Domestic succession, property transmission, and family systems in the agrarian societies of contemporary Spain

Abstract

The first part of this article consists of a critical assessment of a number of basic concepts that are used, rather loosely, in the study of kinship and the family in the social sciences. Drawing mainly from the anthropology of kinship, an argument is put forward in favor of the consistent and rigorous use of these concepts, if we are to make progress in the interdisciplinary and comparative study of family systems. The basic ideas elicited from this review are then applied in an effort to make sense of the diversity of family systems present in historical Spain, their likely historical origins, and their geographical distribution. The second pan consists of a systematic description and comparison of two basic succession, inheritance, and family systems present in contemporary Spain: nuclear-egalitarian and stem-preferential, with their respective variants, drawing on data collected by the author himself as well as on the literature available. An assessment of the hypotheses originally put forward by economic historian H.J. Habakkuk deals with the explanation of the differential effects on society and the economy caused by partible and impartible inheritance.