Hunting as defiant subculture

Hunting has been an important activity for many working-class men in rural Norway. Paradoxically, hunting has emerged as a staple element in male working-class (WC) culture mainly after WW2, when the subsistence element... [ view full abstract ]

Hunting has been an important activity for many working-class men in rural Norway. Paradoxically, hunting has emerged as a staple element in male working-class (WC) culture mainly after WW2, when the subsistence element gradually lost its significance, and leisure activities generally gained importance because of more leisure time, better economy, and better access to hunting on private land. From the 1970s onwards, traditional male working-class culture has seen its material base in the production sector shrink and crumble, and the leisure sphere has taken on increased significance for the reproduction of a WC culture – including an element of resistance against a hegemonic and incessantly expanding middle-class culture. As has been elegantly shown in British studies of youth subcultures, this is by no means an exclusively rural phenomenon. However, in rural areas the middle-class (MC) cultural expansion also entails new perspectives on nature as a resource base and arena for consumptive leisure activities like hunting, adding to the pressure on traditional male WC culture. Consequently, we see indications that some hunting milieus develop the characteristics of defiant subcultures, and not only in typically rural areas. As a striking parallel to the British subculture studies from decades ago, we have seen in our research that young men with a WC background cherish the aspects of hunting that links to the traditional male WC culture. It is typically informal, collective, has a certain element of physical machismo, and represents a “productivist” perspective on human relations to nature. It entails the mastery of tools like guns, GPS-units and even dogs. Young hunters have expressed a deep admiration for their fathers and other male relatives and their lifestyle, and exposed a strong sense of continuity across generations, unlike the popular notions of class-less, reflexive identity projects in the ”post-industrial” era. Hunting may form a bridge to the disappearing culture of physical resource extraction. The intrusive cultural influx of the modern MC with its government and media power base then triggers various forms of cultural resistance. Cultural resistance is not launched openly against institutionalized power, nor does it normally imply a desire for fundamental social change. It should rather be seen as a struggle for autonomy – to be able to realize a preferred lifestyle and cultivate the worldview that goes with it, in the face of political correctness and MC values. It may also entail forms of everyday resistance toward the state and social groups perceived as powerful and threatening. This could be seen as a form of “infrapolitics”, borrowing a term for James C. Scott. Illegal hunting, e.g. of large carnivores, may be one extreme instance of such resistance, but other, less dramatic, forms of non-compliance are more common. Yet, even if a degree of autonomy is achieved, it seldom leads to influence outside the cultural (lifestyle) realm, and hunting subcultures – and male WC culture generally – may be caught in a downward spiral where autonomy (as detachment) leads to more marginalization, and where resistance may become more desperate, and thus dangerous.