Country Boys

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.

• ContentsForeword—Carolyn Sachs 1.Country Boys: Masculinity and Rural LifeHugh Campbell, Michael Mayerfeld Bell, and Margaret FinneyPart I: Practices2.Cultivating Dialogue: Sustainable Agriculture and MasculinitiesGregory Peter, Michael Mayerfeld Bell, Susan Jarnagin, and Donna Bauer3.Three Visions of Masculine Success on American FarmsPeggy F. Barlett4.Masculinities in Rural Small Business Ownership: Between Community and CapitalismSharon Bird5.Real Men, Real Locals, and Real Workers: Realizing Masculinity in Small-Town New ZealandHugh Campbell6.Rooted and Routed Masculinities Among the Rural Youth of North Cork and Upper SwaledaleCaitríona Ní Laoire and Shaun Fielding7.“White Men Are This Nation”: Right-Wing Militias and the Restoration of Rural American MasculinityMichael Kimmel and Abby L. Ferber8.Rural Men’s Health: Situating Risk in the Negotiation of MasculinityWill H. CourtenayPart II: Representations9.Cowboy LoveDavid Bell10.Embodiment and Rural MasculinityJo Little11.Beer Advertising, Rurality, and MasculinityRobin Law12.Changing Masculinity in a Changing Rural Industry: Representations in the Forestry PressBerit Brandth and Marit S. Haugen13.Warrior Heroes and Little Green Men: Soldiers, Military Training, and the Construction of Rural MasculinitiesRachel WoodwardPart III: Changes14.Country/City MenRobert W. Connell15.Gendered Places and Place-Based Gender Identities: Reflections and RefractionsLinda LobaoAbout the ContributorsA Note on the PhotographsReferencesIndex

“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