The Household
Informal Order around the Hearth
Published on 24. August 2008
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-0-691-13442-0 (ISBN)
Description
Some people dwell alone, many in family-based households, and an adventuresome few in communes. "The Household" is the first book to systematically lay bare the internal dynamics of these and other home arrangements. Legal underpinnings, social considerations, and economic constraints all influence how household participants select their homemates and govern their interactions around the hearth. Robert Ellickson applies transaction cost economics, sociological theory, and legal analysis to explore issues such as the sharing of household output, the control of domestic misconduct, and the ownership of dwelling units. Drawing on a broad range of historical and statistical sources, Ellickson contrasts family-based households with the more complex arrangements in medieval English castles, Israeli kibbutzim, and contemporary cohousing communities.He shows that most individuals, when structuring their home relationships, pursue a strategy of consorting with intimates. This, he asserts, facilitates informal coordination and tends ultimately to enhance the quality of domestic interactions.
He challenges utopian critics who seek to enlarge the scale of the household and legal advocates who urge household members to rely more on written contracts and lawsuits. Ellickson argues that these commentators fail to appreciate the great advantages in the home setting of informally associating with a handful of trusted intimates. "The Household" is a must-read for sociologists, economists, lawyers, and anyone interested in the fundamentals of domestic life.
He challenges utopian critics who seek to enlarge the scale of the household and legal advocates who urge household members to rely more on written contracts and lawsuits. Ellickson argues that these commentators fail to appreciate the great advantages in the home setting of informally associating with a handful of trusted intimates. "The Household" is a must-read for sociologists, economists, lawyers, and anyone interested in the fundamentals of domestic life.
Reviews / Votes
Robert C. Ellickson defines the household as a voluntary grouping of relatives or non-relatives living under the same roof. As he points out in his engaging study, this pervasive institution has received surprisingly little attention from social theorists... The Household, a short, curious and enjoyable book, provides a novel way of looking at an institution from which very few of us can escape. -- Lucy Worsley, Times Literary Supplement Ellickson's book represents a skillful use of the analytical tools of the law-and-economics movement to understand relations within the household--a complicated machine for living that involves a large number of joint decisions... Ellickson's book pushes us to think more clearly about the benefits and the costs of homeownership. His book makes sense of one of the most striking facts in the homeownership literature: the extremely tight relationship between structure type and ownership... Houses are most Americans' most important asset. They are the stages on which we live our lives. And so housing policy is worthy of intense attention--but until the current crisis housing policy existed in the netherworld of the more unglamorous public pursuits. Perhaps our present-day troubles will create the opportunity to produce better housing policies, or so I hope. Robert Ellickson's ideas can certainly help. -- Edward Glaeser, The New Republic This volume is a tour de force! Ellickson takes the reader on an erudite, highly informative journey through the household in all of its many manifestations and facets... The reader enjoys a catholic view of why households persist; why they are the size they are; how ownership versus rental decisions are made; what motivates adding or shedding household members; and most fascinatingly, how informal norms regulate household occupant behavior with little formal and explicit societal legislation. -- D. J. Conger, Choice Through its methodological synthesis of economic with legal and sociological analysis, this text serves as an important primer on household structures in liberal societies. -- Patricia McGee Crotty, Law and Politics Book Review By pulling together a range of diverse topics and data, the book is thought-provoking. It is dense but readable, and Ellickson presents economic arguments in an accessible way. Reading it challenged (and energized) me to think about the unique contribution of sociological explanations. -- Carrie Yodanis, Canadian Journal of SociologyMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Jersey
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Trade binding
Illustrations
2 line illus. 6 tables.
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 127 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-691-13442-0 (9780691134420)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
08/2010
1st Edition
Princeton University Press
€26.60
Shipment within 10-20 days
Person
Robert C. Ellickson is the Walter E. Meyer Professor of Property and Urban Law at Yale Law School. His books include "Order without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes".
Content
Preface xi Chapter 1: how households differ from families 1 Chapter 2: household formation and dissolution in a liberal society 10 Three Distinct Relationships that May Exist within a Household 10 Foundational Liberal Rights that Enable Individuals to Fashion Their Own Households 13 Household Surplus and Its Distribution among Members 22 Chapter 3: The predominant strategy : consorting with intimates 27 Favoring Those with Whom One Will Have Continuing Relations 29 Limiting the Number of Persons in the Relationship 32 Favoring Homogeneity of Tastes and Stakes 32 Chapter 4: a historical overview of household forms 35 Occupants of Households: The Predominance of Small, Kin-Based Clusters 35 Owners of Dwelling Units 41 Residential Landlord-Tenant Relationships 44 Chapter 5: are the household forms that endure necessarily best? 46 Utopian Designs of Unconventional Households 46 Possible Imperfections, from a Liberal Perspective, in the Process of Household Formation 47 Is Liberalism Overly Destructive of Solidarity? 51 The Unpromising History of Experiments with Unconventional Household Forms 53 Chapter 6: choosing which of a household's participants should serve as i ts owners 60 Basic Concepts in the Theory of the Ownership of Enterprise 60 Why Suppliers of a Household's At-Risk Capital Tend to End Up Owning It 64 Chapter 7: The mixed blessings of joining with others 76 Adding Co-Occupants 76 Adding Co-Owners 85 Choosing between Owning and Renting a Home 86 Chapter 8: order without law in an ongoing household 92 The Tendency toward Welfare-Maximizing Substantive and Procedural Rules 94 Sources of Household Rules: In General 101 Rules for Co-Occupants 109 Rules for Co-Owners 120 Rules to Govern the Landlord-Tenant Relationship 123 Chapter 9: The challenge of unpacking the household 128 Appendix A: Data on Intentional Communities 137 Appendix B: Data on Co-housing Communities 145 Notes 147 Works Cited 199 Index 237