Custom and Law in the Social Order: Some reflections upon French Catalan peasant communities

Abstract

Until assuming the violent form most strikingly exemplified in France by the explosions of 1789 and 1848, the century-long movement of resistance and emancipation of the European peasantry mainly occurred in the legal domain. The focus of opposition was towards the attempt to impose a normative system which sought to undermine the working rules of peasant communities. It was carried through, for example, by protesting against seignorial obligations or by asserting claims to the free use of forests and communal pastures. In such actions the peasant will, revitalized by periodic subsistence crises, tried to maintain control over legal institutions, and therefore to retain relative social autonomy.

Spontaneous Norms in Law and Economics: A Sketch Typology

“…However, the role of social norms and custom declined over time, giving way to other sources of rules (e.g., Van Caenegem, 1988). This transition has been documented in many case studies (e.g., Kadens, 2019;Masferrer, 2019;Rossi & Spagano, 2018;Thompson, 2015Thompson, [1992Zasu, 2007;Harding, 2001;Assier-Andrieu, 1983;Weber, 1978Weber, [1921), and the process continues even today. As Epstein (1998) notes, "It seems clear that the dominant trend of the past century has been towards the demotion of customary norms and to the rise of what has been called legal centrism" (p. 579).…”

“…Catalonia (Assier-Andrieu, 1983); footbinding norms in Imperial China (Mackie, 1996). In all those cases, the relevant rules are unwritten and derived from the practice, privately interpreted, and rely on community enforcement.…”

Inheritance strategies and lineage development in peasant society

“…Technically all a chef de famille needed to do was to favour a single heir and satisfy the claims of other family members with token payments. 19 The result in Savoy, as elsewhere, in the area of the written law 20 was often a compromise. Many peasant land owners drew up testaments which served the particular needs of a family at the time, modifying the principle of undivided inheritance by leaning sometimes towards the favouring of one heir and at other times using the legally established device of the token payment as a strategy for limiting claims from cousins and more distant kin.…”