Domestic Strategies: Work and Family in France and Italy, 1600-1800 (Studies in Modern Capitalism)

Domestic Strategies offers a new reading of the historical sources in order to understand the social relations and strategies of laboring families toward the organization of productive processes and institutional arrangements in early modern Europe. In contrast to many other works, the essays in Domestic Strategies place laboring families as the actors on the historical scene, rather than as passive recipients of historical changes. Conceptual insights derived from both anthropology (Sahlins and Geertz) and sociology (Bourdieu, Elias and Mary Douglas) are applied to individual case studies of social groups from north-central Italy and the French Alps, and the whole offers an important new perspective on the working lives of European families during the early modern period and beyond. Research on historical processes such as commercialisation traditionally concentrated on the motors of change and measurement of their impact, and considered the labouring classes as the passive objects of such changes. Developments in the social sciences in recent years have stimulated a new reading of the historical sources in terms of the social relations and strategies of families in interpreting and adapting to their own use institutional settings and economic resources. The essays presented in this 1991 book explore the relationship between the historical experiences of social relations and the demands and opportunities offered by the economy in early modern Europe through a focus on the strategies of labouring families. Critical discussion of the historian's use of sources characterises the essays, which provide case-studies of social groups in north-central Italy and the French Alps. They relate to three specific themes: the exploitation of non-agricultural resources in the countryside, urban guilds and charitable provision Domestic Strategies, first published in 1991, offers a reading of the historical sources in order to understand the social relations and strategies of labouring families towards the organisation of productive processes and institutional arrangements in early modern Europe. It is a truism that historical (like all social science) research is influenced by the preoccupations and moods of the society in which the historian works.