Constructing and Communicating Rural Identities in the New Economy

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Constructing and Communicating Rural Identities
in the New Economy

• Anna Woodrow,
• Andrea Sharkey and
• Ivan Emke

Presented at the Rural Sociological Society
Meetings, Montreal, July 27, 2003
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Introduction

• Rural Canada is Changing
• Collective Rural identities are being reworked.
• Which resources support or quell identity?
  (Capital, Capacity, Cohesion)
• How are these new identities communicated?

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NRE Communities

• the extent of exposure to the global economy
• the relative stability of the local economy
• the adjacency to large metropolitan centres
• the level of social and institutional
  infrastructure and,
• the extent to which the site is lagging or
  leading on a number of socio-economic variables

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Capacity
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Identity

• The Rural/Urban Dichotomy
• How do rural communities express a collective
  identity?
• Are there cross-cutting, conflicting ideas?
• Which patterns can be found?
• How important is the communication of identity in
  its formation?
• What effects do migration patterns, community
  events and hopes for the future have on identity?

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Method - Triangulation

• Census data tracing the mobility patterns of
  residents from 1986 through 2001
• Data from 2000 NRE surveys on community profiles
  and community events
• Data from the 2001 NRE household survey (n1995)
  looking at changes in rural communities.

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Findings

• Collective Identity is an outcome and there are
  different motivations for articulating it.
• Lagging communities have a broader collective
  self-definition
• Local events build and maintain a sense of
  community over time
• Patterns are found in symbols of identity which
  are classified by types of processes

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Capacity
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Capacity
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Capacity
??????
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Conclusion

• Which identity is articulated matters
• Migration patterns must be considered
• Community Events matter
• Hope (or lack of hope) for the future matters