ABSTRACT
The C-cluster consists of the family systems of what people would call pre-modern or pre-industrial, complex societies, societies that had undergone the Second Great Transformation, and thus developed systems of social classes and state organizations. These systems occupied most of Europe, Northern Africa, and Asia, as well as the colonized parts of North and South America, before the Industrial Revolution, or the Third Great Transformation. In the C-cluster, there was still a division between subsistence and prestige pursuits but their connection had become a double one: riot only did family organization enable prestige competition in the larger arena, but success or failure in this prestige competition was an important factor in determining the nature of family activity and organization. Families in C-cluster societies were dependent for their livelihood and for their public status on the extent to which they could gain and maintain control over productive goods, or property.
