Paper short abstract:

In Brazil, the world of the rodeo has been oft-represented as an arena of (male) sociability and practice linked to rural heritage and modes of life. Yet in our current post-modern context, a series of significant changes in social patterns and institutions have eroded not only separations between urban and rural modes of life but also boundaries separating men’s and women’s activitities and areas of expertise. Our own original ethnographic research on rodeo looks at how this erasing of boundaries and borders has been played out within an arena of sporting and leisure practice once thought to simply reproduce clear separations between rural and urban and men's and women’s lives, practices and bodies. This new situation has enabled women from both urban middle class and rural poor or working class origin to develop forms of participation with potentially empowering consequences, as equestrian athletes.

Paper long abstract:

In Brazil, the world of the rodeo has been oft-represented as an arena of (male) sociability and practice linked to rural heritage and modes of life. Yet today's increasing rural and urban interconnectedness has eroded not only rural/urban divisions but also boundaries separating men's and women's activitities and areas of expertise. Our own original ethnographic research on rodeo looks at how this erasing of boundaries and borders has been played out within an arena of sporting and leisure practice once thought to simply reproduce clear separations between rural and urban and men's and women's lives, practices and bodies. Thus, a new scenario has been created, enabling women from both urban middle class and rural poor or working class origin to develop forms of participation with potentially empowering consequences. At the discursive level, this has generated fascinating attempts to re-negotiate the "traditionalist" discourse that has played an important role in the recent history of Southern Brazil. At an interactional level, many contradictions emerge, as some men resist change and many women are forced to deal with ambivalence (their own or that of others) and with persisting forms of stigmatization. Thus, our study presents a radical example of new dislocations - favored, in this case, by the feminization of "traditional" equestrian practice - and of the anguishes, uncertainties and challenges they bring with them.