Rurality, Diversity and Schooling

Focusing upon two state high schools in rural Australia, Colvin presents an empirically rich and engaging analysis of multicultural diversity. This important book challenges assumptions that associate rural contexts with whiteness and asks incisive questions about the language and narratives of diversity, including the silences and exclusions involved. -- Peter Hopkins, Professor of Social Geography, Newcastle University, UK This book makes a powerful and unique contribution to the growing field of antiracist studies of education and rurality. Colvin’s research provides a detailed and unflinching study of diversity, racism and the realities of policy and practice in a regional Australian town. Hidden contradictions and power-plays are explored in a bold, nuanced and complex analysis that has international relevance. -- David Gillborn, editor-in-chief of the journal Race Ethnicity and Education It is unsettling reading to learn common-sense and feel-good ideas about ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’ are entangled with the reproduction of racial hierarchies and inequalities, but it also gives space to thinking about other ways schools can operate to build inclusion and belonging. It moves beyond critique to identify ways schooling outside cities can operate to be more equitable and inclusive. -- Barbara Pini, Professor in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, Griffith University, Australia This is a superb book. Urgent, because the countryside too often drifts out of the analysis of racialised social relations; compelling, in the attention it pays to school life in small towns which are more multicultural than imagined; rigorous in its systematic use of ‘thick’, detailed data; and beautifully written throughout. Neroli Colvin uses a rural lens to lift the hood of modern Australian discourse around multiculturalism and uncovers the persistent contradictions and coloniality that shape it. -- Sarah Neal, Professor of Sociology, University of Sheffield, UK