The Household

by Ellickson, Robert C.

• ISBN13: 9780691134420
• ISBN10: 0691134421
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-08-04
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Some people dwell alone, many in family-based households, and an adventuresome few in communes.The Householdis 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 Householdis a must-read for sociologists, economists, lawyers, and anyone interested in the fundamentals of domestic life.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
How Households Differ from Families	p. 1
Household Formation and Dissolution in a Liberal Society	p. 10
Three Distinct Relationships that May Exist within a Household	p. 10
Foundational Liberal Rights that Enable Individuals to Fashion Their Own Households	p. 13
Household Surplus and Its Distribution among Members	p. 22
The Predominant Strategy: Consorting with Intimates	p. 27
Favoring Those with Whom One Will Have Continuing Relations	p. 29
Limiting the Number of Persons in the Relationship	p. 32
Favoring Homogeneity of Tastes and Stakes	p. 32
A Historical Overview of Household Forms	p. 35
Occupants of Households: The Predominance of Small, Kin-Based Clusters	p. 35
Owners of Dwelling Units	p. 41
Residential Landlord-Tenant Relationships	p. 44
Are the Household forms That Endure Necessarily Best?	p. 46
Utopian Designs of Unconventional Households	p. 46
Possible Imperfections, from a Liberal Perspective, in the Process of Household Formation	p. 47
Is Liberalism Overly Destructive of Solidarity?	p. 51
The Unpromising History of Experiments with Unconventional Household Forms	p. 53
Choosing Which of a Household's Participants Should Serve as its Owners	p. 60
Basic Concepts in the Theory of the Ownership of Enterprise	p. 60
Why Suppliers of a Household's At-Risk Capital Tend to End Up Owning It	p. 64
The Mixed Blessings of Joining with Others	p. 76
Adding Co-Occupants	p. 76
Adding Co-Owners	p. 85
Choosing between Owning and Renting a Home	p. 86
Order without Law in an Ongoing Household	p. 92
The Tendency toward Welfare-Maximizing Substantive and Procedural Rules	p. 94
Sources of Household Rules: In General	p. 101
Rules for Co-Occupants	p. 109
Rules for Co-Owners	p. 120
Rules to Govern the Landlord-Tenant Relationship	p. 123
The Challenge of Unpacking the Household	p. 128
Data on Intentional Communities	p. 137
Data on Co-housing Communities	p. 145
Notes	p. 147
Works Cited	p. 199
Index	p. 237
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