Managing Flexibility and Expectations: Gendered Experiences of Spatial-temporal Relations in Swedish Family-based Dairy Farming

Abstract

In recent decades, the Swedish agricultural sector has been reshaped by economic change and the restructuring of the labour market, but it is still dominated by family farms dependent on the labour and time of family members. To date, the concept of temporality and time has attracted limited attention within rural sociological research. Through interviews with couples on dairy farms, this study explored the potentialities in temporal analysis of family farm relations. It sought to open up ways of thinking and conceptualizing gendered and class-based time and division of work in farming. The results show an interconnection between the spatial-temporal organization, social relations, control, property and power of the labour process. The gendered division of labour on the farm, in the household and across different spheres produces a specific set of spatial-temporal relations that manifests itself in the differing experiences of everyday world, time, space and responsibilities between farming husbands and wives.