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Locality Studies and the Household

One aspect of the growth in enthusiasm for locality studies has been the idea that they provide a focus for understanding local variation in all aspects of life, even down to the experience of the household. The author takes issue with that contention. The locality has usually been defined with reference to the rounds of investment and production decisions which have been central to the construction of local labour markets. This is not the level at which household arrangements can best be understood. The local labour market will be a necessary contextualising element in analysis, but household dynamics will also be affected by, for example, influences operating at national level, such as the regulation of the benefit system, influences operating at an ideological level, such as the patriarchal ordering of work and employment relations, and the more immediate social world in which the household is located. It is argued here that this world is best conceptualised with reference to social networks which often operate at neighbourhood level, rather than through ‘locality’ differences defined as local labour markets.