Are Households Universal? On Misunderstanding Domestic Groups in Swaziland

‘Household’ is not the neutral, universal category that census-takers have lulled us into believing, but a culturally-loaded, historically specific, Western term, like ‘family’. This article demonstrates its inappropriateness in capturing the nature of domestic organization in Swaziland through a critical examination of attempts to reduce the indigenous domestic unit umuti (rural homestead) to various constellations of household. The patrilineal homestead on traditionally tenured land persists as the dominant domestic group despite urbanization and the deep penetration of the economy by market principles. The relationship between this homestead and the more ephemeral urban households, into which many of its members are continually dispersed, underlies the linkage between urban and rural areas. Without grounding our understanding of contemporary Swazi society in the rural homestead we fail to understand female-headed domestic groups, domestic cycles, and the location and dynamics of poverty and wealth.     

Land Privatization and Pastoralist Well‐being in Kenya

East African pastoralists have well‐developed systems of communal land management that have been challenged by recent demands from some pastoralists for land privatization. This article analyses the impact on household well‐being of privatizing land among a community of Samburu pastoralists in northern Kenya. Using longitudinal data from household surveys conducted in 2000 and 2005, trends in wealth, income, stratification and livelihood strategies are analysed comparing the privatized community and a community where land remains communally managed. Results indicate few significant differences in wealth and income between the privatized and communal areas, although cultivation has become an important additional strategy in the privatized community. Significant levels of wealth stratification are present in both communities but are mitigated to some extent by mobility across wealth quintiles over time. Wealthy and poor groups exhibit different livelihood strategies with wealthier groups relying more on livestock trade and home consumption while poorer groups depend on wage labour and trade for their income. Policy implications of this analysis include the need for development strategies specific to different wealth groups, greater investment in education and infrastructure, and more attention to employment creation in pastoral areas.     

Gender and Witchcraft in Agrarian Transition: The Case of Kenyan Horticulture

This article examines the social effects of contract farming of export horticulture among smallholders in Meru District, Kenya. During the 1980s and 1990s, contracting was popularized by donors and governments alike as a way to reduce poverty and increase opportunities for self–employment in rural areas. Considerable research has documented the tensions in social relations that emerge in such cases, giving rise to gendered struggles over land, labour, and income in the face of new commodity systems. This article highlights similar tendencies. It suggests that men’s failure to compensate their wives for horticulture production has given rise to a string of witchcraft allegations and acts, as the wealth engendered by horticultural commodities comes up against cultural norms of marital obligation. While witchcraft accusations can expose women to risks of social alienation and financial deprivation, witchcraft nevertheless remains a powerful weapon through which women can level intra–household disparities and, more broadly, challenge the legitimacy of social practice. In Meru, witchcraft discourses are a vehicle through which gendered struggles over contract income are articulated and contested, and through which the social costs of agrarian transition become apparent.     

INVESTMENT RISK AND THE TRANSITION INTO HOMEOWNERSHIP*

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the extent to which house–price uncertainty affects the transition of renter households into homeownership. Using a 14‐year household panel from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics during the years 1984–1997 and measures of the time‐varying risk and return to owner‐occupied housing, we estimate a Cox proportional hazard model of the effect of house–price volatility on the transition into homeownership. Results indicate that house–price uncertainty has a negative and dramatic impact on transitions into homeownership. In addition, we find that the low‐wealth renters are particularly sensitive to house–price risk.     

西部地区农户经济的空间差异及其发展对策

西部不同地带生态条件的优劣差异决定了西部地区农户经济的空间差异,劣等、中等、优等三类生态条件相应地发育出贫困、温饱、富裕三类群落的农户经济。西部各类农户经济的发展有着不同困难,贫困群落农户脱贫面临人口压力大与生态环境脆弱矛盾突出,及农户人均财政负担重,财政支农能力差的困难,已得温饱的农户面临收入与文化素质低、可带动农户从事产业化经营的企业少的困难,富裕农户面临生产要素流失严重,制度创新滞后的困难。由政府主导,以多种手段、方式带动贫困农户脱贫致富;扶持建立农业合作经营组织,促进已得温饱农户发展农业产业化经营;以制度创新推动富裕农户经济的进一步发展,是应采取的针对性对策。     

Restructuring women’s work; labour market and household gender regimes in the Greater Latrobe Valley,Australia

This article examines the impact of economic restructuring on gender relations. It examines the implications of labour market change for households within a region, in this case the Greater Latrobe Valley, Victoria, Australia. The argument is that the unchanging gender structures of the labour market constrain the intentions and efforts of individuals within households to significantly alter household gender relations. The analysis considers how restructuring has reshaped the regional labour market since 1996, changing opportunities for both men’s and women’s employment. Despite these changes, the regional labour market continues to be underpinned by a ‘male breadwinner’ gender regime and significant occupational and industrial gender segregation. Drawing on four vignettes, the analysis shows that the impetus towards greater gender equality in the household is constrained by a stagnant and stable labour market gender regime.     

Relational Economies,Social Embeddedness and Valuing Labour in Agrarian Change: An Example from the Developing World

A relatively neglected area of research on agrarian and economic change is the role of indigenous concepts of labour value in the transition from subsistence to market production. In West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, the presence of a migrant population on an oil palm land settlement scheme (LSS) in close proximity to village‐based oil palm growers, provided an opportunity to examine changing notions of labour value through the lens of smallholder productivity. Voluntary settlers on the LSS are experiencing population pressure and are highly dependent on oil palm for their livelihoods. In contrast, customary landowners in village settings produce oil palm in a situation of relative land abundance. By examining differences in how these two groups practise and value commodity production, the paper makes four key points. First, concepts of labour value are not static and involve struggles over how labour value is defined. Second, the transition to market‐based notions of labour value can undermine labour's social value with a consequent weakening of social relationships within and between families. Third, Theories of Value developed in western contexts and used to frame development policies and projects in the developing world are often inappropriate and even harmful to the welfare of communities that have different registers of value. Fourth, in response to Point 3, and following Rigg (2007), there is a need for ‘theorising upwards’ using empirical data from the developing world to inform theory rather than applying to the developing world models of sociality and economy developed in western contexts.     

What about effective access to cars in motorised households?

Most Canadian urban centres are facing difficulties with public transport systems. As car ownership has increased, urban areas have experienced a long‐term decrease in per capita ridership. At present, a significant proportion of riders in most cities is considered to be transit captives, which usually refers to carless individuals or members of carless households. But, what about members of motorised households without effective or real access to a car as, for instance, two‐income households with only one car? Do these ‘restricted car users’ constitute a significant, but somewhat hidden, segment of the transit market? The initial purpose of this paper was to learn more about individuals with restricted or no‐car access who live in car‐owning households: Who are they? Where do they live? Do their numbers fluctuate significantly throughout the day? More specifically, how has car access in motorised households changed in the past two decades? Sociospatial profiles of motorised household members with restricted car access are presented for 1981 and 1996. The second purpose was to analyse restricted car access in motorised households by using a multivariate model of car access for motorised households in the Québec metropolitan area. To achieve these objectives, we developed a logical typology of forms of ‘restricted car access’ based on a combination of variables, or resources, qualifying the degree of car access enjoyed by individuals at any given moment during the day: availability of a car, possession of a driver's licence and a driver at the disposal of other household members. This typology was then applied to the 1981 and 1996 origin–destination survey data obtained from the Québec Census Metropolitan Area.     

Longitudinal determinants of married women’s autonomy in Egypt

This article explores determinants of women’s autonomy in Egypt around the beginning of the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011. We show that women’s autonomy over time is a product not only of their individual characteristics, but also of the household and community environment in which they live. Using the 2006 and 2012 Egyptian Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS) and multilevel models, results demonstrate that women’s autonomy changes over time. There are large and consistent variations in women’s autonomy by household region of residence and wealth. For example, women in the rural and urban Upper Egypt region are less autonomous than women in the Cairo region, and women in wealthier households are less autonomous compared to the poorest households. Programs aiming to increase women’s autonomy focus exclusively or primarily on women’s own characteristics. These results indicate that strategies to improve women’s autonomy should be mindful of the multiple dimensions of autonomy and have a programmatic focus on changing household and social environments.     

吐魯番新出《前秦建元二十年籍》研究

本文集中探討2006年吐魯番洋海趙貨墓發現的《前秦建元二十年(384)三月高昌郡高寧縣都鄉安邑里籍》。這是敦煌吐魯番文書中現在所知最早的户籍,也是目前所見紙本書寫的最早的户籍。筆者對該户籍的書寫年代、地點、内容、格式等方面進行了分析。該户籍保存造籍的年份,有具體的郡縣鄉里名稱,登録了五户人家的家口以及户内土地、奴婢的買賣情況。《前秦建元二十年(384)三月高昌郡高寧縣都鄉安邑里籍》的發現對中國中古時期的户籍制度的研究具有重要的意義。     

THE ROLE OF FAMILY SUPPORT AND OTHER FACTORS IN RETURNING HOME

The present study focuses on the effect of social and other support from the family in the place of origin of migrants and how it impacts upon migrants’ propensity to return. The study uses longitudinal data from a project in Northeastern Thailand called the Nang Rong Project. The analysis shows that monetary support from the family left behind has a significant effect on migrants’ propensity to return home. Household strategies of migration have played an important role in explaining migration in the Nang Rong setting. At the individual and household level, education, occupation and household size were strongly associated with migrants’ propensity to return to their original village. Among the social support variables, duration of migration has significant effects on migrants’ likelihood of returning home. Three variables—marital status, wealth index and whether the person came with an immediate family member—were found to have weak associations with the dependent variable. A major finding from this study was that migrants who have higher education are more likely to stay at the destination.     

Choice Flowers and Well-Ordered Tables: Struggling Over Gender in a Nineteenth-Century Household

Historical archaeologists have generally considered households as isolated,bounded entities, and not as sets of social relations. Consequently, the household has gone unrecognized as an arena of struggle. Analysis of documents associated with the household of nineteenth-century reformer Gerrit Smith challenges this approach. At his Peterboro, New York estate, a struggle ensued between family members because of conflicting ideologies of self-presentation, and between worker and employer on account of the period's shifting gender ideology. In order to access the meanings of objects excavated, the material remains associated with the Smith household must be considered in light of these struggles.     

Migrant mothers,left-behind fathers: the negotiation of gender subjectivities in Indonesia and the Philippines

The distinct feminization of labour migration in Southeast Asia – particularly in the migration of breadwinning mothers as domestic and care workers in gender-segmented global labour markets – has altered care arrangements, gender roles and practices, as well as family relationships within the household significantly. Such changes were experienced by both the migrating women and other left-behind members of the family, particularly ‘substitute’ carers such as left-behind husbands. During the women’s absence from the home, householding strategies have to be reformulated when migrant women-as-mothers rewrite their roles (but often not their identities) through labour migration as productive workers who contribute to the well-being of their children via financial remittances and ‘long-distance mothering’, while left-behind fathers and/or other family members step up to assume some of the tasks vacated by the mother. Using both quantitative and qualitative interview material with returned migrants and left-behind household members in source communities in Indonesia and the Philippines experiencing considerable pressures from labour migration, this article explores how carework is redistributed in the migrant mother’s absence, and the ensuing implications on the gender roles of remaining family members, specifically left-behind fathers. It further examines how affected members of the household negotiate and respond to any changing gender ideologies brought about by the mother’s migration over time.     

Intersectional power dynamics and extended households: Elderly and widowed women’s international migration from Armenia

Drawing upon interviews and fieldwork conducted in Armenia and Turkey with 25 Armenian migrant women and their non-accompanying family members, the present article examines how gendered norms intersecting with age, marital and motherhood statuses have structured the migration decision-making process as it occurs at the household level. These migrant women were mostly elderly, widowed and from extended households, where male income support to the family was either insufficient or wholly absent for a variety of reasons. Building on the Household Survival Strategies (HSS) approach, this article examines the dynamism and complex kinship norms in extended-households and how these have led some women to assume the role of migrant labourers in a patriarchal context that would ordinarily deny them mobility. While empirically this study sheds light on women’s migration from an understudied geography, it also deepens our understanding of the interplay between patriarchy, intersectionality and women’s agency outside of the traditional nuclear household.     

Determinants of temporary labour migration in southern India

We present new data from three village panchayats in northwest Tamil Nadu and investigate the associations between demographic and socioeconomic factors with temporary labour migration from this setting. Individual (n?=?1110) and household (n?=?278) level logistic regression models were used to demonstrate how factors at each of these levels can influence temporary labour migration trajectories. Young males were most likely to temporarily migrate for work from this region. Additionally, large households from historically disadvantaged castes with marginal land and housing were most likely to have at least one migrant member. Households with multiple migrant members appear to use temporary migration to cope with serious deprivation relative to households with only one migrant member. These findings provide a strong case that can be compared to other settings in India and can be used to inform improved policy and targeted development initiatives to support temporary migrant workers and their households.     

Caste and Regional Influences on the Practice of ‘Untouchability’ in India

Millions of people in India are born with scars that will last a lifetime. These are scars of social rather than physical blemish and they reduce the capacity of such persons to function in life, free of prejudice and untainted by stigma. The source of these wounds is the practice of ‘untouchability’, meaning that any physical contact with them is avoided because they are considered ‘unclean’. This article studies the nature of households in India that admit to ‘practising untouchability’ — in the sense of avoiding contact with persons they regard as unclean — and contrasts such households with those that claim to be not ‘practising untouchability’. Such a contrast is possible because the data used, which are from the Indian Human Development Survey, associate with each household a wealth of economic, social and demographic data. Consequently, it is possible to estimate the likelihood of a household practising untouchability, conditional upon the values pertaining to it of a number of relevant factors. These include its social group, its main source of income, the highest educational level of its members, its urban or rural location and its region of residence. The central finding of the analysis is that the practice of untouchability is determined more by the region in which a household is located than by the caste to which it belongs.     

Engendering the New Enclosures: Development,Involuntary Resettlement and the Struggles for Social Reproduction in Coastal Tanzania

This article engages with the feminist concept of ‘social reproduction’ to arrive at a richer understanding of the gendered processes and outcomes of contemporary large‐scale land acquisitions, or the ‘new enclosures’. It focuses on the case of a recent land deal for industrial sugarcane production in the Coast Region of Tanzania and the resultant process of involuntary resettlement. It critically analyses people's struggles for land in the face of imminent displacement, and the gendered ways they experience the erosion of their pre‐existing modes of social reproduction. It argues that enclosure of rural landscapes does more than immediately strip peasants and pastoralists of their means of production and turn them into wage labourers. It gradually uproots them from their socio‐ecological knowledges, cultural practices and historical memories, which are rooted on the land and articulated through gender. The highly uncertain processes of enclosure and displacement also force rural women and men to renegotiate their livelihood strategies and intra‐household gender relations.     

Demographic events and economic conditions of rural households in Bangladesh

Demographic events, such as death of adults and marriage of children, place a heavy burden on household economy, while economic and labour migration may lessen the burden. This study examined the effects of demographic events on economic condition of rural households in Bangladesh. Household possessions of durable assets in the Matlab demographic surveillance area in 1996 and 2005 were used to calculate asset scores, a proxy for long-term economic condition. Events of adult (aged 15–59 years) death and marriage of girls during 1996–2005 were associated with lower asset scores in 2005 compared to households with no such events. Out-migration of adult males, but not females, to urban areas or other countries and marriage of boys were associated with higher asset scores in 2005 compared to households with no out-migration or boy's marriage. Findings suggest that the government should attach high priority to adult health, abolition of dowry, and encourage out-migration.     

Rethinking Household Headship among Eritrean Refugees and Returnees

One of the most common generalizations concerning refugee populations is that they are dominated by female heads of households and children. It is claimed that men are either killed in the wars that prompt displacement or are left behind to fight. This assumption has continued to determine the policies of relief and development agencies, as well as governments in countries of asylum and return. On the basis of empirical data from UNHCR and household data from Eritrea, this article questions the validity of such a dominant assumption. The article also problematizes the concept of household headship by showing that it is a cultural construction whose meaning varies from one cultural context to another. There is, thus, no definition of headship that can apply cross‐culturally. It also argues that since female heads of households (FHHs) are not socially and economically homogeneous, household headship is not an appropriate method of identifying the poorest of the poor for targeting or provision of emergency relief or for productive inputs in development programmes.