The relative cost of living in rural areas has long been of interest to rural sociologists. Today, the popular perception is that rural prices are lower. This study examines geographic differences in the costs of living in Kentucky. The results indicate that, contrary to the popular perception, when prices of the same products and services were compared, there was no consistent pattern of lower prices in the rural counties. Furthermore, differences in the material conditions of rural living meant that there were additional costs that price comparisons alone did not capture.
Six studies published in the 1940s have become classics in the analysis of rural community and change: the community stability/instability studies. One of their less recognized features is that their analyses included women. This article revisits these six studies, but from a different vantage point. As a socially constructed enterprise, the community studies can be seen as a product of human agency. Examining how these researchers saw and included women, this analysis examines the historically embedded mediating impact of the research producers' positionality on the knowledge they produced. In particular, this analysis examines how women came to be included in the studies, how these researchers interpreted women's roles, and how gendered assumptions affected the conclusions they reached regarding the communities' stability or instability.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.