The cultural representation of the farming landscape: masculinity, power and nature

摘要

This paper explores ideas of masculinity and femininity as articulated in the representation of the rural landscape among farm families in a community of southern France. Data are obtained from in-depth life history interviews with 36 farming families (men=17 and women=19) over a period of 3 months, and in-depth follow up interviews with 8 women and 7 men. It is shown that the local discourses of the farming landscape emphasize the embodied inherited relationship between the farmer and the land. Inthese discourses, the good farmer is one who has an innate understanding of nature. This sympathetic feel for the land is associated with traditional peasant farming. In contrast, the alienated and exploitative attitude of the bad farmer towards natureis associated with modern agriculture. It is argued that this rhetoric of landscape and identity reproduces patriarchal ideologies which exclude and marginalize women from farming. The real farmer can only be a man because only men are seen as having this natural connection with the land. Women in contrast are defined by their lack of connection to farming and the land. Through an analysis of discourse, it is shown how an imagery of earth and blood constitutes a cultural idiom which legitimates men's mastery over nature and women.