ABSTRACT
For the people of Unterweissenbach (Mühlviertel, Upper Austria),1 the connection between emotion and material interests, and between economy and kinship, has been a matter of permanent concern. Whenever I questioned my interview partners on kinship and marriage, they always wanted to talk about property, houses, land ownership and money. At the same time, any conversation about family affairs revealed diverging interests within the socalled nuclear family, the household or the kin group. Rosenbaum (1982:116-7) called this conflict ‘structural’, given the central meaning attributed to a person’s ownership over arable land. In this chapter I will discuss the reasons for these diverging interests, such as inheritance practices, marriage patterns and kin relations, as found within a relatively marginal, rural area of Austria. In the past, high social status came with the ownership of a farmhouse, and only a son or a daughter could assume land ownership, social status and decision-making power from their parents. It will be illustrated below how social inequality and stratification were reproduced at the crossroads between kinship and economic interests.
