Rural Masculinities and the Internalisation of Violence in Agricultural Communities

Abstract

This article is based on research we conducted in two agricultural communities as part of a broader study that included mining communities in rural Australia. The data from the agricultural locations tell a different story to that of the mining communities. In the latter, alcohol-fuelled, male-on-male assaults in public places caused considerable anxiety among informants. By contrast, people in the agricultural communities seemed more troubled by hidden violent harms which were largely privatised and individualised, including self-harm, suicide, isolation and threats to men's general wellbeing and mental health; domestic violence; and other forms of violence largely unreported and thus unacknowledged within the wider community (including sexual assault and bullying linked to homophobia). We argue one reason for the different pattern in the agricultural communities is the decline of pub(lic) masculinity, and with this, the increasing isolation of rural men and the increasing propensity to internalise violence. We argue that the relatively high rates of suicide in agricultural communities experiencing rural decline are symptomatic of the internalisation of violence.

The Place of Rural in a Southern Criminology

“…It can also include the acquisition of land for large, plantation style operations, such as palm oil developments in parts of Africa, Indonesia, South America and elsewhere, and their environmental and social (including crime) impacts on local rural communities (Butler and Laurance 2009). Violence against women is another, not only in terms of cultural traditions that enable violence (Krishnan 2005;Panda and Agrawal 2005), but also in the ways change, such as in the form of energy exploration in rural regions of the global South (Carrington et al 2013), affects changes in the nature and incidence of this violence. As well, interpersonal violence of any kind in a rural context is important for development of a rural criminology of the global South (Hogg and Carrington 2016).…”

How Rural Criminology Informs Critical Thinking in Criminology

“…Fafchamps and Moser's (2003) The work of these authors is a reminder that farmers are not simple food producers, isolated from political strife, ethnic tensions, labour relations and repercussions of the marketplace. Even though they did not explicitly employ a critical criminology approach (with the exception of Carrington et al 2013), their recognition of factors larger than the characteristics of the farm operation itself shows graphically what is missing from past studies of agricultural crime and why critical criminologists should address agricultural crime issues as indicative of the ways various structural arrangements within a capitalist mode of production create criminogenic conditions within the food production and distribution systems of societies around the world.…”

“…Maybe the real issue is the logic behind the relationship of the independent variables to the dependent variables. It is quite possible that many rural communities have a social or moral order which keeps some crimes such as violence, both intimate partner violence (DeKeseredy and Schwartz 2009) and other forms of violence as well, in the 'dark' (Barclay, Donnermeyer and Jobes 2004: 20;Carrington, Hogg and McIntosh 2011;Carrington, McIntosh, Hogg and Scott 2013). Hence, reporting violence is suppressed, which is functional for offenders but not so functional for the victims (Gans 1972).…”

Crime in the Rural Context

“…Second, the research indicates that forms of violent crime victimization (with one exception) are low to nearly nonexistent for food producers (Barclay and Donnermeyer, 2011). The exception (discussed below) is domestic violence: that is, how various economic and social forces related to farming facilitate abuse of farm women by their partners (Carrington et al, 2013).…”