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Traditional masculinities: Obstacles in the turn towards sustainable farming practices.

Ian Coldwell

The Centre for Rural Social Research, Charles Sturt University www.csu.edu.au/research Email icoldwell@csu.edu.au

Abstract

Application of the concept of identity promises to advance sociological studies of agriculture by illuminating the intersection between masculinity and farming. Industrial scientific agriculture has produced a dominant discourse of masculinity that farmers have drawn upon in constructing their identities and working their farms. There are now considerable social, economic and environmental consequences arising from farm practices related to gender identity construction. Knowledge about the relationship between masculinities and farming is a missing link in our understanding of farming practice and why more farmers have not turned away from conventional masculinity and industrial agriculture. This paper sets out a theoretical and conceptual framework for further research on this topic in an Australian setting.

Three key learnings: (1) community participation in public consultation needs to reflect the diversity of stakeholders; (2) the consultation needs to take in to account social, economic, and environmental concerns, and; (3) forums that are inclusive and participatory are more likely to foster action driven by the community.

Keywords

identity; gender; monologic masculinity; dialogic masculinity; social conditions; reflexivity.

Introduction

Robertson and Watts (1999: ix) have pointed out that if Australia is to achieve sustainable management of land, water and biota then it will take more than just scientific knowledge. Scientists and broader community now realise that a partnership is needed between land and water users, scientists, managers and the community if the goal of preserving rural resources is to be achieved. “Such partnerships are not easy to achieve because of the differing perspectives brought to the issue of rural landscape management and the past lack of dialogue between rural communities and researchers”.

The following year a group of American researchers (Peter, Bell, Jarnagin and Bauer, 2000) published a paper on the results of a study of Iowa farmers: the relationship between farmer’s gender identities and their ways of farming. Once again the theme of dialogue emerged in the rural sociological literature, this time arguing a line that henceforth seems to have been all but ignored: that traditional masculine identity constructions and performance are hindering the turn toward more sustainable farming practices. Further, the success of sustainable agriculture depends, in part, on social conditions in which men can discover and perform different masculinities.

This paper sets out a current research project by the author. The aim of this project is to examine the relationship between masculine identities and farming practices in Australia. The study will compare the identity constructions and performances of masculinity among farmers who practice conventional industrial farming with those who have adopted more alternative sustainable farming methods. In drawing on a study by Peter et al. (2000), initial assumptions of this study are that farmers who practice conventional industrial agriculture are more likely to be conservative in the construction and performance of their masculine identities. On the other hand those farmers who practice alternative sustainable farming methods are likely to be more open and less rigid in the construction and performance of their masculine identities.

Studying gender and farming

Many studies have been undertaken on the topic of gender and farming (Fink, 1992; Whatmore, 1991; Shortall, 1992; Silvasti, 1999) and in Australia most notably by Alston (1995). Most of this research has focused on women in agriculture with an emphasis upon the status of women within family farming, the gender division of labour and the processes through which women are repositioned in everyday practices. Sociological theory and research on other occupations emphasises the significance of identity to gender. Where the concept of identity has been applied to farming, research tends to focus mainly upon women. There are only a few examples where men and masculinity are included in the analysis (Peter, Bell, Jarnagin and Bauer, 2000; Saugeres, 2002 a, b, c; Ni Laoire, 2002, 2004; Coldwell, 2004; Bell, 2004).

The turn toward questions of identity of rural and farm women was influenced by shifts in feminist and cultural research (Alston, 1995; Liepins, 1998; Haugen, 1998; Silvasti, 1999; Brandth, 2001; Little, 2002). This research has provided impetus to very recent research on the question of masculinities in farming (Peter et al. 2000; Saugeres, 2002a, 2002b; Ni Laoire, 2002, 2004; Coldwell 2004; Bell 2004) which reveals that whilst there are more open and flexible masculine identities emerging among some farmers, there remains a solid persistence of traditional masculinity associated with male dominance and inheritance, the sexual division of labour, outdoorsy rugged individualism, self-reliance and the use and control of land for profit.

Constructing gender

Connell (1995, 2000) has argued amid extensive evidence that there is not just one masculinity but masculinities that are socially constructed, produced and reproduced within multiple social contexts and structures. Moreover, masculinities are organised hierarchically where the most influential and powerful masculinities bestow power, privilege and status upon some men (and women) but in most instances men either comply with or are subordinated to or marginalised by the hegemonic masculinity in a group or a social order. Bourdieu (1990:4) argues that through socialisation into a culture people acquire a system of dispositions (habitus) which are then reproduced through everyday discourse and practice. This system of dispositions is gendered and so both men and women reproduce patriarchal ideologies which subordinate the position of women. Therefore gender differences are not just the product of material inequalities; they are institutionalised into the “objectivity of social structures and the subjectivity of mental structures”.

A major influence in maintaining the subjective positioning of those who own and work the farms can be found in the system of industrial agriculture which has provided the dominant discourse drawn upon by farmers in the construction of their identities and the ways in which they farm. Consensus is evident among rural sociologists and agricultural scientists that industrial agriculture has produced damaging and unsustainable social, economic and environmental consequences. Bell (2004) and Coldwell (2004) suggest that industrial agriculture imposes and perpetuates a monologic or closed social condition in farming, where individuals may choose to rely upon narrow sources of knowledge and experience to the exclusion of broader knowledge and the opinions of other people constructed in less constrained discourses of dialogue.

A theoretical framework and analytical tools

This monologic/dialogic dichotomy is to be found in the work of Russian social theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1986). Bakhtin contends that whilst there is no pure monologic or dialogic social condition (these are ideal types) or individual behaviours, there are tendencies to favour one more than the other. In monologic form our behaviour tends to disregard others and their opinions, desires, and even their presence in any more than a superficial way. In dialogic social conditions on the other hand, we try to take each other into account. In our language and categories we are not rigid and fixed but reflect an outlook of our place in the social world as an “interactive part of the constantly changing whole” (Peter et al. 2000:218). These concepts are useful tools in further exploring the relationship between masculinities and farming practices.

A distinctive feature of this Bakhtinian approach to understanding masculinity is that it is “explicitly normative” (Peter et al. 2000: 218; Campbell and Bell, 2000: 536). This feature is simply expressed thus: monologic masculinity is bad – dialogic masculinity is good. Through these lenses this “dialogic” approach to the study of farming masculinities seeks to understand the social conditions which might encourage greater development of dialogic masculinity and sustainable farming practices.

Peter et al. (2000) extended Bakhtin's work as a heuristic device in attempting to understand the cultures of masculinities in agriculture. Social life has its monologic and its dialogic side; so does masculinity. Whilst not claiming that the distinction between monologic and dialogic masculinity describes all features of masculinities, the results of fieldwork in this study suggest that this distinction describes much of the difference in the masculine ideologies of more industrially inclined and more sustainability inclined farmers in Iowa. According to the writers monologic masculinity is a conventional masculinity with rigid expectations and strictly negotiated performances that provide a clear distinction between men's and women's work. Monologic masculinity also limits the range of topics considered appropriate to discuss, endorses a specific definition of work and success, and sets precise boundaries of manhood.

A different scenario, however, has become more prevalent among male members of the sustainable agriculture movement the Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), who demonstrate a broader understanding of what it is to be a man. In their study, Peter et al. (2000) have observed that these farmers are “more open to talking about making mistakes, to expressing emotions, to change and criticism, to a less controlling attitude toward machines and the environment, and to different measures of work and success”. In Iowa, the sustainable agriculture movement is seen to be strongly dialogic not only in the social conditions it promotes but also in the social lives of those attracted to it. The sustainable agriculture movement takes on a less individualistic, less categorical, less homogeneous approach to farming, and is more interactive and holistic in outlook by being more open to change and placing emphasis upon ways of farming that attend to, and take into account, the needs of others in society and of the physical environment. Therefore the sustainable agriculture movement provides farm men with an arena for discovering and performing a more dialogic masculinity.

A risk to self and reasons not to change

Bell (2004:17) in Farming for Us All represents sustainable agriculture as a new cultivation of social practice where the relations of knowledge recognise difference in the ways we experience others and our selves. Recognition of these differences can be used as an enriching source of “learning, vitality and change” rather than a “threat to self and knowledge” as some farmers might see it. In recognising difference, and applying it in such a way, we act dialogically and cultivate dialogue. However as Bell (2004) points out – and this at least in part explains why more farmers have not turned to sustainable farming – in an uncertain world monologue can be in a sense a refuge in the mind against the loss of a sense of self. It is difficult to maintain a sense of who we are if all around us is uncertain, as it surely is in farming today. In this context industrial agriculture “offers to listeners the monologic comfort of its universal claim to truth, secured on high in the laboratory and in the market” (Bell, 2004: 17). This monologic tendency can be solidified if farmers become so focused upon the voice of industrial agriculture as to lose confidence in the conversation and experiences of others or even to the extent that they retreat totally into their own “pure local knowledge” (Bell, 2004: 17) at the expense of acquiring new knowledge or even considering the views of family and friends. This route leads to a position where there is nothing to say therefore nothing to learn and no way forward. Could this be the end result of an over constraining process of the structures of agriculture upon the actions of farmers?

Reflexivity, enablement and constraint

Modern industrial farming can be located within a theoretical perspective as a social enterprise that has shifted from local contexts of interaction to the global stage. This shift is explained by Beck, in his Risk Society (1992) and Giddens in The Consequences of Modernity (1990) who have argued that as industrial societies continue to develop, a number of consequences arise. For instance technological expertise now has to be used as a tool in moderating the effects upon the environment of earlier applications of science and technology. But more importantly there has been an increasing development of a process of individualisation, or detraditionalisation whereby individuals are liberated from traditional ties of family, locality and social class. This process of liberation is accompanied by a loss of stability. The traditional securities of practical knowledge, faith and guiding norms are broken down in the process of liberation. The second dimension following liberation is reintegration into new forms of social commitment, what Beck has termed the ‘control’ dimension.

Beck (1992) uses the concept of “individualization” to understand the construction of biography. Individualisation like detraditionalisation, the term Giddens uses, is a process producing structurally necessitated self-reflexivity as tradition is increasingly challenged by new knowledge. However Beck warns that individualisation does not imply or provide a new found freedom by emancipating the personal uniqueness of the individual. Neither does it mean that we have to be isolated or disconnected from society. For Beck, individualisation occurs simultaneously with ‘standardisation’, a process whereby biographies become standardised and more uniform across national and international contexts. While individualisation is about self-reflexivity in determining how we live, it is also about institutional control and standardisation of biographies.

The theory of reflexivity therefore is posed as one of both enablement and constraint depending on people’s location in a given social order. Detraditionalisation or individualisation can be seen on the one hand as one of enablement as Giddens suggests, where modern life allows a greater degree of self reflection and choice in ways of living that if taken to its ultimate conclusion promises some kind of post modern utopia. On the other hand, according to Beck’s interpretation, individualisation theory can be seen as one of constraint where the structures of control, which change in modernisation and force self-reflection, at the same time inhibit self-reflection or at least the ability to act as a consequence of it. It is the notion of reflexivity as self-determining or self-monitoring embedded in institutional discourse that holds power in that reflexivity itself is part of the discourse. If self-determining reflexivity is embedded in the institutional discourse of farming then it is likely to be embedded also in the agents of that institutional discourse such as extension and technology which serve to perpetuate it. If these agents of discourse can be accessed or reconstructed by alternative discourses then what emerges is a window of potential structural change to the hegemonic institutional discourse of industrial agriculture and therefore the potential for enhanced self-reflexivity and changes in gender constructions and relations at the farm along with farming practices.

Therefore, given the structural context to identity constructions in farming, we might ask the question: how reflexive are farming identities when local and global structural conditions in farming suggest that farmers should adopt managerial and entrepreneurial identity constructions in the pursuit of ever increasing production and efficiency. Bryant (1999) refers to subsumption theory when she asks a similar question. Subsumption theory assumes that farms and farmers are structurally constrained in their actions through their dependence on large agri-business conglomerates in buying their commodities and also in supplying the inputs necessary to produce them. In this way agri-business largely determines the farmers ever constricted terms of trade. Gray (1996: 96) has also considered this question in the context of the relationship between reflexivity and the detraditionalisation of farming and suggests that “subsumption could be seen to hang on reflexivity” where each denies the other.

In following Whatmore et al. (1987) Bryant (1999) distinguishes between indirect subsumption, which results in an increasing dependence of family farmers on external capital, and direct subsumption, where the farm is directly controlled by corporate capital. These distinctions are important because they allow a closer examination of the role of reflexivity in the construction of identity and/or the possibility of changes to those identity constructions. In the case of direct subsumption, Bryant argues, the implication is that reflexivity in the business of farming is denied. However in the case of indirect subsumption, that which applies to the majority of Australian farms given that most are still family owned and operated, Bryant found evidence in her study that self reflexivity and multiple understandings of self and ways of farming existed. Bryant (1999: 255) also found, within the context of indirect subsumption, that structural reflexivity, where farmers reflect on their social conditions to “critique and at times change structure” also existed.

Farmers are aware and many want to change

There is plenty of evidence from research to show that Australian farmers are environmentally aware and have a stewardship ethic (Vanclay and Lawrence, 1995). However farmers, notwithstanding the success of environmental social movements such as the national Landcare program for example, have not turned in greater numbers to sustainable agriculture (see the so called ‘Barriers to Adoption’ literature in Lockie and Vanclay, 1997). It has been found that in many instances when farmers have adopted more sustainable farming practices they have usually done so for reasons of commercial advantages rather than environmental benefit (Vanclay and Lawrence, 2004). Whilst this might be due to a deliberate choice by some farmers, it also likely to reflect the pressing need for those on the farms to succeed and to survive as farmers and as men in social and economic conditions that are structured around a hegemonic agricultural discourse that asks for ever greater production and efficiency whilst at the same time it delivers back a continual compression in terms of trade. We can understand how this discourse maintains its position and authority by acknowledging a recognition in the literature that when environmental social movements like Landcare are established, they tend to become agents of the dominant social order in that they are active in the ordering of farming practices in ways that are consistent with corporate interests while minimising opposition from conservation organisations otherwise highly critical of industrial agriculture (Lockie, 2004). This draws attention to ways in which even the most altruistic intentions of movements such as Landcare obscures the power relations of agriculture. Here the relations of knowledge which inform the discourses of agriculture which farmers draw upon in the construction of their identities and the ways in which they farm, are heavily in favour of industrial agriculture at both the structural and agency levels. A better understanding of these obscured power relations would no doubt shed light on why the turn to more sustainable farming has stalled.

To suggest that farmers are helpless and actively perpetuating what they know to be wrong simply for economic advantage would be a denial of their level of awareness of not only the current social, economic and environmental conditions in which they work but also the need for change. For example in a study of young dairy farmers in Victoria (Coldwell, 2004) found a common view among those who participated of wanting to achieve a more balanced way of farming in terms of lifestyle as well as economic and environmental concerns. The young farmers saw the need for change in terms of achieving a greater level of sustainability of the kind that contests the discourse of industrial agriculture and its rhetoric of ever increasing production and efficiency. The young farmers are very aware that the structural conditions of farming impose constraints upon their desire to seek and instigate change. They see change, at least in the short term, as a risky business economically and yet they worry that if changes are not instigated their longer term future in farming is not assured. Nevertheless striving to get their farming lives into better balance is a recognised goal. One way to achieve a greater level of sustainability, according to a constant narrative in this study, is to be switched on to things, to talk things over, to share concerns, to help one another and to take greater care of the environment. What emerges from this is evidence that whilst the uncertainties in farming and the lack of structural support networks encourage monologic masculinities and therefore a continuation of conventional farming methods, as Peter et al. (2000) found, and as has been found here, it is also possible that dialogic masculinities might emerge from the same social conditions. However if dialogic masculinities among farmers are to emerge then other social conditions not yet apparent also become necessary if the seeds of dialogue among farmers are to be nurtured and encouraged to develop. Those social conditions involve the development and emergence of new support structures that farmers with a more dialogic conception of their masculinities can support and be supported by just as the practical farmers of Iowa have achieved in the study by Peter et al. (2000: 211). In Iowa the farmers of “dialogic agricultural masculinity” are working in league with its organisational structures to create a new social and political voice.

It is the nature of farming to be a notoriously uncertain source of livelihood and thus of social identity. However neo-liberal policies of economic rationalism and their never ending focus on efficiency through standardisation and centralisation permeate every acre of the farming landscape and have little empathy for the welfare of the farmer. The standardisation that industrial agriculture produces does not only refer to the mono-cultural production of crops and livestock and the manufactured and marketed products that result from it. Standardisation also refers to “mono-cultures of the mind” (Shiva, 2002) or to identity as Beck (1992) has pointed out. Studies show that farm men often find that their financial worth and their sense of self worth hang in precarious balance (Bell, 2004; Ni Laoire, 2004). To fail as a farmer is seen to fail the expectations of other family and community members. Ultimately it means to fail as a man and to lose one’s identity. Consequently, farming masculinities entail a constant struggle to perform in order to survive regardless of whether men conceive masculinity in more monological or more dialogical terms. There is a suggestion that many are ready to change if the social conditions are right. The results of a national study of Australian farmers by Reeve and Black (1993: 132) reveal that:

“If organic or low-input farming systems were available with the same management complexity, risk profile, profitability, marketing arrangements, information availability, and local back-up as for chemical based-systems, it is likely that 20 to 30 per cent of Australia’s farmers would make the transition to organic or low-input systems. This … highlights the importance of continuing research both on the biophysical aspects of agricultural sustainability and on the social and economic structures which would facilitate the adoption of organic or low-input practices”.

However, for farmers to change away from industrial methods of farming to more sustainable approaches is not just a matter of changing farming practices. Such changes also require that farmers adopt new identities or new constructions of the self that often sit outside traditional masculinities and traditional ways of farming. I would argue that gender identity and its relationship to farming practice is one set of social structures that have all but been ignored in the question of the turn to sustainable farming. Bell (2004) and Peter et al. (2000) propose that a more dialogic agriculture will open up identity formation, fostering a more socially, environmentally and economically sustainable agriculture. Bell (2004:14) argues that the reasons why most farmers don’t change to sustainable agriculture lie in matters of knowledge and its relationship to identity, including gender identity. However, Bell and Peter et al. do not explain the mechanism behind the relationship between gender identity and farming practice and related processes of change. Nor has this relationship been confirmed in Australia where the culture of farming differs significantly from those of Europe and North America.

Objectives of the Research

I propose to undertake further research by way of a comparative study of conventional farmers and farmers who have adopted alternative methods in Australia to explore the relationship between gender identity and the ways in which they farm. The study will be guided by the concepts of monologic and dialogic social conditions and also conventional and alternative farming practices across a continuum in order to identify indicators that will help to define these concepts more clearly and to answer several questions:

  • Do more dialogic masculinities accompany the turn toward more alternative sustainable farming practices?
  • Is the practice of alternative sustainable farming and gender identity possible under the constraints of industrial agriculture upon existing farming practices and identity constructions?
  • What social conditions enable or restrain such possibility?

Methodology

The research design employs both quantitative and qualitative methods in seeking information from farmers that assists in further understanding the relationship between farming practice and the construction and enactment of masculine identity.

A quantitative questionnaire method following the model of Gray, Lawrence and Dunn (1993) will be used for collecting and quantifying demographic information such as age of participants, marital status, income levels, education levels etc. as well as indications in geographic terms of land use and indications of farm practices such as fertiliser and pesticide use or non use.

Because the study seeks to conceptually clarify the relationship between masculine identities and farming practices in an Australian cultural context, a flexible qualitative design based on the principles of grounded theory will be used. This will allow for the building up of rich pictures around the topic of the research because the approach takes account of several key elements of qualitative methodology. Firstly the researcher approaches reality in an unprejudiced way and attempts to form and shape it accordingly. Secondly the research is grounded in data and is therefore very close to the everyday behaviours and interactions of the subjects. Developing grounded theory requires an open and flexible approach which focuses on developing, comparing and testing concepts and key categories. Thirdly, the development of concepts is a process and not a structure that is constantly changing until saturation is achieved through induction, deduction and verification (Sarantakos, 1998).

It is recognised that initially some farmers might be threatened by the topic of the study. Therefore in order to maximise the likelihood of active engagement and to minimise misunderstandings about the purpose of the study participants will be fully informed as to the nature of the research both verbally and by information sheet prior to being asked to sign a consent form both of which have gained prior approval (together with the research proposal) from the Ethics in Human Research Committee of Charles Sturt University.

Data collection and analysis

The literature review will lead to the development of generative questions for focus group discussions and consequently the development of a questionnaire for semi-structured interviewing on topics related to farm practices and gender identity. Both of these data collection methods will be tape recorded and later transcribed. On farm observation and recording through the use of audio/video recording and the keeping of field notes will be a third method used. This method of triangulation has the potential to enrich the research data and provide a higher degree of validity to the study by being able to compare and cross check data across methods. Triangulation also enhances the possibility of the study being reproduced. All three research methods have been widely used in studies of masculinities and farming, most notably by Bell (2004); Peter, Bell, Jarnagin and Bauer (2000); Ni Laoire (2002) and Saugeres (2002 a, b, c). A structured questionnaire will also be administered using indicators comparable with earlier studies and others developed in focus groups in order to provide analysis of the relative significance of the factors identified in relation to each other and the findings of earlier studies where relevant.

Initially participants will be purposively selected for the study by approaching farming organisations to seek the permission of farmer members to participate in the study. As the study proceeds and further data is needed theoretical snowball sampling will be used. Initial collection and coding of the data will assist in identifying concepts that lead to new data collection through more participants and further refining of concepts, integrating of data and the construction of data categories which describe particular patterns of farming practices and identity constructions. Propositions can then be tested to determine theoretical saturation of the study and the emergence or otherwise of theory. Analysis of the field data regarding discourse and identity construction will attempt to identify recurrent words, phrases, themes in patterns of language and discourse and farm practice with the aim of identifying competing discourses and conflicting meanings and enactments of masculinities and farming practices that can be compared with findings in the literature and existing research. The models developed from this analysis will be held against the more qualitative data to explore the relationship between masculinity and practice in greater depth.

Conclusion

The study has the potential to open a window for the possible development of sustainable and alternative agriculture in Australia. This is an under researched topic in rural sociology. Therefore this study is expected to contribute significantly to existing knowledge. Participants will have the opportunity to contribute to this process through the information they provide and the input they give to the process of analysis via feedback of that information. They will also more than likely benefit from the discussion of many personal and farming issues which rural people often do not get the opportunity to participate in. Such participation has the potential to create a sharing and community feeling among those involved, particularly in the focus group discussion phase of the study. As it is proposed that focus group discussions are conducted early in the study, the opportunity for participants to share is likely to give the study an added impetus through its potential for renewed and/or greater community involvement for participants and a greater awareness of what is socially possible in farming. As far as is known this is the only study on this topic to be carried out in Australia and one of only a handful carried out globally so in a sense it is breaking new ground, therefore it is expected to be an impetus to further research, knowledge and learning.

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