Renegotiating Gender and the Symbolic Transformation of Australian Rural Environments
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Published
Jan 15, 2021
Stewart Lockie
Kristen Lyons
Abstract
A notable feature of contemporary approaches to ameliorating rural environmental degradation (such as Australia’s National Landcare Program) is the involvement of women to a degree not witnessed in other mainstream farming issues and organisations. At the same time, rural women’s networks are calling for greater recognition of the contribution women make to agriculture and rural communities – to recognise women as ‘farmers’ in their own right – and for a broadening of the agri-political agenda to give greater recognition to non-‘ production’ issues such as social services, workplace health and safety and environmental care. Given the traditional construction of agricultural labour processes in highly masculinised and phallocentric terms, this raises a number of questions regarding the degree to which rural environments are undergoing a sort of symbolic transformation. More specifically, we might question the degree to which these developments provide evidence that human relationships with rural environments – as embodied in the labour process and other day-to-day activities – are being reconceptualised and restructured. To explore this question, we explore data from a variety of sources including ethnographic research conducted with community Landcare groups and organic farmers, and textual analysis of the popular rural press. We conclude that while the renegotiation of gender relations in the labour process is in itself culturally and socially profound, a range of other sociocultural processes may stand in the way of fundamental transformation of the relationships with rural environments implied in those labour processes
How to Cite
Lockie, S. . and Lyons, K. . (2021) “Renegotiating Gender and the Symbolic Transformation of Australian Rural Environments ”, The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. Paris, France, 9, pp. 43–58. doi: 10.48416/ijsaf.v9i.344.
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References
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___ 1995. Women on the Land: The Hidden Heart of Rural Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press.
___ 1996. “Backs to the Wall: Rural Women Make Formidable Activists.” Pp. 77–84 in Social Change in Rural Australia, edited by G. Lawrence, K. Lyons and S. Momtaz.
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Belasco, Warren. 1993. Appetite for Change. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Bryant, Lia. Forthcoming. “The ‘Text-Book Farmers’: Young Women Constructing Occupations in Farming.” In Consuming Foods, Sustaining Environments, edited by S. Lockie and B. Pritchard. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.
Burch, David, Kristen Lyons and Geoffrey Lawrence. Forthcoming. “What do we Mean by Green? Consumers, Agriculture and the Food Industry.” In Consuming Foods, Sustaining Environments, edited by S. Lockie and B. Pritchard. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.
Campbell, Andrew. 1994. Landcare: Communities Shaping the Land and the Future: With Case Studies by Greg Siepen. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Campbell, Hugh. 1996. Recent Developments in Organic Food Production in New Zealand: Organic Food Exporting in Canterbury. Dunedin, NZ: Department of Anthropology, University of Otago.
Connell, Robert. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
___ 1995. Masculinities. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Curtis, Andrew and Terry De Lacy. 1997. “Examining the Assumptions Underlying Landcare.” Pp. 185–99 in Critical Landcare, edited by S. Lockie and F. Vanclay. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Rural Social Research Key Papers No. 5, Charles Sturt University.
Dryzek, John. 1987. Rational Ecology: Environment and Political Economy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Geno, Barbara. Forthcoming. “Gender Differences in Managing Farms Sustainably.” In Consuming Foods, Sustaining Environments, edited by S. Lockie and B. Pritchard. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.
Grasby, David, Stewart Lockie and Jim McAllister. 2000. The Social Basis of Sustainable Sugarcane Production in Australia. Townsville, QLD: Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Sugar Production.
Harraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.
Higgins, Vaughan, Stewart Lockie and Geoffrey Lawrence. Forthcoming. “Governance, ‘Local’ Knowledge, and the Adoption of Sustainable Farming Practices.” In Environment, Society and Natural Resource Management: Theoretical Perspectives from Australasia and the Americas, edited by G. Lawrence, V. Higgins and S. Lockie. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elga.
James, Allison. 1993. “Eating Green(s) Discourses of Organic Food.” Pp. 205–18 in Environmentalism. A View From Anthropology, edited by K. Milton. London: Routledge.
Lawrence, Geoffrey. 1987. Capitalism and the Countryside: The Rural Crisis in Australia. Sydney: Pluto Press.
Liepins, Ruth. 1995. “Women in Agriculture: Advocates for a Gendered Sustainable Agriculture.” Australian Geographer 26:118–26.
___ 1998a. “Fields of Action: Australian Women’s Agricultural Activism in the 1990s.” Rural Sociology 63:128–56.
___ 1998b. “The Gendering of Farming and Agricultural Politics: A Matter of Discourse and Power.” Australian Geographer 29:371–88.
Liepins, Ruth and Hugh Campbell. 1997. Men and Women as Stakeholders in The Initiation and Implementation of Sustainable Farming Practices: Organic Farming in Canterbury Dunedin, NZ: Department of Geography, University of Otago.
Lockie, Stewart. 1996. Sociocultural Dynamics and the Development of the Landcare Movement in Australia. Ph.D. dissertation, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW.
___ 1997a. “Beyond a ‘Good Thing’: Political Interests and the Meaning of Landcare.” Pp. 29–43 in Critical Landcare, edited by S. Lockie and F. Vanclay. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Rural Social Research Key Papers No. 5, Charles Sturt University.
___ 1997b. “Chemical Risk and the Self-Calculating Farmer: Diffuse Chemical Use in Australian Broadacre Farming Systems.” Current Sociology 45(3):81–97.
___ 1997c. “Rural Gender Relations and Landcare.” Pp. 71–82 in Critical Landcare, edited by S. Lockie and F. Vanclay. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Rural Social Research Key Papers No. 5, Charles Sturt University.
___ 1998a. “Environmental and Social Risks, and the Construction of ‘Best-Practice’ in Australian Agriculture.” Agriculture and Human Values 15:243–52.
___ 1998b. “Landcare in Australia: Cultural Transformation in the Management of Rural Environments.” Culture and Agriculture 20:21–29.
___ 1999a. “Community Movements and Corporate Images: ‘Landcare’ in Australia.” Rural Sociology 64:219–33.
___ 1999b. “The State, Rural Environments and Globalisation: ‘Action at a Distance’ via the Australian Landcare Program.” Environment and Planning A 31:597–611.
___ Forthcoming. “‘Name Your Poison’: The Discursive Construction of Chemical Use as Everyday Farming Practice.” In Consuming Foods, Sustaining Environments, edited by S. Lockie and B. Pritchard. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.
Lockie, Stewart, Ashley Mead, Frank Vanclay and Brett Butler. 1995. “Factors Encouraging the Adoption of More Sustainable Cropping Systems in South-East Australia: Profit, Sustainability, Risk and Stability.” Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 6:61–79.
Lovisolo, Ruth. 1997. “The Codex Alimentarius Commission: What it Means to Australia and the Labelling of Organic Food”. Presented at Australian Institute of Agricultural Scientists and Technologists National Conference, Ulverstone, Tasmania.
Lyons, Kristen. 1999. “Corporate Environmentalism and the Development of Australian Organic Agriculture.” Rural Sociology 64:251–65.
___ Forthcoming a. “From Sandals to Suits: Green Consumers and the Institutionalisation of Organic Agriculture.” In Consuming Foods, Sustaining Environments, edited by S. Lockie and B. Pritchard. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.
___ Forthcoming b. Situated Knowledges, Science and Gender: A Sociology of Organic Agriculture in Australia and New Zealand. Ph.D. dissertation, School of Psychology and Sociology, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, QLD.
Lyons, Kristen and Geoffrey Lawrence. 1999. “Alternative Knowledges, Sustainability and the Biotechnology Debate.” Culture and Agriculture 21(2):1–12.
___ Forthcoming. “Institutionalisation and Resistance: Organic Agriculture in Australia and New Zealand.” In Proceedings of the XVIII Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology, edited by M. Blanc and H. Tovey.
Marcus, George. 1992. “Past, Present and Emergent Identities: Requirements for Ethnographies of Late Twentieth Century Modernity Worldwide.” Pp. 309–30 in Modernity and Identity, edited by S. Lash and J. Friedman. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Martin, Peter and Jim Woodhill. 1995. “Landcare in the Balance: Roles of Government and Policy Directions for Degrading Rural Environments.” Australian Journal of Environmental Management 2:173–83.
Mollison, Bill. 1990. Permaculture: A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Monk, Andrew. 1998. “The Australian Organic Basket and the Global Supermarket.” Pp. 69–80 in Australasian Food and Farming: Recent Developments and Future Prospects, edited by D. Burch, G. Lawrence, R. Rickson, and J. Goss. Melbourne: Monash Publications in Geography No. 50, Monash University.
Murdoch, Jonathon and Judy Clark. 1994. “Sustainable knowledge.” Geoforum 25:115–132.
NASSA. 1998. The Standards for Organic Agricultural Production. Stirling, SA: National Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia.
O’Connor, James. 1993. “Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible?” Pp. 125–37 in Food for the Future: Conditions and Contradictions of Sustainability, edited by P. Allen. New York: Wiley.
Ploeg, Jan Douwe van der. 1985. “Patterns of Farming Logic, Structuration of Labour and Impact of Externalization.” Sociologia Ruralis 25:5–25.
___ 1992. “The Reconstitution of Locality: Technology and Labour in Modern Agriculture.” Pp. 19-43 in Labour and Locality: Uneven Development and the Rural Labour Process, edited by T. Marsden, P. Lowe and S. Whatmore. London: David
Fulton.
Rickson, Roy and David Burch. 1996. “Contract Farming in Organizational Agriculture: The Effects Upon Farmers and the Environment.” Pp. 173–202 in Globalization and Agrifood Restructuring: Perspectives From the Australasia Region, edited by D. Burch, R.
Rickson and G. Lawrence. Aldershot: Avebury.
Sachs, Carolyn. 1996. Gendered Fields: Rural Women, Agriculture and Environment. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
The Country Web, Special Koori Edition, Summer 1998–99.
Allen, Patricia. 1993. “Connecting the Social and the Ecological in Sustainable Agriculture.” Pp. 1–16 in Sustainable Agriculture, Food for the Future: Conditions and Contradictions of Sustainability, edited by Patricia Allen. New York: Wiley.
Allen, Patricia and Carolyn Sachs. 1991. “The Social Side of Sustainability: Class Gender and Race.” Science as Culture 2:569–90.
Alston, Margaret. 1990. “Farm Women and Work.” Pp. 20–28 in Rural Women, edited by M. Alston. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Rural Welfare Research Key Papers No. 1, Charles Sturt University.
___ 1995. Women on the Land: The Hidden Heart of Rural Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press.
___ 1996. “Backs to the Wall: Rural Women Make Formidable Activists.” Pp. 77–84 in Social Change in Rural Australia, edited by G. Lawrence, K. Lyons and S. Momtaz.
Rockhampton, QLD: Rural Social and Economic Research Centre, Central Queensland University.
Barr, Neil and John Cary. 1992. Greening a Brown Land: The Australian Search for Sustainable Land Use. Melbourne: Macmillan.
Beilin, Ruth. 1997. “The Construction of Women in Landcare: Does it Make a Difference?” Pp. 57–70 in Critical Landcare, edited by S. Lockie and F. Vanclay. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Rural Social Research Key Papers No. 5, Charles Sturt University.
Belasco, Warren. 1993. Appetite for Change. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Bryant, Lia. Forthcoming. “The ‘Text-Book Farmers’: Young Women Constructing Occupations in Farming.” In Consuming Foods, Sustaining Environments, edited by S. Lockie and B. Pritchard. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.
Burch, David, Kristen Lyons and Geoffrey Lawrence. Forthcoming. “What do we Mean by Green? Consumers, Agriculture and the Food Industry.” In Consuming Foods, Sustaining Environments, edited by S. Lockie and B. Pritchard. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.
Campbell, Andrew. 1994. Landcare: Communities Shaping the Land and the Future: With Case Studies by Greg Siepen. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Campbell, Hugh. 1996. Recent Developments in Organic Food Production in New Zealand: Organic Food Exporting in Canterbury. Dunedin, NZ: Department of Anthropology, University of Otago.
Connell, Robert. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
___ 1995. Masculinities. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Curtis, Andrew and Terry De Lacy. 1997. “Examining the Assumptions Underlying Landcare.” Pp. 185–99 in Critical Landcare, edited by S. Lockie and F. Vanclay. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Rural Social Research Key Papers No. 5, Charles Sturt University.
Dryzek, John. 1987. Rational Ecology: Environment and Political Economy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Geno, Barbara. Forthcoming. “Gender Differences in Managing Farms Sustainably.” In Consuming Foods, Sustaining Environments, edited by S. Lockie and B. Pritchard. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.
Grasby, David, Stewart Lockie and Jim McAllister. 2000. The Social Basis of Sustainable Sugarcane Production in Australia. Townsville, QLD: Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Sugar Production.
Harraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.
Higgins, Vaughan, Stewart Lockie and Geoffrey Lawrence. Forthcoming. “Governance, ‘Local’ Knowledge, and the Adoption of Sustainable Farming Practices.” In Environment, Society and Natural Resource Management: Theoretical Perspectives from Australasia and the Americas, edited by G. Lawrence, V. Higgins and S. Lockie. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elga.
James, Allison. 1993. “Eating Green(s) Discourses of Organic Food.” Pp. 205–18 in Environmentalism. A View From Anthropology, edited by K. Milton. London: Routledge.
Lawrence, Geoffrey. 1987. Capitalism and the Countryside: The Rural Crisis in Australia. Sydney: Pluto Press.
Liepins, Ruth. 1995. “Women in Agriculture: Advocates for a Gendered Sustainable Agriculture.” Australian Geographer 26:118–26.
___ 1998a. “Fields of Action: Australian Women’s Agricultural Activism in the 1990s.” Rural Sociology 63:128–56.
___ 1998b. “The Gendering of Farming and Agricultural Politics: A Matter of Discourse and Power.” Australian Geographer 29:371–88.
Liepins, Ruth and Hugh Campbell. 1997. Men and Women as Stakeholders in The Initiation and Implementation of Sustainable Farming Practices: Organic Farming in Canterbury Dunedin, NZ: Department of Geography, University of Otago.
Lockie, Stewart. 1996. Sociocultural Dynamics and the Development of the Landcare Movement in Australia. Ph.D. dissertation, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW.
___ 1997a. “Beyond a ‘Good Thing’: Political Interests and the Meaning of Landcare.” Pp. 29–43 in Critical Landcare, edited by S. Lockie and F. Vanclay. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Rural Social Research Key Papers No. 5, Charles Sturt University.
___ 1997b. “Chemical Risk and the Self-Calculating Farmer: Diffuse Chemical Use in Australian Broadacre Farming Systems.” Current Sociology 45(3):81–97.
___ 1997c. “Rural Gender Relations and Landcare.” Pp. 71–82 in Critical Landcare, edited by S. Lockie and F. Vanclay. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Rural Social Research Key Papers No. 5, Charles Sturt University.
___ 1998a. “Environmental and Social Risks, and the Construction of ‘Best-Practice’ in Australian Agriculture.” Agriculture and Human Values 15:243–52.
___ 1998b. “Landcare in Australia: Cultural Transformation in the Management of Rural Environments.” Culture and Agriculture 20:21–29.
___ 1999a. “Community Movements and Corporate Images: ‘Landcare’ in Australia.” Rural Sociology 64:219–33.
___ 1999b. “The State, Rural Environments and Globalisation: ‘Action at a Distance’ via the Australian Landcare Program.” Environment and Planning A 31:597–611.
___ Forthcoming. “‘Name Your Poison’: The Discursive Construction of Chemical Use as Everyday Farming Practice.” In Consuming Foods, Sustaining Environments, edited by S. Lockie and B. Pritchard. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.
Lockie, Stewart, Ashley Mead, Frank Vanclay and Brett Butler. 1995. “Factors Encouraging the Adoption of More Sustainable Cropping Systems in South-East Australia: Profit, Sustainability, Risk and Stability.” Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 6:61–79.
Lovisolo, Ruth. 1997. “The Codex Alimentarius Commission: What it Means to Australia and the Labelling of Organic Food”. Presented at Australian Institute of Agricultural Scientists and Technologists National Conference, Ulverstone, Tasmania.
Lyons, Kristen. 1999. “Corporate Environmentalism and the Development of Australian Organic Agriculture.” Rural Sociology 64:251–65.
___ Forthcoming a. “From Sandals to Suits: Green Consumers and the Institutionalisation of Organic Agriculture.” In Consuming Foods, Sustaining Environments, edited by S. Lockie and B. Pritchard. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.
___ Forthcoming b. Situated Knowledges, Science and Gender: A Sociology of Organic Agriculture in Australia and New Zealand. Ph.D. dissertation, School of Psychology and Sociology, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, QLD.
Lyons, Kristen and Geoffrey Lawrence. 1999. “Alternative Knowledges, Sustainability and the Biotechnology Debate.” Culture and Agriculture 21(2):1–12.
___ Forthcoming. “Institutionalisation and Resistance: Organic Agriculture in Australia and New Zealand.” In Proceedings of the XVIII Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology, edited by M. Blanc and H. Tovey.
Marcus, George. 1992. “Past, Present and Emergent Identities: Requirements for Ethnographies of Late Twentieth Century Modernity Worldwide.” Pp. 309–30 in Modernity and Identity, edited by S. Lash and J. Friedman. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Martin, Peter and Jim Woodhill. 1995. “Landcare in the Balance: Roles of Government and Policy Directions for Degrading Rural Environments.” Australian Journal of Environmental Management 2:173–83.
Mollison, Bill. 1990. Permaculture: A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Monk, Andrew. 1998. “The Australian Organic Basket and the Global Supermarket.” Pp. 69–80 in Australasian Food and Farming: Recent Developments and Future Prospects, edited by D. Burch, G. Lawrence, R. Rickson, and J. Goss. Melbourne: Monash Publications in Geography No. 50, Monash University.
Murdoch, Jonathon and Judy Clark. 1994. “Sustainable knowledge.” Geoforum 25:115–132.
NASSA. 1998. The Standards for Organic Agricultural Production. Stirling, SA: National Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia.
O’Connor, James. 1993. “Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible?” Pp. 125–37 in Food for the Future: Conditions and Contradictions of Sustainability, edited by P. Allen. New York: Wiley.
Ploeg, Jan Douwe van der. 1985. “Patterns of Farming Logic, Structuration of Labour and Impact of Externalization.” Sociologia Ruralis 25:5–25.
___ 1992. “The Reconstitution of Locality: Technology and Labour in Modern Agriculture.” Pp. 19-43 in Labour and Locality: Uneven Development and the Rural Labour Process, edited by T. Marsden, P. Lowe and S. Whatmore. London: David
Fulton.
Rickson, Roy and David Burch. 1996. “Contract Farming in Organizational Agriculture: The Effects Upon Farmers and the Environment.” Pp. 173–202 in Globalization and Agrifood Restructuring: Perspectives From the Australasia Region, edited by D. Burch, R.
Rickson and G. Lawrence. Aldershot: Avebury.
Sachs, Carolyn. 1996. Gendered Fields: Rural Women, Agriculture and Environment. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
The Country Web, Special Koori Edition, Summer 1998–99.
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