Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Images of Cows, Stories of Gender

  • Chapter
Illdisciplined Gender

Part of the book series: Crossroads of Knowledge ((CROKNOW))

  • 506 Accesses

Abstract

Beginning from a series of miscommunications, misunderstandings and seemingly incongruous connections, this chapter explores how three trans- or interdisciplinary areas of research might meet. By exploring the way that cattle are depicted in trade magazines, the chapter discusses how perspectives informed by gender studies, animal studies and rural development might examine how animals are both mirrors of rural gender relations and active in them. Such meetings of different perspectives might help to build towards more sustainable rural futures as they challenge the way that gendered narratives have implications for individual farmers. In addition the chapter points to ways that these narratives have material impacts as animal caretaking and the bodies of individual animals are shaped in response to these gendered narratives.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Unfortunately Genus Breeding Ltd. has not given permission to reprint images from their catalogues. However, their catalogues are available online and the specific images are available from the author.

  2. 2.

    Haraway (2008) highlights the zoonotic implications of H5N1 in global systems of production and consumption. Equally Stassart and Whatmore (2003) identify how food scares highlight the ‘metabolic intimacies’ between species and animal agency in bridging trust between systems of production and consumption.

  3. 3.

    See, for example, Garry Marvin’s interesting account of Being Human in the Bullfight (2007) that identifies the significance of the battle between nature and culture within the corrida (both the bullfight itself and the arena). The victory of the matador over the bull is indicative of the conquest of intelligence over strength (Page 203) and the cultured, restrained urban over the unruly and wild rural space, a conquest made all the more significant through the bringing of the wild bull into the urban space where the corrida is located (page 199).

  4. 4.

    Equally the direction is not important bodies that define spaces which shape discourse, which defines bodies.

References

  • Adams, C. J. (2003). The pornography of meat. New York: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, G. (2004). The open. Man and Animal (trans: Attell, K.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bear, C. (2006). Salmon by numbers: Quantification and understandings of nature. Scottish Geographical Journal, 122, 185–203.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, D. (2007). Feral masculinities: Urban versus rural in City Slickers and Hunters Blood. In R. Fish (Ed.), Cinematic countrysides (Inside popular film). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Birke, L. (2002). Intimate familiarities? Feminism and human-animal studies. Society and Animals, 10, 429–436.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brandth, B. (2006). Agricultural body-building: Incorporations of gender, body and work. Journal of Rural Studies, 22, 17–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bryld, M. M., & Lykke, N. (Eds.). (2000). Cosmodolphins: Feminist cultural studies of technology, animals and the sacred. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bull, J. (2011). Encountering fish, flows and waterscapes through angling. Environment and Planning A, 43, 2267–2284.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buller, H. (2004). Where the wild things are: The evolving iconography of rural fauna. Journal of Rural Studies, 20, 131–141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coldwell, I. (2007). New farming masculinities: ‘More than just shit-kickers’, we’re ‘switched-on’ farmers wanting to balance lifestyle, sustainability and coin. Journal of Sociology, 43, 87–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DEFRA. (2003). Code of recommendations for the welfare of livestock: Cattle. London: DEFRA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Donovan, J., & Adams, C. J. (2007). The feminist care tradition in animal ethics. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Folker, M. P., Svendsen, M. N., & Koch, L. (2009). Lifeworlds of the pig: Towards a cartography of porcine/human entanglements. In H. Tora (Ed.), Investigating human/animal relations in science, culture and work (Crossroads of knowledge, no. 10, pp. 142–153). Uppsala: Uppsala University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fortwangler, C. (2009). A place for the donkey: Natives and aliens in the US Virgin Islands. Landscape Research, 34, 205–222.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fox, R. (2006). Animal behaviours, post-human lives – Everyday negotiations of the animal-human divide in pet-keeping. Social and Cultural Geography, 7, 525–537.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fox, R., & Walsh, K. (2011). Furry belongings: Pets, migration and home. In J. Bull (Ed.), Animal movements: Moving animals (Crossroads of knowledge, no. 17, pp. 97–117). Uppsala: Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gary, M. (2007). Being human in the bullfight. In L. Kalof & A. Fitzgerald (Eds.), The animals reader: The essential classic and contemporary writings (pp. 197–208). Oxford: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gould, S. J. (1996). The mismeasure of man (2nd, Rev. ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grassini, C. (2005). Designer cows:The practices of cattle breeding between skill and standardisation. Society and Animals, 13, 33–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grassini, C. (2007). Managing cows: An ethnography of breeding practices and uses of reproductive technology in contemporary dairy farming in Lombardy (Italy). Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 38, 488–510.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minesota: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. (2012). Awash in urine: DES and Premarin® in multispecies response-ability. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 40, 301–317.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D., & Goodeve, T. N. (1998). How like a leaf: An interview with Donna J. Haraway. New York: Routledge Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hatley, J. (2011). Blood intimacies and biodicy: Keeping faith with ticks. Australian Humanities Review, 50, 63–76.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hinchliffe, S., & Bingham, N. (2008). Securing life: The emerging practices of biosecurity. Environment and Planning A, 40, 1534–1551.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hinchliffe, S., & Whatmore, S. (2006). Living cities: Towards a politics of conviviality. Science as Culture, 15, 123–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holloway, L., & Morris, C. (2008). Boosted bodies: Genetic techniques, domestic livestock bodies and complex representations of life. Geoforum, 39, 1709–1720.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holloway, L., & Morris, C. (2012). Contesting genetic knowledge practices in livestock breeding: Biopower, biosocial collectivities and heterogeneous resistances. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30, 60–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holloway, L., Morris, C., Gilna, B., & Gibbs, D. (2011). Choosing and rejecting cattle and sheep: Changing discourses of (de)selection in pedigree livestock breeding. Agriculture and Human Values, 28, 533–547.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holmberg, T. (2011). Mortal love. Care practices in animal experimentation. Feminist Theory, 12, 147–163.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holmberg, T., & Ideland, M. (2010). Dilemman med transgena djur – forskningspraktik och etik. Uppsala: Crossroad of Knowledge Series Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jerolmack, C. (2007). Animal practices, ethnicity, and community: The Turkish pigeon handlers of Berlin. American Sociological Review, 72, 874–894.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Matless, D., Merchant, P., & Watkins, C. (2005). Animal landscapes: Otters and wildfowl in England 1945–1970. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30, 191–205.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McHugh, S. (2011). Animal stories: Narrating across species lines. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Merchant, C. (1989). The death of nature: Women, ecology, and the scientific revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nordström Källström, H. (2008). Mellan trivsel och ensamhet: om sociala villkor i lantbruket (Acta Universitatis agriculturae Sueciae:74). Uppsala: Doktorsavhandling. Institutionen för stad och land, SLU.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peter, G., Bell, M. M., & Jarnagin, S. (2000). Coming back across the fence: Masculinity and the transition to sustainable agriculture. Rural Sociology, 65, 215–233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Potts, A., & White, M. (2008). New Zealand vegetarians: At odds with their nation. Society and Animals, 16, 336–353.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Redmalm, D. (2013). Holy bonsai wolves: Chihuahuas and the Paris Hilton syndrome. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 16, 1–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Riley, M., & Harvey, D. (2007). Landscape conservation, farm practice and the meaning of the countryside: An oral history approach. Social and Cultural Geography, 8, 391–416.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rudy, K. (2012). Loving animals: Toward a new animal advocacy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanders, C. R. (2003). Actions speak louder than words: Close relationships between humans and nonhuman animals. Symbolic Interaction, 26, 405–426.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saugeres, L. (2002). The cultural representation of the farming landscape: Masculinity, power and nature. Journal of Rural Studies, 18, 373–384.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schupbach, W. (1982). The paradox of Rembrandt’s ‘anatomy of Dr. Tulp’. London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Soil Association. (2011). Producer support: Organic beef and dairy production. Bristol: Soil Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stassart, P., & Whatmore, S. (2003). Metabolising risk: Food scares and the un/re-making of Belgian beef. Themed ‘alternative food networks’ issue of Environment and Planning A, 35(3), 449–462.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • von Linne, C. (1740). Systema naturæ (2nd ed.). Stockholm: Keiswetter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whatmore, S. (2002). Hybrid geographies: Natures cultures spaces. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilmot, S. (2007). From ‘public service’ to artificial insemination: Animal breeding science and reproductive research in early 20th century Britain. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 38, 411–441.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Jacob Bull

Authors
  1. Jacob Bull
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jacob Bull .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Jacob Bull

  2. Department for Literature and Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Margaretha Fahlgren

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Bull, J. (2016). Images of Cows, Stories of Gender. In: Bull, J., Fahlgren, M. (eds) Illdisciplined Gender. Crossroads of Knowledge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15272-1_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15272-1_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-15271-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-15272-1

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation