Shifting Theories: Partial Perspectives on the Household

There is a neglect of networks within cooperative conflict models, which arises because of the patriarchal households assumed. But households are not the same everywhere, because their structure is dependent upon social context, and they are a sub-system of wider social relations and realities. Understanding households (in this paper female-headed households) requires us to study the varied contexts in which households are situated and the social relations of individuals within these institutions. Using contributions from feminist economics and realist social theory, this paper shows how these frameworks can explain the diversity of social reality in household formations and relations