Jennifer Sherman
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., UC Berkeley, 2006
Areas of Research Interest:
Poverty, Inequality, Rural Communities, Gender, Family, Culture.
Current Research Interests:
My research looks at the ways in which job loss and poverty affect families in rural communities. My aim is to understand how labor market changes affect family life, cultural discourses, and gender norms. I am currently working on a project that looks at the ways in which poor parents in different New England communities were impacted by their local economic and social conditions. I am investigating how parenting behaviors are influenced by specific life experiences, stress factors, and community contexts, as well as the connections between gender norms, poverty, and parenting outcomes. I am also hoping to follow up on previous research in the Pacific Northwest that looked at a formerly timber-dependent community, which was devastated by changing environmental regulations that led to massive job loss for men. It is my hope to extend this research through comparative cases in communities that have responded to economic threats with different development strategies and different successes and failures. I am hoping to further our understandings of the connections between structural conditions, cultural discourses, and family outcomes, particularly for the residents of homogenous, cohesive communities that have experienced labor market upheavals.
Selected Publications:
Those Who Work, Those Who Don’t: Poverty, Morality, and Family in Rural America. 2009. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
“Bend to Avoid Breaking: Job Loss, Gender Norms, and Family Stability in Rural America.” Social Problems. November 2009.
“Coping with Rural Poverty: Economic Survival and Moral Capital in Rural America.” Social Forces, 85:2, December 2006, 891-913
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