Reading to Stay: The role of reading in the lives of Swedish rural males across generations

This paper explores the significance of reading in the lives of three generations of working-class males in four families living in the Swedish rural woodlands. By adopting a life history approach and taking an ecological perspective on reading that links narratives of reading experiences to places, times, and historical changes, the paper addresses how rural males’ reading practices intersect with ways of living in Swedish rural woodlands, and in what ways they have been maintained and changed across generations. Findings show that the males engage in practical performative reading practices where reading is transformed into embodied activities in which knowledge practices and embodied skills, entangled with socio-material and historical cultures, are constructed and reconstructed through intergenerational repetitions. In this way, reading emerges as an essential, community-building, and situated social practice through which the males, across generations, construct and reconstruct place-based knowledge practices vital for creating a sustainable lifestyle in the Swedish rural woodlands. The paper contributes insights into the role of reading in the construction of rural places, in formations of rural masculinities, and for the practices of staying, as well as how reading is influenced by the specific socio-cultural, historical, and material spaces available.