The cultural anthropologist PI will study downward social mobility in two cohorts of people who grew up in a suburban community of northern New Jersey. The substantive focus is to interpret social mobility through the analysis of cultural meanings of changing lifestyles. Distinct forms of American culture will be analyzed by studying symbolic dialects which color the perceptions of different cohorts in different ways. The methodology will be to conduct about 100 life-history interviews with cohorts which graduated from high school in 1970 and in 1980, and another 100 interviews with their parents. Long-time residents of the community will also be interviewed, and census and other archival materials will be consulted. This research is important because many younger adults in the U.S. can not replicate the lifestyle that they grew up in, due to the changing socio-economic conditions they face. Understanding how they perceive their condition, and the cultural interpretations they make of it, is important in dealing with these dramatic changes in our society.
