ABSTRACT Unequal gender power relations have long driven many young women to leave rural areas. Recent rurbanisation processes in Spain have intensified with the arrival of a diverse population driven by different motivations, increasing social heterogeneity. Among the newcomers are young, highly educated men involved in innovative entrepreneurial projects aimed at revitalising local economies. This study examines their identities and everyday practices in several geographically well‐connected rural areas of Spain. The aim is to find out whether there are changes in their social roles that may be indicative of more egalitarian gender power relations. In‐depth interviews and field notes were employed to capture the gendered nature of men's experiences. The findings reveal diverse repertoires of masculinity and evidence both progress and resistance in the construction of gender equality. While key patriarchal elements persist—such as lack of co‐responsibility in social reproduction—some values underpinning men's subjectification have been delegitimised, and a process of reflexivity appears to be consolidating.
This article examines how boundaries of belonging are constructed in a Norwegian mountain valley where second homes increasingly outnumber permanent residents. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in between 2020 and 2025, I illustrate how second-home owners have increasingly sought political influence in the valley by invoking their financial contributions and numerical presence. Permanent residents, however, typically resist the idea that people who purchase property and consume the place for leisure should have influence in local affairs. In response to experiences of displacement, villagers advocate for more stringent criteria for inclusion in the valley's political community. By analysing the dynamics between hosts and migrants in this context, the article contributes to a broader understanding of how boundaries of inclusion and exclusion are constructed in rural communities undergoing amenity-driven social change. Such dynamics have rarely been examined in the Nordic countries where egalitarian values and social welfare programmes are often assumed to mitigate social differentiation.
How is hegemonic agriculture produced, reproduced and challenged at the mesosocial level? We explore this question by examining the experiences of 37 farmers in Australia and the Netherlands who are 'other' in hegemonic agriculture: They are women, new to farming and engaged in alternative agriculture. Their experience of navigating their otherness in traditional mesosocial agricultural spaces demonstrates that masculinity, productivism and longevity in agriculture remain co-constructive of hegemonic agriculture. By repeating ritualised performances of masculinity, layering communication about alternative agricultural practices onto existing rural scripts and demonstrating a commitment to their rural community, these women attempted to gain acceptance as legitimate farmers. It was only the norms of longevity in agriculture and commitment to community that expanded to allow a degree of acceptance for this cohort. Their embodiment as women and use of alternative, non-industrial production systems continued to position them as marginal. This paper deepens our understanding of how hegemony may be maintained by making access to the resources required to challenge hegemony dependent upon performances within the discursive matrix.
This paper explores the concept of community resilience in the context of cross-border wildfire management in the Bohemian and Saxon Switzerland National Parks. It focuses on three interrelated dimensions: institutional preparedness, inclusive community engagement and adaptive learning in the aftermath of natural disasters. Drawing on qualitative methods, the study engaged local actors and community representatives from both sides of the border to examine how institutional frameworks and grassroots participation shape resilience strategies. The findings suggest that effective resilience depends on organisational transformation within local governance, the active involvement of diverse community voices in both prevention and recovery and the incorporation of lessons learned into adaptive policies. The study also reveals tensions between environmental protection and community interests, which complicate cross-border cooperation. While acknowledging the limitations of research, the paper offers valuable insights into multi-level forms of governance and highlights the importance of participatory approaches in fostering sustainable and resilient communities.
Land degradation in rural areas is often addressed through technical and economic measures, while the relational and emotional dimensions of governance remain underexplored. This study examines how empathy operates within participatory land governance, drawing on a participatory scenario planning (PSP) workshop conducted in the T & acirc;rnava Mare microregion, Transylvania, Romania. It is one of Europe's largest high nature value farmland landscapes and exemplifies the social and institutional challenges of post-communist rural contexts. Using interpretive discourse analysis, the study analyses participants' narratives to trace the emergence of self-empathy, mirrored empathy, cognitive empathy and empathic action during collective visioning and backcasting. The findings show that empathy develops through interconnected communicative processes, strengthening group cohesion and grounding land-use visions in locally embedded values of care and stewardship. It is concluded that PSP can serve as a planning tool and a relational practice that enhances collaborative environmental governance in rural regions undergoing transition.
Financial incentives go a long way in securing land manager participation in environmental programmes. They are nevertheless limited in their capacity to influence the quality of engagement with nature recovery actions. Drawing on responses from members of organisations active in nature conservation and restoration across four UK study sites-Devon and Cornwall, Peak District, East of England and the Scottish Highlands-we emphasise the importance of examining the conditions for high-quality engagement in environmental programmes. We do so through a focus on land managers' own relationships with the actions they take to recover nature, particularly the extent to which those actions are reified: treated as ends in themselves, rather than as means to the end (i.e., enhanced nature conservation and recovery). Using the concept of reification, we aim to show that the manner in which economic incentives are deployed in environmental programmes does not only influence participation but also the quality of land managers' engagement in nature recovery. Reification therefore invites us to carefully consider how those incentives mediate the actions of land managers.
Previous research has shown that identifying a successor prompts significant changes in farm management, a phenomenon commonly referred to as the succession effect. Based on a survey of Polish and Italian farmers and the use of count data regressions, we investigate whether the successor's gender and involvement in farm operations influence the succession effect. We find that the identification of a successor has a significant effect on all types of management practices. The identification of a female successor favours the adoption of innovation and diversification practices. Conversely, identifying a male successor favours integration practices. However, the effect emerges only when the successor is already involved in farm management, indicating that both certainty of succession and the successor's direct engagement are decisive. This evidence helps better outline the succession effect theory. To leverage the succession effect, policymakers could incentivise successors' early involvement in farm management and make the existing post-installation support for young farmers available prior to succession.
This paper delves into the experiences of new-entrant women farmers in creating leadership roles in community-supported agriculture (CSA) and how these experiences relate to the transformative potential of this agri-food model. It contributes to the literature on gender relations in CSA and agri-food transformation more broadly by offering new insights into disidentification from the traditional 'woman farmer' identity prescribed by capitalist agri-food systems. We present case studies of three women farmers in two different CSA initiatives in Portugal, using data from semi-structured interviews and participant observation, and analysing them through open coding. Our study demonstrates that a focus on disidentification strategies shifts attention to the analysis of dissent from the status quo, revealing the tensions and ambivalent effects that ensue. Disidentification and leadership roles were influenced by these women farmers' family constellations, sexuality and agricultural backgrounds. Although CSA initiatives are conducive to women farmers' emancipation, the absence of collective efforts to address unequal gender relations hinders their transformative potential. CSA initiatives tend to overlook power imbalances emerging from their internal micro-politics and neglect the ambivalent effects shaping their transformative efforts. These findings offer new insights into agri-food transformation from a gender perspective and emphasise the non-linear nature of transformation as women farmers continually disidentify from the traditional 'woman farmer' identity, even as they create alternative power positions in CSA that align more with their aspirations and abilities.
The issue of gender (in)equality occupies an important place in sociological research, but there is still a lack of empirical studies that focus on rural areas. Based on the research approach of qualitatively guided sequential mixed-methods research design (QUAL -> quan), this study analysed 53 semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with Croatian rural residents in 2022, followed by a survey of a nationally representative sample of rural residents in Croatia (N = 831) in 2023. Most respondents generally stated that women and men have equal rights in the private domain. However, despite the growing awareness of gender (in)equality in rural Croatia, the traditional division of gender roles is still somewhat present. In addition, there are other aspects of inequality in the social and professional domain, which are reflected in fewer employment opportunities for women, low participation of women in social life and the lack of basic healthcare for women in rural areas. This study found an increase in awareness of the issue of gender inequality in rural areas of Croatia, although it is still mainly manifested in the attitudes of women, while men are more inclined to report that gender equality has been achieved.
There is a renewed interest in Europe's rural regions and in the consequences of migration on rural social relations, economy and landscape. This paper seeks to contribute to these debates with a case from Eastern Europe showing the contribution of returned migrants in the cultural branding of the overly romanticised region of Transylvanian Highlands, Romania. By conducting fieldwork in a series of localities in the region, we analyse how returnees develop entrepreneurialism through a specific mix of social activism with business-oriented activities, aiming to change local villages through branding. The specific rural branding is based on a notion of European medievality, fusing together local food, crafting and idyllic lifestyle. We explain how returnees acting as 'entrepreneurs of place' participate in the reworking of the local cultural landscape. They are active in articulating a vision of Transylvanian Highlands' rural idyll-an exoticism coming out of remoteness and a unique landscape linked to the regions' German medieval heritage. Thus, while employing a critical perspective, we contribute to the debates on return migration and on place branding reshaping rurality.
The global corporate agro-food system has marginalised food production in remote regions where mountain dairy farming has historically utilised non-arable land for livestock grazing. This decline has weakened local food value chains, even though mountain dairy systems function as values-based supply chains that integrate social and ecological values into food production. This study examined the role of social capital, specifically bonding, bridging, and linking ties, in shaping actor relationships in mountainous dairy supply chains in Grisons, Switzerland. We compared a cooperatively organised system with an independently structured one to explore how social capital influences food production, distribution and marketing. Cooperative structures foster both bonding and bridging connections, whereas independently organised dairy systems rely more heavily on bonding ties at the farm level. Strengthening social capital through new collaborations and revitalised relationships, by building improved bridging and linking networks, is essential for driving future territorial innovation and viability.
This article contributes new insights into farming women's experiences of isolation and how they imagine and create socio-spatial formations for affective connections in their socio-cultural and material environments. We draw on in-depth interviews with farming women and participatory co-design research in a sparsely populated region of South Australia to explore gendered experience of isolation. We show that women experienced 'the farm' as generating disconnection from sites of community connection, family of origin and established social relationships, including their husbands. Opportunities for meaningful connection between women seeking engagement with creative and non-human materiality were also limited. Women's narratives offered insights into the entanglements of intra-action in which they experienced themeselves, the company of other rural women, the natural environments and creative practice. Our conceptualisation of isolation expands current policy to suggest that initiatives should attend to place-based entanglements that farming women desire to ameliorate social isolation.
Agrarian mobilisations no longer target solely public authorities, legislation and its economic and professional consequences. They are now increasingly structured to respond to other social movements and produce a structured discourse aimed at public opinion. In France, the denunciation of 'agribashing' generated significant activity on Twitter (now X) between 2018 and 2020, before disappearing almost completely thereafter. Drawing on online data analysis and traditional qualitative methods (interviews and observations of public and private events), this article analyses how the agrarian question shifted onto a public, controversial terrain, which reframes economic and environmental issues in terms of a moral question. We show the emergence of a new 'positive' repertoire of contention, promoting technological modernity and the responsible ethics of producers, which compete with a more contentious repertoire that voices the resentment of a large number of farmers faced with what they perceive as an 'unfair' criticism from civil society. The divergence of repertoires can thus be interpreted as an internal backlash within the hegemonic agrarian discourse on productivism.
Farmers' rearing practices in livestock production and their decision to adopt alternative practices are of ongoing interest in rural sociology. For social scientists examining alternative agriculture, enduring questions remain about not only how alternatives can emerge but also how mainstream systems often remain relatively unperturbed by the emergence of alternative practices. This article explores these questions through an examination of cow-calf contact (CCC) in Norway. In the industrial dairy sector in the Global North, the removal of dairy calves shortly after calving has become an emerging concern within veterinarian medicine and ethology. In this study, we explored why dairy farmers decide to change rearing practices to CCC systems where calves have contact with the dam for more than 14 days in dairy production, an alternative practice which misaligns with wider practices in the industrial dairy sector. The paper reports the results of qualitative interviews with Norwegian farmers who use these alternative practices and, using Convention Theory (CT), addresses the on-farm and off-farm dynamics that shape both the emergence as well as the current marginalisation of this new alternative practice of calf and cow rearing in dairy farming. The results of the study reveal multiple dynamics shaping the adoption of CCC. The results reveal the way that farmers have the ability to draw on multiple justifications which enable CCC adoption despite significant structural misalignment with Norway's industrial dairy sector. The conclusions support the arguments of social scientists engaging with animal welfare about the importance of societal dynamics both outside and within agricultural systems. How these social dynamics connect with on-farm contexts is highly influential in shaping animal rearing practices and associated farmer justifications. The use of CT demonstrates clearly that creating better animal welfare practices, in this case through the adoption of CCC, is not simply a matter of education, policy or technical interventions. It requires wider alignments between worlds of production, often in hybrid forms, or else the solid industrial centre of these kinds of farming world simply endures relatively untroubled and unchallenged.
This article draws together sociological studies of diagnostic practice with human-animal studies and examines how Swedish veterinarians' diagnostic practice for individual animals differs from diagnostic practice for groups of animals. The empirical focus of the article is diagnostic practice for dairy cattle and poultry in intensive production, and the study examines the relationship between knowing and managing disease and how the objects of veterinarian knowledge are shaped in interaction with animals' social positions and their status as killable. The study shows that while diagnostic uncertainty is inherent in both dairy cattle and poultry settings, the enactment of disease, patienthood and appropriate response strategies differ significantly. The study argues that social aspects of diagnostic practice as well as the contingent character of diseases, bodies and patients are accentuated in relation to production animals. Moreover, the study shows how diagnostic practices participate in the ethical ordering of production animals' lives and deaths but in different ways: They produce different modes of making animals killable.
Rural small towns have long been viewed as places of retail and service provision for both their populations and people in surrounding rural hinterlands, although in many countries these roles are in decline, with these settlements increasingly viewed as ‘left behind places’ experiencing peripheralisation. In countries such as the United Kingdom, however, some of these towns have seen inflows of capital, residents and visitors, stimulating economic and physical growth. This article examines whether peripheralisation can apply to towns experiencing such contrasting fortunes, focusing on small rural towns in England. Using data from the 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation, the 2021 Census, and surveys, regional variations in deprivation are identified, particularly in former coalfield and coastal areas. It also explores towns with low deprivation, often connected to urban centres or service economies. Seven clusters of small rural towns are identified, highlighting how peripheralisation interacts with different dynamics, including gentrification and post-pandemic changes.
Recent research has suggested that the rise of the radical right in rural regions can partly be explained by rural identities. Yet, the nuances of how cultural identities and political allegiances are interconnected, particularly through cultural practices, remain relatively unexplored. This article addresses this gap by examining the association between car culture—encapsulated by interest in and use of cars—and political preferences in rural Sweden. Utilising three novel data sources that encompass survey data, electoral trends and the prevalence of EPA-tractors—a distinctive aspect of Swedish car culture—the study uncovers a strong correlation between these cultural expressions and support for the radical right-wing party, the Sweden Democrats, especially among younger individuals, often exceeding the influence of economic factors. The findings elucidate the connection between political and cultural identities and their role in shaping political behaviour in rural Sweden, providing significant implications for understanding the rise of the radical right in rural regions.
This article examines how agricultural rituals can serve as methodological tools to uncover migrant workers’ voices and facilitate dialogue in agro-industrial regions under pressure. On the basis of 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Haspengouw, Belgium, and Westland, the Netherlands, the research combined participant observation in agricultural workplaces with the co-creation of the exhibition Picking Fruit, Sowing Stories and the organisation of community dialogues. The article highlights how rituals can ground an engaged research positionality by creating spaces of encounter and unexpected, constructive conversations between otherwise disconnected communities. Analysis of both the process of co-creation and the community dialogues suggests that creative methodologies and performance-based frames such as rituals can help bridge social divides. At the same time, transformative research in this field requires critical reflexivity on researcher positionality, broader local mobilisation, political willingness and more inclusive co-creation processes.
Looking back to the ongoing and fluid process of identity formation of the contemporary hunter in Europe (the 'becoming' of hunters), this study explores self-chosen identities, motives and hunter-nature relations in a singularly archaic hunting context: the canton of Grisons, Switzerland. As a qualitative case study, this article investigates the becoming of hunters and their self-perception within a context where social attitudes towards hunting and the appreciation of the natural world remain deeply rooted in tradition, while being pulled into modernity. Based on 10 semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation, the study examines how individuals make sense of hunting in relation to such broader cultural foundations as well as shifts. Our findings reveal a complex interaction between enduring modern and archaic hunting traditions, the influence of postmodern developments, and point to the emergence of what we call 'metamodern' oscillation of self-realisation for the hunters. This metamodern perspective, particularly given its archaic context, offers a conceptually original angle, positioning hunting as a practice where self-limitation, negotiation of identity and a reconsidered power structure between humans and nature play a key role. We submit that our case study of Grisons, where strong, even anachronistic traditions, coexist with contemporary trends including public scrutiny and shifting ethical standards, provides a particularly propitious context for the study of hunting subculture and hope that it will incite further exploration of metamodernism in similar or other contexts.
The European Commission has made an explicit commitment to gender equality. But does the EU's oldest and most financially significant common policy support this goal? This paper investigates the gendered effects of the latest reform of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), specifically Pillar I (Direct Support and Market Measures). Given that CAP policies are translated into National Strategic Plans (NSPs), we illustrate and ground our analysis with examples from the Dutch NSP. Following a review of the role of women in EU agriculture, we present an interpretivist policy analysis. Guided by the framework of feminist institutionalism, we examine the policy for ‘rules about gender’ and ‘rules with gendered effects’. It is concluded that the CAP, through its gender neutrality, fails to adequately consider women. Our analysis further shows that some interventions may potentially discriminate against women farmers—either creating or further solidifying structural disadvantages.
