ABSTRACT
In the global north the idea of rurality takes on a particular inflection. Northern places, which are often considered to be rural and ‘isolated’, have often been marginalized in metrocentric discourses of development. Associated with these peripheral places are equally marginal backward, rough and uneducated identity stereotypes that have been well explored in the rural studies literature. But things are changing. In this chapter, focusing on the Canadian and Scandinavian contexts, we argue that contemporary resource development has complicated established discourses of modernity and that places outside the metropolis are increasingly central to national development agendas. We investigate how contemporary forms of resource production, and the identity structures that they facilitate, integrate into emerging national cultural imaginaries and educational policy narratives in and about northern and rural regions as either utopian or dystopian constructions. This in turn leads to discursive emphasis on retooling education systems in rural and remote areas. This reassertion and reconfiguration of the rural signals a need for a policy shift that recognises the centrality of modern rural regions to national development strategies. At the same time we interrogate the consequences of the entanglement of traditional primary industries such as fishing and farming with emerging associations with mining and oil and gas development.
