Text, Body, and Tools Changing Mediations of Rural Masculinity

This article explores processes by which masculinities change, using examples from the Norwegian forestry industry. Forestry has traditionally been one of the most masculine rural work activities and an arena where hegemonic rural masculinity is expressed. The study is based on mediations of masculinity in a forestry magazine covering a period of twenty years. Using text, body, and tools as an analytic scheme, pictures of temporal vari-ations of, and relations between, “traditional ” and “new ” types of masculinity are described. Even though practical, physical work in the forest is a basis for rural hege-monic masculinity, other types of work with new cultural influences (organizational and expert work) lead to “dialogical ” masculinities, which open up for more flexible bound-aries and cultural borrowing. This might be important to secure the future viability of rural industries and communities, especially if the recruitment of women is desirable. Key words: gender; masculinity; media texts; forestry; rural In gender research, men and masculinity have become a large field, but this research has, to a very small extent, considered differences between urban and rural space and therefore has been insensitive to the possible rural particularities. To understand the cultural diversity and transformations of rural life, however, it is important to identify and understand rural men as gendered persons and to unpack stereotypes. In the past years, research on masculinity has come on stronger in rural studies (see Campbell and Bel