Farming exit and ascriptions of blame: The ordinary ethics of farming communities

摘要

During times of prolonged drought and other significant threats to farming viability, the Australian Government provides farm exit support grants which are intended to enable farmers to leave farms that are economically nonviable. This paper focuses on some of the discourses that circulate within farming communities that constitute farmers' decisions to accept exit packages as a moral event. Moral discourses in everyday social interaction and mundane conversation constitute what Lambek (2010) refers to as 'ordinary ethics'. In farmer narratives, ordinary ethics are enacted through communicative labour to invoke blame about what constitutes a 'bad' farmer. Blame is situated as a transgression of rural values and ideals of the 'respectable' farmer and the moral standards mobilised for rural citizenship and land husbandry. Understanding these normative discourses and attributions can provide insight into the social and discursive dynamics in rural communities that shape loss of self-worth and provide the conditions for the possibility for distress among farmers who are in the process of deciding to exit farming or who have accepted an exit package.