ABSTRACT
The impetus for writing this book has come from a desire to gain greater understanding of the shifting and multiple identities of rural women and men. This was fuelled by our awareness of the limited rural social science literature on gender, and, moreover, on the intersections between gender, rurality, and other social locations. In recent years, postmodernism has resulted in the absenting or marginalization of key social categories in research agendas due to arguments claiming identity as deeply fragmented and unassailable, or even less important in an age where individuality and multiple choice reigned. Certainly, some specifi c identities received attention from rural studies scholars, such as those of gender, sexuality, and youth, but others such as class, ethnicities, disability, and aging elicited little interest in the literature. This book makes a contribution toward fi lling this gap. It has done so by drawing on feminist theorizing, given our political and epistemological belief that gender is a key organizing principle of space (Massey 1994).
