Abstract
This paper provides an in-depth analysis of a group of young rural men's and women's understandings of 'the city' and 'the country'and the relationship between this and their educational decision making. The analysis adds to a growing body of literature on young rural people's experiences and the emerging research on education in a rural context. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with a group of Grade 10 students in a rural Tasmanian high school, I argue that the everyday life of the young respondents is characterised by a high degree of ambivalence towards urban living which sits at the heart of their educational choices. They depicted living in a small rural town as involving a daily trade-off between a welcome familiarity and a problematic lack of privacy. Their perception of the city was that this relationship would be reversed, and that while they might be free from the constraint of everyone knowing your business, they would struggle to negotiate the alien environment. Using Simmel's (1950) ideas on how rural and urban environments produce different worldviews as well as Bourdieu's (1990) concept of habitus, this analysis captures this ambivalence and the sense of risk involved in exchanging the known difficulties of the town for the unknown risks of the city. This sense of the city as 'too risky' informed many of the participants' decisions to 'not make a choice' and remain in their familiar environment rather than moving to the city to continue their education and risk failure. The analysis also draws on Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital and Connell's (2005) theory of hegemonic masculinity to emphasise that although the young people shared common experiences, these were mediated by aspects of cultural knowledge and gender relations.
Highlights
Introduction and background “There is something about Tasmania that gets under your skin; that makes you want to understand more, to feel the stories of the past, its joys and anguish.” These sentiments from Julianne Schultz’ introduction ‘Oscillating Wildly’ in Tasmania: The Tipping Point (Griffith Review, 2013, p. 7) indicate how ambivalent experiences and feelings pervade many of the stories in the journal
Young people in rural Tasmania are amongst the most likely groups to leave school early, with 47 per cent of young men and 58 per cent of young women from metropolitan zones completing Year 12 compared to 34 per cent of young men and 43 per cent of young women from remote zones (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2013). These data demonstrate the role of place in shaping young rural people’s educational decisions, it has been argued that identity in late modernity has been disembedded; lifted out of context and freed from powerful social constraints such as class, gender, ethnicity and place (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991)
In Australia, Wierenga’s (2009) longitudinal study of young people living in a small rural town in southern Tasmania highlights how broader worldviews are linked with decisions to continue in education, whereas local worldviews are linked with choices to leave school early
Summary
In attempting to understand the emplaced nature of the young people’s experiences and the connection with their educational choices, this analysis draws on Bourdieu’s (1977/1990) concepts of social and cultural capital and habitus, as well as Connell’s theory of the gender order, especially hegemonic masculinity (2005). Bourdieu’s concepts have been critiqued for inadequately dealing with structures other than class (Adkins & Skeggs, 2004; McLeod & Yates, 2006; Schippers, 2007), and this analysis employs Connell’s (2005) concept of hegemonic masculinity, a culturally idealised form of masculinity characterised by physical strength, competitiveness, aggressiveness and heterosexuality, to understand the gendered nature of the young people’s lifeworld. These theories are synthesised through the concept of habitus, Bourdieu’s attempt to describe how objective social reality and the internalised subjective worlds of individuals are inextricably bound together. Simmel’s framework is used in conjunction with contemporary theories of place to capture the ambiguity that characterise the educational choices of the young rural people in this study
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