Alcohol, violence, frontier masculinities and the Australian mining boom

While the economic impacts of mining in Australia have been widely discussed, the social impacts of mining are subject to much speculation. In the social sciences, the impacts of mining have largely been understood with through a social disorganization l ens, with population instability being linked to social disorder. Recently , critical criminology has also linked violence and fear of crime in mining regions with work patterns associated with supercapitalism and an overreliance on non-resident workforces. This paper draws on data from in - depth interviews and focus groups from three mining regions in Australia. We argue that the criminogenic impacts of mining must be understood in relation to both the ecological aspects of rural and/or isolated communities and the power relations that exist in these communities. In particular, we contextualize the criminogenic impacts of mining with reference to gender relations in mining communities and what we refer to as monologic expressions of masculinity. The paper con tributes to the burgeoning literature on violent crime in diverse rural settings