Ellickson The Household

Informal Order around the Hearth
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-3415-0
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ellickson, Robert C.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Rechtswissenschaften Bürgerliches Recht Familienrecht

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Über Autor(innen)

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.