A Rural PhD Candidate and the Grace of Community

This paper is an autoethnographic analysis of my experiences as a PhD candidate resident in a rural area of South Australia: a circumstance that is not unique but certainly rare. According to Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011), research that uses an autoethnographic approach describes and analyses personal experiences in order to understand cultural experiences. My circumstance as a highly-educated beneficiary of government subsistence presents a unique research opportunity: namely, to document social policies as both a recipient and an educated investigator. The aim of this paper is to expose the robust challenges that arise when individuals, who are reliant on a meagre income, engage with academic pursuits (Brook & Michell, 2012) in the hope of speaking back some truth to power (Said, 1993). It is hoped that the autoethnographic research undertaken here provides insights into the real personal and detrimental cultural impact of existing neoliberal policy as it relates to rural residents trying to break out of welfare dependency.