Regulating women and managing men: Regimes of control on Languedoc family enterprises

Abstract

This paper is an examination of the forms of control exercised over the labour of women and men on family-based farms in rural Languedoc, France. The argument of the paper is that the labour force on family enterprises is not spontaneously created but that men and women are deliberately fashioned into disciplined workers through the processes of regulation. In rural Languedoc, this is accomplished through two management systems that prevail on the small-scale wine growing enterprises of the region. I call one, a regime of “familial hegemony” and the other, a regime of “familial despotism.” In a regime of familial despotism, coercion is practised to control labour. By contrast, in a regime of familial hegemony, consent serves as the basis upon which labour is secured, retained and managed. The paper uses examples drawn from fieldwork among Languedoc wine growers to illustrate the ways in which despotic and hegemonic regimes operate in a context in which rural depopulation has made the retention of labour imperative on family run farms.

Citation

Lem, W. (2002), "Regulating women and managing men: Regimes of control on Languedoc family enterprises", Research in Economic Anthropology (Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 163-186. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0190-1281(02)21007-0