Contested rural activities: Class, politics and shooting in the French countryside

Abstract

This article illustrates the impact of environmental protection measures on social attitudes and political behaviour in rural France through the prism of hunting. Fieldwork was conducted in France's second largest wetland, La Brière Regional Natural Park. Locals mobilize a claimed tradition of hostility toward a vaguely defined 'them' in order to protect their rural and collective rights. The European Union and the European ruling class have become another face of the threat against the rural way of life of the local working class. As this population felt growing pressure from industrial economic impoverishment and a rural sociability crisis, support for the pro-countryside political party 'Hunting, Fishing, Nature and Traditions' rose. This article depicts hunters' growing concern over EU directives for the conservation of wild migratory birds, and then examines the mobilization and discourse of locals against some aspects of the policy of nature conservation.

Just for Fun: Talk and Tactical Shooting in Southern Saskatchewan

“…There is a paucity of ethnographic research on shooting in Canada. Some ethnographies are concerned with social change, landscape, and class (Lorimer 2000;Mischi 2012), but these tend to focus more on hunting practices than on shooting in general. Unsurprisingly, given the proliferation of guns in the United States of America, and perhaps due to relatively permissive regulations, most ethnographic research on shooting is carried out among American shooters.…”

Deconstructing the Poaching Phenomenon

“…Second, attitudes appear contingent on the violators' affiliation with other locals versus committing the crime in social isolation (Pendleton 1998). For example, in the marshes of Brière, France, and in the Mkuzi Game Reserve in South Africa, communities raised collective funds to pay bail and fines potentially incurred by community members who were prosecuted for poaching (Warchol and Johnson 2009;Mischi 2012). Aesthetics and fairness appear more important in fisheries contexts (Curcione 1992;Hampshire et al 2004;Bell et al 2007).…”

The radicalisation of rural resistance: How hunting counterpublics in the Nordic countries contribute to illegal hunting

“…On the second axis, between hunters and non-hunters, superiority emerges in how the hunting narrative contrasts the nature centred, integrity filled, pure, rural-pastoral lifestyle with environmentally disconnected 'urban outsiders'. Third, superiority is implied in rhetoric describing superiority of hunting rationalities on sustainable wildlife management over remote, shifting, political and elitist EU-based ecological knowledge (Mischi, 2013). Finally, there has been a potent fear within the subculture of losing game populations to predation by large carnivores (Pyka et al, 2007;Bisi and Kurki, 2008).…”

“…Failure to address this through fundamental restructuring of the premises that promote populist movements, namely their inclusion in the public debate, can result in extremist practices (Nagtzaam and Lentini, 2008). The radicalisation of marginalised social groups in society has recently become apparent in the rise of populist hunting and ruralist movements in Europe in response to EU conservation policy infringing on traditional ways of life in the countryside (Bisi et al, 2007;Ekengren, 2012;Mischi, 2013).…”