UC Irvine

This dissertation examines how the diffusion of global cultural norms and projects influence local marital behaviors by comparing two practices, namely, divorce and child marriage. It explores how these practices change over time by looking at aggregate-level indicators of divorce rates and child marriage prevalence and individual-level indicators of the risks associated with these two behaviors. By analyzing how various factors at the individual, national, and global levels influence changes, this project substantiates World Society theory’s argument regarding the top-down influence on individual behaviors. I argue that since the second half of the twentieth century, the world society, an international system of global institutions, international NGOs, and a set of cultural norms, has become a major source and promoter of many social reform projects, including the reform of marriage. Individualism, equality, and consent are the core cultural principles that sustain the contemporary ideal of marriage. The panel regression and multilevel regression results demonstrate that the legitimation and diffusion of these norms has inspired multilateral endeavor to fight the practice of child marriage. In Chapter 2, the analyses show that the dedication of resource and diffusion of norms significantly reduce the prevalence of child marriage and the individual risk of becoming a child bride. In Chapter 3 and 4, I further argue that even when there is no targeted effort on the issue of divorce, the world society can still influence local divorce practices through the “penumbra effect.” Local actors infer proper divorce practices from the fundamental cultural norms and reshape the practice of divorce. I examine the global cultural diffusion effect on gross divorce rates in a wide range of countries over 40 years and on the individual risk of divorce in developing countries during the last 30 years. The results once again suggest that global cultural diffusion increases the individual likelihood of divorce and aggregate rates of divorce. These results are statistically significant in models that take into consideration local processes suggested by existing literature. Therefore, the results demonstrate that although local forces transform shape practices, the influence of global cultural diffusion is also at work.