Our Rural Selves

Life in the countryside, often perceived as either idyllic or depleted, has long been misrepresented. Challenging the stereotypes and myths that surround the idea of rurality, Our Rural Selves interrogates and represents individual and collective memories of childhood in rural landscapes and small towns. Drawing on visual artifacts whose origins range from the early twentieth century to today, such as photographs, films, objects, picture books, and digital games, contributors offer readings of childhood that are geographically, ethnically, and culturally diverse. They examine the memories of Indigenous children, the experiences of back-to-the-land youth, and boom-or-bust childhoods within the petroleum, farming, and fishing industries. Illustrating often neglected and overlooked aspects of adolescence, this collection suggests new ways of studying social connectedness and collective futures. Innovative and revealing in its use of visual studies, autoethnography, and memory-work, Our Rural Selves explores representation, imagination, and what it means to grow up rural in Canada.

In this book, we looked at self-image from a humanistic perspective. We see it as a dynamic and complex process that compromises self-respect and self-confidence. The protagonists of this story come from a rural area. They were a group of eleventh graders from a high school in Samacá, one of the 123 towns in the state of Boyacá, Colombia. As narrators of the story, we wanted to explore, analyze, and interpret how these adolescents perceived their self-image through their life stories under a narrative inquiry method. By telling their narratives, the students could reconstruct and re-signify their reality, while showing us who they are in relation to other people and their contexts. Therefore, life stories offered us the possibility to explore students' inner and social worlds. This research study helped us increase our sensitivity to how the adolescents saw themselves as part of their rural contexts, as well as how this might affect their futures. Resumen En este libro comprendimos la auto-imagen desde una perspectiva humana. Es decir, como un proceso dinámico y complejo que se relaciona con el auto-respeto y la auto-confianza. Los protagonistas de esta historia provienen de una zona rural. Ellos son un grupo de estudiantes de grado once de un colegio localizado en Samacá, uno de los 123 municipios que conforman el departamento de Boyacá en Colombia. Como narradores de esta historia, quisimos explorar, analizar e interpretar como estos adolescentes percibían su auto-imagen a través de sus historias de vida, enmarcadas en un método narrativo. Al narrar sus historias, los estudiantes reconstruyeron y resignificaron su realidad mientras nos mostraban su relación con otras personas y su propio contexto. Estas historias de vida nos dieron la posibilidad de explorar su mundo interno y social. Incrementamos nuestra sensibilidad como investigadores y entendimos como los adolescentes se percibían en un contexto rural y las implicaciones que esto tiene para sus vidas futuras.