The Protoindustrial Household Economy

Toward a Formal Analysis

Bibliographic Data

ID6080313
AuthorsUlrich Pfister (0000-0001-7489-7509, 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., corresponding author)
Year1992
Volume17
Issue2
Pages201-232
Publication date1992-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Family History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0363-1990 • E-ISSN: 1552-5473
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/036319909201700206
OpenAlexW1915230850
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited32

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

Demographic economics · Economic geography · Economics · Epistemology · Positive economics · Sociology · Historical Economic and Social Studies