Embedded Files
Helpful prior knowledge and learning objectives
Helpful prior knowledge and learning objectives
Helpful prior learning:
Section 1.1.1 The economy and you, which explains what an economy is and how it is relevant to students’ lives
Section 1.1.2 The embedded economy, which explains the relationship between the economy and society and Earth’s systems.
Section 1.3.6 Households, markets, state and commons, which explains four provisioning institutions in the economy and their interconnection
Section 1.3.7 Care in the economy, which explains the importance of care in the economy, the types of care, and why care is undervalued
Section S.1 What are systems?, which explains what a system is, the importance of systems boundaries, the difference between open and closed systems and the importance of systems thinking
Section S.2 Systems thinking patterns, which outlines the core components of systems thinking: distinctions (thing/other), systems (part/whole), relationships (action/reaction), and perspectives (point/view)
Learning objectives:
describe the household provisioning institution in terms of its parts, relationships and overall function
Take a minute to consider who you live with, the spaces you live in, and what you do there.
Do you live with parents, siblings, or other family members like grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins? Or do you live with unrelated people?
What about your living space? Is it one or multiple areas? Is it part of a larger building, like an apartment, or is it separate? Do you have regular contact with the rest of the living world in or around your household space?
What activities do you and others do in your living space?
This short thinking exercise shows the many ways we can organise our daily lives with others in our households.
Figure 1. Who lives in your household?
(Credit: José Pestana CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
What is a household?
What is a household?
A household consists of people who live together in a shared dwelling and work to meet each other's needs. Of course, everyone contributes to meeting the needs of others. But in a household there is a greater sense of responsibility and commitment for the survival and wellbeing of household members.
A household is a system. It has parts, the people who live in the household. The people have strong relationships with each other, varying due to culture, history, laws, technology and power. The household’s function is to ensure the survival and wellbeing of household members. The household can be thought of as both a single unit of people working together, but also as individual people with interests, perspectives, and actions. In this Topic, we will sometimes talk about the household as a unit and sometimes focus on individual actors inside the household.
What types of relationships exist inside households?
What types of relationships exist inside households?
Household members have special responsibilities to each other based on particular types of relationships. These relationships vary across cultures and time. Below are a few examples of these relationships.
Kinship
Kinship connects people in a household through blood, adoption, legal marriage or another type of long-term commitment. Blood relationships are based on birth and are not chosen. Adoption involves a relationship chosen by the adopters, not the adoptee. In some cultures, marriage is a relationship chosen by both individuals, while in other cultures, families arrange marriages. In some countries, members of the LGBTQ+ community may not be able to legally marry, but have the same type of kinship commitment. In almost all cultures, kinship involves strong social norms of care between household members (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Kinship relationships in households involve very strong social norms around care for the household members
(Credit: Laura Garcia CC0)
Households based on kinship take many forms. Extended families include parents, children, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles and/or cousins. Nuclear families are smaller, with only parents and children. Factors like culture, incomes, laws, gender equity and power relationships affect how common extended or nuclear families are in societies. Households may be composed of nuclear and extended families at various times, depending on people’s needs. The next Section 2.1.2 will explore household size and composition, including single-person households.
Friendship and cost-sharing
Some households include members not related through kinship. You might share a household with friends or others because you enjoy living together or to lower living costs. For instance, young people often move into a household with other students or young workers. These households can be places where people support each other through transitions in young adulthood and share living costs when incomes are low.
Co-living, where adults share living, cooking, and bathing spaces, but have separate sleeping areas, is becoming more common. It lowers living costs and offers a lifestyle not based on biological kinship. New co-living arrangements put together unrelated people in different generations, like retired people and young people, to build stronger social ties and provide support across different life stages.
Domestic workers
Some households employ people to do care and domestic work, who also live in the household. Domestic workers, such as childminders, housekeepers, cooks, gardeners and others are more common in households with high incomes relative to the rest of the population. These households can afford to employ and house others to help with care and household work.
Domestic workers, especially women, may connect households in distant countries when they migrate for work. Often, domestic workers leave their own families in the care of others. This situation, known as the global care chain, is discussed in detail in Section 2.3.3.
How are households related to the rest of the economy?
How are households related to the rest of the economy?
The embedded economy model (Figure 4) gives us an overview of the relationship between households and the rest of the economy. Households are one of four provisioning institutions in the economy. Households have relationships with markets, the commons, and the state and are embedded in society and Earth’s systems. The household relationships with other provisioning institutions are influenced by culture, history, laws, technology, incomes, gender equity and power relationships. These relationships are discussed in detail in Subtopic 2.2.
However, the embedded economy model doesn’t fully capture the specific role of the household or other provisioning institutions in the economy. Many economists believe that households are the core of the economy, the most important institution for strong, stable societies because of the care they provide for human survival and wellbeing.
Figure 4. The household in the embedded economy
(Credit: Kate Raworth and Marcia Mihotich CC-BY-SA 4.0)
Figure 5. Humans regenerate inside their households.
(Credit: August de Richelieu CC0)
Households help human beings regenerate. In your household, you likely rest, sleep, eat, get clean and clothed. In well-functioning households, people care for their physical and mental health, help each other develop skills, instil social norms and provide adaptable support, like a shock absorber. Humans must regenerate in the household to function well outside of the household in their relationships with society and ecological systems. Understanding how households work and strengthening regenerative household work is key to regenerating social and ecological systems.
Activity - 2.1.1
Activity - 2.1.1
Concept: Systems
Skills: Thinking skills (transfer)
Time: 30 minutes
Type: Individual, then pairs or larger group
Option 1: How would you describe your household and the relationships within it?
You may not think much about your household and take it for granted. But it is worthwhile to think about who lives with you, what their roles are in your life, and what your role is in their lives.
Consider the following questions and record (write, audio, video) a reflection or if you feel comfortable, discuss with a partner or a larger group like your class:
Who do you live with?
What is each person’s relationship to you (kinship or other)?
How or why do you live together?
What type of housing do you live in?
If you live in housing with more than one household (like an apartment building), what is your relationship with the other households?
What kinds of care do you receive from others in your household?
What kinds of care do you provide for others in your household?
How well does your household function to regenerate you and other household members every day? What might be getting in the way of your or others’ regeneration?
Can you already imagine ways to strengthen the care relationships between the members of your household?
Option 2: Exploring households around the world
The website Dollar Street has photographs and videos of global households, mainly composed of kinship relationships. Explore the website, keeping the information from this section in mind.
What does the photographic evidence tell you about the types of relationships in households?
What does the photographic evidence tell you about how members of households care for each other?
What evidence do you see about how households are related to the other provisioning institutions, to the rest of society and to nature?
Ideas for longer activities and projects are listed in Subtopic 2.5 Taking Action
Checking for understanding
Checking for understanding
Further exploration
Further exploration
The unpaid work that GDP ignores -- and why it really counts - a TED Talk from Marilyn Waring, who explains the vital importance of unpaid care and domestic work in the economy. Difficulty level: easy
What is Feminist Economics? - Short video from the Institute for New Economic Thinking where economist Diana Strassmann discusses what feminist economics focuses on, explaining that the field of economics is incomplete unless it understands care work and the outsized role of women and girls in that care. Difficulty level: medium
Dollar Street - a website from the Gapminder organisation with photographs and videos of global households, mainly composed of kinship relationships. The website is fascinating to explore with or without a goal in mind. Difficulty level: easy
Sources
Sources
Hasty, J. et al. (n.d.). “11.3 Defining Family and Household”. Introduction to Anthropology. LibreTexts. https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anthropology/Introductory_Anthropology/Introduction_to_Anthropology_(OpenStax)/11%3A_Forming_Family_through_Kinship/11.03%3A_Defining_Family_and_Household
Ironmonger, D. (2001). “Household Production and the Household Economy”. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/03964-4
Raworth, K. (2017). Doughnut economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist. London: Penguin Random House.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2019). Patterns and trends in household size and composition: Evidence from a United Nations dataset. (ST/ESA/SER.A/433).
Terminology (in order of appearance)
Terminology (in order of appearance)
household: a system where people living together care for each other and do domestic work, often termed the 'core economy'
dwelling: a physical space where people live
system: a set of interdependent parts that organise to create a functional whole
power: the ability to influence events or the behaviour of other people
kinship: to be related by blood, marriage, adoption, civil recognition, or other long-term commitment
culture: the beliefs, values, attitudes, behaviours and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next
norm: a social rule for accepted and expected behaviour, can be stated or unstated
care: the act of providing what is necessary for the health, welfare, upkeep, and protection of someone or something
extended family: a family which extends beyond parents and children to include grandparents and other relatives
nuclear family: a family of parents and children only
income: money received from work or investments
gender equality: when people of different genders are treated equally
co-living: when people live together who are not related
domestic worker: someone who lives inside a household and is paid to care for others but is not related to them
global care chain: a situation where caregivers from poorer countries migrate to wealthier ones, creating a global network of care relationships
embedded economy model: an economic model showing that the economy is shaped by society and dependent on nature
economy: all the human-made systems that transfer and transform energy and matter to meet human needs and wants
provisioning institution: a group of people and their relationships as they try to meet human needs and wants
market: a system where people buy and sell goods and services for a price.
commons: a system where people self-organise to co-produce and manage shared resources.
state: a system that provides essential public services, and also governs and regulates other economic institutions
embedded: to be contained inside something else
institution: human-made systems of rules and norms that shape social behavior
regenerate: the process of restoring and revitalising something
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