Interrogating Place and Gender in Appalachia

• In Event: Rural And...: A Symposium on Intersectional Diversity in Rural Education Research

Abstract

Researching Appalachia presents particular challenges for academics. As an Appalachian “outsider,” and a cis-gender middle-class White woman, it is necessary that I consider the social and economic marginalization of Appalachia-as-place, spatial inequity across place, and place-based hegemonic gender constructions as I interrogate Appalachian people’s experiences with schooling. Given my own identity, the challenge of elevating Appalachian voices, particularly marginalized voices within Appalachia, is largely in gaining the trust of participants that their voices will be central to my work, and that their experiences will be granted the legitimization they deserve. The goal of this presentation is to discuss the challenges associated with and the relationship building necessary for conducting research on gender and place in Appalachia.

Such research requires an integration of feminist and geographic frameworks. Chenoweth and Galliher (2004) describe Appalachia in terms of localism, historicism, and familism. Historicism can be further problematized through an interrogation of the ways in which an “understanding of one’s place in history” (p. 4) is constructed and constrained, particularly among underrepresented groups, including women. Feminist geographers similarly view place as geographical and relational, as well as dynamic and porous (i.e. Miewald & McCann, 2004). Place is intricately connected to constructions of gender, and both are “culturally specific ideas” (Massey, 2013, p. 2). Within a geographically-bounded area, individuals engage in social struggles, including gender struggles, which vary in response to local cultures (Massey, 2013), involve the continuous “(re)negotiation of appropriate roles that women and men should play in society,” and legitimize certain places for specific gendered activities (Miewald & McCann, 2004, p. 1046). While women engage in social struggles in a particular place, this does not signify their lives, struggles, and constructions are geographically bound. Because place is dynamic, relational, and porous, while gender struggles occur within a geographically small space, they are influenced through social processes that are produced and (re)negotiated at a multiplicity of geographic scales, from local to global (i.e. McDowell, 2001).

Centralizing placed identity as a construction integrated with other marginalized identities (e.g. gender and class) allows for nuanced understandings of how Appalachian women experience schooling, how novice teachers experience their work, and how rural leaders make sense of placeless education policy. This research requires the elevation and legitimization of underrepresented and silenced voices, accomplished through qualitative inquiry, including feminist case study strategies. Such research finds that deep connections between place and gender: (1) influence educational success definitions while shaping social behaviors; (2) create place and class-specific challenges for Appalachian teachers, and (3) influence diverse agency beliefs among place-bound educational leaders. These findings generate nuanced insights into a population largely conceived as monolithic by outsiders, with implications for teacher and leader preparation and policymakers.

Author

• Erin McHenry-Sorber, West Virginia University