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Spatial construction of European family and household systems: a promising path or a blind alley? An Eastern European perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2012

MIKOŁAJ SZOŁTYSEK
Affiliation:
Laboratory of Historical Demography, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.

Abstract

This essay represents an attempt at a re-examination of the Western scientific evidence for the existence of the divergent ‘Eastern European family pattern’. This evidence is challenged by almost entirely unknown contributions of Eastern European scholars, revealing the stark incompatibility of the two discourses. This paper is informed to a large extent by Richard Wall's voluminous research on European household and family systems. Wall's original observation of non-negligible spatial variation within the supposedly homogeneous North-Western European marriage and family pattern is used here as a starting point to show the true diversity of familial organisation in Eastern Europe, which had been placed at the other end of the spectrum of what was long believed to be a dichotomous division in European family systems. The diversity of family forms and the rhythms of their development in historical Eastern Europe presented in this literature should finally free us from a simplistic view of the continent's familial history, and especially from the perspective implied by the notion of a ‘dividing line’.

Construction spatiale des systèmes européens de la famille et du ménage: chemin prometteur ou impasse ? la question vue de l'est européen

Cet essai a pour ambition de réexaminer les éléments qui ont permis, jusqu'à présent, aux chercheurs occidentaux, de soutenir l'idée qu'il existait un modèle familial spécifique à «l'Europe de l'Est». Lorsque l'on considère les contributions – presque totalement inconnues à l'Ouest – des chercheurs de cette zone de l'Europe, on met en évidence deux discours complètement incompatibles. Cet article a pour point de départ les recherches considérables entreprises par Richard Wall, à Cambridge, sur les systèmes européens de la famille et du ménage en Europe qui ont mis en évidence de considérables variations spatiales au sein de ce que l'on considérait comme un modèle homogène (le modèle européen de mariage et de formation de la famille en Europe du Nord-Ouest). Nous pouvons ainsi montrer la grande diversité des modes d'organisation familiale en Europe de l'Est, dans cette partie du spectre située à l'Est, alors que, jusqu'à nos jours, on ne concevait qu'une division simple, dichotomique, partageant en deux les systèmes familiaux européens, l'Ouest et l'Est. Nous commentons ici nombre de travaux historiques attestant la considérable diversité des formes d'organisation familiale et de leurs rythmes de développement en Europe de l'Est, ce qui finalement nous libère d'un vue simpliste de l'histoire de la famille en Europe, et particulièrement de cette perspective qui prônait l'existence d'une «ligne de séparation» entre deux mondes.

Die räumliche konstruktion europäischer familien- und haushaltssysteme: vielversprechender weg oder sackgasse? eine osteuropäische perspektive

Dieser Essay stellt einen Versuch dar, die von der westlichen Forschung angeführten Belege für die Existenz eines abweichenden „osteuropäischen Familienmusters“ einer erneuten Bewertung zu unterziehen. Zweifel an der Gültigkeit dieser Belege ergeben sich aus den Beiträgen osteuropäischer Gelehrter, die im Westen fast völlig unbekannt sind und zugleich zeigen, wie sehr sich die beiden Diskurse widersprechen. Der Beitrag stützt sich zum großen Teil auf die umfangreichen Forschungen von R. Wall über europäische Haushalts- und Familiensysteme. Dabei dient Walls ursprüngliche Beobachtung, dass die räumlichen Unterschiede innerhalb des angeblich homogenen nordwesteuropäischen Heirats- und Familienmusters nicht vernachlässigt werden dürfen, als Ausgangspunkt für den Aufweis der tatsächlichen Diversität der Familienorganisation in Osteuropa, die man ans andere Ende des Spektrum der europäischen Familiensysteme platziert hatte, von dem man lange glaubte, es lasse sich als dichotomische Zweiteilung darstellen. Die Unterschiedlichkeit der Familienformen und die Rhythmen ihrer Veränderungen im historischen Osteuropa, die sich aus dieser Literatur ergeben, sollte uns endgültig von einem allzu einfachen Blick auf die Familiengeschichte des Kontinents befreien, vor allem von der Perspektive, die sich aus der Vorstellung einer „Trennlinie“ ergibt.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

ENDNOTES

1 For example, Goran Therborn, Between sex and power: family in the world 1900–2000 (London, 2004); Arland Thornton, Reading history sideways. The fallacy and enduring impact of the developmental paradigm on family life (Chicago, 2005); Hannes Grandits, ‘Introduction: the reshaping of family and kin relations in European welfare systems’, in Hannes Grandits ed., Kinship and social security in contemporary Europe, vol. 1. Family, kinship and state during the century of welfare: eight countries (Frankfurt and New York, 2010), 23–46.

2 Maria Todorova, ‘On the epistemological value of family models: the Balkans within the European pattern’, in Maria Todorova, Balkan family structure and the European pattern. Demographic developments in Ottoman Bulgaria (Washington, DC, 2006), 199–211; Sovic, Silvia, ‘Moving beyond stereotypes of “east” and “west”’, Cultural and Social History 5, 2 (2008), 141–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrejs Plakans and Charles Wetherell, ‘The Hajnal line and Eastern Europe’, in Theo Engelen and Arthur P. Wolf eds., Marriage and the family in Eurasia. Perspectives on the Hajnal hypothesis (Amsterdam, 2005), 105–26; Kertzer, David I., ‘Household history and sociological theory’, Annual Review of Sociology 17 (1991), 155–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Recently, for example, Tomáš Sobotka, ‘The diverse faces of the second demographic transition in Europe’, in Tomas Frejka, Tomáš Sobotka and Jan M. Hoem eds., special collection 7: Childbearing trends and policies in Europe, Demographic Research 19, article 8 (2008), 171–224.

4 This paper is restricted primarily to a discussion of East-Central European area studies. Consequently, it takes only a very limited stance on intense discussions among the nineteenth-century scholars of the morphology and social implications of the peculiar family type of zadruga, found in some parts of the Balkans, but often believed to encapsulate the very spirit of the Slavic familial tendencies (reviewed in Mikołaj Szołtysek and Barbara Zuber-Goldstein, , ‘Historical family systems and the great European divide: the invention of the Slavic East’, Demográfia: English Edition 52, 5 (2009), 547Google Scholar. The variety of family forms in pre-industrial Russia is also omitted here.

5 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: the map of civilization on the mind of the enlightenment (Stanford, 1994).

6 August von Haxthausen, Studien über die inneren Zustände, das Volksleben und insbesondere die ländlichen Einrichtungen Rußlands (Hanover and Berlin, 1972[1846]), 82.

7 Périer, Philippe, ‘Le Play and his followers: over a century of achievement’, International Social Science Journal 50, 157 (2002), 343–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 345; Thornton, Reading history sideways, 64; also Adamovsky, E., ‘Russia as a space of hope: nineteenth-century French challenges to the liberal image of Russia’, European History Quarterly 33, 4 (2003), 424CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Frédéric Le Play, L'organisation de la famille selon le vrai modéle signalé par l'histoire de toutes les races et de tous les temps, 3rd edn. (Tours, 1871), § 12, 94; Frédéric Le Play, ‘La réforme sociale’, in C. Bodard Silver ed., Frederic Le Play on family, work, and social change (Chicago, 1982[1872]), 259.

9 Frédéric Le Play, Les ouvriers européens (Tours, 1877–1879), vol. I, facing p. 683.

10 Despite placing this line in his mapping exercise, Le Play never referred to it directly in the text.

11 Le Play, Les ouvriers européens, v. 2.

12 Thornton, Reading history sideways, 61; Emmanuel Todd, The explanation of ideology. Family structures and social systems (Oxford, 1985). Le Play's model of European family structures has been verified by a large battery of family research conducted in the second half of the twentieth century. This research was not, however, focused on his geographic premises, but on his developmental trajectory interpretations: see Peter Laslett, ‘Introduction: the history of the family’, in Peter Laslett and Richrd Wall eds., Household and family in past time (Cambridge, 1972), 1–89.

13 For example, Laslett, ‘Introduction’.

14 John Hajnal, ‘European marriage patterns in perspective’, in David V. Glass and David E. C. Eversley eds., Population in history. Essays in historical demography (London, 1965), 101–43.

15 Hajnal compared data from different part of the European continent (including European Russia) with surveys of Asian and even African societies. Hajnal's basic unit of analysis was national societies, although his secondary data may have referred to single regions or even locations.

16 Hajnal, ‘European marriage patterns’, 101.

17 Hajnal was less certain, however, as to where to put the line between ‘East’ and ‘West’ in terms of percentages never married: see Francois Hendrickx, ‘West of the Hajnal line: North-western Europe’, in Engelen and Wolf, Marriage and the family in Eurasia, 78.

18 Hajnal, ‘European marriage patterns’, 101.

19 Ibid., 104.

20 Peter Laslett, The world we have lost (London, 1965), 90–1.

21 Peter Laslett, The world we have lost, 2nd edn. (London, 1965), 94.

22 Laslett, Peter, ‘The comparative history of household and family’, Journal of Social History 4, 1 (1970), 81–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Laslett made reference to the data from Estonia (‘At the other end of Western Europe, in an Esthonian village’; Laslett, ‘Introduction’, 20, also ft. 35) as revealing features compatible with stem-family rules, although a careful reading of that passage suggests he may rather have had in mind a joint-family system with married brothers living together. He also mentioned some Latvian and Hungarian territories of the eighteenth century as having the highest proportions of multiple households in pre-industrial Europe, but without making either a geographical or a bibliographical reference (Laslett, ‘Introduction’, 60–1, ft. 79). Finally, at least twice, he referred to micro-census data from a village called Lesnica in ‘far away Poland’; again, no careful reference was provided, and Laslett admitted that the data could not be taken as representing ‘the whole national area’ (Laslett, ‘Introduction’, 62).

24 Peter Laslett, ‘Characteristics of the Western family considered over time’, in Peter Laslett, Family life and illicit love in earlier generations. Essays in historical sociology (Cambridge, 1977), 12–49. The paper was first circulated in an unpublished version in 1973 and was consequently revised and expanded for publication in 1977.

25 Ibid., 14–16.

26 These were isolated points (seven geographically disparate case studies) for which research results have been available, giving way to regional or national designations/references.

27 Laslett, ‘Characteristics of the Western family’, 16–17, 22–3; see also Peter Laslett, ‘The stem-family hypothesis and its privileged position’, in Kenneth W. Wachter, Eugene A. Hammel and Peter Laslett, Statistical studies of historical social structure (New York, 1978), 90–3.

28 In some communities of this area, Laslett asserted, ‘entirely “Western” familial patterns seemed to have existed in villages next door to others where the pattern was less pronounced, and where elements of other systems obtruded (…) In individual places in this large and ragged region simple family households predominated, accompanied by others of the characteristics we have listed (…) But in others as late as the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, “non-Western” familial characteristics (as here defined) were even more pronounced than those which have been found in the small group of Serbian and Japanese communities known to us at the same time, though never as extreme as in Great Russia (…)’; Laslett, ‘Characteristics of the Western family’, 16–17.

29 Ibid., 27.

30 Ibid., 14.

31 Both Hajnal's and Laslett's perception of family type in Eastern Europe seemed to have been deeply influenced by Peter Czap's findings; see ibid., 12, 14, 22–3, 27; Laslett, ‘The stem-family hypothesis’, 91; Peter Laslett, ‘Family and household as work group and kin group: areas of traditional Europe compared’, in Richard Wall, Jean Robin and Peter Laslett eds., Family forms in historic Europe (Cambridge, 1983), 517, 520–1, 549; Laslett, Peter, ‘Family, kinship and collectivity as systems of support in preindustrial Europe: a consideration of the “nuclear-hardship” hypothesis’, Continuity and Change 3, 2 (1988), 153–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 156–9; Hajnal, John, ‘Two kinds of preindustrial household formation system’, Population and Development Review 8, 3 (1982), 449–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 467–9, 473. Preliminary results of research on the Mishino estate were circulated within a close-knit community of scholars before they finally came into print, and were available to Laslett certainly before 1977.

32 Czap, Peter, ‘The perennial multiple family household, Mishino, Russia, 1782–1858’, Journal of Family History 7, 1 (1982), 526CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 18; Peter Czap, Jr. ‘“A large family: the peasant's greatest wealth”: serf households in Mishino, Russia, 1814–1858’, in Wall, Robin and Laslett, Family forms in historic Europe, 145 ff.

33 Peter Czap, ‘Marriage and the peasant joint family in Russia’, in David Ransel ed., The family in imperial Russia (Urbana, 1978), 114, 116.

34 Czap, ‘The perennial multiple family’, 6.

35 ‘It is true,’ Czap wrote, ‘that large households, or preferably housefuls, were found elsewhere in northeastern Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially in the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire. But the composition of the large Baltic domestic units, and of smaller Polish ones as well, extended to servants, farmhands, and other non-related persons rarely encountered in the almost exclusively kin-based households revealed by the data used in this study.’ (Czap, ‘The perennial multiple family’, 7). Sources of data on Polish and Baltic households were not provided in the text.

36 Czap, ‘“A large family: the peasant's greatest wealth”’, 146–8, 150.

37 Sovic, ‘Moving beyond stereotypes’, 144.

38 Hajnal, ‘Two kinds’, 452.

39 ‘Indeed it seems likely that something like the Mishino household formation system prevailed among populations numbering in the millions’ (Hajnal, ‘Two kinds’, 468).

40 Ibid., 469.

41 See Laslett, ‘Family and household’, 516, 526–7.

42 Ibid., 529. The lack of specification of spatial reference to ‘European Russia as a whole’ disclosed Laslett's lack of concern about the diversity of Eastern European family patterns. It goes without saying that, depending on the level of inclusiveness of the category ‘European Russia as a whole’, one ends up with strikingly different geographical patterns of family types in Eastern Europe.

43 Ibid., 528.

44 For example, Kundera, Milan, ‘The tragedy of Central Europe’, New York Review of Books 31, 7 (1984), 33–8Google Scholar.

45 A close reading of yet another comparativist endeavour as put forward by Richard Wall (Laslett's long-term close collaborator) suggests that the term ‘Central Europe’ was most often used to refer to countries such as Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic and Poland. However, the ‘centrality’ of the positioning of Austria was clearly accentuated (Wall, Richard, ‘Introduction’, in Wall, Robin and Laslett, Family forms in historic Europe, 38, 44, 48Google Scholar).

46 Wrigley, Edward A., ‘Reflections on the history of the family’, Daedalus 106 (1977), 78Google Scholar.

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48 Andrejs Plakans, ‘Agrarian reform in the family in eastern Europe’, in David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli eds., Family life in the long nineteenth century 1789–1913. The history of the European family, vol. 1 (New Haven and London, 2002), 79; other variants of a similar approach in A. Burguière, ‘Historical foundations of family structures’, in J. Commaille and F. de Singly eds., The European family. The family question in the European Community (Dordrecht, 1997), 105–7; Alderson, Arthur S. and Sanderson, Stephen K., ‘Historic European household structures and the capitalist world-economy’, Journal of Family History 16, 4 (1991), 419–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reher, David S., ‘Family ties in Western Europe: persistent contrasts’, Population and Development Review 4, 2 (1998), 204Google Scholar; Karl Kaser, ‘Serfdom in Eastern Europe’, in David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli eds., Family life in early modern times 1500–1789. The history of the European family, vol. 1 (New Haven and London, 2001), 34; Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, ‘Marriage, widowhood, and divorce’, in Kertzer and Barbagli, Family life in early modern times, 221; Thornton, Reading history sideways, 52.

49 Therborn, Between sex and power, 305.

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54 Wall, ‘Regional and temporal variations’, 89.

55 Ibid., 93–8.

56 Ibid., 109.

57 Richard Wall, ‘European family and household systems’, in Historiens et populations. Liber Amicorum Etienne Helin (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1991), 617–36.

58 Ibid., 619.

59 Rural populations only.

60 Wall, ‘European family and household systems’, 619–20.

61 Ibid., 625; partly repeated in Richard Wall, ‘Historical development of the household in Europe’, in Evert van Imhoff, Anton Kuijsten, Pieter Hooimeijer and Leo van Wissen eds., Household demography and household modeling (New York, 1995), 32–7.

62 Richard Wall, ‘Transformation of the European family across the centuries’, in Richard Wall, Tamara K. Hareven, Josef Ehmer and Markus Cerman eds., Family history revisited. Comparative perspectives (Newark, 2001), 217–41.

63 Ibid., 221, 224.

64 Ibid., 236–7.

65 Plakans, Andrejs, ‘Peasant families east and west: a comment on Lutz K. Berkner's Rural family organization in Europe’, Peasant Studies Newsletter 2 (1973), 1116Google Scholar; Plakans, A., ‘Seigneurial authority and peasant family life: the Baltic area in the eighteenth century’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 5, 4 (1975), 629–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Plakans, ‘Peasant families east and west’, 13; Plakans, ‘Seigneurial authority’, 645.

67 Sklar, June L., ‘The role of marriage behaviour in the demographic transition: the case of Eastern Europe around 1900’, Population Studies 28 (1974), 231–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sklar was a student of Kingsley Davis at Berkeley, where she was awarded her Ph.D. in 1970. She died prematurely in 1977.

68 Ibid., 232–4; also tab. 6, 245. Sklar contended that the 36.3 per cent who had never married at ages 20–29 years, and the 7.8 per cent never married at ages 40–49 years among females in the Polish areas, ‘still reflect a rather late age at marriage and moderately high celibacy, especially compared with the Balkan countries’.

69 Ibid., 234–6. Sklar's information on Polish customs was derived mostly from the work of Thomas and Znaniecki (see ft. 7, 235).

70 ‘Although people were not marrying as late in such areas as Grodno, Volhynia [northern Belarus, and the north-west corner of Ukraine] and Slovakia as in Western Europe, mean age at first marriage was higher than in the early marriage Balkan countries of Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia’ (Ibid., 234).

71 This genuine contribution to historical demography of Eastern Europe went generally unnoticed by mainstream scholars working on a geography of family forms and was not mentioned in any work of the Cambridge Group-related scholars known to me; but see Plakans, Andrejs, ‘Interaction between the household and the kin group in the eastern European past: posing the problem’, Journal of Family History 12, 1 (1987), 163–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 166; Kertzer, ‘Household history’, 163; Ni Bhrolchain, M., ‘East–West marriage contrasts, old and new’, in Blum Rallu, European population, vol. 2, 461–2Google Scholar. Scholars from Eastern Europe rarely recognise the importance of Sklar's paper, and only most recently: Kera, G. and Pandelejmoni, E., ‘Marriage in urban Albania (during the first half of the twentieth century)’, History of the Family 13, 2 (2008), 126–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pamporov, A., ‘Patterns of family formation: marriage and fertility timing in Bulgaria at the turn of the twenty-first century – a case-study of Sofia’, History of the Family 13, 2 (2008), 210–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Chojnacka, Helena, ‘Nuptiality patterns in an agrarian society’, Population Studies 30, 2 (1976), 203–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 204–5.

73 Ibid., 211.

74 A. J. Coale, B. A. Anderson and Erna Härm, Human fertility in Russia since the nineteenth century (Princeton, 1979).

75 Ibid., 136–9.

76 Ibid., 148–53. The diversity of family and marriage patterns within Russian political boundaries has been noted by studies at the regional level too: see, for example, Polla, M., ‘Family systems in central Russia in the 1830s and 1890s’, History of the Family 11 (2006), 2744CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Josef Ehmer, Heiratsverhalten, Sozialstruktur, ökonomischer Wandel. England und Mitteleuropa in der Formationsperiode des Kapitalismus (Göttingen, 1991).

78 Up to the turn of the eighteenth century, Galicia (Galizien in German) constituted a historical region of Red Ruthenia south and southeast from the province of Lesser Poland, in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the eighteenth-century partitions of Poland, it became a Crown Land of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, located in its north-eastern corner.

79 Data used by Ehmer (various volumes of Österreichische Statistik) contained information on marital status by age only for males.

80 Ehmer, Heiratsverhalten, 145.

81 Ibid., 146.

82 Ibid., 144–8.

83 Markus Cerman, ‘Central Europe and the European marriage pattern. Marriage patterns and family structure in Central Europe, 16th–19th centuries’, in Wall, Hareven, Ehmer and Cerman, Family history revisited, 283–5; also M. Cerman, ‘Mitteleuropa und die “europäischen Muster”. Heiratsverhalten und Familienstruktur in Mitteleuropa, 16–19. Jahrhundert’, in J. Ehmer, T. K. Hareven and R. Wall eds., Historische Familienforschung: Ergebnisse und Kontroversen. Michael Mitterauer zum Geburtstag (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), 327–46.

84 Cerman, ‘Central Europe’, 301–2. Still, however, it is hard from Cerman's analysis to identify more precisely where this transitional zone was located (apart from that it covered Slovakian areas), which other territories it had cut through while repositioning others to different typological entities.

85 Todorova, Maria, ‘Population structure, marriage patterns, family and household (according to Ottoman documentary material from north-eastern Bulgaria in the 60s of the 19th century)’, Etudes balkaniques 1 (1983)Google Scholar, 59–72; Todorova, M., ‘Situating the family of Bulgaria within the European pattern’, History of the Family 1, 4 (1996), 443–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Todorova, ‘On the epistemological value’.

86 Todorova, ‘Population structure’, 71–2.

87 Todorova, ‘On the epistemological value’, 105–8, specifically 105. The predominance of nuclear households was also reported for Macedonia: Hammel, E. A., ‘Household structure in fourteenth-century Macedonia’, Journal of Family History 5, 3 (1980), 242–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Slovenia: Sovic, S., ‘Families and households of the poor: day labourers in nineteenth-century Slovenia’, History of the Family 19 (2006), 161–82Google Scholar. Depending on the socio-economic setting, different household systems were observed in northern Croatia, one of them being based on the predominance of nuclear households: J. Capo-Zmegac, , ‘New evidence and old theories: multiple family households in northern Croatia’, Continuity and Change 11, 3 (1996), 375–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Exceptions to this rule are given in Kaser, K., ‘The Balkan joint family: redefining a problem’, Social Science History 18, 2 (1994), 257CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 261; Kaser, Familie und Verwandschaft, 265–38. Kaser also gives the most thorough assessment of the Balkan household types' internal variation: see Kaser, K., ‘Introduction: household and family contexts in the Balkans’, History of the Family 1, 4 (1996), 375–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 380. According to him, the Bulgarian family pattern Todorova focused on represented only the transitional form from the more complex nature of family residential arrangements in the Balkan interior (ibid., 383).

88 Siegfried Gruber, ‘Household formation and marriage: different patterns in Serbia and Albania?’, in Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux and Ioan Bolovan eds., Families in Europe between the 19th and 21st centuries: from the traditional model to contemporary PACS (Cluj-Napoca, 2009), 229–48; see also Gruber, S. and Szołtysek, M., ‘Stem families, joint families and the “European pattern”: what kind of a reconsideration do we need?’, Journal of Family History 37, 1 (2012, forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

89 Mitterauer, M., ‘Family contexts: the Balkans in European comparison’, History of the Family 1, 4 (1996), 404CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Szołtysek, M., ‘Three kinds of preindustrial household formation system in historical Eastern Europe: a challenge to spatial patterns of the European family’, History of the Family 13, 3 (2008), 223–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Szołtysek, ‘Three kinds’, 223–57.

92 For example, Hammel, E. A., ‘Reflections on the Zadruga’, Ethnologia slavica. Zbornik filozofickej fakulty univerzitety Komenskeho 7 (1975), 141–51Google Scholar.

93 Szołtysek and Zuber-Goldstein, ‘Historical family systems’.

94 For example, Macfarlane, A., ‘Demographic structures and cultural regions in Europe’, Cambridge Anthropology 6, 1–2 (1980), 117Google Scholar.

95 Karel Kadlec, Rodinny nedil ćili zadruha v pravu slovanskem (Prague, 1898), 1–3, 129–132. Other ‘universal’ features of ‘niedział’ forms included: seniority principle in the succession of headship; strong standing of widowed mothers as household heads (in other cases, the position of women in zadrugal forms was usually only secondary); the domination of the patrilineal descent ideology and practice, also underscored by norms of equal partible inheritance among the male offspring or lateral relatives and ultimogeniture (in cases when splitting occurred); and patriarchal power relations.

96 For the more contemporary notion of a much earlier disappearance of the zadruga-type families among the Western Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and also Slovenians), see also M. Gimbutas, The Slavs (New York, 1971), 136.

97 Kadlec, Rodinny nedil, 1–2, 10, 49, 53, 75, 100–7, 125, 130.

98 Ibid., 75, 106, 117–19, 125, 130.

99 Balzer, Oswald, ‘O zadrudze słowiańskiej. Uwagi i polemika’, Kwartalnik Historyczny 13, 2 (1899), 183256Google Scholar, here 185, 193 and 241–2.

100 Ibid., 191–9.

101 H. Łowmiański, Zaludnienie państwa litewskiego w wieku XVI. Zaludnienie w roku 1528, A. Kijas and K. Pietkiewicz, eds. (Poznan, 1998), 101–13, 132, 150–2.

102 H. Łowmiañski, Z dziejów Słowian w I tysiącleciu n.e. (Warsaw, 1967).

103 Franciszek Bujak suggested that huge, lineage-based families among peasantry of southern Poland vanished by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. According to Bujak, this process was a result of the landowners' policy of support of the ‘innate drive’ towards the individualisation of family relationships among peasant population, with a view to multiplying their own profits, which were usually calculated on the basis of single households number (F. Bujak, Studia nad osadnictwem Małopolski (Poznan, 2001[1905]), 111.

104 Łowmiañski, Z dziejów Słowian, 357–8.

105 Ibid., 346–50.

106 Ibid., 360–2.

107 E. Čaňová, Horska, P. and Maur, E., ‘Les listes nominatives de la Bohème, source de données pour l'histoire sociale et la demographie historique’, Annales de demographie historique 24 (1987), 295312Google Scholar; Grulich, J. and Zeitlhofer, H., ‘Struktura jihočeských venkovských a městských domácností v 16. a 17. století. (Příspěvek k dějinám sociální každodennosti poddaných v období raného novověku)’, Historická demografie 23 (1999), 3640Google Scholar. Soupis was drawn up in 1651 by the Habsburg monarchy in the form of a register of households.

108 Horska, P., ‘K historickemu modelu stredoevropske rodiny’, Demografie 31, 2 (1989), 137–43Google Scholar; E. Čaňová and P. Horska, ‘Existuje stredoevropsky model rodiny pro predstatisticke obdobi?’, in Z. Pavlik ed., Snatecnost a Rodina: Brachnost i Semia (Prague, 1992), 90–104; Grulich and Zeitlhofer, ‘Struktura jihočeských’, 51–2.

109 Horska, ‘K historickemu modelu’; also Čaňová and Horska, ‘Existuje stredoevropsky model’.

110 Horska, ‘K historickemu modelu’, 142; Horska, P., ‘Historical models of the Central European family: Czech and Slovak examples’, Journal of Family History 19, 2 (1994), 99106CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 101 and 104.

111 Horska, ‘K historickemu modelu’; Čaňová and Horska, ‘Existuje stredoevropsky model’, 102; Horský, J. and Maur, E., ‘Die Familie, Familienstrukturen und Typologie der Familien in der böhmischen Historiographie’, Historická demografie 17 (1993), 13Google Scholar; Horský, J. and Sladek, M., ‘Rodinné, sociální a demografické poměry v poddanských vsích na panství Třeboň v letech 1586 a 1651’, Historická demografie 17 (1993), 83Google Scholar; also: Rumlova, E., ‘Demograficka a socialni struktura obyvatelstva panstvi Dymokury v polovine 17. Stoleti’, Historická demografie 17 (1993), 153200Google Scholar; Seligová, M., ‘Příspěvek ke studiu rodinných struktur v Čechách v 17. století. Panství Děčín – sonda’, Historická demografie 17 (1993), 111–30Google Scholar; Grulich and Zeitlhofer, ‘Struktura jihočeských’.

112 Horska, ‘K historickemu modelu’, 142; Horska, ‘Historical models’, 101–4; Horský and Maur, ‘Die Familie’, 14–15; Čaňová and Horska, ‘Existuje stredoevropsky model’, 94–5; Langer, J., ‘Household – social environment – ecotypes’, Ethnologia Europe Centralis 2 (1994), 4355Google Scholar, here 44–5; also Švecová, S., ‘Dva typy tradicnej ceskoslovenskej rodiny v Ceskoslovensku’, Ceský lid 76 (1989), 215Google Scholar. Some scholars comparing sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Bohemian household lists have, however, argued that in the late sixteenth century (1586) no relics of the ‘Eastern’ family structure could be found. Consequently, no marked turning point from one family system to another was possible to detect in Bohemia between 1586 and 1651 (Horský and Sladek, ‘Rodinné, sociální a demografické’, 81–2, 85).

113 Čaňová and Horska, ‘Existuje stredoevropsky model’, 90–4; Horska, ‘Historical models’, 102; Švecová, ‘Dva typy tradicnej’, 211.

114 Švecová, ‘Dva typy tradicnej’, especially 215–16; also Švecová, S., ‘Klasifikácia rodinných foriem na slovenskom materiáli’, Ceský lid 53 (1966), 85–9Google Scholar; Švecová, S., ‘Slovenská a ceská rodina’, Ceský lid 73 (1986), 203–5Google Scholar. In Švecová's accounts, ‘rodina jednonástupnická’ which came to be prevalent in Bohemia, represented an equivalent of Le Play's famille souche (Švecová, ‘Dva typy tradicnej’, 210, 215).

115 Švecová, ‘Klasifikácia rodinných foriem’, 86–7; Švecová, ‘Slovenská a ceská rodina’, 203; Švecová, ‘Dva typy tradicnej’, 212–15; also Horský and Sladek, ‘Rodinné, sociální a demografické’, 71, 81–82.

116 Švecová, ‘Klasifikácia rodinných foriem’, 85; Švecová, ‘Slovenská a ceská rodina’, 204; also Langer, ‘Household – social environment – ecotypes’, 44. The term ‘real partition’ is commonly used in literature on Central European pattern of inheritance. It stems from the German ‘Realteilung’ which means ‘partible inheritance’.

117 Švecová, ‘Dva typy tradicnej’, 214–17.

118 Švecová, ‘Slovenská a ceská rodina’, 204. Complex and almost self-sufficient family collectives did not dominate the region of Slovakia entirely, but their incidence was connected with the variety of local ecotypes.

119 Andorka, R., ‘The peasant family structure in the 18th and 19th centuries (data from Alsónyék and Kölked in international comparison)’, Acta Ethnographica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 25, 3–4 (1976), 344Google Scholar.

120 R. Andorka and T. Faragó, ‘Pre-industrial household structure in Hungary’, in Wall, Robin and Laslett, Family forms, 294.

121 Tamás Faragó, ‘Formen bäuerlicher Haushalts- und Arbeitsorganization in Ungarn um die Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Josef Ehmer and Michael Mitterauer eds., Familienstruktur und Arbeitsorganisation im ländlichen Gesellschaften (Graz, 1986), 135 ff.

122 Faragó, T., ‘Different household formation systems in Hungary at the end of the 18th century: variations on John Hajnal's thesis’, Historical Social Research 23, 1–2 (1998), 83111Google Scholar; Faragó, T., ‘Different household formation systems in Hungary at the end of the 18th century: variations on John Hajnal's thesis’, Demográfia, Special Edition 46 (2003), 95136Google Scholar; Péter Őri, ‘Marriage customs and household structure in Hungary at the end of the 18th century. The case of County Pest-Pilis-Solt (1774–1785)’, in Fauve-Chamoux and Bolovan, Families in Europe, 167–92.

123 For example, Brodnicka, E., ‘Ludność parafii Wieleń nad Notecią w drugiej połowie XVIII w.’, Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski 2 (1969), 177215Google Scholar; Borowski, S., ‘Próba odtworzenia struktur społecznych i procesów demograficznych na Warmii u schyłku XVIIw. na przykładzie Dobrego Miasta i okolicy’, Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski 8 (1975), 125–98Google Scholar; Borowski, S., ‘Procesy demograficzne w mikroregionie Czacz w latach 1598–1975’, Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski 9 (1976), 95191Google Scholar; Górny, M., ‘Wartość źródłowa “status animarum” parafii Szaradowo z 1766 r.’, Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski 17 (1987), 165184Google Scholar; M. Górny, ‘Rodzina chłopska i jej gospodarstwo w Wielkopolsce w drugiej połowie XVIII wieku’, in M. Górny, Mieszkańcy parafii pępowskiej w 1777 roku. Analiza księgi status animarum (Wroclaw, 1994), 111–119; Polaszewski, L., ‘Struktura społeczna ludności w parafii Szubin w 1766 roku’, Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski 10 (1978), 157–75Google Scholar; Z. Kwaśny, ‘Rodzina chłopska w parafii Dobra w latach 1727–1758’, in H. Suchojad ed., Wesela, chrzciny i pogrzeby w XVI–XVIII wieku. Kultura życia i śmierci (Warsaw, 2001), 23–31. It was only during the 1990s that the Cambridge Group's methodology was comprehensively introduced in Poland: Kuklo, C., ‘Problematyka badawcza europejskiej demografii historycznej w dziesięcioleciu 1975–1985’, Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski 18 (1991), 93115Google Scholar; C. Kuklo and W. Gruszecki, Informatyczny system rekonstrukcji rodzin, gospodarstw domowych i społeczności lokalnych w Polsce przedrozbiorowej (Białystok, 1994).

124 Kwaśny, Z., ‘Struktura demograficzna ludności wiejskiej w kluczu Gryf w drugiej połowie XVIII wieku i na początku XIX wieku’, Śląski Kwartalnik Historyczny Sobótka 21, 1 (1966), 103–23Google Scholar; Obraniak, W., ‘Oblicze demograficzne wsi wieluńskiej w epoce Sejmu Wielkiego’, Studia Demograficzne 16 (1968), 109–22Google Scholar; Wachowiak, B., ‘Rodzina chłopska na Pomorzu Zachodnim w połowie XVIII wieku’, Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski 18 (1990), 139–48Google Scholar; M. Kopczyński, Studia nad rodziną chłopską w Koronie w XVII–XVIII wieku (Warsaw, 1998); C. Kuklo, Kobieta samotna w społeczeństwie miejskim u schyłku Rzeczypospolitej szlacheckiej. Studium demograficzno-społeczne (Białystok, 1998).

125 Kula, W., ‘La seigneurie et la famille paysanne en Pologne au XVIII siècle’, Annales E. S. C. 27 (1972), 949Google Scholar–58.

126 M. Koczerska, Rodzina szlachecka w Polsce późnego średniowiecza (Warsaw, 1975), 100–9.

127 Gieysztorowa, I., ‘Sprawozdanie z konferencji poświęconej zastosowaniu technik komputerowych w badaniach historyczno-demograficznych XVII i XVIII w.’, Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski 17 (1987), 265–75Google Scholar, here 273; C. Kuklo, Demografia Rzeczypospolitej przedrozbiorowej (Warsaw, 2009), 280–2.

128 M. Szołtysek, Ludność parafii bujakowskiej w XVIII i XIX wieku. Między „unikalnym” systemem formowania się gospodarstw a swoistością pogranicza, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Wroclaw, 2003), 124–55; also Kuklo, Demografia Rzeczypospolitej, 356.

129 Kopczyński, Studia nad rodziną, 108, 171.

130 Kuklo, Kobieta samotna, 77–83.

131 Kuklo, C., ‘Typology of household in the Polish town of the pre-industrial age’, Polish Population Review 10 (1997), 248–65Google Scholar, here 255; Kuklo, Kobieta samotna, 83.

132 Szołtysek, M., ‘Central European household and family systems, and the “Hajnal-Mitterauer” line: the parish of Bujakow (18th–19th centuries)’, History of the Family 1 (2007), 1942CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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134 A. Laszuk, Ludność województwa podlaskiego w drugiej połowie XVII wieku (Warsaw, 1999), 120–3, 189–95.

135 Z. Budzyński, Kresy południowo-wschodnie w drugiej połowie XVIII w. T. 3: Studia z dziejów społecznych (Przemyśl-Rzeszów, 2008), 163–4, 170.

136 M. Szołtysek and D. Biskup, ‘Różnorodność czy tożsamość? Chłopskie gospodarstwo domowe na ziemiach Rzeczypospolitej i Śląska pod koniec XVIII wieku’, in C. Kuklo ed., Rodzina i gospodarstwo domowe na ziemiach polskich w XV–XX wieku. Struktury demograficzne, społeczne i gospodarcze (Warsaw, 2008), 363–90; Szołtysek, ‘Three kinds’, 27–8; also Szołtysek, M., ‘Rethinking Eastern Europe: household formation patterns in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and European family systems’, Continuity and Change 23 (2008), 389427CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Szołtysek, M., ‘Life cycle service and family systems in the rural countryside: a lesson from historical East-Central Europe’, Annales de démographie historique 1 (2009), 5394CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

137 Sliž, N., ‘Dasledavanne gistoryi sjam’i: njavykarystanyja magčymasci belaruskaj gistaryjagrafii', Gistaryčny Al'manah 10 (2004)Google Scholar (http://kamunikat.fontel.net/www/czasopisy/almanach/10/07.htm).

138 Aggregated data for 15 estates with 791 households; see A. I. Višniauskaitė, ‘Razvitie litovskoj krest'ianskoj sem'I’. Proceedings of the VII International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (Moscow, 1971), 8–12. By transposing the data from 1594–1700 onto Laslett's typology, we get the percentage of simple households estimated at 81 per cent, with only a very slight contribution of multiple-family domestic groups valued at 6.9 per cent.

139 Višniauskaitė, ‘Razvitie litovskoj’, 4.

140 Ibid., 7.

141 Kapyski, Z. and Kapyski, B., ‘Belaruskaia veska i iae nasel'nitstva u kantsy XVI-pershai palove XVII st. Vopyt demagrafichnai kharakterystyki’, Belarusian Historical Journal 2 (1993), 43Google Scholar.

142 V. F. Golubev, Sialianskaie zemlevladanne i zemlekarystannne na Belarusi XVI–XVIII ctct (Minsk, 1992), 88.

143 V. Nosevich, Tradicionnaja belorusskaja derevnja v evropejskoj perspektive (Minsk, 2004), 81–7.

144 Nosevich, Tradicionnaja belorusskaja, 157–76.

145 V. Nosevich, ‘The multiple-family household: relic of a patriarchal past or more recent phenomenon?’, paper presented at Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, August 2007; Nosevich, Tradicionnaja belorusskaja, 176.

146 Nosevich, ‘The multiple-family household’.

147 Tchmelyk, R., ‘Dejaki mirkuvannja pro viniknennja maloi sim'i na ukaini’, Narodna tvorcist' ta etnohrafija 3 (1992), 41Google Scholar.

148 R. Tchmelyk, Mala ukrains'ka seljans'ka simja druhoi polovyny XIX – po'catku XX st. (Lviv, 1999). That tendency to portray ‘Little Russians’ (Ukrainians) as ‘individualists’ in opposition to Russians, and, respectively, to present the societal traits of ‘Great Russians’ (Russians per se) in collective terms, had been pinpointed already by Kovalevskij in 1885: Kovalevskii, M., ‘Obscinnoe zemelelevladenie v Malorossii v XVIII veke’, Juridiceskij vestnik 1 (1885), 3669Google Scholar.

149 Tarnovskiy, V. V., ‘O delimosti semejstv v Malorossii’, Trudy Komissii dlja opisannja gubernij Kievskogo učebnogo okruga 2 (1853), 115Google Scholar. Based on Tarnovskiy's ‘field work’ observation in one village of Kijowszczyzna (central Ukraine).

150 Gubrik argued that in the second half of the sixteenth century the Volhynia multiple-family co-residence was only a rare phenomenon, and that single-family households predominated. The picture changed dramatically when moving eastward through northern Ukraine: A. O. Gurbik, ‘Seljans'kij simejnij lad’, in V. A. Smolij ed., Istorija ukrains'kogo seljanstva: Narisi v 2-x t., vol. 1 (Kiev, 2006), 152–8. In our opinion, the basic statistics on household structure provided by the author do not fully confirm his interpretive ventures.

151 J. Goško, Naselennja ukrains'kix Karpat XV–XVIII st. (Zaselennja. Migracii. Pobut) (Kiev, 1976), 161–4; Goško, J., ‘Simja v Karpatach ta Podkarpatti v XVI–XIX st.’, Naukowij zbirnik Muzeju ukrainskoj kultury v Swidniku 19 (1994), 234–42Google Scholar.

152 Goško, Naselennja ukrains'kix Karpat, 138–9, 162–4.

153 Nahodil, O., ‘K problému rozkladu velkorodiny u východoslovenských Ukrajinců’, Universitas Carolina/Philosophica 1, 2 (1955), 151 ff.Google Scholar

154 A. L. Perkovskij, ‘O ljudnosti ukrainskogo dvora i veličine sem'i vo vtoroj polovine XVIII veka (Po materialam Rumjancevskoj opisi i cerkovnoj statistiki)’, in R. Pullat ed., Problemy istoričeskoj demografii SSSR. Sb. statej (Tallin, 1977), 106–7, 111; A. Perkovs'kij, L., ‘Evoljucija simi i gospodarstva na Ukraini v XVII – peršij polovini XIX st.’, Demografični doslidžennja 4 (1979), 41–4Google Scholar. Perkovskii linked that process with the decline in joint-family farming resulting from demographic growth and in the increasingly unfavourable land/population ratio.

155 Krikun, M. G., ‘Naselennja domogospodarstva u Žitomirs'komu poviti Kiivs'kogo voevodstva 1791 r.’, Ukraina moderna 6 (2001), 2546Google Scholar; Sakalo, O., ‘Domogospodarstva sil's'kogo naselennja Get'manščini drugoi polovini XVIII st.: dejaki istoriko-demografični aspekti (na prikladi sela Vedmeže Romens'koi sotni Lubens'kogo polku)’, Kraeznavstvo 1 –4 (2008), 168–74Google Scholar; also Gruber and Szołtysek, ‘Stem families, joint families’.

156 On the concept of symbolic geography, see Bakic-Hayden & Hayden, 1992.

157 Kertzer, ‘Household history’, 163.

158 Alderson and Sanderson, ‘Historic European household’, 426; Rudolph, Richard L., ‘The European peasant family and economy: central themes and issues’, Journal of Family History 17, 2 (1992), 119–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 122–4.

159 Conflating household size with household internal composition – and drawing bold conclusions about the latter from an analysis of data based solely on the number of domestics – seems a more general problem which discredits many Ukrainian studies of historical family forms (e.g. Tchmelyk, Mala ukrains'ka, 34, 64–9).

160 The lion's share of the Eastern European studies of historical families relied on interregional and cross-temporal comparisons of the percentage of households that are simple, extended, or multiple. Such comparisons may, however, often be meaningless, as demographic opportunities to form different types of households may differ significantly between different regional populations, as well as between populations distanced in time: see S. Ruggles, Prolonged connections: the rise of the extended family in nineteenth century England and America (Madison, 1987), 142 ff. and Ruggles, S., ‘The future of historical demography’, Annual Review of Sociology 38 (2012, forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a sound methodological argument; also Gruber and Szołtysek, ‘Stem families, joint families’.

161 Much seems to signal that the picture of Eastern European peasant family fixed in the minds of Western scholars was significantly affected by a rather unimpressive body of works treating essentially on familial behaviours in the post-enfranchisement era. Indeed, Polish ethnographic knowledge suggests that peasant enfranchisement in the second half of the nineteenth century might have brought about a marked increase in the number of multi-generational families among the rural classes (Kopczyński, Studia nad rodziną, 108). According to Markowska, a multi-generational family settling in Polish lands was only a temporary phenomenon, typical of the transition from feudalism to capitalism: D. Markowska, Rodzina wiejska na Podlasiu (1864–1964) (Warsaw, 1970), 195. The ephemeral emergence of this type of family arrangement in Polish lands between the years 1880 and 1900 – that is, roughly during the period referred to in Hajnal's nuptiality statistics – perhaps points to the sole historical moment in which it is indeed possible to capture the phenomenon of multi-generational dwelling in one place in the history of the East-Central European family. The conclusions coming from these works, however, cannot be transposed onto earlier periods.

162 M. Szołtysek, ‘Residence patterns and human-ecological setting in historical Eastern Europe: a challenge of compositional (re)analysis’, paper presented at the International workshop ‘Population in the human sciences: concepts, models, evidence’, Oxford University, Institute of Human Sciences (United Kingdom), September 2011.

163 M. Szołtysek and S. Gruber, ‘Spatial variation in residence patterns in pre-1900 Germany: comparing aggregate statistics and census microdata’, paper presented at the 36th Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association ‘Generation to Generation’, Boston Park Plaza Hotel and Towers, Boston, MA, November 2011; M. Szołtysek and S. Gruber, ‘All in the bosom of the family? Living arrangements of the aged in two Eastern European joint-family societies’, paper also presented at the 36th Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association.

164 Oscar Halecki, The limits and divisions of European history (New York, 1950), 138.