A Divorce in a Polish Village: Gender, Class and Forms of Solidarity and Resistance in Traditional Communities.

Traditional rural communities are unquestionably fascinating laboratories of social change in an increasingly diverse world. One clear example of such changes is the increasing experience of divorce, conflict and tensions in rural communities as they confront and negotiate postmodern patterns of family life. I will show how rural divorce can activate potential for solidarity and resistance in small, patriarchal and Catholic communities in eastern Poland.

The findings are based on dozens of autobiographical narratives (30 IDIs) of female rural residents of eastern Poland and over a year-long participatory ethnographies conducted between 2018 and 2023 in the border region of Mazovia and Podlasie.

I will demonstrate how the biographical and everyday experiences of divorcing rural working-class women were shaped by various local social networks. I will also discuss which social positions, affiliations and forms of capital are activated by rural divorce, and how gender and social class mediate it. Furthermore, I will discuss whether and what kind of support and solidarity for divorcing women can be found among other rural women (rural sisterhood)? The analysis will reveal how traditional and new patterns of practices and discourses reproduce dynamics of exclusion and inclusion in traditional rural communities. The transformation of rural areas and family life in Poland over the last three decades provides an essential context for understanding the findings.