The Life of Property

In Béarn, a region of south-west France, longstanding and resilient ideas of property and practices of inheritance control the destinies of those living in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Based on extensive fieldwork and archival research that combines ethnography and intellectual history, this study explores the long-term continuities of this particular way of life within a broad framework. These local ideas have found expression twice at the national level. First, sociological arguments about the family, proposed by Frédéric Le Play, shaped debates on social reform and the repair of national identity during the last third of the nineteenth century - and these debates would subsequently influence contemporary European thought and social policy. Second, these local ideas entered into late twentieth-century sociological categories through the influential work of Pierre Bourdieu. Through these examples and others, the author illustrates the multi-layered life of these local concepts and practices and the continuing contribution of the local to modern European national history.

Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Discovery of the Pyrenean Family
Chapter 2. Continuity over Time: Patterns of Land Inheritance
Chapter 3. The Contemporary Béarnais Farming Family
Chapter 4. Local Politics and Land Use
Chapter 5. Marriage, Inheritance and Social Change in a Gascon Novel: Simin Palay's Los tres gojats de Bòrdavielha
Chapter 6. Bourdieu's Béarnais Ethnography
Chapter 7. The Life of Property
Bibliography
Index