Doctoral Dissertation Research: Class and Marriage for Rural Appalachian Women

Pennsylvania State Univ University Park, University Park PA

Investigators

Abstract

Johnson / Boden Rural U.S. women tend to have a lower educational attainment, as well as marry earlier and in higher numbers than urban women. This is not surprising, since early marriage for women is strongly associated with early completion of education. Given that in many rural U.S. communities, lower levels of educational attainment are associated with economic stagnation or deterioration, a better understanding of why rural women marry early will be valuable to rural policy-makers. This dissertation research project by a cultural anthropologist uses ethnographic methods to provide a richly-detailed study of how rural Appalachian women make their marriage decisions and how these decisions shape their life course. The researcher, an anthropology-demography graduate student, examines how women's class positions within the community influence their social networks, especially the number of ties to people with more or different resources than the women have, and how both women's class positions and social ties influence their decisions concerning marriage and higher education. The study uses multiple measures of class, including a measure based on the ideas and perceptions of class that characterize the local community, comparing the explanatory value of the different measures. Thus, this project provides both a more integrated model of marriage behavior within a specific context and a better understanding of how people conceptualize and experience class. The broader impacts of the new knowledge provided by this study will enhance theory-building efforts among anthropologists and other scholars interested in rural conditions, women's issues, and marriage behavior, and will enable rural policy-makers to formulate more effective family and educational programs. The project also contributes to the training of a young social scientist.