When the lads go hunting: The 'Hammertown mechanism' and the conflict over wolves in Norway

• Published in: Ethnography Vol. 12; no. 4; pp. 466 - 489
• Main Authors: Krange, Olve, Skogen, Ketil
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.12.2011
• Subjects: Autonomy; Carnivores; Cities; Conflict; Cultural resistance; Cultural studies; Ethnography; Hunting; Lifestyle; Moose hunting; Nature; Norway; Resistance; Rural Areas; Rural communities; Social Change; Unemployment; Wolves; Working Class; rural lifestyle; working-class culture; cultural resistance; land use conflicts; hunting; the Hammertown mechanism; wolves
• ISSN: 1466-1381; 1741-2714
• DOI: 10.1177/1466138110397227

Rural communities are changing. Depopulation and unemployment is accompanied by the advance of new perspectives on nature, where protection trumps resource extraction. These developments are perceived as threatening by rural working-class people with close ties to traditional land use – a situation they often meet with cultural resistance. Cultural resistance is not necessarily launched against institutionalized power, nor does it necessarily imply a desire for fundamental social change. It should rather be seen as a struggle for autonomy. However, autonomy does not entail influence outside the cultural realm. Struggles to uphold traditional rural lifestyles – for example by denouncing the current nature conservation regime – could be understood in much the same conceptual framework as Willis employed in 'Learning to labour'. Based on an ethnographic study of the conflicts over wolf protection, we demonstrate that 'the Hammertown mechanism' is of a more general nature than often implied in the discussion of Willis' work.