“Families’ Economic Lives: Economic Practices within Families in Contemporary Societies”
Scientific coordinators:
Clément Bellanger, CSO [Center for the Sociology of Organizations], Sciences Po-CNRS
Angèle Jannot, CRESPPA-CSU [Paris Center for Sociological and Political Research-Urban Cultures and Societies], Université Paris 8-CNRS, INED
Camille Herlin Giret, SAGE [Societies, Actors, Government in Europe], CNRS
As sociological research has demonstrated, it would be misguided to reduce the family to the affective sphere of life. Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac’s critique of François de Singly’s notion of the modern family (1993, 2016) reminds us that the family is also an economic institution that structures wealth production, circulation, and evaluation (Bessière and Gollac 2020). Contemporary capitalist dynamics, in which wealth, particularly in the form of assets, has become central to accumulation dynamics (Piketty 2001, 2013) and economic capital is a key factor in social stratification (Savage 2015; Waitkus et al. 2025), have only confirmed this observation. Many studies have been done on inherited wealth (Beckert 2008) and major economically related family changes such as divorce (Collectif Onze 2013), but those situations alone cannot account for the many and diverse forms of economically motivated family practices, such as economic socialization, saving practices, or investments and redistributions that are in the family interest because they contribute to social reproduction—both in the feminist sense, as material and symbolic reproductive labor, and in the Bourdieusian sense, as the transmission and reproduction of inequalities. This special issue of the Revue Française de Sociologie will explore contemporary forms of what can be called economically motivated family practices, bringing to light what drives them, the grounds on which they are legitimated, and their effects. By describing these types of actions as “contemporary,” our aim is to situate them within recent transformations, where the family has assumed greater importance when it comes to reproducing inequalities, while remaining attentive to historical continuities, reconfigurations, and recurrences.
Research avenue 1: economic circulation within families
This first research avenue concerns intrafamily economic transfers. Though inheritance is essential, it accounts for only some types of financial and material circulation within kinship groups. Contributions in this area will identify and analyze the wider range of ways in which money circulates within such groups: inter vivos transfers, loans between relatives, parental investments, and other transfers that may be part of family economies. Drawing on Viviana Zelizer’s sociology of money ([1997] 2005), authors submitting articles on this question are encouraged to focus on concrete practices of monetary circulation and the social and symbolic aspects of the arrangements used to legitimate them. Following the approach of economic ethnography (Dufy and Weber 2007) and “ethno-accountancy” (Cottereau and Marzok 2012), families’ economic practices can also be considered in terms broader than strictly monetary ones, as when certain family members pay housing-related expenses for others or avoid paying for family members’ home maintenance work altogether by doing the work themselves free of charge. Contributions may also investigate the legal and fiscal regulations of these circulations (Spire 2009), their effects on family organization, the ways they are used, and the forms of avoidance, circumvention, or conflict it may generate. In sum, this special issue should account for the diversity of family economic practices through contributions that investigate different positions within social space.
Research avenue 2: Economic accumulation, dispossession, and conversion
Contributions in this second area will focus on the dynamics of economic accumulation (and corresponding processes of dispossession), conversion, and reconfiguration within kinship groups. These may take very different forms, ranging from real estate asset accumulation to stock market investment, as well as paying for one or more family members’ education, the economic consequences of a business failure or debt.
Above and beyond accumulation or net loss of wealth, the point is to investigate the concrete ways in which family economic projects are constructed, implemented, and presented as collective; and, symmetrically, how those projects shape kinship relations, the roles assigned to various group members and the specific economic skills or forms of knowledge that those members are recognized as possessing within the family. Articles in this area may examine how such dynamics contribute to reproduce relations of power and domination based on gender, age, generation, or social class. They may also examine the institutional environment that frames and shapes family economic projects. The state governs family practices by way of tax law and social policy, while banks and insurance companies do so by way of the financial products they offer. By pursuing some of the avenues opened by Jeanne Lazarus et al. (2022), the aim is to understand how these institutions structure and organize the uses of money, wealth, and capital (depending on the terminology adopted) within families.
Research avenue 3: At the margins of contemporary family economic practices in France
Contributions in this third area will investigate situations “at the margins” of family economic practices. Articles in this area may focus on countries other than France or on non-contemporary historical periods. Indeed, the purpose of this subset of studies is to provide a valuable counterpoint to current family economic practices by bringing to light recurrences, continuities, or, on the contrary, discontinuities in relation to the family economic practices or strategies described in avenue 1 and avenue 2 contributions. Morphologically, articles in this section may study economic practices outside the family and that may extend beyond it—i.e. taken by single persons or by friends—thereby contributing by contrast to knowledge of intrafamily ones. Yet other studies might explore situations where a family’s deliberate practices and actions work to structure economic activity beyond itself. These studies would analyze companies or other types of economic organizations, thereby furthering understanding of how family practices or strategies may shape spaces of market exchange that extend far beyond the family’s own immediate sphere.
The originality of this special issue lies in its ambition to bring into dialogue two research traditions that have developed in parallel with little interaction: on the one hand, analyses of wealth, property ownership and types of accumulation and conversion specific to the upper class (Herlin-Giret 2019; Barbier et al. 2022); on the other, studies of domestic economies and resource management practices in the working class (Perrin-Heredia 2018; Collectif Rosa Bonheur 2019). Critically comparing these two perspectives should enable us to grasp the entire range of different economically motivated family practices, from wealth transmission to more subtle forms of financial solidarity, and to bring to light some that are common to and cut across different positions within social space. Breaking down the boundaries between those two traditions should lead to a more detailed understanding of how families, above and beyond social differentiations between them, constitute a key space of the reproduction of economic inequalities within contemporary societies.
Integrating this special issue into the editorial landscape
Our aim here is to compile a varied set of studies of intrafamily economic relations that collectively moves beyond the standard emphasis on the upper class (Politix 140(4), 2023; British Journal of Sociology 2025, forthcoming) and particular themes such as wealth accumulation (Enfance, Familles, Générations 46, 2024) or domestic work (Revue Française de Socio-Économie call for papers published in 2025) so as to encompass the full diversity of family economic practices and advance understanding of how they fit together. This special issue therefore has two objectives: to offer a synthesis of the ways such practices shape family dynamics and how the family, as a fundamental type of organization in our societies, operates to increase inequalities in a capitalist production system; and to integrate contributions into a cumulative approach by comparing what are specifically contemporary family practices with the abundant literature on past and historical family economic organizations. This perspective should make it possible both to understand the specificities of economically motivated family practices in our own time and to identify more fundamental forms of social organization.
Submissions must be original works in French or English and not exceed 75,000 characters, including spaces, figures, tables, and references.
Any proposal not following this format will be automatically rejected.
Send submissions by September 2, 2026, at the latest to:
the Revue Française de Sociologie Editorial Office: christelle.germain@cnrs.fr
and the scientific coordinators at mobil-eco-fam@services.cnrs.fr
The scientific coordinators will preselect and anonymize submissions for RFS Editorial Committee evaluation, scheduled for December 2026.
References
BARBIER, C., DELFINI, A., DESAGE, F., 2022. “Bâtir ou périr? Les inégales (re)conversions de la bourgeoisie industrielle nordiste dans l’immobilier (1945-1990).” Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 242: 22-45.
BECKERT, J., 2008. Inherited Wealth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
BERTHONNET, I., MORTAIN, B. (dir.), 2025. “Travail, circulations, politiques publiques: les familles contemporaines au prisme de la socio-économie.” Revue Française de Socio-Économie, Call for Papers.
BESSIÈRE, C., GOLLAC, S., 2020. Le genre du capital: comment la famille reproduit les inégalités. Paris: La Découverte. Translated into English as The Gender of Capital: How Families Perpetuate Wealth Inequality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2023).
BESSIÈRE, C., HIGGINS, K., KUUSELA, H. (dir.), [Forthcoming] 2025. “Families and Wealth.” British Journal of Sociology.
BESSIÈRE, C., PUGLIESE, M. (dir.), 2024. “Le patrimoine: une affaire de famille. Enfances Familles Générations 46.
BOSVIEUX-ONYEKWELU, C., HERLIN-GIRET, C., PERRIN-HEREDIA, A., 2022. “Dominer par l’argent.” Politix 140 (4).
COTTEREAU, A., MARZOK, M.M., 2012. Une famille andalouse: ethnocomptabilité d’une économie invisible. Saint-Denis: Bouchène.
COLLECTIF ONZE, 2013. Au tribunal des couples: enquête sur des affaires familiales. Paris: Odile Jacob.
COLLECTIF ROSA BONHEUR, 2019. La ville vue d’en bas: travail et production de l’espace Populaire. Paris: Éditions Amsterdam.
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Herlin-Giret, C., 2019. Rester riche. Enquête sur les gestionnaires de fortune et leurs clients. Lormont: Le Bord de l’Eau.
LAZARUS, J., OSSANDON, J., DEVILLE, J., LUZZI, M., 2022. “Financial oikonomization: The Financial Government and Administration of the Household.” Socio-Economic Review 20 (3): 1473-500.
PERRIN-HEREDIA A., 2018, « La gestion du budget un pouvoir paradoxal pour des femmes de classes populaires » dans A. Lambert, P. Dietrich-Ragon, C. Bonvalet (dirs.), Le monde privé des femmes. Genre et habitat dans la société française, Paris, Ined Éditions, p. 193-212.
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PIKETTY T., 2013, Le capital au XXIe siècle, Paris, Le Seuil. Translated into English as Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014).
SAVAGE M., 2015, Social Class in the 21st Century, London, Pelican.
SINGLY F. de, 1993, Sociologie de la famille contemporaine, Paris, Nathan.
SINGLY F. de, 2016, Le soi, le couple et la famille, Paris, Armand Colin [2e éd.].
SPIRE A., 2009, « Échapper à l’impôt ? La gestion différentielle des illégalismes fiscaux », Politix, 87, 3, p. 143-165.
WAITKUS N., SAVAGE M., TOFT M., 2025, « Wealth and Class Analysis: Exploitation, Closure and Exclusion », Sociology, 59, 1, p. 126-143.
WEBER F., 1989, Le travail à-côté : étude d’ethnographie ouvrière, Paris, INRA-EHESS.
ZELIZER V., 1997, The Social Meaning of Money Princeton, Princeton University Press. Translated in French as La signification sociale de l’argent (Paris, Le Seuil 2005).
