Country Boys: Masculinity and Rural Life

Rural masculinity is hardly a typical topic for a book. There is something unexpected, faintly disturbing, even humorous about investigating that which has long been seen and yet so often overlooked. But the ways in which we think about and socially organize masculinity are of great significance in the lives of both men and women. In Country Boys we also see that masculinity is no less significant in rural life than in urban life.

The essays in this volume offer much-needed insight into the myths and stereotypes as well as the reality of the lives of rural men. Interdisciplinary in scope, the contributions investigate what it means to be a farming man, a logging man, or a boy growing up in a country town and how this impacts both men and women in city and country. Chapters cover not only the United States but also Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, giving the book an unusually broad scope.

Hugh Campbell is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Agriculture, Food, and Environment at the University of Otago, New Zealand.Michael Mayerfeld Bell is Associate Professor of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His most recent book is Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability (Penn State, 2004).Margaret Finney recently completed her Ph.D. thesis on gender and literature and is currently working at the Centre for the Study of Agriculture, Food, and Environment at the University of Otago, New Zealand.