Young Aussie Blokes Navigating Change: Youth Culture, Rurality, and Gender in the 21st Century

• In Event: Rural Education and Youth

Abstract

In this ethnographic study in an isolated rural community in western NSW Australia youth identity formation is examined and a boys’ arts project investigated. This exploration of the identity texts that were observed to be taken up in that particular place over a particular period of time may inform the practices of rural educators as they deal with the rapidly changing context of rural education. In the site called Paterson in this study a boys’ arts project was initiated in response to local concerns over the pressures on rural boys. In this paper some of the issues of identity, youth culture and gender, raised by this initiative, are explored.

Author

• Lindy Margaret Croft-Piggin, Charles Sturt University