ABSTRACT
One source of empirical inadequacy in models is that they are constructed on the basis of simplistic empirical assumptions. The smallholding family is characterised by inheritance rather than succession, which mode of transmission symbolises the emergence of family members as individuals, though not necessarily autonomous individuals, from collectivity of family. In contrast to the distinctively agrarian forms of production and family are those characteristic of ‘protoindustrialisation’, which term has been used to refer to the movement of manufacturing industry into the countryside during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Protoindustrialisation worked, Medick argues, to preserve the family as a productive group, and at the same time created the conditions for the emergence of the factory system of production which destroyed that family type. Smelser, a Parsonian functionalist, saw industrialisation as requiring a greater differentiation of the ‘social system’ of the family, and working-class protest as a response to these pressures which disappears once the system has adapted to new economic conditions.
