Rural Revival

When most of their jobs disappear, how do communities survive? In the hard-hit area explored in this book - the Bonavista Peninsula, on the island of Newfoundland - many residents transitioned into "everyday" entrepreneurs such as restauranteurs. Rural Revival explains how these business owners developed a place rich in "entrepreneurial capital." The author draws on six years of ethnographic fieldwork in the area: observations from listening, watching and learning with people in their everyday settings.

Camera work opened doors to people's ventures and their lives. The many photographs in this book bring you deeply into a sense of presence among the people and their natural settings. To interpret the findings from fieldwork, the author draws on rural sociology and economic anthropology. He shows how people transformed the value of once-neglected things in the "house economy" into assets for tourists, leaving the "market economy." He uses theories of "cross-sector partnerships" to show the ways in which regional development is tough to sustain.

Through eloquent well-researched prose and a series of stunning photographs, Alex Stewart tells the story of present-day Bonavista Peninsula, a place both modern and historic, one of steady rock and capricious weather, of creative and entrepreneurial people and the various ways they thrive in this oceanside landscape. Rural Revival is a compelling work of joy and survival that is rooted in place and at the same time, universal.

Emily Urquhart, author of The 21st century outport: Reimagining home in Newfoundland (Ph.D. dissertation) and The Age of Creativity, Beyond the Pale, and Ordinary Wonder Tales

This book is an empathetic masterpiece. Its pioneering use of photo-ethnography delivers important contributions to our understanding of rural entrepreneurship.

Derek Lidow, Professor of Practice, Princeton University, and author of Startup Leadership, Building on Bedrock, and The Entrepreneurs: The Relentless Quest for Value