Country Boys: Masculinity and Rural Life

by Hugh Campbell (Editor), Michael Mayerfeld Bell (Editor), Margaret Finney (Editor)

Overview

Rural masculinity is hardly a typical topic for a book. There is something unexpected, faintly disturbing, even humorous about investigating that which has long been seen and yet so often overlooked. But the ways in which we think about and socially organize masculinity are of great significance in the lives of both men and women. In Country Boys we also see that masculinity is no less significant in rural life than in urban life.

The essays in this volume offer much-needed insight into the myths and stereotypes as well as the reality of the lives of rural men. Interdisciplinary in scope, the contributions investigate what it means to be a farming man, a logging man, or a boy growing up in a country town and how this impacts both men and women in city and country. Chapters cover not only the United States but also Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, giving the book an unusually broad scope.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780271028750
Publisher:	Penn State University Press
Publication date:	07/15/2006
Series:	Rural Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Hugh Campbell is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Agriculture, Food, and Environment at the University of Otago, New Zealand.Michael Mayerfeld Bell is Associate Professor of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His most recent book is Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability (Penn State, 2004).Margaret Finney recently completed her Ph.D. thesis on gender and literature and is currently working at the Centre for the Study of Agriculture, Food, and Environment at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword—Carolyn Sachs

1. Country Boys: Masculinity and Rural Life

Hugh Campbell, Michael Mayerfeld Bell, and Margaret Finney

Part I: Practices

2. Cultivating Dialogue: Sustainable Agriculture and Masculinities

Gregory Peter, Michael Mayerfeld Bell, Susan Jarnagin, and Donna Bauer

3. Three Visions of Masculine Success on American Farms

Peggy F. Barlett

4. Masculinities in Rural Small Business Ownership: Between Community and Capitalism

Sharon Bird

5. Real Men, Real Locals, and Real Workers: Realizing Masculinity in Small-Town New Zealand

Hugh Campbell

6. Rooted and Routed Masculinities Among the Rural Youth of North Cork and Upper Swaledale

Caitríona Ní Laoire and Shaun Fielding

7. “White Men Are This Nation”: Right-Wing Militias and the Restoration of Rural American Masculinity

Michael Kimmel and Abby L. Ferber

8. Rural Men’s Health: Situating Risk in the Negotiation of Masculinity

Will H. Courtenay

Part II: Representations

9. Cowboy Love

David Bell

10. Embodiment and Rural Masculinity

Jo Little

11. Beer Advertising, Rurality, and Masculinity

Robin Law

12. Changing Masculinity in a Changing Rural Industry: Representations in the Forestry Press

Berit Brandth and Marit S. Haugen

13. Warrior Heroes and Little Green Men: Soldiers, Military Training, and the Construction of Rural Masculinities

Rachel Woodward

Part III: Changes

14. Country/City Men

Robert W. Connell

15. Gendered Places and Place-Based Gender Identities: Reflections and Refractions

Linda Lobao

About the Contributors

A Note on the Photographs

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

Country Boys demonstrates how images and realities of the lives of rural men—from cowboys, farmers, and lumberjacks to militiamen, agrarian patriarchs, and the lads down at the local pub—play central roles in the social construction of masculinities of all sorts, as well as in the gendered construction of rural life. Avoiding both idealization and denigration of rural masculinities, these essays indicate and excavate, literally and figuratively, underexplored locations to yield important and enlightening sociological insights. The essays in this volume make a very significant contribution to our understandings of the economies, sexualities, politics, and health of rural life on a global scale.”

—Harry Brod, University of Northern Iowa

“This edited volume represents a solid contribution to two areas of study in sociology. . . . The editors present a cogent introduction to the field, and the last two chapters are thought-provoking explorations of the changes surrounding rural masculinities.”

—A.A. Hickey Choice

“The collection is refreshingly progressive and, at times, unapologetically optimistic, being run through with the leitmotiv of the very real possibility of change.”

—Thomas Thurnell-Read The Sociological Review

From the Publisher