Endogamy and social class in history: An overview

International Review of Social History

Volumn 50, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 1-23

  Van Leeuwen, Marco H D ^a   Maas, Ineke ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 29344474945     PISSN: 00208590     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S002085900500204X     Document Type: Review

References (131)

1. F.M.L. Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830-1900 (London 1988), p. 93.
2. J. Kocka, "Family and Class Formation: Intergenerational Mobility and Marriage Patterns in Nineteenth-Century Westphalian Towns", Journal of Social History, 17 (1984), pp. 411-433;
3. J. Kocka idem, "Problems of Working-Class Formation in Germany: The Early Years 1800-1875", in I. Katznelson and A.R. Zolberg (eds), Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton, NJ, 1986), pp. 279-351.
4. See for example Guy Brunet, Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, and Michel Oris (eds), Le choix du conjoint (Paris, 1996);
5. Christophe Duhamelle and Jürgen Schlumbohm (eds), Eheschließungen im Europa des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Muster und Strategien (Göttingen, 2003);
6. R. Gehrmann (ed.), Determinanten und Muster des Heiratsverbaltens in Europa in der Neuzeit: Ausgewähtle Fallstudien, special issue, Historische Sozialforschung, 28 (2003).
7. P. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Mobility (New York, 1959), pp. 138-141;
8. D.V. Glass, Social Mobility in Britain (London, 1954);
9. S.M. Lipset and R. Bendix (eds), Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Berkeley, CA, 1959);
10. C. Tilly, The Vendéé (Cambridge, MA, 1964), pp. 93-99;
11. P.M. Blau and O.D. Duncan, The American Occupational Structure (New York, 1967);
12. A. Sharlin, "From the Study of Social Mobility to the Study of Society", American Journal of Sociology, 85 (1979), pp. 338-360;
13. M. Hout, "The Association Between Husbands' and Wives' Occupations in Two-Earner Families", American Journal of Sociology, 88 (1982), pp. 397-409;
14. H. Sixma and W. Ultee, "Marriage Patterns and the Openness of Society: Educational Heterogamy in the Netherlands in 1959, 1971 and 1977", in B.F.M. Bakker, J. Dronkers, and H.B.G. Ganzeboom (eds), Social Stratification and Mobility in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, 1984), pp. 91-108;
15. P.M. Horan, "Occupational Mobility and Historical Social Structure", Social Science History, 9 (1985), pp. 25-47;
16. F.L. Jones, "Marriage Patterns and the Stratification System: Trends in Educational Homogamy since the 19305", Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 23 (1987), pp. 185-193;
17. Robert D. Mare, "Five Decades of Educational Assortative Mating", American Sociological Review, 56 (1991), pp. 15-32;
18. I.K. Fukumoto and D.B. Grusky, "Social Mobility and Class Structure in Early Industrial France", in A. Miles and D. Vincent (eds), Building European Society: Occupational Change and Social Mobility in Europe 1840-1940 (Manchester, 1993);
19. A. Miles, "How 'Open' Was Nineteenth Century British Society? Social Mobility and Equality of Opportunity", in Building European Society: Occupational Change and Social Mobility in Europe 1840-1940 ibid.;
20. W. Uunk, Who Marries Whom? The Role of Social Origin, Education and High Culture in Mate Selection of Industrial Societies during the Twentieth Century (Nijmegen, 1996).
21. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (New York, 1852);
22. W. Sombart, Why Is There No Socialism in America? (New York, 1976), first published in German in 1906, esp. p. 115;
23. S. Thernstrom, The Other Bostoniens: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis 1880-1970 (Cambridge, MA, 1973), esp. pp. 258-259.
24. The question of how to explain American exceptionalism has continued to arouse interest. See for example K. Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, NY [etc.], 1993)
25. and the special supplement to Historical Materialism, 11 (2003).
26. It remains to be seen, of course, whether the social fluidity in the USA during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was indeed greater than that in Europe. Sec J. Long and J. Ferrie, "A Tale of Two Labor Markets: Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Britain and the US since 1850", NBER Working Paper No. 11253 (April 2005).
27. Of course, valuable historical single case studies of marriage patterns according to social class do exist. See for example A. Daumard, "Les relations sociales l'époque de la Monarchie Constitutionelle d'après les registres paroissaux des mariages", Population, 12 (1957), pp. 445-466;
28. A. Daumard, "Structures et relations sociales: Paris au milieu de XVIIIe siècle", Cahier des Annales, 18 (1961);
29. R.D. Penn, Skilled Workers in the Class Structure (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 158-182;
30. P. Borscheid, "Romantic Love or Material Interest: Choosing Partners in Nineteenth-Century Germany ", Journal of Family History, 11 (1986), pp. 157-168
31. D. Mitch, "'Inequalities Which Everyone May Remove': Occupational Recruitment, Endogamy, and the Homogeneity of Social Origins in Victorian England", in Miles and Vincent, Building European Society, pp. 140-164;
32. A. Miles, Social Mobility in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England (Basingstoke, 1999).
33. For a study comparing mobility patterns in several German regions using the same social-class scheme see R. Schüren, Soziale Mobilität: Muster, Veränderungen und Bedingungen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (St Katharinen, 1989). As far as we are aware, no studies comparing patterns of homogamy among historical populations in different countries have ever appeared before.
34. The issue of the non-comparability of the various historical studies on social mobility has been raised, for example, in H. Kaelble, Historical Research on Social Mobility: Western Europe and the USA in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1981),
35. and H. Kaelble, idem, Social Mobility in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Europe and America in Comparative Perspective (Leamington Spa, 1985).
36. Marco H.D. van Leeuwen, Ineke Maas, and Andrew Miles, HISCO: Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations (Leuven, 2002);
37. Marco H.D. van Leeuwen, Ineke Maas, and Andrew Miles, idem, "Creating an Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations (HISCO): An Exercise in Multi-National, Interdisciplinary Co-Operation", Historical Methods, 37 (2004), pp. 186-197;
38. M.H.D. van Leeuwen and I. Maas, "HISCLASS", paper presented at the 5th European Social Science History Conference (Berlin, 24-27 March 2004). Sec too the individual contributions and the conclusion to this volume for more information on HISCO and HISCLASS, as well as the History of Work Website mentioned below, These three projects originate with the long-established research project HISMA (Historical International Social Mobility Analysis).
39. The History of Work website of the International Institute of Social History (see http://historyofwork.iisg.nl) contains occupational titles coded into HISCO from the following countries: Belgium, Brazil, Canada (Quebec), Finland, France, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, UK, and Switzerland. Work on coding occupations in other countries, such as India, Italy, Russia, and the Philippines is currently underway.
40. See, for example, V. Vladimirov (ed.), Istoricheskor professiovedenie, Sbornik nauchnikh statie (Barnaul, 2004).
41. M. Kalmijn, "Status Endogamy in the United States", American Journal of Sociology, 97 (1991), pp. 496-523,
42. and M. Kalmijn, "Intermarriage and Endogamy: Causes, Patterns, Trends", Annual Review of Sociology, 24 (1998), pp. 395-421.
43. See, for example, P.M. Blau, T.C. Blum, and J.E. Schwartz, "Heterogeneity and Intermarriage", American Sociological Review, 47 (1982), pp. 45-62;
44. M. Kalmijn and H. Flap, "Assortative Meeting and Mating: Unintended Consequences of Organized Settings for Partner Choices", Social Forces, 79 (2001), pp. 1289-1312;
45. Kalmijn, "Intermarriage and Endogamy".
46. Kalmijn and Flap, "Assoortative Meeting and Mating".
47. At least in the case of co-educational schools.
48. See Jutta Allmendinger, Career Mobility Dynamics: A Comparative Analysis of the United States, Norway, and West Germany (Berlin, 1989).
49. See, for instance, M.P. Atkinson and B.L. Glass, "Marital Age Heterogamy and Homogamy, 1900 to 1980", Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49 (1985), pp. 685-691;
50. F. van Poppel and A.C. Liefbroer, "Leeftijdsverschillen tussen huwelijkspartners. Een interpretatie van veranderingen en verschillen in de negentiende en twintigste eeuw", Tildschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenes, 2 (2001), pp. 129-152.
51. H. Chisick, The Limits of Reform in the Enlightenment: Attitudes Towards the Education of the Lower Classes in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991);
52. M.H.D. van Leeuwen, Logic of Charity: A Simple Model Applied to Amsterdam 1800-1850 (London, 2000)
53. . 17. D.J. Treiman, "Industrialization and Social Stratification", in E.O. Laumann (ed.), Social Stratification: Research and Theory for the 1970s (Indianapolis, IN, 1970), pp. 207-234;
54. E. Shorter, "Illegitimacy, Sexual Revolution, and Social Change in Modern Europe", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1971), pp. 237-272;
55. E. Shorter, idem, "Female Emancipation, Birth Control, and Fertility in European History", American Historical Review, 78 (1973), pp. 605-640.
56. Treiman, "Industrialization and Social Stratification"; C. Kerr, J.T. Dunlop, F.H. Harbison, and C.A. Myers, Industrialism and Industrial Man (Cambridge, MA, 1960);
57. Miles and Vincent, Building European Society. The studies by Shorter cited in the previous footnote offer a similar argument: increasing market contacts.
58. A recent survey is offered by John C. Brown, Marco H.D. van Leeuwen, and David Mitch, "The History of the Modern Career: An Introduction", in David Mitch, John C. Brown, and Marco H.D. van Leeuwen (eds), Origins of the Modern Career (Ashgate, 2004), pp. 3-41.
59. In the case of an increase in seasonal migration, for example, one would expect a decrease in homogamy according to social class. For a survey of migration in Europe, see Leslie Page Moch, Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe since 1650 (Bloomington, IN, 1992).
60. In societies where it was common for girls to seek employment elsewhere as a servant before marriage, such service could broaden the marriage horizon, not just geographically but also socially, as the girls acquired the social and other skills valued in the social circles of their employers; perhaps the girls also developed a taste for another way of life, See L. Broom and J.H. Smith, "Bridging Occupations", British Journal of Sociology, 14 (1963), pp. 321-334;
61. T. McBride, "Social Mobility for the Lower Classes: Domestic Servants in France", Journal of Social History (1974), pp. 63-78;
62. H. Bras, Zeeuwse meiden. Dienen in de levensloop van vrouwen, ca. 1850-1950 (Amsterdam 2002). A decrease in service over time would, in that case, mean an increase in social homogamy, while an increase in service would mean the opposite.
63. P.M. Blau and J.E. Schwartz, Crosscutting Social Circles (New York, 1984);
64. William R. Catton, Jr and R.J. Smircich, "A Comparison of Mathematical Models for the Effect of Residential Propinquity on Mate Selection", American Sociological Review, 29 (1964), pp. 522-529;
65. Gillian Stevens, "Propinquity and Educational Homogamy", Sociological Forum, 6 (1991), pp. 715-726.
66. Blau and Schwartz, Crosscutting Social Circles;
67. Peter M. Blau, Terry C. Blum, and Joseph E. Schwartz, "Heterogeneity and Intermarriage", American Sociological Review, 47 (1982), pp. 45-62;
68. T.C. Blum, "Structural Constraints on Interpersonal Relations: A Test of Blau's Macrosociological Theory", American Journal of Sociology, 91 (1985), pp. 607-617.
69. See, for example, Alice Bee Kasakoff and John W. Adams, "Spatial Location and Social Organisation: An Analysis of Tikopian Patterns", Man, New Series, 12 (1977), pp. 48-64;
70. Wesley Andrew Fisher, The Soviet Marriage Market: Mate-Selection in Russia and the USSR (New York, 1980), pp. 100-203;
71. Barrie S. Morgan, "A Contribution to the Debate on Homogamy, Propinquity, and Segregation", Journal of Marriage and the Family, 43 (1981), pp. 909-921;
72. Thomas W. Pullum and Andres Peri, "A Multivariate Analysis of Homogamy in Montevideo, Uruguay", Population Studies, 53 (1999), pp. 361-377;
73. Stevens, "Propinquity and Educational Homogamy".
74. J. Millard, "A New Approach to the Study of Marriage Horizons", Local Population Studies, 28 (1982), pp. 10-31.
75. e siècle", Annales de Démographie Historique, 1 (2004), pp. 107-136, esp. p. 109.
76. Frans van Poppel and Peter Ekamper suggest a lower limit of 20 km in "De Goudse horizon verruimd. Veranderingen in de herkomst van Goudse bruiden en bruidegoms", in J. Kok and M.H.D. van Leeuwen (eds), Genegenheid en gelegenheid. Twee eeuwen partnerkeuze en huwelijk (Amsterdam, 2005).
77. Kok and Mandemakers found that the degree to which a town or village was isolated had an effect on the degree of social homogamy; see Jan Kok and Kees Mandemakers, "Vrije keuze uit een beperkt aanbod. De huwelijksmarkt in Utrecht en Zeeland, 1840-1940", in Kok and van Leeuwen, Genegenheid en gelegenheid.
78. th Century (London, 1988), pp. 64-71 and 303-306.
79. D. Vincent, The Rise of Mass Literacy: Reading and Writing in Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2001).
80. This can be seen as evidence of the fact that social-class relations were complicated and sometimes overridden by other allegiances. See Lex Heerma van Voss and Marcel van der Linden (eds), Class and Other Identities; Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in the Writing of European Labour History (New York [etc.], 2002).
81. One wonders to what extent it was also true for social groups with a modest amount of property, such as shopkeepers.
82. Arthur P. Wolf and Chieh-shan Huang, Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845-1945 (Stanford, CA, 1980);
83. sec also R.S. Watson and P. Buckley Ebrey (eds), Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (Berkeley, CA, 1991).
84. In addition to parents, other kin might also have helped or hindered. See, for example, the role of grandparents and other kin in intergenerational mobility in nineteenth-century China, as described in Cameron Campbell and James Lee, "Social Mobility from a Kinship Perspective: Rural Liaoning, 1789-1909", International Review of Social History, 48 (2003), pp. 1-26.
85. Well-to-do farmers could supply the non-inheriting child with a farm or another livelihood during their life. See Dirk Damsma and Jan Kok, " 'Ingedroogde harten?' Partnerkeuze en sociale reproductie van de Noord-Hollandse boerenstand in de negentiende en vroeg-twintigste eeuw, 1940", in Kok and van Leeuwen, Genegenheid en gelegenheid.
86. If, on the other hand, parents prefer a degree of upward mobility for at least one of their children, for example their firstborn son, one would expect them to try to retain a greater grip on the eldest son than on his siblings. A decrease in parental authority over time would mean that the difference in endogamy practices between the firstborn son and the others would have slowly declined in the course of time.
87. P. van Poppel, J. de Jong, and A.C. Liefbroer, "The Effects of Paternal Mortality on Sons' Social Mobility: A Nineteenth Century Example", Historical Methods, 31 (1998), pp. 101-112;
88. M.H.D. van Leeuwen and I. Maas, "Partner Choice and Endogamy in the Nineteenth Century: Was There a Sexual Revolution in Europe?", Journal of Social History, 36 (2002), pp. 101-123.
89. On charivari see J.L. Flandrin, Les amours paysannes XVI-XIX siècles (Paris, 1975);
90. Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt (eds), Le charivari (Paris, 1981)
91. , and M. Segalen, Love and Power in the Peasant Family: Rural France in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1983). One intriguing question, however, is whether charivari were usually related to social exogamy. Most seem to be about girls becoming romantically attached to boys from another village or town, about inappropriate age differences between lovers, and about extramarital relations. Were charivari perhaps rural phenomena, and thus a feature of populations that were socially rather homogamous?
92. M. Mitterauer, A History of Youth (Oxford, 1990), pp. 178-184;
93. Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York, 1975), pp. 124-127;
94. Louise Tilly and Joan Scott, Women, Work and Family (New York, 1978), pp. 38, 58, and 187.
95. See the literature cited above, as well as K.R.V. Wikman, "Die Einleitung der Ehe, Eine vergleichende Ethno-soziologische Untersuchung über die Vorstufe der Ehe in den Sitten des Schwedischen Volkstums", Acta Academiae Aboensis Humaniora, XI (1937), pp. 1-384;
96. Van Leeuwen and Maas, "Was There a Sexual Revolution in Europe?";
97. Yochi Fischer Yonin, "The Original Bundlers: Boaz and Ruth, and Seventeenth-Century English Courtship Practices", Journal of Social History, 35 (2001/02), pp. 683-705.
98. Mitterauer A History of Youth, pp. 226-240.
99. J. Smits, W. Ultee, and J. Lammers, "Educational Homogamy in 65 Countries", American Sodological Review, 63 (1998), pp. 264-285.
100. Segalen, Love and Power in the Peasant Family, pp. 38, 41.
101. Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family, pp. 19-20.
102. W. Goode, The Family (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1964), pp. 108-109.
103. Shorter, "Female Emancipation";
104. Treiman, "Industrialization and Social Stratification";
105. Tilly and Scott, Women, Work and Family.
106. An overview can be found in J. Alber, Von Armenhaus zum Wohlfartsstaat (Frankfurt, 1982).
107. Smits, Ultee, and Lammers, "Educational Homogamy".
108. We have suggested that, since they needed to inherit the farm, farmers' sons were at the mercy of their fathers. This is only one side of the coin, however. Older farmers also needed heirs to take over their farms and provide for them in old age. "Retirement contracts" could be drawn up for this purpose, in which the owner of a farm yielded the usufruct of his farm to another person in return for food and shelter. This person was usually one of his sons, who promised to house his father - and mother - in either the farmhouse or in an annexe, and provide food, such as milk, beer, grains, meat, but also fuel and other necessities. The relative freedom on the part of the farmer to choose his heir encouraged high rates of endogamy. A farmer's son had an interest in pleasing his father by marrying a potentially good farmer's wife, i.e. a farmer's daughter. Marrying outside the farming class could harm his chances of taking over the farm. These contracts fell into disuse from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. One reason given for this is the rise of banks, which were willing to offer credit to buy a farm, and, indeed, of savings banks, where older farmers could deposit the proceeds from the sale of their farm (with the farmers then moving to live in the town), One could thus argue that in the heyday of the retirement contract, farmers with property had the sort of pension protection that other social groups lacked until the rise of the welfare state. Farmers with property lost that protection when retirement contracts fell out of use.
109. Compare the debate conducted in this journal by Wall, King, and Gillis: J.R. Gillis, "'A Triumph of Hope over Experience': Chance and Choice in the History of Marriage", International Review of Social History, 44 (1999), pp. 47-54;
110. S. King, "Chance Encounters? Paths to Household Formation in Early Modern England", International Review of Social History, 44 (1999), pp. 23-46;
111. S. King, idem, "Chance, Choice and Calculation in the Process of 'Getting Married': A Reply to John R. Gillis and Richard Wall", International Review of Social History, 44 (1999), pp. 69-76;
112. R. Wall, "Beyond the Household: Marriage, Household Formation and the Role of Kin and Neighbours", International Review of Social History, 44 (1999), pp. 55-67. Wall stresses structural factors, notably of a social and economic nature, whereas King and Gillis emphasize chance and cultural factors. Our introduction discusses social, economic, as well as cultural factors. It notes that even "chance" meetings between certain individuals are influenced by structural factors such as group size and class differences in the likelihood of meeting, and that cultural factors could include the wish for a partner with the same values and tastes, which in turn is associated with social background.
113. See for example Hout, "The Association Between Husbands' And Wives' Occupations in Two-Earner Families";
114. Jerry A. Jacobs and Frank F. Furstenberg, "Changing Places: Conjugal Careers and Women's Marital Mobility", Social Forces, 64 (1986), pp. 714-732;
115. Kalmijn, "Status Endogamy in the United States".
116. M. Kalmijn, "Assortative Mating by Cultural and Economic Occupational Status", American Journal of Sociology, 100 (1994), pp. 422-452;
117. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, 1984).
118. Mitterauer, A History of Youth;
119. Segalen, Love and Power in the Peasant Family
120. . 47. See Orvar Löfgren, "Family and Household among Scandinavian Peasants: An Exploratory Essay", Ethnologica, Scandinavia (1974), pp. 17-52, esp. p. 33;
121. L.F. Saugstad and Ö. Ödegard, "Marriage Pattern and Kinship in Pre-industrial and Present-Day Norway", in S. Akerman et al. (eds), Chance and Change: Social and Economic Studies in Historical Demography in the Baltic Area (Odense, 1978), pp. 84-94
122. Tilly and Scott, Women, Work and Family, p. 33.
123. "Curieusement le modèle bourgeois se rapproche du modèle paysan, dans la mesure où l'institution matrimoniale coïncide avec un 'établissement'. Au mariage, les parents transmettent une partie de leurs biens à leurs enfants; ils doivent donc en contrôler soigneusement la formation";
124. Martine Segalen, De l'amour et du mariage autrefois (Paris, 1981), pp. 68, 85.
125. See too George Alter, Family and the Female Life Course: The Women of Verviers, Belgium, 1849-1880 (Madison, WI, 1988), pp. 148-150, on the town of Verviers.
126. Thimo de Nijs, "Partnerkeuze in de hoge Rotterdamse burgerij 1815-1890", in Kok and Van Leeuwen, Genegenheid en gelegenheid.
127. Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family, p. 148.
128. Stone too argues that this trend commenced in the late eighteenth century. See Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (New York, 1977)
129. Macfarlane, however, dates its beginnings much earlier: Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300-1840 (Oxford, 1986).
130. In order, however, to participate in certain cultural activities - such as attending classical concerts or expensive dance parties, or dining in chic restaurants - one does need economic resources. In other words, there is some association between cultural participation and economic position.
131. The body of this review article, though necessarily global, does differentiate according to possession of property, inheritance system, gender, group size, and type of religion.