ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to build conceptually upon the accounts of young people’s actions in specifi c rural settings outlined in the preceding chapters. Like the wider body of ongoing research on young people’s everyday lives across the world, the foregoing chapters clearly demonstrate how the shift to viewing young people as individuals with the capacity to act and shape their own lives, i.e. to have agency, rather than seeing children simply as ‘adults in training’ (Dunne 1980), passive and innocent dependents, or victims2 has become fi rmly established in children’s and youth studies. This volume illustrates some of the many ways in which young people are creative and competent actors in a diversity of rural settings across Minority and Majority worlds. In this chapter we consider the agency which young people show in their everyday rural lives, identifying different spheres and types of agency as well as the limits to agency; we conclude with some suggestions for future research directions. What follows outlines conceptual frameworks for addressing (and critiquing) agency in present and future research on rural young people.
