La famille-souche pyrénéenne au XIXe siècle : quelques réflexions de méthode

In the wake of research at the Cambridge school on the structure of the housechold in traditional communities, a debate arose among historians concerning one of Peter Laslett's principal conclusions : the predominance of the nuclear household in traditional European populations. But is the debate well put? Would it not be better, rather than contrasting this or that local result with Laslett's conclusions, to question a method that consists in drawing conclusions concerning the dominant type of family organization in a community, based upon classification of households made for the census. The author is in agreement with the methodological criticisms that Lutz Berkner made of P. Laslett and tests them by tracing the evolution of eighty households of Bessède (Pays de Sault, Upper Valley of the Aude) using the nominal rolls of the census for the years 1846, 1851, 1856, 1861, and 1866. While each of these censuses comprises no more than 20 to 30% complex households, a diachronic study confirms that in this case, the stem-family is the dominant type of familial organization. Moreover, the author analyzes the reasons for which, in upper Aude valley, there is no positive correlation between the size of the household and its complexity.
Fine Agnès. La famille-souche pyrénéenne au XIXe siècle : quelques réflexions de méthode. In: Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations. 32ᵉ année, N. 3, 1977. pp. 478-487.