Anna Bellavitis

Household economies, social norms and practices of unpaid market work in Europe from the sixteenth century to the present

These days, the issue of unpaid family work immediately evokes the world of care and home -keeping, -help, and -schooling. Unpaid work has become synonymous with care. Years of research and activist demands have resulted in an increasingly open recognition of these domestic tasks in social science research, at the institutional level, and among the public. From this perspective the factoring of these activities in the GDP of certain countries is a sure sign of a positive reversal in perception (Folbre & Wagman, 1993). However, this equation has produced an unexpected side effect: a relatively cursory consideration of unpaid market work within family productive activities. The goal of this special issue is to begin to clear the way for a historical approach to a topic that is barely addressed in the sociology and anthropology of gender and family and quite neglected by historians, by attempting to observe it across a broad swath of western and southern Europe.

Family and Society

This chapter talks about family practices, particularly matrimonial and inheritance, within the context of the complex juridical structure of Venetian society, and in relation to the economic activities carried out by the various social groups. It examines the principal sources for the history of the Venetian family available to scholars and several problems that have grown out of the most recent research. Then the theme is developed in three distinct sections that correspond to the three social groups into which Venetian society is traditionally divided patriciate, bourgeoisie, and popolo . The social structure of the Venetian population was determined especially by economic and political factors, which were tightly interwoven. Historiography has dealt much less with the family behavior of artisans, sailors, and household servants than that of members of higher social classes and, in particular, of the patriciate. Keywords: bourgeoisie; family practices; patriciate; popolo ; Venetian society

Der Code civil in Frankreich

Um die Folgen des Code civils für die Rechtssituation von Frauen darstellen zu können, ist es nötig in drei Schritten vorzugehen: Zunächst ist von der Fragmentierung des Rechts im Ancien Régime auszugehen, dann sind die Erneuerungen der revolutionären Epoche und schließlich der Code Napoléon selbst zu untersuchen, der den ersten Versuch darstellt die verschiedenen juridischen Traditionen, die es in Frankreich gab, zu vereinheitlichen.