| Summary: | The expansion of the knowledge society became a regional policy issue in Iceland and Scotland in the 1990s. Attention was increasingly paid to the development of the knowledge society in rural areas, especially higher education and research activities. Today, in all Iceland’s regional areas there is a university center and/or research institutes, operating as independent institutes or as a part of bigger institutes based in the Reykjavík area. Similar development has taken place in rural areas of Scotland with the establishment of the University of the Highlands and Islands. This research examines the interaction of the knowledge society and rural development in three regions: The Westfjords of Iceland, East Iceland, and the Western Isles of Scotland. The aims are to investigate the effect of selected historical events on rural communities; to analyse the policy discourse on these events; and to examine whether and how higher education and research activities encourage people to become active place-makers in their communities. The theoretical approach draws on resilience focusing on the knowledge society and rural development as a social-ecological system and incorporating epistemological pluralism and triple-loop learning. It also draws on theories of eco-feminism and place-based pedagogy in rural development and the formation of communities. Data was collected in three ways. Historical research, based on the revisionist perspective, was used in describing the development of the knowledge society and rural development over time, emphasising specific historical events. Historical discourse analysis was used when analysing governmental policy documents about rural development and development of the knowledge society in the three research areas. Interviews were taken with people who were living in these areas, and who were working within the field of rural development, the knowledge society and/or had finished a higher education degree through distance learning methods. Those interviews were analysed using a ...
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