Derouet:Das französische Ancien Régime

French research, particularly the Annales school, provides important intellectual sources for German social, economic and agricultural history. In this translation of five selected articles, Bernard Derouet's central employees on the connection between law and family are made accessible without detours via English linguistic images and terminology. Law does not appear as an externally imposed determinant of social practice, nor as a prescriptive norm against which resistant or deviant solutions are negotiated, but as the language of civil law into which family practice can be "translated". An introduction by Michael Kopsidis places Derouet's arguments in the context of the current debate on agricultural and institutional economics.