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"'

IS "HOUSEHOLD" A NOUN OR A VERB? :

The Use of the Household in the Study of Sociocultural Change

Richard R. Wilk
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Box 3BV New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM 88003
March, 1986

Note: Prepared for a sy111posiua entitled "The Peasant Household and Socioecono•ic Change in
Latin A11er1.ca" at the Annual Meetings of the Latin A111erican Studies Association,
Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 18-21, 1985. Please do no quote without per111ission.

Abstract

What is a household? This paper suggests that the problem is 111uch 111ore than
111ethodological. If we are to understand how households change and adapt under econolllic
pressures, we lllust have an accurate operational 111odel that takes account of the household as
a soc1al unit, an activity unit, as a culturally 111eaningful concept, and as a continuing
syste111 of economic exchange and transaction. I suggest soae ways such a 'grawu11ar' can be
constructed, and then SUlUiarize what is known about how households respond to econo11ic
developaent and incorporation into capitalism froa that perspective.

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INTRODUCTION

There are three basic aodels of what happens to pre-capitalist agrarian households when they

have contact with and becoae incorporated into the world econo11y <be it aercantilist or

capitalist>. The first l.S the now generally discredited fragaentation aodel, as foraulated

by Le Play and aade to sound aore scientific by Goode <1963>. Here the pre-capitalist

extended faally is broken apart into 1.solated nuclear faailies by industrial capitalisa.

This aodel has been effectively challenged by data, largely presented by Laslett (1969,

1972>, which shows reaarkably little change in household fora as capitalisa becaae doainant

in Europe. Laslett's explanatory aodel, however, depends on so-called 'nouaenal noras' to

explain this continuity. In their concentration on household aeabership and structure and

their dependence on custoa and ideology to explain history, these aodels actually have aore

in coaaon than in conflict.

The latest aodel is the product of Iaaanuel Wallerstein and his associates <1979, 1982>.

It posits a fundaaental shift in the econoaic role end activities of households w1.th

incorporation into the world systea. The household in a capitalist systea is defined as a

unit which paola incoae, and this pooling allows capital to extract labor fro• households at

less than a ll.vl.ng wage. The world systea is said to 'create' the pooling household out of

broken-up pre-capitalist production units which were coaaunities or lineages. Here at least

we have a aodel which considers change in how households function instead of JUSt how they

appear on census lists.

I believe all three aodels ere funde•entally in error because t.hey fail to define the

household in a correct or even useful way. All focus on a few liaited aspects of a coaplex

soc1el unit. They seea to be deliberately cutting off pieces of the aetephoricel elephant

in order to siMplify the blind aens' task of description. Siaplifying the beast this way

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aay lead to aore elegant or straightforward descriptions, but not of elephants.

Recently, Eugene Haaael adaitted that the "episteaological status of household is ••. auch

in doubt" <1984:30). I believe that the role of the household in the world econoaic system

is equally ~n doubt, and I suggest that the two probleas are closely related. Therefore, in

this paper I will concentrate first on the unexciting issue of defining and describing the

elusive household, and will discuss the ways ~t changes. The goal is to refine and aaintain

a working definition of the household which reaains cross-culturally and historically

useful, resistant to atteapta to label one particular fora "the household" and all others as

aberrant, fragaentary or uniaportant.

In the process I w1ll stress that the household is not a corporate bounded 1
thing 1 with

the boundaries and activations of an individual.£11 While all societies have households, the

household is never an island. They are always eabedded in wider social and econoaic

networks, to greater or lesser degrees, and these linkages are an iaportant subJect for

study. Indiv1duals have different degrees of household aeabership, and the autonoay of the

un1 t is always abridged by custoa, law, or coaauni ty. The isolated autonoaous household

beloved to theorists of the capitalist aiddle class is an ideal type which has little

eapirical basia, whatever its ideological appeal.

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NOUN OR VERB?

Households can usually be identified on the ground in a particular cultural setting, but

a universal definition is an elusive target. The difficulty of finding a cross-cultural

identify1ng criteria is itself a h1.nt to the nature of the problea and the beat solution.

The problea is that while a household-like group or 'thing' can be found in every society,

in each place they perfora unique aixes of activ1.ties and functions, leav1ng very little in

coMaon cross-culturally. Even in the saae saall coaauni ty, households can all appear

different; soae aay be coheaive, soae very diffuse. Soae will be involved in production,

others will not. There are, in fact, no universal functions.

If our purpose is to take a census and produce a liat, this is no problea. We want to

count 'things', not activities or econoaic entities. To define the household as a thing for

a censua, we generally end up picking a unit that aeets Haaaell's definition of " the

saallest (social] grouping with the aaxiaua corporate function" <1980:251>. Or we 11ight

JUSt dub the aost co••on social unit in a society 'the household' and leave it at that.

This is what I aeen by the household as a noun. But for coaparetive purposes and for the

study of change, this definition is insufficient.

By treating the household as a bounded unit defined by co•aon residence or participation

in vaguely-defined doaestic activities, the household becoaes a aorphological unit of

description. Though its exact functional nature reaains culturally particular or vague, the

aorphology of the household can readily be described and classified by reference to the

relationships between its ae•bers. The 'thing' is either extended, multiple or nuclear.

It is certainly true that aorphological household units can be found, nuabered, counted

and claasified <and these scheaes can be quite universal and/or elaborate, eg. Laslett

1972, Herter end Bertrand 1977>. But this activity tends to obscure aore than it

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illuainates, for households are not Just aorphologically differentiated butterflies. The

processes by which households adapt and change can no •ore be understood by classify1ng and

co~paring household structures than insect evolutionary process can be discovered by looking

at butterfly collections.£21

To pursue this analogy a little bit further, when we start to look aore closely at

living organisms and their behavior in an ecological setting, it turns out that the neat

typological categories of aorphology are only an approxiaation of a 11uch aessier reality.

For exaaple, the household group's boundaries can becoae difficult to draw with precision

when all the 11eabers of a household do not live under a single roof, or where household

aeabership is fluid end constantly changing and ao11e people belong to two households. These

probleas 11ey seea a bit picky -- ell classifications ere i11perfect to so11e degree. But I

believe that a purely aorphologicel approach is baaed on a aisunderstending of the nature of

the household, neglecting whet the household does in favor of what it look l1ke.

It turns out, of course, that studying households as process or as patterned activity is

difficult and aessy too, aainly because of the tre11endous variability in household

act1vities within and between cultures. There is soae consensus however, on a group of

activities that for• the core of what is doaestic on a cross-cultural basis. Elsewhere

<Wilk and Netting 1984, Wilk and RathJe 1982) we have grouped thea under the ter11s

production, transaission <trusteeship and inter-generational transfer of property>,

distribution <including pooling, sharing, exchange and consuaption>, biological

reproduction, and co-residence (11een1ng shared activity in constructing, aaintaining and

using a dwelling). We recogni2e that these ere crude categories in need of refine•ent, and

they are not exhaustive. Other activities like co11aon de-fense, legal representation end

ritual are soaetiaes doaeatic activities, and aust be included in those cases.

A workable definition of the household as an activity group requires that these various

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doaestic functions be aapped onto a social group. We have suggested (following Wrigley

1977>, that a graphic aethod like Venn diagraae can show how the different activities

overlap, a aethod which has been successfully deaonetrated by Helas <1975) and Hawkesworth

<1981>. The household proper is the area of aaxiaua overlap, but the exercize also shows

what activities are divided up within the household, as well as the functional links between

households and groupe outside. This aapping of activities locates the household econoay in

re l at i on to larger econoaic institutions, to other households, and to the individual

ae11bera.

Acti vity aapping reveals further coaplications because in aany cases categories like

production and transaission are too large and aust be differentiated. In ay own fieldwork

setting in Belize <Wilk 1981, 1984> the household can be a unit of production for a part of

the year, while other institutions take over this activity for the rest of the agricultural

cycle. [ 31 Chronological change and the diversity of strategies within coaaunitiee also

present proble•s to noraative description of household activities. Just as the aix of

activities carried on by households changes in the course of econoaic transforaation <eg.

Medick 1976, Lofgren 1974), so does the aix of activities at different stages of the

do11estic cycle. Palacio (1985) describes a Belizean case where younger households are

productive units, while older households are not.

So far I have spoken of two diaensions of households which I have called aorphology and

activi ty. It aay eeea like I have been opposing thea to each other, though ay real intent

is to show that they are coapleaentary. But they are not exhaustive either. For households

are also vital cultural units, for which there are codes, rules, rights, and duties. This

cultural diaension of the household has been labelled the 1

houeehold systea 1 <Netting et.

al. 1984>, and has been subdivided by Carter <1984> into rules and strategies. Rules are

culturally sanctioned guidelines for leadership, for recruitaent of personnel, and for

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devolution - the aanageaent of property and the division or fission of the household and its

resources. Strategies involve aanageaent and patterns of decisions within that fraaework of

rules.

To this I add the ideological eleaent of the household syste11, what a household 11eans

end sy•bolizes. While soae cultures seea to lack an ideal household type <puttlng cultural

weight instead on the fallily, kindred, village or other group>, in others the ideal of what

a household should look like and what it should do has great iaportance and persistence.

Even if Just a tiny proportion of the populace can ever live in an ideal household for

reasons of wealth, statue or deaographic accident, the ideals can persist and acquire

iaportance in ethnic or class identity. Such resistant cultural aodels <Laslett's 'nou11enal

noras' 1984> aey have great continuity over ti11e end space, end seea to be coa11on both in

stable agrarian class-baaed societies <eg. China, Japan, pre-industrial England end perhaps

Mayan aesoeaerica (see Wilk 19831> and in the aodern industrial state. Lofgren <1984> has

discussed, and Moynihan (1965> has exe11plified the way a class-based household ideology can

affect scientific JUdgeaent and be used as a tool in class conflict.

There is a wider sense in which households are culturally integrated. Aa Rapp <1979),

Guyer <1981>, Linares (1984) and aany others have pointed out, cultural concepts of gender,

age, class and status, while not always part of the household syate• itself, have a direct

effect on the operation of the household. And because these cultural roles and concepts are

deeply rooted in structures other than the household, they aey be resistant to forces that

change the household itself.

GRAMMAR

How can these three very different aodea of description be brought together in the study

of changing households? While it is unpleasantly coaplex, I believe that a aiaultaneoua

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study of household aorphology, activity and culture is necessary in order to understand how

households adapt. This is because the causes of change and the rates of change can be

different in each of the three diaensions. For exaaple, the activities undertaken by

households can change quickly while soae aorphological changes take years or several

doaestic cycles to becoae evident, and the ideal role of a household head aay not change at

all. The three di•ensions of the household variability aeea to be functionally linked in a

very loose fashion.

How can we reconcile this lack of coherence with the asauaption that the household is a

systea, with functional integrity? I don't think we can, for the household is not a closed,

coherent syste111. While soae sub-cultures of our own society aay idealize and venerate an

iaage of the household as a closed, eutonoaous systea with internal order end haraony

between parts, this iaage has little to do with ethnographic reality. [4] Rather, because

households ere not independent institutions but 'eaergent' ones <with properties derived

fro• other systeas) they always reaain open systeas. As in studying ecosysteas, we have to

draw arbitrary boundaries around our units of study for analytical purposes, and like

ecologists we have a tendency to treat those boundaries as real ones ever after.

The 111orphology of households, for exeaple, is partially under the household's control

through recruitaent strategies, tiaing of aarriage, fertility control and through fission or

eJection of aeabers. But the aorphology of the household is also a product of health,

deaographic and stochastic factors and a kinship systea which aay have little relationship

to the household. (5] The saae can be said for household activities and the household

systea. Gender roles, age categories end noras, legal prescriptions of inheritance and on

property - all are vital in their effects on the household, but are also constituents of the

wider socioecono111ic systea.

The lack of systeaic integrity does not aean that households cannot be studied or

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co11pared es units, it only requires thet they be treated as open syst.e11s, not isolated

ones. And we already have a nu11ber of studies which do that. Included are those that. draw

connections between changes in the econo~ny and household 11orphology <Murdock 1949, Spoehr

1947, Lofgren 1974, Wilk and Netting 1984, Medick 1976), and aoae that. show how the existing

11orpholog ical character of the household places constraints. on i t.s potential act.i vi t.iea

(Chayanov 1966, Rudie 1969/70>. These sUIIIIeries, beginning with Murdock s, are basically 1

functionalist. and 11at.erialist, and tend to follow a 'nor11al' 11odel of econo11ic cauaation in

which •acro-econoaic or ecological changes st.iaulat.e or force change in household production

strategies or property relations, followed by change in household •orphology and in the

ideology and rules of household co11posit.ion and conduct.

While I have used this aodel ayaelf <Wilk 1981, 1984>, there is good evidence

alternative 11odels too. Linares <1984> presents a good case where an initial change in

religious beliefs and gender roles. later leads to reorgani7ation of activities and

11orphology. Guyer <1981> finds cases where the value of labor and goods changed first.,

followed by the household deciaion-aaking syste11 and the distribution of power, and only

then by change in activities and 11orphology. I11ported ideals of household organization and

role behav1or have well-docu•ented effects on Caribbean households <Brown 1977, Rubenstein

1975). Rapid de11ographic changes as in conquest-period aesoaaerica, cause 11orpholog1cal

changes in the household iaaediately, and the household's activities and aorphology •ust

adJust later. Forced resettleMent and faaine have the salle effects.

These 11odels assu11e that household diaensions can be linked in a causal sequence, when

in fact the interrelationships are often 11ore coaplex. The lack of change in one diaension

o£ the household, for exeaple, aay provide an opportunity for other parts to change

rapidly. Kunstadter <1984> points to a Thal situation where household 11orphology re11ains

constant despite draatic changes. in activity and the household systea. And Laslett (1984>

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argues for historically resistant class-based household systeas which have great resistance

to econoMic change.

At the very least these studies deaonstrate that households are dynaaic and changeable,

and that presuaing stability is a poor way to begin. Contradictions are inherent in the

co-existence of diaensions changing at different rates, all subJect to contradictory

influence fro• diverse eleaents of the socioeconoaic environaent. The contradictions aay

propel change for a long tiae after an initial iapetus. Certainly the presuaption of soae

pre- or post- capitalist steady state is unwarranted.

The household aay be the only place in a social syatea where these diverse influences

and crossties coae together in a coMplex knot. Given this coaplexity it is reaarkable that

there is any coherence to the household as a systea at all, and the expectation that order

and coherence should be the nora is probably a source of bias and frustration in household

studies <Haaaell 1984>.

The details of how households change are hard to fill in using an existing database

which consists aostly of aorphological studies and census aaterials. It is rare to find

data on all three household diaensions in a single study. We also lack inforaation on the

internal processes by which contradictory deaands of individuals and supra-household

institutions are balanced and reconciled within the household (though see Carter's £1984]

proaising household history technique>. We also need aore aaterial on leadership and

decision asking at the household level <though Sahlins' early work (1957) includes

interesting ideas about how leadership roles are related to econoaic organization of

households).

I have used self-recording techniques to study labor exchanges between 111en in Maya

households, and interviews to track the divislon of cash froa crop sales in order to study

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the accounting of internal household balances. I was able to aake soae liaited stateaents

about how the expectations of household aeabers were balanced against each other and

~nequalities were rationalized within a general scheae of different kinds of reciprocity.

Carter (1984) presents a aoaewhat aore aechanistic aodel of decision-asking dealing aainly

with property. But internal exchanges of labor, property, rights, duties and proaiaea

within households are eo often considered to be extreaely private that they are aaong the

hardest social phenoaena to study. I and a colleague have had aoae success getting

household aeabers to sit together and reconstruct decisions, working backwards fro11 the

results <Wilk and Wilhite 1984>, and other foraal aethoda have been used by social

psychologists and 11arket researchers <see Park 1982, Spiro 1983).

With aore data of this sort in hand we will have aoae hope of studying process in a

coaparative way. But what of the broad sweep of history? I think a look at our present

global aodels of household change shows that a healthy dose of data is strongly needed here

too.

HOUSEHOLD SYSTEMS AND WORLD SYSTEMS

Atte•pts to equate household types with stages of cultural evolution have generally

failed <see Niakoff and Middleton 1960), producing only weak statistical correlations.

Australian hunter-gatherers for exaaple, hold property at the band level, pool food at the

household level, and produce in sex-specific non-household groupe. Northwest coast

Aaerindiana gatherers on the other hand, held property at the household or individual level,

pooled food aaong a larger kin group, and produced auch food and craft within the

household. Pre-capitalist agrarian econoaiea are equally diverse in household activities,

aorpholog~ea, and household ayateaa. In soae horticultural societ1ea, aa in some

hunter-gatherer groups, the household is so eabedded in a clan, a co•aunity or a set of

task-groups that it hardly aee•a an i•portant unit for social analysis, though ethnographers

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111ay tend to reiffy it in their data-gathering (see Guyer 1981, Woodford-Berger 1981)). But

in other non-capitalist societies households are definitely present and i111portant, even the

central un~ts of society <see for exaaple Netting 1965, Rappaport 1968).

This is not an argu111ent for so111e kind of historical particularis111, but for a close

attent~on to the ecological setting of societies on a case-by-case basis. Seeaingly 111inor

changes in an econoaic or ecological eetting can have aaJor effects on households (61, but

this argues only for careful generalizations, not for their absence. Here are so111e exa111ples

of what I think are careful generalizations:

1. That there is no single kind of 'pre-capitalist' household that for111s a un~fora

historical base for later change. The diverse precapitalist origins of households

lead to var1able <and hopefully predictable> responses to capi tali at incorporation.

Thus one hunter-gatherer society that organizes production at the household level aay

f1.nd it easy to take up tenant faraing, while another that which produces in large

groups aay be unable to 111ake the transit1on at all.

2. That what has been called the 'capitalist world ayate111' is teaporally and spatially

variable, with shifting peripheries and seai-peripheries, and 11any different niches

with1n ita structure. In Latin Aaerica the econoaic pressures on households have gone

through several historical phases <Cancian et. al. 1979), as have the ideological

and legal pressures. Each econoaic niche within the systea has very different

raaifications for the households which occupy it, though households increasingly find

it possible to move between niches (71 In 111uch of the third world today, peripheral

capitalisa provides only insecure and short-tera niches which present special

challenges to 1ndividuals and households.

3. Households often respond to peripheral capitalislll by diversifying to occupy as 111any

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 niches as possible in order to reduce r1sk, and by increasing their aobility in order

to follow opportunities as they coae and go. Flexibility and diversification have

the1.r own costs and structural probleas which affect other parts of the household

systea.

4. That households do aore than passively respond to the pressures of the economy or the

state, serv1ng as a vital aeans of econoaic and ideological resistance <eg.

Wallerste1n et. al. 1979, Hackenburg et. al. 1984>. Ind1.viduals often have storay

relations with households, which have a tendency to run roughshod over soae aeabers~

1nterests <Befu 1968>. The balance that keeps the individual inside the household aust

be understood.

If these are very general stateaents about how households adapt, it l.s because our

aodels of the environaent presented by the expansion of the world systea reaain general. It

is hard to operationalize a list like that of Guyer's <1981) which enu11erates political

incorporation, socioeconoaic differentiation, coaaoditization and foraation of new

associations as the IISJor forces affecting households.

Soae 11ore specific and aore local kinds of changes which occur during these processes

have been shown to have direct effects on households, including <references are indicative,

not exhaustl.ve):

1. Wage rates and the proportion of subsistence needs provided by wages <Wallerstein

1979, Johnson 1978).

2. Security and reliability of wage eaployaent, and wage rates for both genders

<Rubenstein 1975, Helas 1975>

3. The degree to which households own property of all kinde. <Lofgren 1974>.

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 4. The legal statue of property, aarriage, inheritance and the household, and of woaens'

rights to property of various kinds <Guyer 1981, Goldschaidt and Kunkel 1971>.

5. The k1nds of local-level polit1cal institutions in which households participate

<Chance and Taylor 1985>.

6. The relative values of goods and services produced by different aeabera of the

household <Guyer 1981>.

7. Religious and ideological changes which affect gender roles, behavior towards

property, and leadership (Rapp 1979, Linares 1984>.

8. Ratios of people to land and other vital resources, and the changing relative

iaportence of lend, capital, and labor in agricultural production <Wilk 1984).

9. The diversity of productive activities which households 11ust perfor• in order to

surv1ve <Pasternack, Eaber and Eaber 1976).

10. The k1nds of housing available, and the relative costa of housing <Wilk and Netting

1984>.

SYNTHESIS

I clearly do not have apace here to tie all these suggestions together into a catalogue

of the aany ways that incorporation into the world ayatea has affected households. The

niches are aany. I will, however, follow Martin's <1982) lead by deacrib1ng a aenea of

econoaic niches which are coa11on in the area I work in, and will discuss how households

functionally adapt to those niches.

One coaaon niche is for subsistence faraers with adequate land who produce saall aaounta

of cash crops, and/or take on short-tera wage labor in the iaaediate vicinity. Today in

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Let~n Aaer1ce such groups tend to be in expending frontier zones. While land is abundant,

households are aainly organized around agricultural product1on <though this is by no aeans

their only function>. They are often able to procure additional labor through labor

exchange ayeteas <Ereaaus 1956>, through low-wage hired help, or through exchange of

personnel between households as servants or helpers <Lofgren 1974). The availability of lend

Means that children can easily leave end set up their own new households at aeturity, and so

households aay never becoae generationally extended.

As long as the systea reaaina predoainately non-aonetized, distribution within the

household can be fairly siaple. But as wages and incoae froa cash crops becoae a larger

pert of the household 1ncoae, distribut1on can becoae aore probleaatic. When exchanges

between household aeabers consist aeinly of intangibles, they are coaplex and aulti-stranded

<including proa1ses for the future>, and it is hard for individuals to draw ahort-tera

balances. But when labor can be valued on a labor aarket, when coaaoditiee flows can be

converted 1nto cash values, relationships can be aore accurately JUdged in econoaic teras,

and cohesive productive unite with several adults are harder to aaintain. These divisions

are often exacerbated aa younger people with greater opportunities for cash incoaea no

longer want to contribute their entire incoae to a coaaon fund <see Martin 1982, Wilk 1984,

Arnould 1984>, or when the labor aarket only absorbs people for a short part of their life

course.

Runn~ng contrary to this divisive trend is the increased coaplexity of production when

cash cropping and wage labor are added to subsistence pursuits. The need for aore labor,

closer coordination, aore leadership, and careful scheduling in order to take advantage of

diverse incoae opportunities poses a serious dileaaa for households facing difficulty in

equitable distribution to aeabers. This aay be why households in this niche often have

difficulty innovating with new crops, technologies and incoae opportunities. Additional

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aanageaent has coste too. It is also clear that households in different areas have found

different solutions to the dileaaa, soae evident in household aorphology, others in

extra-household organizations which serve to redistribute labor or ita products within

coaaunitiea, cooperatives or eJidos.

1\s clearly shown by Collier <1975> progressive squeezes on land resources have a

draaatic effect on this econoaic niche, and on the households which occupy it. £81 The

rural response to shortage of land varies widely depending on wage rates, the alternatives

for rural eaployaent, the patterns of rural credit, land tenure and 11arketing. Soae of

these polit1cal and property relatione can create a land shortage despite abundant resources

<Durhaa 1979>.

Several responses by households are coaaon. In early stages of land shortage,

households becoae iaportant institutions for holding land end tranaaitting holdings to the

next generation. In such stable peeaantriea, rules are developed for restricting

inher1tance to a few household aeabera, while non-eligibles who stay in the household

contribute labor and share in conauaption without hope of a share of the houaehold 1 s capital

<eg.a Netting 1981, Saith 1959). This restriction on who will inherit, while preserving the

fara as an econoaic unit, proaotes out-aigretion of non-inheritors. Households which result

tend to be large, but internally differentiated, end their fission and aorphology aay be

11ore a product of property aenageaent than of efforts at efficient production <Carter 1984,

Sa1th 1977, cf. Wood 1981>. In any case, there is always great structural tension between

the need to aanege property restrictively and the need to procure as auch labor as

possible.

Collier sees a second phase of land shortage, where the size of holdings becoaes so

saall that property relatione no longer hold households together. Individuals end aaall

groups break off to seek niches within the wage econoay, in craft activities, or in

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saall-scale trading. As the rural econoay is squeezed households 11\ay occupy several

niches through the developll\ental cycle, or they aay resort to •obility strategies. While

households aay have very high fertility in order to provide labor, they have trouble keeping

children in the household because the prospects for the future are poor and other niches

becon <Birdwell 1984).

Collier, however, worked in a fairly unusual situation where very few econo•ic options

were open to households because of ethnic and political discri•ination. This keeps

households equally poor, creating a unifor• ainifundista class, which serves 8S a reserve

labor pool for capitalist agriculture. Often however, when pressure on land increases,

household becoae differentiated and then stratified by wealth <see Stone et. al. 1984,

Nett1ng 1982>. Soae households with aore resources are able to expand the breadth of their

operations, pooling capital fro• diverse sources and investing it in productive

enterprises. Often, aeabers are recruited froa poorer households and the group takes on

aspects of 8 saall capitalist fira. Large households in India described by Singer <1968)

and the "Kulaks" of proto-industrial northeastern Europe <Medick 1976) are rural exaaples.

Siailar households, integrating coll\plex productive, trading and distributive activities and

aanaging corporate capital are found in towns and urban areas in settings as diverse as

Medieval Genoa <Hughes 1975) and aodern Mexico <Hunt 1965).

Other households becoae involved in rural artisanry and crafts, like the Guateaalan

rope-asking households described by Loucky <1979> and the northern European proto-industrial

cloth-askers described by Medick <1976). In structure and aorphology these households

superficially reseable those of 1

kulaks 1 , as they tend to be large and coaplex. But

functionally they are organized alaost exclusively around the production process; as Kedick

1
says, "Inherited property as the tangible 1 deterll\inant of household foraation and faaily

structure receded 1n the face of the overwhelaing iaportance of the fa111ily as a unit of

- 16 -
labor." <1976; 303) The retention of soae part of a subsistence econoay in such a unit allows

capitalists to pay leas than a living wage for the labor of the household 11eabera or the

products of that labor. At best such an artisans! econoay can develop into the kinds of

independent rural saall industry described in Italy by Conrad <1984>, and at worst it

presents one of the aost exploitative faces of capitalisa.

The households of the poor sector of the rural population, like those of craftspeople,

are organized around pooling of resources. But it is iaportant to distinguish what is being

pooled and why. Richer peasant and aerchant households not only pool labor, but pool incoae

for investaent. While craft producing households pool their labor in the production process

and aay then put their incoaes into a coaaon pool of goods, the purpose is consu•ption

rather than investaent. As Medick says, they are pooling to redistribute their poverty

( 1976: 295> . By concentrating on household pooling of both kinds we obscure the pooling

between households and kin groups, which can be of equal or greater iaportance <see Segalen

1984). Rapp <1978) discusses circulation of food, furniture, clothing, appliances, aoney and

children between urban households, and others highlight the iaportance of such networks in

tiaes of crisis. Rapp also points out that such networks of sharing and pooling can serve

as a leveling device, preventing anyone froa accuaulating the resources needed to eascape

the cycle.

When property becoaea leas iaportant in household strategies because of poverty and land

shortage, aobili ty of all kinds tends to increase draaatically. A nuaber of studies

docuaent the effects of different kinds of teaporary wage-aigration on households <Gonzalez

1969, 1984, Palacio 1985, Douglass 1984). Issues of leadership and decision •eking can

becoae probleaatic, and the boundaries of household aeabership becoae difficult to define.

Certainly, it is to the advantage of the rural household to keep ita boundaries as fluid and

open as possible, and to assert ita rights over the incoae of distant aeabers. But

- 17 -
household aaintenence activities (~housework~> and petty production reaein vitally iaportant

activities in households, even when aost wage earners are absent and their reaittances are

the aaJor source of cash incoae <Palacio 1985>.

Fluid boundaries and •eabership allow the household to take advantage of new niches,

especially in an econoaic setting where incoae opportunities ere scattered end short lived.

Households aey also change their functions end •orphology •any ti•es during their

developaent <calling into question the concept of the developaental cycle>. As Rubenstein

says of St. Vincent:

Bounded corporate units on the do•eatic level would not perait individuals to
eas1.ly change residential affiliation, •ating behavior, or the organization of
doaestic and extra-do•estic teaks when external aocio-econoaic conditions and
opportunities <aarket prices for agricultural produce grown by villagers, wage
labour prospects, aigretion outlets, etc.> fluctuate in an unpredictable
fashion. A fora of doaestic organization in which doaeatic group [aorphologyl
and faaily functions [activities] ere e1.ther independent or loosely associated
with each other produces considerable scope for flexibility and aenouevreability
in doaestic life <1975:320>.

In such settings the focus of ideology aay be a prestige feaily fora prescribed by a

aiddle class elite, but few will actually achieve anything rese•bling that faaily form

except for short periods during the life course <Brown 1977>. Because the household is so

dependent on sharing of incoae for survival, the ideology of reciprocity and faaily duty may

be do•inant, while other functions of the household ere elaost hidden.

As I have aentioned previously, individuals' interests so•eti•es counter those of

households. In situations of spatially and teaporally variable and aarginal inco•e

opportunities, individuel interests seea to coae to the fore because aost niches are too

s•all for more them en e single adult. Multiple household ae•bership <like that described

by Stack [19741 in modern Alllericen urban black households), single person households,

institutional residence, consensual or coaaunal sharing of dwellings, and even transient

living without a residence are all alternatives for aany individuals. The deciding issue is

- 18 -
what household aeabership can offer the individual, and what it requires in return, though

these balances and decisions are coaplex and difficult to model.

In aany ways the poorest rural households being squeezed off the land are siailar to the

poorer households in third world cities. Within the aany niches of the urban environaent,

aany of which are in the 1

inforaal sector 1 , differences in incoae have a direct effect on

household organization and strategy <Hackenburg et. al. 1984>. Household recruitaent

strategies and careful budgeting have a direct effect on household incoae and presuaably on

well-being, and as incoae increases there see111s to be a tendency for greater structural

stability in household organization. Certainly those with higher incoae have the resources

to invest in training for aeabers, and on the tools, equipaent or stock needed to enter the

petty burgeoise. The full variety of urban niches has not been adequately described to

date. I suspect that the security and variability of niches is JUst aa iaportant as their

wage rates.

The aorphology and functions of aiddle- and upper- class households in developing

econoaies does not lie within the scope of this paper <see Cancian et. al. [19791 for so•e

generalizations>. I suspect that there is a good deal aore diversity than has presently

been accepted. The very powerful ideology of faaily and household as bounded and ordered

entities which is part of •iddle-clasa folklore <see Lofgren 1984> is both a tool for class

confll.ct (as the aodel is used to show other classes to be inferior> and a aask for very

great variation in actual co11position and function. One wonders JUSt how auch variation

11ight be found in the aiddle classes of our own society if the veil of ideological

uniforaity is pushed aside.

Conclusions

I have concentrated here on a descriptive scheae which I believe aakes it easier to

- 19 -
understand JUst how households are involved in sociocultural change. Unless we distinguish

between household 11orphology, activity and ideology, we are dooaed to the scholar's hell

where rubber rulers are used to coapare apples and poaaegranettes because they look alike

and apples and pineapples because they sound alike. I realize that I have neglected the

ideological and gender aspects of households in this discussion, and can only plead liaited

space and difficult choices of priorities <as well as a aaterialist bias) in response.

It would certainly be nice if we could draw soae broad sweeping generalizations about

how households change during incorporation into the world systea and leave it at that. The

perception that there was soae grand culainating evolutionary scheae leading froa a

pre-capitalist household to the aodern suburban Aaerican household has been coaaon aaong

social scientists since the tiae of Le Play. But hindsight is no substitute for vision; I

suggest we have quite a bit aore research to do before the broadest scope of change can be

deterained.

1. Guyer <1981), Yanagisako (1979>, Rapp <1979) and Haaaell <1984> aaong others, have

criticized the ethnocentric bias of historians and ethnographers in iaposing a aodel of the

~odern corporate aiddle-class household on households of other tiaes, classes and cultures.

They have also criticized the 'reification' of the household into a pseudo-person which I

11ention here.

2. This is not a new coaplaint or point: 11orphological descriptions of households as

'things' <nouns> have been increasingly criticized and found insufficient <see Lofgren 1974,

Kedick 1976, Carter and Merrill 1979, and Mitterauer end Seider 1979, aaong aany others).

3. See Terray'a <1972) discussion of different tasks and productive groupe for useful

11ethods of dealing with this kind of coaplexity.

- 20 -
4. It can be argued that the ideology of the independent, self-reliant household current in

aiddle class North Aaer ica is a reaction and aaak for the unprecedented lack of econo11ic

independence end social autonoay in the face of state institutions.

5. Burch <1971> and Wachter, Haaael and Laslet.t. <1978> aaong others have shown how 11inor

changes in basic deaographic rates can have a aaJor effect on household aorphology, holding

everything else constant..

6. unfortunately alaoat all of these studies, for exaaple those of Sahlins<1957>, Spoehr

<1947), Netting <1965>, Arnould <1984), and Reyna <1976), deal with cases of integration

1nto a aarket econoay - but these are the facta of life in aodern ethnography. The point

stands that households are in aany ways sensitive and adaptive institutions.

7. Murphy and Steward <1956) discuss si•ilar niches in two widely separated areas of

peripheral capitalis11, and the si11ilar effects on the houeeholds in two widely different

societies.

8. Callier also deaonstrates clear 1y that land pressure •ay have other causes than natura 1

population growth, but this is no reason to reJect cultural ecology in toto, as he seeaa to

be teapted to do.

- 21 -
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