Reshaping Gender and Class in Rural Spaces, edited by BarbaraPini and BelindaLeach, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. 246 pp. $114.95 (cloth). ISBN: 978–1‐4094–0291–6.

Gender and class analyses are highly useful ways to understand the local and global nexus in various social problems, yet scholars continue to struggle to bring gender and class analysis together in meaningful ways. In their introduction, “Transformations of Class and Gender in the Globalized Countryside,” Barbara Pini and Belinda Leach situate their edited volume in the context of globalization and social justice as applicable to people in rural places. They link gender, class, and rural scholarship in developed countries to research that usually focuses on developing countries. Pini and Leach argue that rural places have been characterized as classless, but that paying greater attention to class is essential for social justice. While intersectional approaches to gender, class, and race are becoming increasingly popular, many scholars only discuss gender, race, class, and other categories side by side rather than in a truly intersectional way. However, this volume includes several good examples of intersectional theories of class and gender which posit that identities not only intersect but that those intersections create distinct experiences. The main drawback of this book is a tendency of some authors to treat gender and women interchangeably. In other words, some chapters are about women but do not include gender analysis. Overall, the chapters collected in this book bring to the fore class and gender as critical to understanding common rural topics such as agriculture, natural resources, manufacturing, and family and social issues like race and sexuality. Gender and class in agriculture is the focus of chapters 3–6, and one highlight is chapter 6, “Configurations of Gender, Class, and Rurality in Resource Affected Rural Australia,” by Pini and Robyn Mayes. This well-written chapter explores the perceptions of class differences, emphasizing how rural women perform class. Pini and Mayes note that considerations of gender, variation in class definitions, and the symbolic and affective nature of class are generally lacking in the literature. They approach class in those terms in the rural context by interviewing 18 women connected to the agricultural and mining industries in an area of Australia where the economy is shifting from farming to mining. The women Pini and Mayes interview are hesitant to claim a class status but do recognize a difference, particularly between agricultural families and mining families. These perceptions reveal that class is not necessarily dependent on income but rather the cultural interpretations of work, education, commitment to place, and lifestyle. The most notable result is that the farming women seem much more discerning and analytical about class distinctions than women from mining families. Perhaps this is related to the fact that the farming families were long-term residents of the area and the mining families were generally newcomers, though Pini and Mayes don't analyze this potentially important finding. Pini and Mayes's chapter also provides a topical transition to a focus on natural resources, and Suzanna E. Tallichet picks up this thread in chapter 8, “Digging Deeper: Rural Appalachian Women Miners' Reconstruction of Gender in a Class Based Community.” Tallichet conducted interviews with women miners and males in the mining industry in the early and mid 1990s. These data show that women were able to break barriers in a male-dominated and highly masculinized industry. However, Tallichet also recognizes that women miners had to use accepted masculine discourses, specifically those of the breadwinner and the “good miner,” in order to be accepted. Unfortunately, Tallichet's data are almost 20 years old at this point, so updated data would be useful, particularly in the volatile resource-extraction industry. However, the results are still important in understanding how cultural and economic transitions affect gender in working-class communities and how working-class women redefine gender and class roles, especially when they are the extreme minority in the industry. The final rural economic sector covered in this collection is manufacturing. Leach offers a clearly written essay in chapter 7, “Jobs for Women? Gender and Class in Ontario's Ruralized Automotive Manufacturing Industry.” She argues that although traditional gender roles are sometimes rigidly maintained in rural Ontario, women entering manufacturing challenge rural industrial masculinity. However, she identifies two barriers to women's success and well-being when they go into manufacturing. First, the industry is unstable and women are laid off at disproportional rates. Second, many women experience sexism on the job. Thus, while women's participation in the automotive industry is particularly significant in this rural context, gender and class still intersect to maintain inequality for these women. To round out the book, chapters 9–12 focus on family and identity. A particularly helpful piece here is chapter 9, “Class, Rurality and Lone Parents’ Connections with Waged Labour: The Mediating Influences of Relational Assets and Human Capital,” by Annie Hughes. In this chapter, Hughes deals with the way class and rurality shape the experience of lone parenting (or what would be referred to as single parenting in the United States). Hughes argues against the popularized notion that working-class parents prioritize mothering while middle-class parents prioritize work. She thoughtfully addresses many variables in rural communities that create employment barriers for middle-class women. Another highlight is chapter 10, “Not All Bright Lights, Big City? Classed Intersections in Urban and Rural Sexual Geographies,” by Yvette Taylor. This chapter represents an important addition to the growing literature on rural sexuality (Campbell, Bell, and Finney 2006; Gray 2009; Herring 2010). While continuing to debunk the metronormative aspect of homosexual identity, Taylor offers a class analysis of qualitative data gathered from gays and lesbians in rural Great Britain. She shows how it is not only the rural-urban continuum that creates normative spaces for gays and lesbians but also the class divide. The working class is seen as ignorant and intolerant while the middle class is seen as educated and tolerant. Taylor argues that critical analysis of sexuality and place should also acknowledge issues of class. After several well-written and thought-provoking chapters, Pini and Leach provide no concluding chapter. This addition would be useful for making more generalizable statements about gender and class as a way of synthesizing the chapters. Specifically, a deeper examination of the meaning of gender in these chapters would bring the gender aspect of this book into balance with the class analysis. However, readers of some or all of the chapters in this book will likely incorporate the theoretical and empirical knowledge presented here into their own work in the stead of any broad conclusive statements. Those interested in gender and class issues in rural sociology, social dimensions of agriculture and natural resources, rural migrant labor, and rural families and communities will all find useful chapters in this collection, which could be used as a reader for graduate or upper-level undergraduate classes employing a gender-and-class lens to understand rural issues broadly. As a whole, the book contributes many new perspectives and creates a more nuanced understanding of class and gender in the Australian, Canadian, British, and U.S. contexts.

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