Warum verlassen junge Frauen ihre Heimatdörfer, warum bleiben junge Männer dort - häufig unverheiratet? In ihrer Studie untersucht Nancy Konvalinka diese Entwicklung am Beispiel eines spanischen Dorfes. Deutlich wird, dass sich das Haus als Ort der gemeinsamen (Re-)Produktion verändert hat und dass Bildungsmöglichkeiten die Lebensläufe der Frauen entscheidend beeinflussen. Die Studie lässt Rückschlüsse auf ähnliche Prozesse in anderen ländlichen Gegenden Europas zu. Why do young men born in many small villages in Spain tend, at the end of the twentieth century, to stay there to live, often remaining unmarried, while young women from the same villages tend to leave? In Gender, Work and Property, Nancy Konvalinka explores this phenomenon using the case of one small village in northwestern Spain, and she extrapolates her findings there to understand similar processes elsewhere in Europe.

InhaltsangabeContents Introduction Fieldwork and methodology 1. Practical, Usable Value Theory Value theory in anthropology Specific problems of value and gender, localized in a Leonese village 2. The Casa as a Unit of Production, Reproduction, andConsumption: The First Half of the 20th Century Covering an extended time period to study processes Demography and social structure at the beginning of the 20th century The agent of decision: person, family or casa? The casa as a unit of production, reproduction, and consumption What is the casa? Who are the members of the casa? Rural capital Value and gender during the first half of the 20th century The distribution of work among men and women Interiorness and exteriorness Inheritance and differential uses of rural capital: men's permanence andwomen's mobility Reproducing the casa Married couples and children: the agents involved in reproducingthe casa Life courses and vital conjunctures Orientation of the casa toward the future 3. Local Dimensions of a General Transformation: 1960-1979 Changing circumstances: industrialization, emigration, and mechanization Life courses and vital conjunctures The appearance of the categories of optionality, tastes, and preferences Emigration and the accumulation of capital: You only need land tomarry if you are going to stay in the village Mechanization The introduction of milk production Values and gender repositioned: rural capital and interior and exterior spaces Rural capital and men's and women's uses of it Interior and exterior spaces: the tasks change, but not the positions The casa reproduces itself, but only in some of its children Emigration makes it possible to concentrate rural capital, a limitedresource Mechanization as a catalyst of the process The casas reproduce themselves, but only in some of their children 4. Casas and Sociedades: Splitting Meanings at the Endofthe 20th Century Changing circumstances: economic crisis and the reshaping of the familyfarm The economic crisis and the reassessment of the casa as a job position for young men Mechanization in the fields and in the stables Reconfiguration of the family farm: the sociedades Option, taste, and preference: decisive factors in the formation ofsociedades When the children do not reproduce the casa Demographic profile, 1980-2000 The configuration of the households, 1980-2000 Values and gender repositioned: inheritance, schooling and life courses Sociedades and their consequences "The differences are less noticeable" Changes in schooling and their interactions with gender configurations and vital conjunctures Separating men's and women's life courses The casa as a unit of production, consumption, and reproduction no longer exists 5. Conclusions Some considerations about rural society Rural society is not static, nor has it been in the recent past People make their decision in the framework of their immediate, relevant social environment, such as the family or the casa The processes of change develop along the axes of the structure that has existed up to that moment: Gender is a main axis that structures rural life Ambivalence toward rural life The unexpected results of the changes Considerations for a theory of value in relation to gender Social subjects in their fields of value: processes of change People The casas The village Suggestions for a theory of value in relation to gender List of Diagrams, Figures, Graphs, and Tables Works Cited Index

Introduction While doing fieldwork in a small village in Spain near León (I will use "San Julián" as a pseudonym), I came across something that perplexed me. The family farm businesses were relatively prosperous-people could and did build new houses and had good cars and all the main household consumer items-and many young men were staying in the village to work on their families' farms. But the young women were leaving, and some of the young men were finding it difficult to marry and form families. When I asked about this, the young men and the older generations told me that the young men "liked" living in the village, but the young women did not. The young women, however, said they would like to live in the village but could not because there was no work for them there. In the previous generation, both men and women seemed to "like" living in the village just fine. How could this suddenly have changed? How could living and working in the village continue to have value for the men, while ceasing to have value for the women? Or were women for some reason unable to fulfill their ideal of living in the village? Had the values changed in the space of one generation? These were the questions that motivated the research that I will present in this volume. While this research did, in fact, become a doctoral dissertation, this book is definitely not that dissertation. I have substantially reworked my material and my analyses, taking into consideration suggestions that many colleagues have generously made. My intention is to answer the questions in the previous paragraph and shed light on what happened in one particular place over a specific period of time, hoping by this to illuminate processes in a broader range of places and times. In order to do this, I will use the concept of value as defined by Pierre Bourdieu. I will analyze the concept of casa as people use it in the village, show how gender is the axis along which life and work in the village are organized, and show how small changes in the life course, such as the age when one has to decide whether to continue in school or leave to work, can greatly affect later outcomes. So this book will be of interest to a wide variety of people: anthropologists and ethnographers, of course, but also anyone interested in the study of work and property, in recent changes in rural life, in value theory, in how culturally constructed gender differences affect people's lives, or in how schooling works on already-existing situations, among other things. Although the discussion will center on San Julián and what has happened there, the situation that I will describe is, with local variations, common to many villages not only in Spain, but in Italy, France, Germany, and other areas in Europe. So what I will present here is a study of value in a local context. Using the concept of value, which I will discuss shortly, and the organizing axes of work, gender, and property, I will interpret the events and processes of the second half of the 20th century, and the very beginning of the 21st, in the village. We shall see how the values that people enact and express in their life-course decisions and discourse locate them in specific places in the social field, and how in different time periods changing conditions on the national and international scale have altered the shape of this social field and the options available, altering the results of people's decisions. Up to the middle of the 20th century, the positions people occupied on the social field led to the reproduction of the casa and the family farm; in the sixties and seventies, this was so only for some people, while others emigrated. By the end of the century, the organizational logic of work and gender, against the changing conditions of economic crisis, a decrease in job opportunities, and schooling, led to important changes in the way family farms were set up and worked and to the situation that originally insp

Introduction Fieldwork and methodology 1. Practical, Usable Value Theory Value theory in anthropology Specific problems of value and gender, localized in a Leonese village 2. The Casa as a Unit of Production, Reproduction, and Consumption: The First Half of the 20th Century Covering an extended time period to study processes Demography and social structure at the beginning of the 20th century The agent of decision: person, family or casa? The casa as a unit of production, reproduction, and consumption What is the casa? Who are the members of the casa? Rural capital Value and gender during the first half of the 20th century The distribution of work among men and women Interiorness and exteriorness Inheritance and differential uses of rural capital: men's permanence and women's mobility Reproducing the casa Married couples and children: the agents involved in reproducing the casa Life courses and vital conjunctures Orientation of the casa toward the future 3. Local Dimensions of a General Transformation: 1960-1979 Changing circumstances: industrialization, emigration, and mechanization Life courses and vital conjunctures The appearance of the categories of optionality, tastes, and preferences Emigration and the accumulation of capital: You only need land to marry if you are going to stay in the village Mechanization The introduction of milk production Values and gender repositioned: rural capital and interior and exterior spaces Rural capital and men's and women's uses of it Interior and exterior spaces: the tasks change, but not the positions The casa reproduces itself, but only in some of its children Emigration makes it possible to concentrate rural capital, a limited resource Mechanization as a catalyst of the process The casas reproduce themselves, but only in some of their children 4. Casas and Sociedades: Splitting Meanings at the End of the 20th Century Changing circumstances: economic crisis and the reshaping of the family farm The economic crisis and the reassessment of the casa as a job position for young men Mechanization in the fields and in the stables Reconfiguration of the family farm: the sociedades Option, taste, and preference: decisive factors in the formation of sociedades When the children do not reproduce the casa Demographic profile, 1980-2000 The configuration of the households, 1980-2000 Values and gender repositioned: inheritance, schooling and life courses Sociedades and their consequences "The differences are less noticeable" Changes in schooling and their interactions with gender configurations and vital conjunctures Separating men's and women's life courses The casa as a unit of production, consumption, and reproduction no longer exists 5. Conclusions Some considerations about rural society Rural society is not static, nor has it been in the recent past People make their decision in the framework of their immediate, relevant social environment, such as the family or the casa The processes of change develop along the axes of the structure that has existed up to that moment: Gender is a main axis that structures rural life Ambivalence toward rural life The unexpected results of the changes Considerations for a theory of value in relation to gender Social subjects in their fields of value: processes of change People The casas The village Suggestions for a theory of value in relation to gender List of Diagrams, Figures, Graphs, and Tables Works Cited Index