Survival narratives: Constructing an intersectional masculinity through stories of the rural/urban divide

A New Type of (White) Provider: Shifting Masculinities in Mainstream Country Music from the 1980s to the 2010s

“…Accordingly, over 80 percent of the weeks analyzed in each decade included a reference to heterosexuality. This parallels the significance of heterosexuality to hegemonic masculinities across the United States and in rural communities specifically (see Gray ; Leap , ; Scott ; Silva ).…”

“…The meanings assigned to places complicate intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality. In (sub)urban (Brekhus ) and rural contexts (Leap ), meanings associated with places are centrally important to inequalities within and between communities. Rural sociologists and geographers have repeatedly stressed that meanings associated with rural people and places inform how individuals in rural communities arrange their lives (Bell , ; Ching and Creed ; Cloke and Little ; Cramer ; Falk and Pinhey ; Leap and Thompson ), including how they do gender and reproduce gendered inequalities (Campbell and Bell ; Connell ; Leap , ; Little and Austin ).…”

“…Rural sociologists and geographers have repeatedly stressed that meanings associated with rural people and places inform how individuals in rural communities arrange their lives (Bell , ; Ching and Creed ; Cloke and Little ; Cramer ; Falk and Pinhey ; Leap and Thompson ), including how they do gender and reproduce gendered inequalities (Campbell and Bell ; Connell ; Leap , ; Little and Austin ). Sexuality (Brewer ; Gray ; Little ; Silva ), class (Desmond ; Keller, Lloyd, and Bell ; Morris ), and race (Kimmel and Ferber ; Leap ) also complicate the links between gendered inequalities and rurality. Consequently, although there are multiple rural masculinities complicated by intersecting inequalities, rural men are often expected to do masculinities in particular manners because of their rurality (Campbell and Bell ).…”

“…Further, though there are exceptions (e.g., Kimmel and Ferber ; Scott ), analysts have generally focused on how intersections of class and gender inform how masculinities are rearranged in response to shifting socioeconomic conditions in rural contexts (e.g., Filteau ; Wierenga ). These are valuable contributions, but it will be impossible to consider how hegemonic masculinities are reproduced in rural communities if gender and class remain the primary focus of analyses (Leap ). I show that mainstream country music has reproduced a hegemonic representation of rural masculinity, in spite of rural men’s increasingly precarious economic prospects, by rearranging the intersections of gender, class, sexuality, and race in depictions of masculinity in the genre.…”

Social Solidarity, Collective Identity, Resilient Communities: Two Case Studies from the Rural U.S. and Uruguay

“…Despite the geographic, economic, and sociopolitical marginalization of rural communities, and partially in reaction to it, those living in rural settings often consider themselves to be rural people with values and ways of life that distinguish them from (sub)urban people (Ching and Creed 1997). Though rural communities are incredibly diverse in their socio-ecological compositions (Cloke and Little 1997), ethnographers have repeatedly shown that individuals living in such settings often construct collective identities that frame their rurality as a positive attribute (e.g., Fox 2004;Leap 2017). For example, Bell (1994) illustrates how the residents of an English exurb considered themselves to be country people who were morally superior to those who lived in urban settings.…”