ABSTRACT
Our contribution to this book concerns the interaction of household and economic life for people who depend, in whole or in part, on micro-businesses for their livelihoods. It is increasingly recognised in accounts of the labour market that systems of production and reproduction do not operate autonomously but that labour markets and households interact continuously (Bruegel et al., 1998). Moreover, there is now a growing volume of research suggesting that a micro-business is as likely to be a household as an individual undertaking. Yet small enterprise policy rhetoric for the most part remains rooted in a model of business behaviour based on individual rational choice. That is, a model borrowed from economics and applied to many areas of policy, as well as to other academic disciplines. The result is an asocial view of economic behaviour which conceptualises economic activity as carried out by isolated individuals. It is our argument in this chapter that the world of the micro-business should rather be understood in the context of changes in labour markets and household livelihoods. Moreover, if social scientists are to make sense of microbusiness behaviour, analysis which takes account of the household is essential.
