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2. According to a famous contemporary definition, the “labouring poor” were “those whose daily labour is necessary for their daily support”, and “whose daily subsistence absolutely depends on the daily unremitting exertion of manual labour”: Eden, Frederic Morton, The State of the Poor, or an History of the Labouring Classes in England from the Conquest to the Present Period […] (London, 1797), vol. 1, p. 2Google Scholar.

3. Abel, Wilhelm, Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Europa (Hamburg [etc.], 1974) pp. 26–27Google Scholar ; Gutton, Jean-Pierre, La société et les pauvres. L'exemple de la généralité de Lyon 1554-1789 (Paris, 1971), pp. 69–78Google Scholar ; Gascon, Richard, “Economie et pauvreté aux xvie et xviie siècles: Lyon, ville exempkire et prophétique”, in Mollat, Michel (ed.), Etudes sur l'histoire de la pauvreté (Paris, 1974), vol. 2, pp. 747–760. Abel noted (pp. 294-295) that, already in the midnineteenth century, a period of mass poverty in many parts of Europe, statisticians were puzzled by similar findings in studies about contemporary working-class families. This made them wonder whether they should assume that the labouring poor could balance their household budgets only by “running into debt, by begging and stealing”Google Scholar.

4. Henning, Friedrich-Wilhelm, Dienste und Abgaben der Bauern im 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1969), pp. 171–173Google Scholar ; cf. Goubert, Pierre, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730, 2 vols (Paris, 1960), vol. I, p. 182Google Scholar.

5. The quotations are from Blaug, Mark, “The Poor Law Report Reexamined”, Journal of Economic History, 24 (1964), pp. 229–245, 229CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and Sokoll, Thomas, Household and Family Among the Poor: The Case of Two Essex Communities in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Bochum, 1993), pp. 290–291Google Scholar ; cf. Slack, Paul, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London [etc.], 1988), pp. 73-80, 207Google Scholar ; idem, The English Poor Law 1531-1782 (Basingstoke [etc.], 1990), pp. 29-34Google Scholar ; Lees, Lynn Hollen, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700-1948 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 43 ff.Google Scholar ; and the articles by Jeremy Boulton and Thomas Sokoll in this volume. Data from other countries and regions concerning the proportion of the population receiving poor relief and the amount of relief appear in, e.g., , Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, pp. 50-57, 142Google Scholar ; , Gutton, La socéte et les pauvres, pp. 51–56Google Scholar ; Dinges, Martin, Stadtarmut in Bordeaux 1525-1675: Alltag, Politik, Mentalitdten (Bonn, 1988), esp. pp. 164-165, 524–527Google Scholar ; Lis, Catharina, Social Change and the Labouring Poor: Antwerp, 1770-1860 (New Haven, CT, [etc.], 1986), pp. 102–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Leeuwen, Marco H.D. van, The Logic of Charity: Amsterdam, 1800-1850 (Basingstoke [etc.], 2000), pp. 103–133CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Hufton, Olwen H., The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France 1750-1789 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 69–127.Google Scholar

7. Wall, Richard, “Work, Welfare and the Family: An Illustration of the Adaptive Family Economy”, in Bonfield, Lloydet. al (eds), The World We Have Gained: Essays Presented to Peter Laslett (Oxford, 1986), pp. 261–294Google Scholar . Cf. the debate about the proto-industrial family economy: Kriedte, Peteret al, Industrialization before Industrialization: Rural Industry in the Genesis of Capitalism (Cambridge [etc.], 1981), pp. 38–73Google Scholar; idem, “Proto-industrialization Revisited: Demography, Social Structure, and Modern Domestic Industry”, Continuity and Change, 8 (1993), pp. 217-252 ; Pfister, Ulrich, “The Proto-industrial Household Economy: Toward a Formal Analysis”, Journal of Family History, 17 (1992), pp. 201–232CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Sec e.g. Beck, Rainer, Unterfmning. Ländliche Welt vor Anbruch der Moderne (Munich, 1993), esp. pp. 553–575Google Scholar ; Groebner, Valentin, Ökonomie ohne Haus. Zum Wirtschafien armer Leute in Nümbtrg am Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1993)Google Scholar; idem, “Black Money and the Language of Things: Observations on the Economy of the Labouring Poor in Late Fifteenth-Century Nu-remberg”, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch ftlr deutsche Geschichte, 22 (1993), pp. 275-291 ; Leeuwen, Marco H.D. van, “Logic of Charity: Poor Relief in Preindustrial Europe”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 24 (1994), pp. 589–613, 600 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Some of Becker's seminal articles are reprinted in Gary S. Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago, 1976); cf. idem, A Treatise on the Family (1981), 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA, 1991).

10. See, e.g., Moser, Caroline O.N., Gender Planning and Development: Theory, Practice and Train ing (London [etc.], 1993), pp. 18–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Bergstrom, Theodore C., “A Survey of Theories of the Family” in Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Stark, Oded (eds), Handbook ofPopulation and Family Economics, vol 12 (Amsterdam [etc.], 1997), pp. 21-79, 31–44Google Scholar.

11. Thorner, Daniel (ed.), A. V. Chayanov on the Theory ofPeasant Economy (Homewood, IL, 1966)Google Scholar

12. An excellent study comparing households of the poor to other households and based on record linkage between household lists and other sources is Sokoll, Household and Family Among the Poor.

13. Peter Laslett, who defined the household as the 'coresident domestic group,“was not oblivious to the problems associated with comparing this unit across cultures and over extended periods. Nonetheless, he basically assumed that those compiling household lists in the past used criteria similar to those of modern researchers: Laslett, Peter, “Introduction: The History of the Family”, in Laslett, Peter and Wall, Richard (eds), Household and Family in Past Time, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 1-89, 24–15Google Scholar ; Hammel, E.A. and Laslett, Peter, “Comparing Household Structure Over Time and Between Cultures”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16 (1974), pp. 73–109, 76-77CrossRefGoogle Scholar . For some of the later criticisms, see Hammel, E. A., “On the of studying household form and function”, in Netting, Robert McC.et al. (eds), Households: Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group (Berkeley, CA [etc.], 1984), pp. 29–43Google Scholar ; Freitag, Winfried, “Haushalt und Familie in traditionalen Gesellschaften: Konzepte, Probleme und Perspektiven der Forschung”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 14 (1988) pp. 5–37Google Scholar ; Verdon, Michel, Rethinking An Atomistic Perspective on European Living Arrangements (London, 1998), pp. 24–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. To cite just two examples: Moser, Caroline O.N., Confronting Crisis: A Comparative Study of Household Responses to Poverty and Vulnerability in Four Poor Urban Communities (Washington DC, 1996)Google Scholar ; Wilk, Richard R., Household Ecology: Economic Change and Domestic Life Among Kekchi Maya in Belize, 2nd ed. (DeKalb, IL, 1997)Google Scholar.

15. See, e.g., the articles by Danyu Wang on the rural household (hu) in China, by Thomas Sokoll and by Montserrat Carbonell-Esteller in this volume. For changes in the use of the terms “family” and “household” cf. Tadmor, Naomi, “The Concept of the Household-Family in Eighteenth-Century England”, Past and Present, 151 (1996), pp. 111–140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. See, e.g., the article by Sabine Ullmann in this volume.

17. Sabean, David Warren, Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 163–182Google Scholar ; cf. Möhle, Sylvia, Ehekonflikte und sozialer Wandel: Göttingen 1740-1840 (Frankfurt/M., 1997)Google Scholar ; Lis, Catharina and Soly, Hugo, Disordered Lives: Eighteenth-Century Families and Their Unruly Relatives (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 94ffGoogle Scholar.

18. This brief remark obviously does not convey the varieties of approaches devised over half a century. The seminal book in this field was Neumann, John von and Morgenstern, Oskar, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton, NJ, 1944)Google Scholar . Interestingly, the article on “strategy” in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 15 (1968), pp. 281–288Google Scholar , dealt exclusively with the military meaning of the term and noted only in passing that it had been “applied also t o numerous other kinds of competitive situations, including commerce and games”. The date of this change was described as “comparatively recent, occurring mostly since World War II” (p.281).

19. Bourdieu, Pierre, “Les stratégies matrimoniales dans le systeme de reproduction”, Annales ESC, 27 (1972), pp. 1105–1127Google Scholar ; English translation “Marriage Strategies as Strategies of Social Reproduction”, in Forster, Robert and Ranum, Orest (eds), Family and Society (Baltimore, MD [etc.], 1976), pp. 117–144Google Scholar . A revised version appeared in Bourdieu, Pierre, Le sens pratique (Paris, 1980), pp. 249–270Google Scholar ; English translation The Logic of Practice (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar . Interestingly, in the 1960s Bourdieu had written a first analysis of this ethnographic material in a language of the “logic” (of marriages) and not yet in a language of the strategy: idem, “Célibat et condition paysannc”, Etudes rurales, 5-6 (1962), pp. 32-135.

20. Idem, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge [etc.], 1977), pp. 18 ff.

21. Tilly, Louise A., “Individual Lives and Family Strategies in the French Proletariat”, Journal of Family History, 4 (1979), pp. 137–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Hareven, Tamara, Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar ; cf. idem, “A Complex Relationship: Family Strategies an d the Processes of Economic and Social Change”, in Roger Friedland and A.F. Robertson (eds), Beyond the Marketplace: Rethinking Economy and Society (New York, 1990), pp. 215-244 ; Levi, Giovanni, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist (Chicago, IL [etc.], 1988), esp. pp. xv–xviGoogle Scholar.

22. , Bourdieu, “Marriage Strategies”, pp. 122, 126–127Google Scholar . He did not overlook conflicts within the family, though, see, e.g., pp. 129-130.

23. Cf. Moch, Leslie Pageetal., “Family Strategy: A Dialogue,” Historical Methods, 20 (1987), pp. 113–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. In research on survival strategies, another shortcoming of this type of sources is that they give information about those who arc integrated into sedentary communities - even if they have to struggle not to be forced out - rather than about those who really live on the margin of subsistence, like propertyless vagrant people. Cf. the articles by Sabine Ullmann and Dennis Frey in this volume.

25. Sokoll, Thomas (ed.), Essex Pauper Letters, 1731-1837, Records of Social and Economic History, new series (Oxford, in press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. Cf. , Sabean, Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, pp. 128 ff.Google Scholar ; , Lis and , Soly, Disordered Lives, pp. 83–84Google Scholar.

27. Cf. the articles by Thomas Sokoll and Jeremy Boulton in this volume.

28. Braker, Ulrich, Lebensgeschichte und natürtiche Ebentheuer des armen Marines im Tockenburg (Zürich, 1789)Google Scholar, available in numerous later editions; idem, Sämtliche Schriften, vols 1-3 (Munich, 1998) contain the diaries 1768-1798. On the beggar, see Ulbricht, Otto, “Die Welt eines Bettlers um 1775: Johann Gottfried Kästner”, Historische Anthropologie, 2 (1994), pp. 371–398CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. A fine example appears in the autobiography of the propertyless tailor, who presented his decision to remarry as a purely economic strategy, motivated by the insight that, as a widower with two children, ‘I could not possibly keep house without a wife’. He proved his case by explaining that he married his second spouse, suggested by a woman relative, only two weeks after he met her. The parish registers, however, show that a child was born less than seven months after the wedding, and that, in the marriage entry, the bride was not called “virtuous virgin”, which was otherwise usual. See Schlumbohm, Jürgen, “Weder Neigung noch Affection zu meiner Frau' und doch ‘zehn Kinder mit ihr gezeugt’: Zur Autobiographic eines Nürnberger Schneiders aus dem 18. Jahrhundert”, in Lubinski, Axelet al (eds), Historic und Eigen-Sinn: Festschrift für Jan Peters zum 65. Geburtstag (Weimar, 1997), pp. 485–499, 492Google Scholar.

30. Jagoda, Zenonet al., “Das Überleben im Lager aus der Sicht ehemaliger Haftlinge von Auschwitz-Birkenau” (1977), in Die Auschwitz-Hefte. Texte aus derpolnischen Zeitschrift ‘Przeglad Lekar-ski’, vol. 1 (Weinheim [etc.], 1987), pp. 13–51, 19Google Scholar ; Pawekznska, Anna, Values and Violence in Auschwitz: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley, CA, [etc.], 1979), esp. pp. 103, 107Google Scholar ; Milton, Sybil, “Women and the Holocaust: The Case of German and German-Jewish Women”,in Rittner, Carolet al. (eds), Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust (New York, 1993), pp. 213–249, 227Google Scholar ; Goldenberg, Myrna, “Memoirs of Auschwitz Survivors: The Burden of Gender”, in Ofer, Daliaetal. (eds), Women in the Holocaust (New Haven, CT [etc.], 1998), pp. 327–339Google Scholar ; Obenaus, Herbert, “Der Kampf urn das tagliche Brot”, in Herbert, Ulrichet al. (eds), Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentra-tienslager Entwicklung und Struktur, vol. 2 (Gottingen, 1998), pp. 841–873, 852 ff.Google Scholar ; Christoph Daxelmüller, “Kulturelle Formen und Aktivitaten als Teil der Oberlebens- und Vernichtungsstrat-egie in den Konzentrationslagern”, in Ibid., pp. 983-1005, 999. Cf. Sofsky, Wolfgang, Die Ordnung des Terrors: Das Konzentrationslager (Frankfurt/Main, 1993), esp. pp. 106 ff.Google Scholar , translated into English as: The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp (Princeton, NJ, 1997)Google Scholar.

31. Cf. note 3 above.

32. See, e.g., Thomas, J. J., Surviving in the City: The Urban Informal Sector in Latin America (London [etc.], 1995), pp. 70 ff.Google Scholar ; Hoeven, Rolph van der and Anker, Richard (eds), Poverty Monitoring: An International Concern (New York, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Cf., however, Sen, Amarrya, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford, 1982), pp. 9–38Google Scholar ; idem, “Poor, Relatively Speaking”, Oxford Economic Papers NS, 35 (1983), pp. 153-169, reprinted in idem, Resources, Values Development (Oxford, 1984), pp. 325-345.

33. Cf. Idem, “Poor, Relatively Speaking”, pp. 158 ff.

34. See, e.g., the articles by Dennis Frey and Danyu Wang in this volume.

35. See, e.g., the article by Thomas Sokoll in this volume.

36. Bourdieu, Pierre, Travail et travailleurs en Algérie (Paris, 1964).Google Scholar

37. Day, Sophie, Papataxiarchis, Euthymios, and Stewart, Michael (eds), Lilies of the Field: Marginal People Who Live for the Moment (Oxford, 1999).Google Scholar

38. The works of Valentin Groebner offer a glimpse of the vast discrepancies in food prices in fifteenth-century Nuremberg. Groebner, Valentin, “Towards an Economic History of Customary Practices: Bread, Money, and the Economy of the Bazaar: Observations on Consumptio n and Cheating in the Late Medieval Foodstuffs Market”, German History, 12 (1994), pp. 120–136CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39. See, e.g., Stack, Carol B., All Our Kin: Strategiesfor Survival in a Black Community (New York [etc.], 1974), pp. 28–29.Google Scholar

40. See the article by Hotze Lont in this volume and, on contemporary China, Harrell, Stevan, “Geography, Demography, and Family Composition in Three Southwestern Villages”, in Davis, Deborah and Harrell, Stevan (eds), Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era (Berkeley, CA [etc.], 1993), pp. 77–102Google Scholar.

41. The articles by Dennis Frey and Horze Lont in this volume explore these issues.

42. See the articles by Alain Marie and Danyu Wang in this volume.

43. , Moser, Gender Planning and Development, p. 17.Google Scholar

44. See the article by Alain Marie in this volume.

45. See the articles by Montserrat Carbonell-Esteller, Dennis Frey, and Thomas Sokoll in this volume.

46. See the articles by Montserrat Carbonell-Esteller and Thomas Sokoll in this volume.

47. Davis and Harrell, Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era.

48. Preiswerk, Yvonne, Les Silencespudiques de I'économie, Cahiers de l'IUED (Geneva, 1998), p. 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49. See the article by Danyu Wang in this volume.