Journal article
The Protoindustrial Household Economy: Toward a Formal Analysis
- Pfister, Ulrich Ulrich Pfister is senior assistant for information management at the humanities faculty. University of Zurich, Switzerland. He has published articles and two books on the demographic and economic history of early modern Switzerland and on the political economy of the Third Word.
- 2016-7-25
Published in:
- Journal of Family History. - SAGE Publications. - 1992, vol. 17, no. 2, p. 201-232
English
Several recent studies on the household structure and the demographic evolution of protoindustrial communities in early modern Europe contradict important tenets of protoindustry theory as it has emerged from the writings of Braun, Mendels, Medick, and Levine. The present study develops a conceptual framework of the protoindustrial household economy based on a simple model of the decision-making process by which rural households allocate their labor to agricultural and protoindustrial activities. Its application to the class-specific location of protoindustrial activities, to the demographic corollaries of protoindustrialization, to age- and gender-specific work roles as well as to patterns and strategies of life cycles suggests its capacity to interpret in a coherent fashion a wide variety of seemingly contradictory empirical evidence.
- Language
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- English
- Open access status
- closed
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.1177/036319909201700206
- ISSN 0363-1990
- Persistent URL
- https://sonar.ch/global/documents/215826
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