The post-World War II development of kinship history was initiated by
the emergence of methods for the analysis of quantitative historical-demographic
sources: in France by means of the Family Reconstitution Method based on genealogi
cal records and parish registers; in England by the analysis of nominative household
censuses. The essay discusses five areas of subsequent development in the field : (1) the
search for an investigation of large-scale kinship structures, and their influence on
society as a whole; (2) life-course analysis, which integrates both events in individual life
histories and larger historical events with the household developmental cycle;
(3) interactions between kinship and economic relations, and particularly the roles
played by women in the economic life of the family; (4) the effects of kinship on social
relations at the community level; and (5) the relationships between kinship and social
structures more generally. In this last respect, the essay emphasizes the influence of the
particularly French intellectual institutions and traditions, and of the alliance theory of
marriage on the distinctive direction taken by French social historians. Finally, the
essay considers the study of mentalités, as it has influenced kinship history.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Anderson, Michael.1971. Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2.
Archives départementales de la Gironde, Serie 3E. Archives notariales.
3.
Ariès, Philippe.1948. Histoire des populations françaises et leurs attitudes devant la vie dupuis le XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Editions Self.
4.
_______. 1949. "Attitudes devant la vie et devant la mort du XVIIe au XIXe siècles." Population4:463-470.
5.
_____. 1953. "Sur les origines de la contraception en France ." Population8:465-472.
6.
_______. 1960. L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien règime . Paris: Plon.
7.
1980. Un historien du dimanche. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
8.
Bardet, Jean-Pierre.1983. Rouen aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Les mutations d'un espace social. 2 volsParis: SEDES .
9.
Berkner, Lutz K.1972. "The Stem Family and the Developmental Cycle of the Peasant Household: An Eighteenth-Century Austrian Example." American Historical Review77:398-418.
10.
_____. 1975. "The Use and Misuse of Census Data for the Historical Analysis of Family Structure." Journal of Interdisciplinary History5:721-38.
11.
Bloch, Marc. 1961. Feudal Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
12.
Boutruche, Robert.1947. La Crise d'une société. Seigneurs et paysans du Bordelais pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
13.
Bouchard, Gerard, and Isabelle de Pourbaix .1987. "Individual and Family Life Courses in the Saguenay Region, Quebec, 1842-1911." Journal of Family History12:225-242.
14.
Burguière, Andreπ.1979. "Histoire d'une histoire: La naissance des Annales ." Annales1979:1347-1359.
15.
Castan, Yves.1974. Honnêteté et relations sociales en Languedoc 1715-1780 . Paris: Plon.
16.
Charbonnier, G.1961. "Entretiens avec Claude Lévi-Strauss." Les Lettres Nouvelles10:43-56.
17.
Clark, Terry Nichols.1972. Prophets and Patrons: The French University and the Emergence of the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
18.
Coutau-Bégarie, Herveπ.1983. Le Phénomène "Nouvelle Histoire. Strategie et idéologie des nouveaux historiens. Paris: Economica .
19.
Couturier, Marcel.1969. Recherches sur les structures sociales de Châteaudun 1525-1725 . Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N.
20.
Czap, Peter, Jr. 1982. "The Perennial Multiple Family Household, Mishino Russia, 1782-1858," Journal of Family History7:5-26.
21.
Daumard, A., and F. Furet.1959. "Méthodes de l'histoire sociale. Les archives notariales et la meπcanographie." Annales1959:676-693.
22.
_____. 1961. Structures et relations sociales à Paris au milieu du XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Librairie Armand Colin.
23.
Davis, Natalie Zemon.1977. "Ghosts, Kin, and Progeny: Some Features of Family Life in Early Modem France." Daedalus106:87-114.
24.
Deyon, Pierre.1967. Amiens, capitale provinciale. Etude sur la société urbaine au 17e siècleParis: Mouton .
25.
Duby, Georges.1953. La Société au Xie et XIIe siècles dans la région maconnaise . Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
26.
Dupâquier, Jacques.1984. Pour la démographie historique. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France.
27.
Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1974. Children of the Great Depression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
28.
_____. 1978. "Family History and the Life Course." Pp. 16-64 in T.K. Hareven, ed., Transitions: The Family and the Life Course in Historical Perspective. New York: Academic Press.
29.
Eversley, D.E.C., Peter Laslett, E.A. Wrigley, W.A. Armstrong, and Lynda Ovenall.1966. An Introduction to English Historical Demography . London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson .
30.
Farber, Bernard.1981. Conceptions ofKinship. New YorkElsevier.
31.
Febvre, Lucien.1968. Le problème d'incroyance au XVIe siècle: la religion de Rebelais. Paris.
32.
Filmer, Sir Robert.1949. Patriarcha and Other Political Works. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
33.
Fleury, Michel, and Louis Henry.1956. Des Registres paroissiaux a l'histoire de la population. Manuel de dépouillement et d'exploitation de l'état civil ancien. Paris: INED.
34.
Fortes, Meyer.1945. The Dynamics of Clanship Among the Talensi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
35.
_____. 1949a. The Web of Kinship Among the Talensi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
36.
_____. 1949b. "Time and Social Structure: An Ashanti Case Study " Pp. 54-84 in Fortes ( 1949).
37.
_____. 1969. Kinship and the Social Order. The Legacy of Lewis Henry MorganLondon: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
38.
_______. 1971. "Introduction." Pp. 1-14 in Goody (1971).
39.
Fortes, Meyer, ed. 1949. Social Structure. Studies Presented to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown. London: Oxford University Press.
40.
Foster, Brian L.1984. "Family Structure and the Generation of Thai Social Exchange Networks." Pp. 84-105 in Netting, Wilk, and Arnould, 1984 .
41.
Foster, John.1974. Class Struggle in the Industrial Revolution; Early Industrial Capitalism in Three English Towns. London: Wiedenfeld and Nicolson.
42.
Frêche, Georges.1974. Toulouse et la région Midi-Pyrénées au Siècle des Lumières vers 1670-1789. N.p.: Editions Cujas.
43.
Gautier, Etienne, and Louis Henry.1958. La population de Crulai, paroisse normande. Étude historique . Paris: INED.
44.
Geertz, Clifford.1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
45.
Gerth, H.H., and C. Wright Mills, eds. 1958. From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.
46.
Glass, D.V., and D.E.C. Eversley .1965. Population in History. Essays in Historical Demography. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co.
47.
Goode, William J.1970. World Revolution and Family Patterns. New York: The Free Press.
48.
Goody, Jack.1972. "The Evolution of the Family." Pp. 103-124 in Laslettand Wall, eds., Household and Family in Past Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
49.
_______. 1983. The Development of the Family and Marriage in EuropeCambridge: Cambridge University Press.
50.
Goody, Jack, ed. 1971. The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
51.
Goody, Jack, Joan Thirsk , and E.P. Thompson, eds. 1976. Family and Inheritance. Rural Society in Western Europe 1200-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
52.
Goubert, Pierre.1954. "Une richesse historique en cour d'exploitation. Les registres paroissiaux." Annales ESC1954 :83-93.
53.
____. 1960. Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730. Contribution à l'histoire sociale de la France du XVIIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N.
54.
Greven, Philip J.,Jr. 1970. Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
55.
Hajnal, J.1965. "European Marriage Patterns in Perspective." Pp. 101-143 in D.V. Glass and D.E.C. Eversley, eds., Population In History . Chicago: Aldine.
56.
_____. 1983. "Two Kinds of Pre-Industrial Household Formation System ." Pp. 65-104 in Wall, Robin, and Laslett, eds., Family Forms in Historic Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
57.
Halpern, Joel M., and Richard A. Wagner .1984. "Time and Social Structure: A Yugoslav Case Study." Journal of Family History9:229-244.
58.
Hammel, E.A.1972. "The Zadruga as Process." Pp. 335-373 in Laslettand Wall, eds., Household and Family in Past Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
59.
Hareven, Tamara K.1982. Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship Between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
60.
Hareven, Tamara K., ed. 1978. Transitions. The Family and the Life Course in Historical Perspective. New York: Academic Press.
61.
Harris, Marvin. 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory. A History of Theories of Culture . New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.
62.
Henrepin, Jacques.1954. La Population canadienne au début du XVIIIe siècle. Nuptualité, Fecondité. Mortalité infantile. Paris: INED.
63.
Henry, Louis.1953. "Une richesse démographique en fiche. Les registres paroissiaux ." Population8:281-290.
Hillaire, Jean.1956. Le re1gime des biens entre e1poux dans la re1gion de Montpellier du de1but du XIIIe sie2cle a2 la fin du XVIe sie2cle. Montpiellier.
66.
Homans, George Caspar.1960. English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century. New York: Russell and Russell.
67.
Hughes, Diane Owen. 1986. "Representing the
68.
Family: Portraits and Purposes in Early Modem Italy." The Journal of Interdisciplinary History17:7-38.
69.
Imhof, Arthur E.1976. "Généalogie et démographie historique en Allemagne ." Annales de démographie historique1976 :77-107.
70.
James. Mervyn.1974. Family, Lineage and Civil Society. A Study of Society, Politics, and Mentality in the Durham Region, 1500-1640. London: Oxford University Press.
71.
Kertzer, David I.1984. "Anthropology and Family History." Journal of Family History9:201-206.
72.
Keylor, William R.1975. Academy and Community. The Foundation of the French Historical Profession. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
73.
Labrousse, Ernest.1955. "Voies nouvelles vers une histoire de la bourgeoisie occidentale aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles." Pp. 514-530 in Decimo Congresso internazionale di Scienze Storiche, Relazioni, IV, Storia modema.
74.
Laslett, Peter.1948. "The Gentry of Kent in 1640." Cambridge Historical Journal1948:148-164.
75.
_______. 1965a. The World We Have Lost. England Before the Industrial AgeNew York: Scribners.
76.
_____. 1965b. "The History of Population and Social Structure " International Social Science Journal17:582-593.
77.
_______. 1972. "Introduction: The History of the Family." Pp. 1-89 in Laslett and Wall, eds., Household and Family in Past Time . C ambridge: Cambridge University Press.
78.
_____. 1977. Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations Essays in Historical Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
79.
Laslett, Peter, and John Harrison.1963. "Clayworth and Cogenhoe." Pp. 157-184 in H.E. Bell and R.L. Ollard , eds, Historical Essays 1600-1750 Presented to David Ogg . London: Adam and Charles Black .
80.
Laslett, Peter, and Richard Wall, eds. 1972. Household and Family in Past Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
81.
Le Roy Ladurie, Emanuel.1976. "Family Structures and Inheritance Customs in Sixteenth-Century France." Pp. 37-70 in J. Goody, J. Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson , eds. Family and Inheritance. Rural Society in Western Europe 1200-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
82.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude.1949. Les Structure élémentaires de la parenté. Paris.
83.
1960. "The Family." Pp. 261-285 in H.L. Shapiro, ed., Man, Culture, and Society. New York: Oxford University Press.
84.
_____. 1963. Structural Anthropology. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
85.
Locke, John.1960. Two Treatises on Government. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
86.
Macfarlane, Alan.1970. The Family Life of Ralph Josselin, A Seventeenth Century Clergyman. An Essay in Historical Anthropology. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
87.
Mauss, Marcel. 1967. The Gift. Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.
88.
McCaa, Robert.1984. "Calidad, lase, and Endogamy in Colonial Mexico: The Case of Parral, 1788-1790." Hispanic American Historical Review64:477-502.
89.
McCaa, Robert, and Michael Swann.1982. "Social Theory and the Log-Linear Approach: The Question of Race and Class in Colonial Spanish America." Discussion Paper No. 76, Department of Geography, Syracuse University.
90.
Mitterauer, Michael.1981. "Marriage without Co-residence: A Special Type of Historic Family Form in Rural Carinthia." Journal of Family History7:177-181.
91.
Mousnier, Roland.1969. Les hiérarchies sociales de 1450 à nosjours. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
92.
. 1970. La Plume, la faucille, et le marteau. Institutions et Société en France du Moyen Age à la Révolution. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
93.
_____ . 1974. Les Institutions de la France sous la monarchie absolue . Tome I. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
94.
_____. 1976. La Stratification sociale à Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. L'échantillon de 1634, 1635, 1636. Paris : Editions A. Pedone.
95.
Mousnier, Roland, ed. 1964. Lettres et mémoires adressés au Chancellier Seguier (1633-1649). 2 tomes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France .
96.
. 1968. Problèmes de stratification sociale. Actes du Colloque International (1966). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
97.
Mousnier, R., J.-P. Labatut, and Y. Durand.1965. Problèmes de stratification sociale. Deux cahiers de la noblesse pour les États Généraux de 1649-1651. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France .
98.
Murdock, George Peter.1949. Social Structure. New York: The Free Press.
99.
Netting, Robert McC., Richard R. Wilk, and Eric J. Arnould, eds. 1984. Households. Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group. Berkeley: University of California Press .
100.
Phillpotts, Bertha Surtees.1913. Kindred and Clan in the Middle Ages and After. A Study of the Sociology of the Teutonic Races. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
101.
Plakans, Andrejs.1984. Kinship in the Past. An Anthropology of European Family Life 1500-1900. Oxford: Basil Blackwell .
102.
Porschnev, Boris.1963. Les Soulevements populaires en France de 1623 à 1648. Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N.
103.
Robin, Régine.1970. La Société française en 1789: Semur-en-Auxois. Paris: Plon.
104.
Runciman, W.G.1963. Social Science and Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
105.
Rutman, Darrett B., and Anita H. Rutman .1984. A Place in Time: Middlesex, Virginia, 1650-1750. New York: W.W. Norton.
106.
Segalen, Martine.1980. Mari et femme dans la société paysanne. Paris: Flammarion.
107.
_____. 1985. Quinze générations de Bas-Bretons. Parenté et société dans la pays bigouden Sud 1720-1980. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
108.
Shapiro, Harry L., ed. 1960. Man, Culture, and Society. New York: Oxford University Press.
109.
Smith, Richard M.1979. "Kin and Neighbors in a Thirteenth-Century Suffolk Community ." Journal of Family History4:219-256.
110.
_____. 1984. "Some Issues Concerning Families and their Property in Rural England 1250-1800." Pp. 1-86 in R.M. Smith, ed., Land, Kinship and Life-cycle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
111.
Smith, Richard M., ed. 1984. Land, Kinship and Life-cycle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
112.
Stone, Lawrence.1966. "Social Mobility in England, 1500-1700." Past and Present33:16-55.
113.
_____ 1977. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800. New York: Harper and Row.
114.
Tilly, Charles.1964. The Vendée. A Sociological Analysis of the Counterrevolution of 1793. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
115.
Tilly, Louise A.1979. "The Family Wage Economy of a French Textile City: Roubaix, 1872-1906." Journal of Family History4:381-394.
116.
Tilly, Louise A., and Joan W. Scott.1978. Women, Work, and Family. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
117.
Wall, Richard, Jean Robin , and Peter Laslett, eds. 1983. Family Forms in Historic Europe. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
118.
Wheaton, Robert.1973. "Bordeaux before the Fronde." Ph.D.. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge.
119.
_____. 1980. "Affinity and Descent in Seventeenth-Century Bordeaux " Pp. 111-134 in Wheaton and Hareven, eds., Family and Sexuality in French History. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press.
120.
_____. 1985. "The Application of Network Theory to the Analysis of the Social Structure of Bordeaux in the Seventeenth Century." Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.
121.
Wheaton, Robert, and Tamara K. Hareven, eds. 1980. Family and Sexuality in French History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
122.
Wrigley, E.A.1966. "Family Limitation in PreIndustrial England." Economic History Review19:82-109.
123.
. 1968. "Mortality in Pre-Industrial England: The Example of Colyton, Devon, over Three Centuries." Daedalus97:546-580.
124.
Yans-McLaughlin, Virginia.1982. Family and Community. Italian Immigrants in Buffalo 1800-1930 . Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
125.
Yver, Jean.1966. Egalité entre héritiers et exclusion des enfants dotés. Essai de gégraphie coutumière. Paris: Editions Sirey.
