Why do people rebel? This is one of the most important questions historians and social scientists have been grappling with over the years. It is a question to which no satisfactory answer has been found, despite more than a century of research. However, in most cases the research has focused on what people do if they rebel but hardly ever, why they rebel. The essays in this volume offer an alternative perspective, based on the question at what point families decided to add collective action to their repertoires of survival strategies, In this way this volume opens up a promising new field of historical research: the intersection of labour and family history. The authors offer fascinating case studies in several countries spanning over four continents during the last two centuries. In an extensive introduction the relevant literature on households and collective action is discussed, and the volume is rounded off by a conclusion that provides methodological and theoretical suggestions for the further exploration of this new field in social history.

Foods fermented with lactic acid bacteria are an important part of the human diet. Lactic acid bacteria play an essential role in the preservation of food raw materials and contribute to the nutritional, organoleptic, and health properties of food products and animal feed. The importance of lactic acid bacteria in the production of foods throughout the world has resulted in a continued scientific interest in these micro-organisms over the last two decades by academic research groups as well as by industry. This research has resulted in a number of important scientific breakthroughs and has led to new applications. The most recent of these advances is the establishment of the complete genome sequences of a number of different lactic acid bacterial species.

To communicate and stimulate the research on lactic acid bacteria and their applications, a series of tri-annual symposia on lactic acid bacteria was started in 1983 under the auspices of the Netherlands Society for Microbiology (NVVM), which was later also supported by the Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS). The aim of these state-of-the-art symposia is to offer a unique platform for universities, institutes, and industry in this area of biotechnology, to present recent work, to obtain information on new developments, and to exchange views with colleagues from all over the world on scientific progress and applications. The growing number of participants at these symposia has been a clear demonstration of the interest of the international industrial and scientific community in this area of research.

The 7th Symposium is based on a number of plenary lectures that review the scientific progress of the last years in the different areas of research on lactic acid bacteria, and which are documented in this special issue of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.

Originating from discussions about the reasons for, and regional variations behind, the remarkable rise in cohabitation that started in the 1970s - a rise that continues to this day - this book explores the main stimuli behind cohabitation. The variation in levels of cohabitation cannot be explained solely by regional differences, religious affiliation, nationality, levels of education, or by the varying rate in which contraceptive measures spread across Europe. The book also focuses on the ways in which cohabitants are legitimized or rejected by certain communities. Did communities develop specific terms to define cohabitation and because of which underlying reasons were these different terms created? Illegitimacy is another phenomenon inseparably tied to cohabitation, based on the hypothesis that the understanding of marriage differs between societies and regions. In 1971, Shorter, Knodel and Van de Walle found that children born in rural Slavic communities in unlawful but stable, consensual unions were not recognised by civil law and the Church, and were registered as illegitimates, but in a cultural perspective were considered as legitimate. They also found more or less the same pattern in Scandinavian countries. This book explores the correlations that exist between illegitimacy and cohabitation across space and time in Europe? This book was originally published as a special issue of The History of the Family.

Originating from discussions about the reasons for, and regional variations behind, the remarkable rise in cohabitation that started in the 1970s - a rise that continues to this day - this book explores the main stimuli behind cohabitation. The variation in levels of cohabitation cannot be explained solely by regional differences, religious affiliation, nationality, levels of education, or by the varying rate in which contraceptive measures spread across Europe. The book also focuses on the ways in which cohabitants are legitimized or rejected by certain communities. Did communities develop specific terms to define cohabitation and because of which underlying reasons were these different terms created? Illegitimacy is another phenomenon inseparably tied to cohabitation, based on the hypothesis that the understanding of marriage differs between societies and regions. In 1971, Shorter, Knodel and Van de Walle found that children born in rural Slavic communities in unlawful but stable, consensual unions were not recognised by civil law and the Church, and were registered as illegitimates, but in a cultural perspective were considered as legitimate. They also found more or less the same pattern in Scandinavian countries. This book explores the correlations that exist between illegitimacy and cohabitation across space and time in Europe? This book was originally published as a special issue of The History of the Family.

Why do people rebel? This is one of the most important questions historians and social scientists have been grappling with over the years. It is a question to which no satisfactory answer has been found, despite more than a century of research. However, in most cases the research has focused on what people do if they rebel but hardly ever, why they rebel. The essays in this volume offer an alternative perspective, based on the question at what point families decided to add collective action to their repertoires of survival strategies, In this way this volume opens up a promising new field of historical research: the intersection of labour and family history. The authors offer fascinating case studies in several countries spanning over four continents during the last two centuries. In an extensive introduction the relevant literature on households and collective action is discussed, and the volume is rounded off by a conclusion that provides methodological and theoretical suggestions for the further exploration of this new field in social history.

What does well-being mean when we talk about men and women in the past? Their sheer chances of survival, their protection from want, their social status, their individual agency and their self-esteem were all strongly mediated by the family, the pre-dominant social institution. Family laws and customs of family formation created differences between insiders and outsiders in terms of well-being. Within families, there were strong differences in autonomy, status and freedom between the genders and generations. The book offers a fascinating exploration of gender differences in well-being in many regions of historic Europe, with some comparative perspectives. It explores how historic family systems differed with respect to choosing a marriage partner, transmitting property, living and care conditions of widows and widowers and the position of children born out of wedlock.

How has 'agency' - or the ability to define and act upon one's goals - contributed to global long-term economic development during the last 150 years? This book asserts that autonomous decision making, and female agency in particular, increases the potential of a society to generate economic growth and improve its institutions. Inspired by Amartya Sen's capabilities approach and looking at this in comparison to contemporary economic theory, the collection of chapters tackles the issue of agency from the micro level of household and family formation and asks how this applies to gender at regional and state level. It brings to the fore new empirical data from across the globe to test the links between family systems, female agency, human capital formation, political institutions and economic development and puts these into broader historical context. It will appeal to scholars researching social policy, gender studies, economic history, development studies and philosophy, as well anyone with interests in the long-term societal development of the world economy and issues of global inequality.

How has 'agency' - or the ability to define and act upon one's goals - contributed to global long-term economic development during the last 150 years? This book asserts that autonomous decision making, and female agency in particular, increases the potential of a society to generate economic growth and improve its institutions. Inspired by Amartya Sen's capabilities approach and looking at this in comparison to contemporary economic theory, the collection of chapters tackles the issue of agency from the micro level of household and family formation and asks how this applies to gender at regional and state level. It brings to the fore new empirical data from across the globe to test the links between family systems, female agency, human capital formation, political institutions and economic development and puts these into broader historical context. It will appeal to scholars researching social policy, gender studies, economic history, development studies and philosophy, as well anyone with interests in the long-term societal development of the world economy and issues of global inequality.