ABSTRACT

The household has constituted an important focus of study since the 1970s, appealing to those from multiple disciplines for different reasons. As a 'basic, communal, multi-purpose, social-economic unit' (White 1980:9), the household invited economists, both neo-classical and neo-Marxist alike, and anthropologists, sociologists and geographers, all of whom drew on economics, to test their different theories about utility, work, labour, production and reproduction. At the same time, the household allowed feminists to distance themselves from the family – that very construct within which the locus of women's subordination is located and from which they were attempting to free themselves. Additionally, the household was and still is very attractive from a methodological perspective ( it is visible and concrete, enabling easy access to a physically contained unit.