Familism, Despotism, and Discipline in Rural Languedoc
This paper is an examination of the mechanisms through which the labour of women and men is controlled in family based farms in rural Languedoc. It argues that the fashioning of women and men into disciplined workers on local wine-growing enterprises is accomplished through the establishment of two management systems. I call one the regime of “familial hegemony” and the other, I call the regime of “familial despotism”. In a despotic regime coercion is a key in the management and control of labour. By contrast, a regime of familial hegemony is based on consent and consent governs the management system. Focusing on the ways in which women and men are differentially affected by the mechanisms of the two regimes, the paper uses examples from Languedoc to illustrate the ways in which both despotic and hegemonic regimes draw on the ideological and material dimensions of a familistic ethic — what I shall refer to as “familism” — to control labour on family farms.