This thesis presents itself as a theory to approach the persistent effects of culture over current outcomes and phenomena through a historical legacies approach. It combines the theory of cognitive culture, historical legacies, the theory of human values, and the second demographic transition to address a crucial question: can a historical antecedent such as pre-industrial family systems capture cultural traits that affect our behaviours and values today?
The first chapters of the thesis are dedicated to introducing and presenting the theoretical and historical background that sets the grounds for this argument on the cultural legacies of the pre-industrial family. The third chapter is presented as a case study to analyze the most common European pre-industrial household structure, the Stem family system, to understand its internal logic, reproduction, and resilience to the times of change (mid-19th to mid-20th century). It uses census data for 5 municipalities in the region of Baix Llobregat, near Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain. Chapter four focuses on the cultural congruence of the common sense captured by the four pre-industrial family systems and the basic human values described by Schwartz, testing the argument of Emmanuel Todd and defining the value profile associated with each of the four basic pre-industrial family systems in Western Europe. The fifth chapter focuses on the current practice of cohabitation as a legacy of these family systems. For chapters four and five, I combine the ten waves of the European Social Survey and the data for historical family systems described by Emmanuel Todd (1996) and coded by Duranton et al. (2009).
The results highlight that the specific characteristics of each family type can be used to address persistent cultural differences in the individual's common sense that are linked to significant differences in the individual's profile of human values and the adoption of practices such as cohabitation. Moreover, the third and fifth chapters show how the family should not be merely interpreted as an economic unit adrift from economic and social conditions but as an agent that affects and plays a role in the processes of social change in its environment.
Inés Gil-Torras is a sociologist and political scientist completing her PhD at the European University Institute (EUI) and a postdoctoral researcher at the GEN-POP ERC project (University of Bologna). She holds a Bachelor's and Master's from Carlos III University of Madrid, with academic stays at the University of Bath and SUNY New Paltz. Inés has also been a visiting researcher at the Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (Barcelona) and has experience in teaching and curriculum design at the postgraduate level.
Her research explores the evolution of family structures from pre-industrial times to the present, focusing on the legacies of historical family systems in Europe and their impact on contemporary cohabitation and population values. She specializes in historical demography, quantitative methods, and interdisciplinary approaches, combining historical census data, surveys, and ethnographic techniques.