Doctoral Dissertation Research: Class and Marriage for Rural Appalachian Women

博士论文研究：阿巴拉契亚农村妇女的阶级与婚姻

• 批准号: 0234200
• 负责人: Patricia Johnson
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-05-01 至 2005-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0234200&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Class; Marriage

Johnson / BodenRural 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.

美国农村妇女往往受教育程度较低，而且比城市妇女结婚更早、人数更多。这并不奇怪，因为女性早婚与早期完成教育密切相关。鉴于在美国许多农村社区，较低的受教育程度与经济停滞或恶化有关，更好地了解农村妇女早婚的原因对农村政策制定者来说将是有价值的。本论文研究项目由文化人类学家使用民族志的方法提供了一个丰富的详细研究农村阿巴拉契亚妇女如何做出他们的婚姻决定，以及这些决定如何塑造他们的人生历程。这位人类学-人口学研究生研究了女性在社会中的阶级地位如何影响她们的社会网络，特别是与拥有更多或不同资源的人的联系数量，以及女性的阶级地位和社会关系如何影响她们在婚姻和高等教育方面的决定。该研究使用了多种阶级衡量标准，包括一种基于当地社区特征的阶级观念和观念的衡量标准，比较了不同衡量标准的解释价值。因此，这个项目既提供了一个特定背景下更完整的婚姻行为模型，也更好地理解了人们是如何概念化和体验阶级的。这项研究提供的新知识的广泛影响将加强对农村状况、妇女问题和婚姻行为感兴趣的人类学家和其他学者的理论建设工作，并将使农村政策制定者能够制定更有效的家庭和教育计划。该项目还有助于培养一名年轻的社会科学家。