The Impact of Market Agriculture on Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Chile

Abstract

SCHOLARS of Latin American history have only recently begun to systematically analyze the family and household.1 A very few of the studies to date have dealt with lower-class household structures, and these investigations have been limited in scope to specific times and places. Such an approach tends to characterize household structure as static and culturally determined. By contrast, this analysis samples household structures, as indicated by general population enumerations, for various economic zones in Chile (see map). Using this technique, it is possible to show the variety of structures which can typify one ethnic-class group in different economic and social contexts. Households and families are portrayed as fluid institutions which change with economic and demographic change and reflect the position of the unit within the economic and social system. Specifically, changes in lower-class rural household and family structures in nineteenth-century Chile are related to the transformation from subsistence to market argriculture and to the position of the household within the market sector given an abundant supply of labor.2