Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade

A drawback of the Handbook’s emphasis on introducing disparate groups of researchers to one another is that these groups sometimes seem to be talking past each other. The editors do not attempt to develop an overarching framework that would “make sense” of the work and family field by locating different topics and perspectives within a coherent whole. The reader is left to puzzle out how research on the determinants of government policies relates to work on the intra-psychic processes generating individual stress, how cultural interpretation of employers’ use of family metaphors fits with investigation of quantitative variation in work schedules over the life course, and how rigorous positivist methodologies mesh with a clear normative commitment to increasing work-family integration for both men and women. But perhaps it is too early in the game to ask for this kind of coherence. By the time of the next edition of the Handbook, the work-family field may have matured sufficiently to allow a clearer mapping of the terrain. In the meantime, the Handbook represents a rich and valuable collection that will be important for any scholar whose research and teaching focuses on work, family, or the links between the two.