Contenu du sommaire : L'argent en famille

Money in the familyThe family is a legal, moral and affective unit based on the pooling of goods, the sharing of incomes, the obligation to provide support and an inheritance. Attention is often drawn to the power of money, a means of exchange, to break up affective and personal relationships. But how do these two facts of life coexist? On the one hand, we observe that families do not forgo bookkeeping in relationships, nor the monetization of care, affects and the duties stemming from solidarity. On the other hand, a fine analysis of family members' reasons reveals that the very definition of family ties requires putting aside any rationale based on interests alone. The examples examined in this special issue illustrate that an “economy” of family ties does exist but that it is (even for those with the least “confidence”, namely separated couples) not based on the marketplace or a balancing of interests. In the family, relations involving money are governed by norms of fairness that appeal to moral values and affects.

Intimacy and economyThe interference between economic transactions and private social relationships can be analyzed in three different ways: from the angle of separate spheres or “hostile worlds”, which are mutually contaminated when they come into contact; in terms of being “nothing other than business”, cultural constructs or expedients; or as being differentiated bonds, each characterized by transfers. An argument is presented for this third approach by drawing information from lawsuits having to do with compensation for the deaths caused by the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC

When interests and feelings mix: Family correspondence during the 18th and 19th centuriesThe letters exchanged between the members of bourgeois or aristocratic families during the 18th and 19th centuries provide evidence of the key place of money matters and negotiations about them in certain families. How were interests expressed with, or despite, feelings? What social arrangements were they part of? This correspondence is interpreted from a structural and temporal perspective so as to shed light on the collective requirements and individual aspirations, and to inquire into the evolution of an “affective economics”

“What is mine is yours?” Pooling income and transferring money within the coupleThe couple is not an indivisible unit where both parties have fully fungible incomes. Three rationales emerge in the circulation of money and pooling of incomes between spouses. They are based on a more or less extensive definition of the communal estate and on whether or not a norm of equality comes into play for clearly quantifying the amount of money involved. In household calculations, expenditures are reckoned first; and the pooling of income only comes up once the schedule of joint expenses has set each person's part. The dimension of time, as glimpsed through the spouses' history and their future projections, is essential for understanding the arrangements made as well as the possibility of renegotiating them when expenditures or incomes increase or decrease (changing residence, children moving in or out, losing or finding a job, etc.)

A telling debt due to money or a debt disguised as a gift: Monetary assistance and the beneficiaries of income support programsWhy do families provide regular assistance in cash much less frequently than irregular help and support in kind? Because, as is often said, money creates a greater dependency? This is not the main reason according to interviews with beneficiaries of the french income support program and their kin. Regular cash payments are avoided because they make assistance too visible. By strongly obliging the receiver, they endanger the reversibility of the giver's and receiver's positions, which is necessary for family bonds to be preserved. The intention, when money — a sign of tension in family relationships — is brought into play, is to redefine each person's place in the kin network

How to maintain ties? Keeping the books in the new families formed by separated parentsHow to interpret, in the new families formed following separations, the economic transactions that still join the disunited parents, now in their new households, around the problems related to support for the children they had in common? Several case studies are used to examine how money and its circulation expresses, between a debt-based rationale and a principle of equivalence, the persistence of quasi family ties between the two units comprising the new constellation. These ties might involve obligations, conflicts or solidarity. As evidence of a gradual change in relationships as new arrangements are made, money does not just reflect the plurality or temporariness of the bonds woven between the two households. In many cases, it quite simply brings them into existence

“He is my father”: Solidarity between the divorced father, the father's line and adult childrenThe family of a child whose parents have separated is a network split in two that might expand due to additions on the mother's or father's side. The large majority of the children who live mainly with their mother receive major support from the mother's side of the family when they enter adulthood. The father prefers helping his child directly instead of giving an allowance that would transit via the mother. However the mother-in-law often stands in the way of the support the father imagines providing to the young adult. For this reason, some fathers help their children in secret. Although many fathers lose contact with their children, the paternal grandparents (in particular the grandmother) try to help their grandchildren, even if this means not going through their son. Between half-brothers and ‑sisters, an asymmetry can be observed between the “uterines” (who, raised in the same household, feel as though they are full siblings) and the “consanguines” (who might not know each other very well). Very few mother-in-laws seem moved by a feeling of solidarity based on common forebears. The “place” in the family still prevails over intergenerational solidarity in France

“Children don't cover their costs”: Family and money in NaplesVarious ways of circulating money and “keeping tabs” were observed in families belonging to the educated bourgeoisie in Vomero, a well-do-do neighborhood overlooking Naples. Money can be used to analyze: the relation between family and state; the distribution of statuses and roles between the sexes; housing and its conveyance; relations between generations; and forms of belonging and maintaining a continuity in family ties. A comparison with France is suggested

“Making shares”: business and the descent groupA family case study of a retired baker and her children in a rural commune in Gironde, France, serves to analyze stages in the conveyance of an estate (in particular of the bakery to the son), ranging from a “simple” to the final “shared” gift. Sharing an estate between children is not shaped by legal requirements alone; it also follows family rationales based on residence (gifts of real estate can serve to bring the residences of family members closer together in line with occupational and household demands) and, too, on “descent group” (family members have an interest in maintaining and conveying a joint estate). This notion of a descent group is worked out by examining how a succession is settled and what is said about the settlement in the contemporary French context

Obliged by inheritance: A childless elderly lady in BarcelonaThe chronology of taking a childless elderly lady with a behavioral disorder into custody is analyzed in detail. This case has three special characteristics: the freedom in making a will in Catalonia, the accusations brought against the hired home helper, and the bonds of affection between the elderly lady and certain collateral kin of her deceased companion. For six years, two nieces assumed responsibility together. Carmen, an actual collateral niece, held a white-collar job in the social security administration; she lived in the same building as the last sister-in-law, the only remaining rightful heir. Anita, a goddaughter and collateral through the deceased companion, was a hospital psychologist; she inherited alone one of the two apartments in the estate. This case is a magnifying glass of the processes at work in more ordinary situations: the place of the estate (depending on whether it is real estate or available savings) in decisions about custody; the importance of occupational qualifications; the designation of someone as being “responsible”; mutual accusations about how expenses are managed; and the jealousy between “groups of devolution”

The triumph of belief: Catholics and spirits around Allan Kardec's tombThe tomb of Allan Kardec, the founder of Spiritism, is a place of worship in Paris. These practices are examined by analyzing exchanges between the faithful, forms of devotion and the way the latter become part of individuals' lives. These practices have two dimensions, the one Catholic and the other Spiritist. The working out of a special relation with the deceased is the principal means whereby the faithful gradually bring these two dimensions together. Ultimately, this double work of establishing relations closely depends on a process of adherence where belief and faith are enacted, a process where interactions between the faithful play a key role

Dying and being reborn in Greece: When women make kollivaThe making of kolliva in Greece marks the period of bereavement for a recent death, as much as the days in the ecclesiastical calendar that are dedicated to the collective remembrance of the deceased. This funeral ceremony, by making these women go-betweens with the beyond, creates ties between them and enables them to reinterpret the orthodox doctrine of resurrection. Making this memorial dish is a charitable action for the Church and part of the liturgy; it is an expression of love or sociability for the women who do the cooking. How do these women share this food between the living and the dead so as to reintegrate the latter in the household?