ‘catch’ a social norm through the observation of individual agency. This monograph focuses on the understandings of such relationships in adult family members combining two approaches: life-course analyses are grounded in adult family members’ life career stories upgraded by the socio-psychological study on understanding their quality of life.
The ethnographic research was designed on the general findings of a previous survey on gender and generations on farms in Slovenia (Chapter 3) to obtain new knowledge about the relationships among generations and gender in the context of farming development. The recently introduced measures of Early Retirement of Farmers (2004) and Setting Up of Young Farmers (2005) in Slovenia aimed precisely at assuring farming continuity and encouraging the due transfer of farms from the older to the younger generation. The survey’s general finding was that the most vital (as to the size of farms, education of its members and their fertility) were the farms which had received both forms of aid. Yet these households show some ‘rigid’ features, too. The young successors (the beneficiaries) did not participate in wider social networks. Their social network still consisted of their closer siblings only. Division of labour among the family members was less flexible in view of their particular interests, and the younger generation was still committed to providing care for the older generation either due to the ‘preservation of tradition’ or the lack of some services in their living environment. Whether these ‘rigid features’ are a potential source for development of supportive, conflicting or ambivalent relationships among the members of farm families, either the beneficiaries or the non-beneficiaries of both forms of aid, was the point of departure of ethnographic study on practices of support in multigenerational farm families. Intertwined spheres of ‘work’ (Chapter 5) and ‘home’ (Chapter 6) on the farm were observed through the life stories of all adult family members and not from the view of only one household interviewee as designed in the previous survey.
Six multigenerational farm families (two beneficiaries of the aid of SYF and ER, and one candidate for the aid SYF, and three non-beneficiaries) were selected in Prekmurje (NE Slovenia, bordering Austria, Hungary and Croatia). This is a region with the most favourable conditions for agriculture, but only a small proportion of farms is occupied exclusively with farming. The specialty of the region is that more than half of the households are at least partially engaged in farming, indicating that the share of half-workers half-farmers prevails.
In 2009, the largest Slovenian apparel producer and a meat processing company located in the main town of the region, declared bankruptcy and some thousands of employees lost their jobs. This economic crisis was expected to trigger full-time employment on farms of those workers who lost their jobs and who had previously combined their off-farm employment with work on the farm.
The fieldwork material shows that both observed groups of family farms differ mostly by enlarged farm capacities (the size of farmland, the number of livestock and the building capacities) at the time the younger operator took over the farm, and the number of employed family members on the farms. The beneficiaries of both forms of aid have considerably increased their farm capacities, which was also proved by the previous survey. Characteristic for these farms are employed parents on the farm for most of their working career. Therefore, the higher number of employed family members on the beneficiary farms compared to the non-beneficiary farms is not a revelation. The latter have one member employed on the farm, usually the operator.
Compared to the previous survey, this study shows that the highest completed education is not ‘typical’ for the beneficiary group only. The university educated spouses are found among the young transferees as well as among the adult children from the farms without a secured successor. And on the contrary, individuals with completed elementary education are met among the young farmers as well as their parents.
This study has not proved a uniform pattern of ‘traditional commitment’ of the younger generation to take care of the older generation of family members. Domestic care ‘in old age’ as preferred option in comparison with the institutional care applies for both generations irrespective of the observed farm. Despite the expectation that young transferees and those who stay on the farm would take care of their old parents, this is a commitment of their spouses. Irrespective of the generation observed and the farm type, the care for the elderly and children remains the working domain of women who, irrespective of their age, take this task for granted.
As with the survey, this study also shows that everyday activities of family members of the beneficiary farms encompass mutual regular or occasional assistance to farms or families of their relatives, usually to their siblings who have moved from their farms of origin. However, this practice is found among the non-beneficiary households as well, whose members are embedded in ‘outside’ family networks of giving and receiving assistance; frequently with other siblings and relatives and rarely with neighbours and friends.
Considering daily tasks of each family member during their life careers, there are no pronounced differences between the two observed groups. The analysis of life stories points to common features of both groups of farm families on the one hand, and to potential sources for evolving of various ‘types’ of relationships among the generations, on the other hand. There found out to be three general ‘fields of disagreement’, a potential source for ambivalent or conflicting relationships among the members of multigenerational farm families. First, the entry to the new family environment as experienced and understood by a spouse or the family in which they have married. Second source of disagreement refers to decision-making about the way and timing of work on the farm; the younger as well as the older generation as a rule imagine the work on the farm ‘on their own’. Finally, the basis for disagreement pertains to a diverse imagining of caring for the elderly, children and family members who need the permanent assistance by those involved in these activities.
That interpersonal relationship among the family members reflects feelings of ‘emotional closeness’, mutual expectations and commitments is proved by the socio-psychological study (Chapter 7), which sought to identify the simultaneous positive and negative feelings towards the same person. Comparisons of observed groups (by age, gender, and type of farm household) show that, in general, adult children experience a more ambivalent relationship towards their fathers than to their mothers, spouses are more ambivalent towards their fathers-in-law than fathers-in-law towards them, fathers-in-law are more ambivalent towards their sons-in-law than to daughters-in-law, and daughters-in-law are more ambivalent towards their fathers-in-law than to their mothers-in-law. These findings mirror the still patriarchal organisation of farm family communities in which the male members, irrespective of their age or kin relation, are recognised as the most accountable holders. The life stories of collocutors reveal that as a rule a son takes over the farm, men perform mechanised tasks on the farm, although women are capable of doing the same, and women perform caring work while men do not. Finally, such practices reflect the community’s expectations towards men and women and their adopted responsibilities.
The embedded socio-psychological study in the anthropologically designed fieldwork has proved to be valuable only within the domain of interpretations extracted from the life stories of collocutors.

Like many other concepts it is also difficult to define the environment. In most cases environment is basically understood as the nonhuman world and sometimes it is used as a synonym for the nature. However the relationship between environment and human is becoming more important in the contemporary environment definitions. In this article, the relationship between rural woman and environment will be investigated through the gendered lens. Women-environment relations
will be examined in two ways: women who have affected the environment and are affected by the environmental conditions.
As a result, rural woman-environment relations will be reviewed by referring to the preceding studies. Firstly the concepts of environment and gender will be examined and the subject of rural woman and the environment will be revised afterwards. Finally the paper will end with the conclusion part.

The aim of this article is to reread The Polish Peasant in Europe and America as
a representation of the fears and modernisation fantasies of its era. I analyse
the patterns of gendered family relations and ideals of femininity and
masculinity constructed by Thomas and Znaniecki within the framework
of rural–urban discourses. As I will show, in The Polish Peasant we find huge
contradictions between the liberal and conservative perspectives presented.
On the one hand, the authors introduce the concept of “organisation
– disorganisation – reorganisation,” which is supposed to be scientific and
thus non-ideological. On the other hand, the authors’ patterns of interpreting
empirical data show numerous gender bias and patriarchal schemes. As
a result, the authors create an opposition in which whatever is rural is the
cradle of authenticity, of naturalised national and gendered family values,
and whatever is urban is dangerous and demoralising due to escaping the
former strong rural social control. In The Polish Peasant the authors thereby
construct the “morally healthy” model of a national and patriarchal rural
community of families untouched by individualisation and women’s emancipation.
Such a model had a patriarchal division of gender roles within
a religiously devout, strong (meaning indissoluble), multi-generational family.
In The Polish Peasant we can find both a nostalgia – which was typical
of its era – for a “pre-modern,” rural, conservative civilisation, and worry
about the moral health of women in the urban world. However, it is an
ambivalent nostalgia accompanied by a conviction of the inevitability of
social change.

"Rural drag" is the appropriation, arrangement, and deployment of rural fashion, objects, practices, and aesthetics in order to assert membership in and support for white, settler heteropatriarchy. This rhetorical practice draws from a cultural repository of rural symbols and tropes called the "rural imaginary" to establish a rhetorical link between rural space and the privileges of white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, and settler colonialism.

In liberal, capitalist societies, human worth typically is measured by one’s capacity to contribute to society productively. In other words, it is defined through what I call labor-normativity. From the ADA to feminist calls to remunerate care work, labor-normativity informs the way people and their claims to societal participation are perceived. Building on Erevelles’s theorization of active citizenship and Simplican’s insights into the political anxiety of the capacity contract, I argue for the centrality of labor-normativity in the reception of family-centered reality television that portrays poor people. Because online commentaries are still neglected sites of meaning-making in cultural studies, I provide close readings of Facebook comments and blog posts that crip labor-normativity through their reparative readings of the television show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. Juxtaposing these with a discussion of other web 2.0 critiques of the show, I outline how viewer responses offer insights into the co-constitution of racist, sexist, and disablist labor-normative demands in liberal capitalism. Ultimately, this article suggests an analytical praxis that can hold the crip potential of low theory in tension with the importance of understanding the continuing production of sanist anxiety and racialized ableism in popular culture and its subjugated sites of knowledge production.

This chapter discusses current, critical thinking around the following: whether gender is viewed as having significance as an indicator of leadership potential by individuals and organizations in rural communities; the ways in which gender shapes paths to leadership for rural people; the types of leadership posts that are open to rural men and/or women and whether (formally or informally) gender is a contributing factor in the search for leaders; the usefulness and accuracy of the terms “masculine” and “feminine” in regards to leadership styles in rural organizations; and, finally, the question of whether gender will continue to be a factor in leadership development and potential.

La participación de las mujeres rurales en los procesos de desarrollo y en las actividades productivas ha sido cuestión de debate y de un amplio análisis a nivel internacional (i.e., UN- Conferencia Internacional sobre Población y Desarrollo, El Cairo, 1994, UN-Quinta Conferencia Mundial sobre las Mujeres, Beijing 1995, UN-Declaración del Fondo para el Desarrollo de la Mujer 2002). Aún en México, se ha investigado y discutido sobre la participación de las mujeres como asalariadas en la agroindustria o el papel de las mujeres campesinas en la producción y generación de ingresos fuera de la parcela, pero en el contexto de una organización económica-campesina (Botey y Suárez 1993). Estos foros y estudios, sin duda, han contribuido a incrementar el conocimiento de las condiciones de trabajo de las mujeres en los países del Tercer mundo. Sin embargo, y en particular en México, las mujeres tanto de comunidades rurales, como de aquellas poblaciones en procesos de urbanización, aún se mantienen en considerable rezago, respecto al proceso de inserción a la producción. Mundialmente existen más de un billón de personas pobres (World Bank, 1998) y en México hasta 67 millones de pobres (Bolvinik, 2002), es decir el 54% de la población mexicana vive con uno a dos dólares al día y que el 60% de las personas que viven en extrema pobreza en nuestro país, sean mujeres.

Lokalekonomiska analyser, snedställdhet, kvinnors företagande och hållbar landsbygdsutveckling Landsbygden är mer aktuell i dag än på många år. Urbaniseringstakten ökar, suget blir större efter ekologisk närproducerad mat samtidigt som statliga jobb försvinner och konflikter uppstår om mark och vatten i kölvattnet av utvinningsindustrin. Frågan är: vilken väg bär framåt för landsbygden? Denna rapport visar på byalagens betydelse för landsbygdsutvecklingen och fokuserar på social och ekologisk hållbarhet utifrån de tjugotalet LEA-processer som varit igång i Östergötland under åren 2011–2015. Lokalekonomiska analyser (LEA) är ett konkret och billigt verktyg som kan användas som ett landsbygdsutvecklingsredskap då det synliggör tillgångar på mindre orter, skapar en mobiliserande process till nytta för både jämställdhet och hållbarhet samt är en möjlighet att ta tillvara på energin som finns idag över hela landet. Nödvändigheten av att lokalisera ekonomin är i centrum. Rapporten visar att 2 000 personer har deltagit på något sätt, över 300 sidor har rapporterats, mer än 100 konstruktiva förslag har presenterats samt att fler än 50 aktiviteter har genomförts. De ringar på vattnet som skapats är också viktiga att inkludera i ett försök till sammanfattning av de effekter som LEA skapar. I rapporten lanseras begreppen exkluderingsbyn, ögonöppnarsamhället och likavillkorbyn som tre stationer i processen mot ett jämställt samhälle.

This paper examines the importance of property rights in women’s empowerment in rural India.  Arguments justifying the need for granting property rights to women are presented and the distinction is made between legal (formal) and customary (informal) rights.  The ineffectiveness of legal right in absence of customary rights has been discussed.  Customary rights also become ineffective due to other institutional impediments.  These impediments have been discussed.  The results of extensive field work in rural West Bengal and Orissa have been presented to illustrate the pattern of development process that poor rural women want and in which the property right is only one component, not the only component.

This chapter examines how rural women’s interactions with both men and other women shaped the ways in which they incorporated gender roles and relations into their concepts of leadership.
Women’s identities as “rural” and “woman” and “leader” are shaped by interactions through which they internalise gender roles and relations. Many participants in this study of rural women leaders in Northern Ireland recounted experiences of being mentored by and/or working closely with men. Simultaneously, many of the women described having powerful female role models in their families. The chapter discusses how those connections affected participants’ concepts of gender relations, their perceptions of the presence or absence of gender bias within organizations, and their view of care for others as the hallmark of womanhood.
It will further be demonstrated that this ethic of care was reflected in one of the most telling findings of the study: namely, that the majority of participants who worked in male-dominated industries or who had attended coeducational schools resolutely asserted that those organizations did not or had not discriminated against women. It was also present in the adamancy of many participants that they did not identify as feminists because they associate the term with such “unfeminine” qualities as hating men or desiring to be free of their families. Conversely, the women who did identify as feminist and were intentionally challenging what they viewed as patriarchal or female-negative systems also claimed their identities as “rural” and “woman” as valuable resources.