- Email: [email protected]
New directions on gender and environment: A review essay
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Journal of Rural Studies 22 (2006) 493–502 www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud
Book reviews New directions on gender and environment: A review essay H. Buller, K. Hoggart (Eds.), Women in the European Countryside, Aldershot, Ashgate, ISBN 0-7546-3946-0, 2004 (162pp., US $89.95/£45.00 hbk). M. Hessing, R. Raglon, C. Sandilands (Eds.), This Elusive Land: Women and the Canadian Environment, UBC Press, Vancouver, ISBN 0-7748-1107-2, 2005 (386pp., $84 hbk, $35 pbk). M.G. Reed, Taking Stands: Gender and the Sustainability of Rural Communities, UBC Press, Vancouver, ISBN 0-77481018-1, 2003 (282pp., $85 hbk $29.95 pbk). Twenty years on from the rapid growth in rural gender studies in western, Anglo-American settings it is time to pause and consider some recently published works that are continuing to expand this field of scholarship. Following initial critiques on the implicit gender blindness occurring in much rural research, early responses focused on acknowledging the relatively invisible experiences and contributions made by women in many rural societies. Conceptualizing gender as a way to theorize and explain women’s experiences was crucial. Recognition of uneven gendered power relations was fundamental to groundbreaking work analyzing farm economies and rural community practices (e.g. Berlan-Darque, 1988; Little, 1986, 1987; Little and Austin, 1996; Whatmore, 1991). Since then we have seen a rich literature established; one which uses increasingly sophisticated notions of gender, which incorporates expanding critiques of masculinity, and which points to new directions in deepening our appreciation of how gender works in diverse rural setting. Recent publications illustrate some of the breadth of this endeavor in both European and Canadian contexts. In this essay I want to review three publications that promote further thought on one key aspect of gender studies, namely the ways in which gender and environment intersect. In considering such a review, it is important to note that notions of environment are diverse, stretching from meanings about the bio-physical, non-human world through to a conception that recognizes the intersection of physical, social and political contexts that constitute an individual’s or group’s surroundings. This continuum of understandings is relevant for contemporary research ranges from studies detailing women’s and men’s direct relationships with the physical environment through to others focused more on the socio-economic and political environments in which they live. For the purposes of this review this diversity of environmental definitions needs to be remembered as does the contrasting genres of the books being considered. The Elusive Land and Taking Stands are
both reports of Canadian research and each focuses upon the intersections between specific physical environments and the women associated with them. Taking Stands also considers social, economic and political environments in more detail as it is a detailed, single-authored account of one research program. In contrast, The Elusive Land and Women in the European Countryside provide edited collections of briefer but more diverse research activities. Each volume is quite different from the next and some of these features are highlighted below. Nevertheless, as this review will show, some generic concepts and key themes are relevant across the works and these cumulatively point to stimulating new directions scholars may pursue in future studies of gender and environment. The Elusive Land: Women and the Canadian Environment aims to expand existing understandings of gender and environment. But it does so in a very specific way. Using the case of Canadian environments, histories and peoples, the editors draw together an anthology that emphasizes the experiences and representations of women and physical landscapes and environments. Thus while there are numerous passing references to gender (and less often men), it is especially a focus on women and feminist Canadian scholarship that is presented in this volume. It is also important to note that the subtitle of the book Women and the Canadian Environment refers specifically to nonurban environments but includes an extensive range of settings: from intense primary production and natural resource sites through to ‘wilderness’. These two features, set up some disappoints which it is worth addressing before considering the strengths and implications of this volume. First, the specificity of the book (both on Canada and on women) reduces its engagement with more generic debates and developments in gender, environment and society-nature debates with which many Journal of Rural Studies readers would be familiar. The depth and breadth of the chapters are fascinating but this lack of more extroverted scholarship means the book’s greatest appeal will be confined to those whose interests are also primarily Canadian and womenfocused. Second, the settings that are canvassed in this book form a rich array of environments or senses of nature that could have been more critically discussed by the editors in their opening and closing chapters. It is apparent that the opening and closing chapters provide a useful bracketing of the collection, nevertheless concepts as diverse as territory, landscape and nature are employed throughout these alpha and omega chapters but in a frustratingly under-theorized fashion. It is also unfortunate that the complex and stimulating lenses of ethnicity and
ARTICLE IN PRESS 494
Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 22 (2006) 493–502
cultural diversity were not more fully trained upon the questions of gender and environment, for culturally different understandings and experiences of environment are replete in the Canadian context. Moreover, detailed attention on the contrasts within, and between, First Nation and other women could have been an internationally stimulating feature of the work. Moving beyond these disappointments, The Elusive Land is a rich and fascinating book. It is carefully constructed and the thoughtful introductory and concluding chapters are appreciated as this gives the volume a sense of an integrated project. In attempting the ambitious aim of producing a multidisciplinary investigation of the ‘gendered reality of Canadian experiences of the land’ the editors assemble a rich set of 16 chapters from sociological to literary, geographical, religious and environmental studies. Cumulatively the works can inspire and stretch readers’ understandings and appreciation of the multiplicity of gender–environment experiences, and the academic traditions that can frame contrasting scholarly endeavors. The anthology emphasizes that many disciplinary traditions can shed critical lights on the study of gender and environment. Compare for example the innovatively geographic approach of contemporary community mapping (advocated by Dunster, Chapter 12) with the careful literary analyzes made of contrasting women writers (e.g. Raglon’s assessment of Traill’s works, Kaufman’s reading of ‘environmental ecstasies’ in Cather and van Herk’s writings, and Scholtmeijer’s commentary on First Nations song, poetry and prose—Chapters 1, 13 and 16). Detailed assessment of each of the 16 contributions is beyond the scope of this essay, however, the structural decisions the editors made in devising four chapter clusters is admirable. These four parts to the book provide a framework for the book, but also stimulate our further thinking about future ways gender–environment matters could be pursued. For instance, the value of taking an initial historic critique of gender–environment issues is demonstrated in Part 1 ‘Explorers and Settlers’. The almost complete absence and silence of First Nations histories is rather deafening at this point although the chapters that are included provide an illustration of the contrasting and problematic developments of various parts of Canada. Chapters 3 and 4 also introduce men into the scene in contrasting ways though it is unfortunate that more theorized conceptions of gender relations and identities was not included. Part 2 ‘Making a Living: Making a Life’ draws together the physical, economic and social dimensions of gender– environment studies. The chapters included here most naturally complement those included in the second edited collection on European women (discussed below). In the Canadian works, time is spent demonstrating how environmental interactions so often invoke nature-economy tensions and that these are played out through the laboring of women. Chapters on fisheries, forestry, farming, and national parks invite readers to recognize the complexity of ‘rural’ and ‘natural’ environments. The authors show how
individual women’s lives, their households and communities can also intersect with industry-wide, national and globalization processes and debates. In a complementary fashion, Part 3 ‘Environmental Politics: Issues at Home and Away’ also reflects personal and wider scales of environmental meaning and action. In this case, however, the four chapters focus on contrasting forms of political concern and action. The chapters do not bear conceptual comparison for the topics and academic traditions are too divergent, however, collectively they show the widespread environmental concerns and creative initiatives women are prepared to highlight (i.e., concerns as divergent as dioxin contamination of breast milk in Canada and the lessons and support Canadian ‘sisterhood’ can extend to international innovations in Brazil, India, and the Philippines). An anthology of this kind demonstrates that gendered scholarship has moved well beyond any homogenizing categories of women (and men), and is capable of nuanced and complexly layered accounts of gendered political action. Finally the fourth part on ‘Rethinking the Environment’ provides an intriguing mix of conceptual, literary, and spiritual considerations acknowledging First Nation and wider perspectives. Hessing’s Chapter (14) is especially thoughtful as it interrogates ways a gendered approach could revitalize questions of wilderness. While, as noted above, this has a Canadian focus, the conceptual commentary and conclusions provide one example of how the book can speak to other scholars interested in the construction and/or protection of environment, nature, and human– nonhuman interactions. And Scholtmeijer’s account of First Nations women writers is an appropriately placed final chapter that invokes respect for the contrasting knowledge and creativity of women from different cultures. While it is regrettable that First Nation voices were not more evident in this book, ethnicity and cultural questions surrounding the dynamics of rural and environment issues is a relatively under-recognized area of rural studies internationally, and this chapter suggests some inspiring examples of how future scholarship and cultural respect might be achieved. Overall, this book is by far the largest of the three reviewed and its content is a kaleidoscope of details and contrasts. Aside from the disappointments noted above and the challenges any editors would face in a project of this breadth, The Elusive Land provides a rewarding resource for any readers interested in Canadian specific environmental questions or those interested to explore the diversity of approaches scholars might take in future investigations of gender–environment questions. In a complete contrast, Women in the European Countryside was recently published as part of the Ashgate series: Perspectives on Rural Policy and Planning. In this case, Buller and Hoggart (2004) draw together a short volume of research reflecting on the complexities of recent and contemporary European rural conditions. Again the gendered lens is concentrated upon the patterns and dynamics of women’s rural lives. Men, masculinities and
ARTICLE IN PRESS Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 22 (2006) 493–502
gender relations between men and women appear only as tangents to the prime attention given to women. After a somewhat disappointing introduction which does little to engage with wider conceptual debates surrounding gender or to conceptualize the ‘countryside’ in any comprehensive theoretical fashion, the remainder of the book is devoted to seven accounts of recent work in various European countries. Stemming primarily from a sociological tradition, the chapters identify the contexts shaping women’s rural lives and experiences. In these cases the ‘‘European countryside’’ is represented as a social, economic and political environment. Little mention of the biophysical dimensions of the countryside is made, and nature-society debates do not figure in any discussion of the ‘countryside’ although some chapters clearly deal with topics that could incorporate questions of nature, or physical-environment focus (e.g. Demossier’s analysis of change in rural France; Inhetveen and Schmitt’s identification of trends in German agriculture; and Limstrand and Stemland’s discussion of types of education associated with developing rural areas in Norway). Understandably, much of the sociological perspective concentrates on human life and relations and thus an environmental review of this work should fairly record the types of environment such authors investigate. In this case a series of detailed descriptions of economic and political environments is provided. The ‘‘European countryside’’ is portrayed as an environment of diverse labor patterns. The countryside is one of work expectiations and employment contexts which demand of, but also constrain, women in various ways depending on their location (Chapter 2). The chapters provide the rich array of women’s work in many settings, industries, and un/paid situations. And authors such as Haugen, Inhetveen and Schmitt and van Hoven point to the widespread social and political norms and contexts that affect women’s opportunities. Here we see the importance of attending to how the social environment (in its broadest sense) deeply influences women’s lives. Moreover, as Hoggatt outlines in introducing the volume, these conditions have individual, structural, cultural and policy roots—and future implications. These complexities are well illustrated in the fascinating contrasts the editors have assembled between intimate individual biography (Inhetveen and Schmitt, Chapter 5) and macronational comparison (Bock, Chapter 2). Anyone wishing to have a deeper picture of the diversity of women’s contexts and actions in rural Europe would find this book informative. As many scholars before these have shown, women are rarely if ever passive subjects in the rural contexts and conditions they navigate. Indeed, Demossier’s Chapter (3) reports on the role of women in local politics and points to the contributions that they can make to the future relations between rural and urban France. While her own focus is primarily socio-political her recognition of the changing nature and function of rural areas (and environments) is well noted, and in turn resonates with the more
495
bio-physical environmental foci reported in The Elusive Land. The women are portrayed to have different priorities (political in the French case, and physical or socio-physical in the Canadian cases), but the strong message that emerges cumulatively is one recording women’s active presence in their environments. Women can be the political participant, activist, agitator and change agents. Recognizing this capacity, enables us to further explore the degree to which gender and environment are mutually constitutive—closely entwined in a set of dialectic relationships. In the two edited collections, these matters are necessarily brief, but in the third volume I wish to review, we have a far more nuanced case of the complex relations weaving gender and environment together into a multifaceted fabric. Taking Stands: Gender and the Sustainability of Rural Communities records a detailed account of Maureen Reed’s research into the gendered experiences and perspectives of women involved in Canadian forestry industry and associated communities. The book illustrates the densely woven relations women have with both the environment and the men in forestry. In this way Taking Stands resonates with the livelihood theme of The Elusive Land (and Reed has a chapter in that anthology as well). But equally, the gender relations with male forestry workers, and the experiences of paid employment and political participation also intersect with the themes recorded in many of the chapters in Women in the European Countryside. Understandably, however, the genre of a stand-alone research monograph has a more intense character. This ranges from the evocative expression of the ‘smell’ and ‘romance’ of ‘big men y and big trees’ (p. 79), through women’s social reproductive labor in sustaining the male dominated workforce of the forestry industry, to the navigation of ‘us’/‘them’ and ‘inside’/‘outsider’ boundaries and politics surrounding environmental politics and primary industry restructuring. Maureen Reed writes with depth and insight and we come to appreciate the diverse realities and rhetoric that swirl through the dynamism of this changing industry. Not since Whatmore’s (1991) Farming Women have I read such a theoretically nuanced, and carefully analyzed, in-depth gender critique of a primary industry. But where Whatmore concentrated primarily on theorizing the gender dynamics at the level of production units, Reed not only critiques women’s multiple experiences on the home front, or in paid or community labor, she also interrogates the processes and struggles associated with the wider industry politics. Equally at home conveying the pithy narratives of the forestry women, the complications of contrasting methodological approaches and the theoretical conundrums she faced in analyzing this research, Reed presents an engaging and challenging book. A full length text, published with a fascinating array of illustrative material, Taking Stands enables us to appreciate the problem Reed uncovered when neither ecofeminist nor labor theories could adequately frame her investigation.
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We come to understand the diversity of women’s lives and choices, even while there are some generic environmentlabor and environment-gender dimensions inherent in the forestry industry described. And in the closing chapter, Reed argues cogently for a multi-layered approach to analysis—one which took in broad public actions as well as community activities, and the intimacies of household and relationship struggles. This enables her to contend that women’s ‘choices for activism are embedded within local social and spatial contexts’, and that the outcomes were not homogenous or conservative but ‘heterogeneous and continent, complex, contradictory, and embedded’ (p. 222). By the end of this book, one is more fully aware of how women can experience marginalization and extreme forms of a masculinist environment while also choosing multiple forms of support for that environment and industry. There is also a range of issues surrounding gendered, and industry politics that will bear translation well outside the forestry example that Reed presents. Scholars of rural industries and communities, and others focusing on social movements will all find thought-provoking material in this book for the divisions, threats and impact of conflict (in this case environmentalist-versus-forestry struggles) are palpable in this book. Moreover, the way they are addressed in terms of the complexity of community, identity and political decision-making are relevant to many other settings and the discussion of planning in the final chapter is especially useful. In sum, Reed goes a long way in realizing her hope that the book ‘will help individuals and groups who currently oppose one another in a politics of segregation and conflict to being new conversations in a renewed politics of engagement and resolution’ (p. 230). Finally, postgraduate and professional researchers will also appreciate the frank and reflective appendix on research methods. The books reviewed in this essay, form part of the recent publication of gendered collections (see also Little and Morris, 2005; Goverde et al., 2004). While each volume may have its disappointments, the cumulative impact of these works indicates the breadth of contemporary gender concerns and points to fertile ground for future debates. Many of the works are particularly accessible for postgraduate students which subsequently may inspire further new directions and critiques of gendered rural life. Questions of gender and environment are clearly one
priority area in a new millennium when concerns about the value and sustainability of rural environments, economies and societies will grow in importance. Indeed, taking some of the strengths from the environment-focused works, discussed here, will enable rural development concerns such as those edited by Goverde et al. (2004) to be enhanced via the incorporation of an environment-nature dimension which is currently missing from such work. Equally, recognizing the wider-than-environment efforts of rural gender studies in recent times—especially in the areas of rural masculinities (e.g. Ni Laoire, 2002; Saugeres, 2002) or emotional relations (Little, 2003; Little et al., 2005), and gender politics Panelli and Pini, 2005)—can reciprocally invigorate further gender–environment scholarship. References Berlan-Darque, M., 1988. The division of labour and decision-making in farming couples: power and negotiation. Sociologia Ruralis 28, 271–292. Goverde, H., de Haan, H., Beylina, M., 2004. Power and Gender in European Rural Development. Aldershot, Ashgate. Little, J., 1986. Feminist perspectives in rural geography: an introduction. Journal of Rural Studies 2, 1–8. Little, J., 1987. Gender relations in rural areas: the importance of women’s domestic role. Journal of Rural Studies 3, 335–342. Little, J., 2003. ‘Riding the rural love train’: heterosexuality and the rural community. Sociologia Ruralis 43, 401–417. Little, J., Austin, P., 1996. Women and the rural idyll. Journal of Rural Studies 12, 101–111. Little, J., Morris, C., 2005. Critical Studies in Rural Gender Issues. Aldershot, Ashgate. Little, J., Panelli, R., Kraack, A., 2005. Women’s fear of crime: a rural perspective. Journal of Rural Studies 21, 151–163. Ni Laoire, C., 2002. Masculinities and change in rural Ireland. Irish Geography 35, 16–28. Panelli, R., Pini, B., 2005. ‘This beats a cake stall!’: Farm women’s shifting encounters with the Australian state. Policy and Politics 33, 489–503. Saugeres, L., 2002. The cultural representation of the farming landscape: masculinity, power and nature. Journal of Rural Studies 18, 373–384. Whatmore, S., 1991. Farming Women: Gender, Work and Family Enterprise. Macmillan, London.
Ruth Panelli Department of Geography, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand E-mail address: [email protected].
doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2006.03.004
N. Gallent, A. Mace, M. Tewdwr-Jones, Second Homes: European Perspectives and UK Policies, Aldershot, Ashgate, ISBN 0-7546-4239-9, 2005 (252pp., price £55, hardback). This text updates Rural Second Homes in Europe by Nick Gallent and Mark Tewdwr-Jones, published by Ashgate in 2000, and also addresses new issues relating to second homes within the context of wider housing pressures and
social change in rural areas. It does so primarily by incorporating the results of three recent studies conducted by the authors for the Scottish Executive, the National Assembly for Wales and the Countryside Agency in England, and material from other European sources. The text is divided into three parts dealing respectively with: (i) broad debates relating to the definition of second homes, demand and impacts over the past four decades (Chapters
Journal of Rural Studies 22 (2006) 493–502 www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud
Book reviews New directions on gender and environment: A review essay H. Buller, K. Hoggart (Eds.), Women in the European Countryside, Aldershot, Ashgate, ISBN 0-7546-3946-0, 2004 (162pp., US $89.95/£45.00 hbk). M. Hessing, R. Raglon, C. Sandilands (Eds.), This Elusive Land: Women and the Canadian Environment, UBC Press, Vancouver, ISBN 0-7748-1107-2, 2005 (386pp., $84 hbk, $35 pbk). M.G. Reed, Taking Stands: Gender and the Sustainability of Rural Communities, UBC Press, Vancouver, ISBN 0-77481018-1, 2003 (282pp., $85 hbk $29.95 pbk). Twenty years on from the rapid growth in rural gender studies in western, Anglo-American settings it is time to pause and consider some recently published works that are continuing to expand this field of scholarship. Following initial critiques on the implicit gender blindness occurring in much rural research, early responses focused on acknowledging the relatively invisible experiences and contributions made by women in many rural societies. Conceptualizing gender as a way to theorize and explain women’s experiences was crucial. Recognition of uneven gendered power relations was fundamental to groundbreaking work analyzing farm economies and rural community practices (e.g. Berlan-Darque, 1988; Little, 1986, 1987; Little and Austin, 1996; Whatmore, 1991). Since then we have seen a rich literature established; one which uses increasingly sophisticated notions of gender, which incorporates expanding critiques of masculinity, and which points to new directions in deepening our appreciation of how gender works in diverse rural setting. Recent publications illustrate some of the breadth of this endeavor in both European and Canadian contexts. In this essay I want to review three publications that promote further thought on one key aspect of gender studies, namely the ways in which gender and environment intersect. In considering such a review, it is important to note that notions of environment are diverse, stretching from meanings about the bio-physical, non-human world through to a conception that recognizes the intersection of physical, social and political contexts that constitute an individual’s or group’s surroundings. This continuum of understandings is relevant for contemporary research ranges from studies detailing women’s and men’s direct relationships with the physical environment through to others focused more on the socio-economic and political environments in which they live. For the purposes of this review this diversity of environmental definitions needs to be remembered as does the contrasting genres of the books being considered. The Elusive Land and Taking Stands are
both reports of Canadian research and each focuses upon the intersections between specific physical environments and the women associated with them. Taking Stands also considers social, economic and political environments in more detail as it is a detailed, single-authored account of one research program. In contrast, The Elusive Land and Women in the European Countryside provide edited collections of briefer but more diverse research activities. Each volume is quite different from the next and some of these features are highlighted below. Nevertheless, as this review will show, some generic concepts and key themes are relevant across the works and these cumulatively point to stimulating new directions scholars may pursue in future studies of gender and environment. The Elusive Land: Women and the Canadian Environment aims to expand existing understandings of gender and environment. But it does so in a very specific way. Using the case of Canadian environments, histories and peoples, the editors draw together an anthology that emphasizes the experiences and representations of women and physical landscapes and environments. Thus while there are numerous passing references to gender (and less often men), it is especially a focus on women and feminist Canadian scholarship that is presented in this volume. It is also important to note that the subtitle of the book Women and the Canadian Environment refers specifically to nonurban environments but includes an extensive range of settings: from intense primary production and natural resource sites through to ‘wilderness’. These two features, set up some disappoints which it is worth addressing before considering the strengths and implications of this volume. First, the specificity of the book (both on Canada and on women) reduces its engagement with more generic debates and developments in gender, environment and society-nature debates with which many Journal of Rural Studies readers would be familiar. The depth and breadth of the chapters are fascinating but this lack of more extroverted scholarship means the book’s greatest appeal will be confined to those whose interests are also primarily Canadian and womenfocused. Second, the settings that are canvassed in this book form a rich array of environments or senses of nature that could have been more critically discussed by the editors in their opening and closing chapters. It is apparent that the opening and closing chapters provide a useful bracketing of the collection, nevertheless concepts as diverse as territory, landscape and nature are employed throughout these alpha and omega chapters but in a frustratingly under-theorized fashion. It is also unfortunate that the complex and stimulating lenses of ethnicity and
ARTICLE IN PRESS 494
Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 22 (2006) 493–502
cultural diversity were not more fully trained upon the questions of gender and environment, for culturally different understandings and experiences of environment are replete in the Canadian context. Moreover, detailed attention on the contrasts within, and between, First Nation and other women could have been an internationally stimulating feature of the work. Moving beyond these disappointments, The Elusive Land is a rich and fascinating book. It is carefully constructed and the thoughtful introductory and concluding chapters are appreciated as this gives the volume a sense of an integrated project. In attempting the ambitious aim of producing a multidisciplinary investigation of the ‘gendered reality of Canadian experiences of the land’ the editors assemble a rich set of 16 chapters from sociological to literary, geographical, religious and environmental studies. Cumulatively the works can inspire and stretch readers’ understandings and appreciation of the multiplicity of gender–environment experiences, and the academic traditions that can frame contrasting scholarly endeavors. The anthology emphasizes that many disciplinary traditions can shed critical lights on the study of gender and environment. Compare for example the innovatively geographic approach of contemporary community mapping (advocated by Dunster, Chapter 12) with the careful literary analyzes made of contrasting women writers (e.g. Raglon’s assessment of Traill’s works, Kaufman’s reading of ‘environmental ecstasies’ in Cather and van Herk’s writings, and Scholtmeijer’s commentary on First Nations song, poetry and prose—Chapters 1, 13 and 16). Detailed assessment of each of the 16 contributions is beyond the scope of this essay, however, the structural decisions the editors made in devising four chapter clusters is admirable. These four parts to the book provide a framework for the book, but also stimulate our further thinking about future ways gender–environment matters could be pursued. For instance, the value of taking an initial historic critique of gender–environment issues is demonstrated in Part 1 ‘Explorers and Settlers’. The almost complete absence and silence of First Nations histories is rather deafening at this point although the chapters that are included provide an illustration of the contrasting and problematic developments of various parts of Canada. Chapters 3 and 4 also introduce men into the scene in contrasting ways though it is unfortunate that more theorized conceptions of gender relations and identities was not included. Part 2 ‘Making a Living: Making a Life’ draws together the physical, economic and social dimensions of gender– environment studies. The chapters included here most naturally complement those included in the second edited collection on European women (discussed below). In the Canadian works, time is spent demonstrating how environmental interactions so often invoke nature-economy tensions and that these are played out through the laboring of women. Chapters on fisheries, forestry, farming, and national parks invite readers to recognize the complexity of ‘rural’ and ‘natural’ environments. The authors show how
individual women’s lives, their households and communities can also intersect with industry-wide, national and globalization processes and debates. In a complementary fashion, Part 3 ‘Environmental Politics: Issues at Home and Away’ also reflects personal and wider scales of environmental meaning and action. In this case, however, the four chapters focus on contrasting forms of political concern and action. The chapters do not bear conceptual comparison for the topics and academic traditions are too divergent, however, collectively they show the widespread environmental concerns and creative initiatives women are prepared to highlight (i.e., concerns as divergent as dioxin contamination of breast milk in Canada and the lessons and support Canadian ‘sisterhood’ can extend to international innovations in Brazil, India, and the Philippines). An anthology of this kind demonstrates that gendered scholarship has moved well beyond any homogenizing categories of women (and men), and is capable of nuanced and complexly layered accounts of gendered political action. Finally the fourth part on ‘Rethinking the Environment’ provides an intriguing mix of conceptual, literary, and spiritual considerations acknowledging First Nation and wider perspectives. Hessing’s Chapter (14) is especially thoughtful as it interrogates ways a gendered approach could revitalize questions of wilderness. While, as noted above, this has a Canadian focus, the conceptual commentary and conclusions provide one example of how the book can speak to other scholars interested in the construction and/or protection of environment, nature, and human– nonhuman interactions. And Scholtmeijer’s account of First Nations women writers is an appropriately placed final chapter that invokes respect for the contrasting knowledge and creativity of women from different cultures. While it is regrettable that First Nation voices were not more evident in this book, ethnicity and cultural questions surrounding the dynamics of rural and environment issues is a relatively under-recognized area of rural studies internationally, and this chapter suggests some inspiring examples of how future scholarship and cultural respect might be achieved. Overall, this book is by far the largest of the three reviewed and its content is a kaleidoscope of details and contrasts. Aside from the disappointments noted above and the challenges any editors would face in a project of this breadth, The Elusive Land provides a rewarding resource for any readers interested in Canadian specific environmental questions or those interested to explore the diversity of approaches scholars might take in future investigations of gender–environment questions. In a complete contrast, Women in the European Countryside was recently published as part of the Ashgate series: Perspectives on Rural Policy and Planning. In this case, Buller and Hoggart (2004) draw together a short volume of research reflecting on the complexities of recent and contemporary European rural conditions. Again the gendered lens is concentrated upon the patterns and dynamics of women’s rural lives. Men, masculinities and
ARTICLE IN PRESS Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 22 (2006) 493–502
gender relations between men and women appear only as tangents to the prime attention given to women. After a somewhat disappointing introduction which does little to engage with wider conceptual debates surrounding gender or to conceptualize the ‘countryside’ in any comprehensive theoretical fashion, the remainder of the book is devoted to seven accounts of recent work in various European countries. Stemming primarily from a sociological tradition, the chapters identify the contexts shaping women’s rural lives and experiences. In these cases the ‘‘European countryside’’ is represented as a social, economic and political environment. Little mention of the biophysical dimensions of the countryside is made, and nature-society debates do not figure in any discussion of the ‘countryside’ although some chapters clearly deal with topics that could incorporate questions of nature, or physical-environment focus (e.g. Demossier’s analysis of change in rural France; Inhetveen and Schmitt’s identification of trends in German agriculture; and Limstrand and Stemland’s discussion of types of education associated with developing rural areas in Norway). Understandably, much of the sociological perspective concentrates on human life and relations and thus an environmental review of this work should fairly record the types of environment such authors investigate. In this case a series of detailed descriptions of economic and political environments is provided. The ‘‘European countryside’’ is portrayed as an environment of diverse labor patterns. The countryside is one of work expectiations and employment contexts which demand of, but also constrain, women in various ways depending on their location (Chapter 2). The chapters provide the rich array of women’s work in many settings, industries, and un/paid situations. And authors such as Haugen, Inhetveen and Schmitt and van Hoven point to the widespread social and political norms and contexts that affect women’s opportunities. Here we see the importance of attending to how the social environment (in its broadest sense) deeply influences women’s lives. Moreover, as Hoggatt outlines in introducing the volume, these conditions have individual, structural, cultural and policy roots—and future implications. These complexities are well illustrated in the fascinating contrasts the editors have assembled between intimate individual biography (Inhetveen and Schmitt, Chapter 5) and macronational comparison (Bock, Chapter 2). Anyone wishing to have a deeper picture of the diversity of women’s contexts and actions in rural Europe would find this book informative. As many scholars before these have shown, women are rarely if ever passive subjects in the rural contexts and conditions they navigate. Indeed, Demossier’s Chapter (3) reports on the role of women in local politics and points to the contributions that they can make to the future relations between rural and urban France. While her own focus is primarily socio-political her recognition of the changing nature and function of rural areas (and environments) is well noted, and in turn resonates with the more
495
bio-physical environmental foci reported in The Elusive Land. The women are portrayed to have different priorities (political in the French case, and physical or socio-physical in the Canadian cases), but the strong message that emerges cumulatively is one recording women’s active presence in their environments. Women can be the political participant, activist, agitator and change agents. Recognizing this capacity, enables us to further explore the degree to which gender and environment are mutually constitutive—closely entwined in a set of dialectic relationships. In the two edited collections, these matters are necessarily brief, but in the third volume I wish to review, we have a far more nuanced case of the complex relations weaving gender and environment together into a multifaceted fabric. Taking Stands: Gender and the Sustainability of Rural Communities records a detailed account of Maureen Reed’s research into the gendered experiences and perspectives of women involved in Canadian forestry industry and associated communities. The book illustrates the densely woven relations women have with both the environment and the men in forestry. In this way Taking Stands resonates with the livelihood theme of The Elusive Land (and Reed has a chapter in that anthology as well). But equally, the gender relations with male forestry workers, and the experiences of paid employment and political participation also intersect with the themes recorded in many of the chapters in Women in the European Countryside. Understandably, however, the genre of a stand-alone research monograph has a more intense character. This ranges from the evocative expression of the ‘smell’ and ‘romance’ of ‘big men y and big trees’ (p. 79), through women’s social reproductive labor in sustaining the male dominated workforce of the forestry industry, to the navigation of ‘us’/‘them’ and ‘inside’/‘outsider’ boundaries and politics surrounding environmental politics and primary industry restructuring. Maureen Reed writes with depth and insight and we come to appreciate the diverse realities and rhetoric that swirl through the dynamism of this changing industry. Not since Whatmore’s (1991) Farming Women have I read such a theoretically nuanced, and carefully analyzed, in-depth gender critique of a primary industry. But where Whatmore concentrated primarily on theorizing the gender dynamics at the level of production units, Reed not only critiques women’s multiple experiences on the home front, or in paid or community labor, she also interrogates the processes and struggles associated with the wider industry politics. Equally at home conveying the pithy narratives of the forestry women, the complications of contrasting methodological approaches and the theoretical conundrums she faced in analyzing this research, Reed presents an engaging and challenging book. A full length text, published with a fascinating array of illustrative material, Taking Stands enables us to appreciate the problem Reed uncovered when neither ecofeminist nor labor theories could adequately frame her investigation.
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Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 22 (2006) 493–502
We come to understand the diversity of women’s lives and choices, even while there are some generic environmentlabor and environment-gender dimensions inherent in the forestry industry described. And in the closing chapter, Reed argues cogently for a multi-layered approach to analysis—one which took in broad public actions as well as community activities, and the intimacies of household and relationship struggles. This enables her to contend that women’s ‘choices for activism are embedded within local social and spatial contexts’, and that the outcomes were not homogenous or conservative but ‘heterogeneous and continent, complex, contradictory, and embedded’ (p. 222). By the end of this book, one is more fully aware of how women can experience marginalization and extreme forms of a masculinist environment while also choosing multiple forms of support for that environment and industry. There is also a range of issues surrounding gendered, and industry politics that will bear translation well outside the forestry example that Reed presents. Scholars of rural industries and communities, and others focusing on social movements will all find thought-provoking material in this book for the divisions, threats and impact of conflict (in this case environmentalist-versus-forestry struggles) are palpable in this book. Moreover, the way they are addressed in terms of the complexity of community, identity and political decision-making are relevant to many other settings and the discussion of planning in the final chapter is especially useful. In sum, Reed goes a long way in realizing her hope that the book ‘will help individuals and groups who currently oppose one another in a politics of segregation and conflict to being new conversations in a renewed politics of engagement and resolution’ (p. 230). Finally, postgraduate and professional researchers will also appreciate the frank and reflective appendix on research methods. The books reviewed in this essay, form part of the recent publication of gendered collections (see also Little and Morris, 2005; Goverde et al., 2004). While each volume may have its disappointments, the cumulative impact of these works indicates the breadth of contemporary gender concerns and points to fertile ground for future debates. Many of the works are particularly accessible for postgraduate students which subsequently may inspire further new directions and critiques of gendered rural life. Questions of gender and environment are clearly one
priority area in a new millennium when concerns about the value and sustainability of rural environments, economies and societies will grow in importance. Indeed, taking some of the strengths from the environment-focused works, discussed here, will enable rural development concerns such as those edited by Goverde et al. (2004) to be enhanced via the incorporation of an environment-nature dimension which is currently missing from such work. Equally, recognizing the wider-than-environment efforts of rural gender studies in recent times—especially in the areas of rural masculinities (e.g. Ni Laoire, 2002; Saugeres, 2002) or emotional relations (Little, 2003; Little et al., 2005), and gender politics Panelli and Pini, 2005)—can reciprocally invigorate further gender–environment scholarship. References Berlan-Darque, M., 1988. The division of labour and decision-making in farming couples: power and negotiation. Sociologia Ruralis 28, 271–292. Goverde, H., de Haan, H., Beylina, M., 2004. Power and Gender in European Rural Development. Aldershot, Ashgate. Little, J., 1986. Feminist perspectives in rural geography: an introduction. Journal of Rural Studies 2, 1–8. Little, J., 1987. Gender relations in rural areas: the importance of women’s domestic role. Journal of Rural Studies 3, 335–342. Little, J., 2003. ‘Riding the rural love train’: heterosexuality and the rural community. Sociologia Ruralis 43, 401–417. Little, J., Austin, P., 1996. Women and the rural idyll. Journal of Rural Studies 12, 101–111. Little, J., Morris, C., 2005. Critical Studies in Rural Gender Issues. Aldershot, Ashgate. Little, J., Panelli, R., Kraack, A., 2005. Women’s fear of crime: a rural perspective. Journal of Rural Studies 21, 151–163. Ni Laoire, C., 2002. Masculinities and change in rural Ireland. Irish Geography 35, 16–28. Panelli, R., Pini, B., 2005. ‘This beats a cake stall!’: Farm women’s shifting encounters with the Australian state. Policy and Politics 33, 489–503. Saugeres, L., 2002. The cultural representation of the farming landscape: masculinity, power and nature. Journal of Rural Studies 18, 373–384. Whatmore, S., 1991. Farming Women: Gender, Work and Family Enterprise. Macmillan, London.
Ruth Panelli Department of Geography, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand E-mail address: [email protected].
doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2006.03.004
N. Gallent, A. Mace, M. Tewdwr-Jones, Second Homes: European Perspectives and UK Policies, Aldershot, Ashgate, ISBN 0-7546-4239-9, 2005 (252pp., price £55, hardback). This text updates Rural Second Homes in Europe by Nick Gallent and Mark Tewdwr-Jones, published by Ashgate in 2000, and also addresses new issues relating to second homes within the context of wider housing pressures and
social change in rural areas. It does so primarily by incorporating the results of three recent studies conducted by the authors for the Scottish Executive, the National Assembly for Wales and the Countryside Agency in England, and material from other European sources. The text is divided into three parts dealing respectively with: (i) broad debates relating to the definition of second homes, demand and impacts over the past four decades (Chapters