Return to search

Women, development, and communities for empowerment: grassroots associations for change in Southwest Virginia

This is a qualitative study of women and change in the coalfields and nearby mining areas of Southwest Virginia in the Central Appalachian mountains, a peripheral region in a core country at the end of the twentieth century. Intensive interviews with working-class women in grassroots associations explicate women’s experiences in the intersection of social structures of class, gender, and Appalachian ethnicity. Conditions and positions of marginalization are explored through analysis of women’s lives in the family, through work, and in communities. The study also examines grassroots associations as contexts for empowerment, and how women struggle for development and change. A grounded theory of empowerment as a process of coming to personal autonomy through political community is presented as an alternative to the economism and individualism of conventional women in development analysis. / Ph. D.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/39552
Date03 October 2007
CreatorsSeitz, Virginia Rinaldo
ContributorsEnvironmental Design and Planning, Flora, Cornelia B., Allen, Katherine R., Appleby, Michael D., Bohland, James, Calasanti, Toni M., Hardman, Anna, Luke, Timothy W.
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDissertation, Text
Formatvii, 296 leaves, BTD, application/pdf, application/pdf
RightsIn Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
RelationOCLC# 26444817, LD5655.V856_1992.S438.pdf

Page generated in 0.0019 seconds