Households as Coercive Labour Regimes

The conference will explore coercive labour regimes through the lens of the household. We define the household as primarily composed of its head and everyone within this unit enjoying the patronage of the head. Kinship relations are considered to be secondary, as members of the household head’s family were usually but not always included in the household.

During the conference, we would like to concentrate our attention to larger household organizations, including the private households of the military, political and economic elites, but also, for example, plantations, private companies, haciendas and estates.

Participants are invited to write a paper dealing with a fixed set of questions, such as:

• How do you define the household?
• How do people enter and exit the household?
• Who belong to the household?
• What is the divison of labour?
• How does it function as a unit of production and/or economic unit?
• What are the mechanisms of control within the household?

The conference will take place on November 2-3 2023 at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. It is co-hosted by the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. Find the full version of the call here.