ABSTRACT
At this juncture, we can appreciate the distance separating this set of axioms from Smith’s position. First of all, his salvo against Laslett blinds him to the right formulation of the ‘underlying philosophical assumptions’ of family history, namely the opposition between collectivism and individualism. Having failed to perceive the true locus of the opposition (although culture does wriggle its way back in through collectivism, so that he does not utterly miss the point) and failing to be explicit about the relationship between a set of axioms and what we deem problematical, he cannot appreciate precisely how collectivism and individualism diverge. Second, his atoms are not minimal household units but families; from that perspective most societies studied by ethnographers, let alone our own contemporary society, would escape his underlying assumptions.
