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It is established that, in many countries, farmers recognise displayed tidiness in farming practice as indicative of 'good' farming. This paper asks whether Irish farmers share this recognition, and considers how this may affect uptake of agri‐environmental schemes and the potential for alterations in farming practices associated with such schemes to become 'culturally embedded'. Taking a Bourdieusian approach, this paper examines features which Irish farmers associate with tidy, 'good' farming practices and the resulting capital invested in them. It is found that the Irish participants do recognise displayed tidy practice as cultural capital, but that it is mainly male farmers who afford this capital sufficient value to recognise the display of tidiness as status‐conferring symbolic capital. This recognition results in inter‐farmer criticism and judgement, and in the questioning by many male farmers of the untidy farmer's right to the 'good farmer' identity. This is not the case for female farmers, who generally dislike the culture of judgement and criticism. In light of this culture, it is suggested that tidiness is one reason why agri‐environmental schemes do not become culturally embedded, and that this issue may be exacerbated by the low representation of Irish women in farm ownership and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is set within the context of a growing interest in the gendered nature of rurality and of rural life, and in particular in the context of an emerging literature on rural masculinities. It focuses on rural men and in particular on the phenomenon of rising male rural suicide rates. The paper reviews existing research in order to ascertain the validity of popular claims of high and rising suicide rates among young men in rural Ireland, and explores possible explanations for this phenomenon. It draws on medical and psychological literature but sets this material in a wider geographical context, focusing on processes of contemporary rural restructuring and the oft-cited masculinity crisis. The paper concludes that in order to understand the processes behind rising male suicide rates, we need to understand the struggles for power and identity that are going on in places, and the movements of people in and out of places. Therefore geography and gender studies can contribute to a greater understanding of the phenomenon, suggesting that this is an area that merits further interdisciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that it is necessary to study the structure of power in rural life in order to understand the marginalized position of farm women, how this position is maintained and why women subscribe to it. A study of the distribution and sources of power in an Irish farming community proved useful in addressing these questions. This paper is based on data collected ever a three-and-a-half month period in 1987, and a further five-week period in 1989. Participant observation and several intensive interviews with twenty farm wives were carried out, as well as interviews with members of farming organizations, farming advisors' services and local organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food has become marginalized from discussions of agriculture and rural development, due partly to a division of labour within the discipline which treats agriculture as part of the sociology of work and production, and partly to the acceptance by rural sociologists and policy makers that the task of farmers in the contemporary developed world is less to produce food than to produce the countryside. Using ideas from the organic farming movement in Ireland, the paper argues that food is still a highly significant issue for both consumption and development, and needs to be conceptualized in rural sociology in more holistic ways. It also suggests that if food is not treated as central to the rural environment, organic farming will tend to be assimilated into environmental conservationism and its critique of conventional productivist forms of agriculture undermined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of a case study of pan time farming in the small farm economy of Western Ireland. Three aspects of off farm employment arc examined factors affecting the adoption of employment, its impact on the rural economy as expressed in investment patterns, and its impact on land use patterns The study compares full time and part time farms. The results help to supplement the findings of previous research on part time farming in Ireland and illustrate that off farm employment has both benefits and disadvantages for the rural economy. On the one hand, population is retained in the countryside and opportunities arc provided for improving general standards of living, while on the other, intensities of land use are reduced. The study concludes that while strategies for increasing the productivity of part time farms are required a broadly based approach is needed m development policies which takes account of the inter-connections between part time farming and other aspects of rural social and economic life [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on several abstracts on sociology. "Ontology matters: The relational materiality of nature and agro-food studies," by David Goodman examines This paper examines the question of ontological choice in agro-food studies, and emphasizes that such choices are consequential, determining analytical points of entry, arenas of theory and praxis, and normative positioning. These questions are explored by examining the privileged place of the labor process in the development of agro-food studies and, as a more specific illustration, in analyses of agro-biotechnology. It is suggested that the modernist ontological priorities embedded in the unreconstructed conceptualization of the labor process not only have been ignored but also have found an unexamined place in post-structuralist agrarian political economy. The discussion closes by reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of actor-network theory as an alternative avenue of critical engagement with the new bio-politics of agro-food networks. "A matter of life and death? Men, masculinities and staying behind in rural Ireland," by Caitriona Ni Laoire is set within the context of a growing interest in the gendered nature of rurality and of rural life, and in particular in the context of an emerging literature on rural masculinities. It focuses on rural men and in particular on the phenomenon of rising male rural suicide rates.