Rural literacies: toward social cartography

Abstract

In this article we analyze the emergence of the field of rural literacies. We attempt to map this field in a way that illustrates the foundational ideas of literacy and rurality as relational concepts, which are devoid of meaning as what we call singularities. Our insistence on the importance of context and place reveals multiple rural literacies instantiated in a diverse range of studies that have emerged from foundational texts in the field. In an effort to apply a spatial lens to rural literacies scholarship, we problematize authoritative decontextualized conceptions of both literacy and rurality. In doing so, we seek to place rurality on the map as an educationally and culturally significant category in the analysis of literacy and education.