Household financial organisation and discursive practice: Managing money and identity

The Journal of Socio-Economics 37 (2008) 533–551

Household financial organisation and discursive practice: Managing money and identity Stefanie J. Sonnenberg ∗ School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Washington Singer Laboratories, Exeter EX4 4QG, UK Accepted 1 December 2006

Abstract Research on the intra-household economy has gained great impetus over the last 20 years. There has been particular interest in the ways in which financial resources are distributed among individual household members. This, in turn, has led to the delineation of different systems of financial management. Methodologically, work in this domain has been informed by large-scale surveys and interview studies. The present paper contends that, due to their analytic reliance on the individual perceiver, current methods cannot fully account for the contradictions that are raised by key findings in the field. It is argued that a discursive approach, with the critical language awareness associated with it, might not only be able to reconcile some of these paradoxical findings but also provide the basis for a more critical understanding of the social–psychological processes underlying household money management. The potential contribution of a discursive approach to studying the intra-household economy is illustrated by drawing on group interview data. This calls attention to (a) the inherent variability of people’s accounts regarding their money management practices and (b) the identity processes involved in such ‘money talk’. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. JEL classification: B5; Z0 Keywords: Discursive psychology; Household money management; Money and identity; Gender

1. Introduction Throughout the last two decades, the inner workings of the household economy have caught the attention of social scientists. There has been a growing interest in the question of how household members organise or manage their financial resources and a substantial body of evidence now ∗

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suggests that the household is anything but an unproblematic economic unit (e.g., Burgoyne, 1990; Pahl, 1980, 1983; Vogler, 1994; Vogler and Pahl, 1994). Research into household financial management has generated a wealth of findings regarding the diversity of financial practices and their potential implications for individual welfare (e.g., Burgoyne, 1990; Burgoyne et al., 2006; Elizabeth, 2001; Pahl, 1989, 1995, 2005; Singh and Lindsay, 1996; Vogler, 1994, 2005; Vogler and Pahl, 1993, 1994). To date, most of our insights into the intra-household economy have been derived from studies of married couples—although the emphasis on this particular household type is gradually changing, with recent studies taking into consideration more varied family forms, such as heterosexual cohabitants (Ashby and Burgoyne, this issue; Elizabeth, 2001; Vogler, 2005; Vogler et al., 2006) and gay/lesbian couples (Burns et al., this issue). This paper will focus on research methodology and on some of the analytic assumptions that have been made in this particular area of inquiry. Its aim is to start laying some of the theoretical foundations for a new methodological outlook on household money management and, in so doing, to encourage methodological reflexivity (see e.g., Willig, 2001; Haslam and McGarty, 2003). Thus far, research on household financial organisation has predominantly relied on large-scale surveys and in-depth interview studies. Both methods have proved to be invaluable tools for the purpose of mapping this research terrain. Yet, all research and the interpretation of findings unavoidably bear the hallmarks – and hence the limitations – of the methods from which data have been derived. In survey studies of household money management, for instance, assessment of the often complex social processes that impinge on the intra-household economy (e.g., control or power-related dynamics) is reduced to self-report and often single-item measures, many of which aim to tap into particular attitudes. As a consequence, the significance or meaning of particular money management practices becomes divorced from the contexts in which such practices take place. Interview studies of household financial organisation, with their in-depth focus on participant-generated meanings, have compensated for some of the weaknesses inherent in survey methods. However, the analytic principles underlying qualitative work in this area have sometimes remained unclear (see e.g., Singh and Lindsay, 1996; Nyman, 1999, 2003). In cases where those principles have been explicit, with a few notable exceptions (see e.g., Elizabeth, 2001), Grounded Theory has been their main source (see e.g., Burgoyne, 1990; Burgoyne and Morison, 1997; Burgoyne et al., 2006, in press; Singh, 1996). Yet, due to this analytic reliance on Grounded Theory principles in qualitative work and on survey methods in quantitative approaches, the full analytic potential for understanding the intra-household economy has not been tapped. Indeed, our methodological possibilities are far from being exhausted, in terms of both the kinds of data that could be collected and the means by which they could be analysed. As an elaboration of one key way in which data collection and analysis could be enriched, this paper introduces a discursive approach as an alternative means of conceptualising and studying household financial organisation. In doing so, this analysis draws heavily on Dixon and Wetherell’s (2004) work on the domestic division of labour. In this, Dixon and Wetherell call for a greater emphasis on social constructionist ideas in general, and particularly on Discursive Psychology, in investigations of the domestic sphere. More specifically, Dixon and Wetherell make an eloquent case for a discursive approach towards understanding justice. Their argument is pertinent here not only because the division of domestic labour and household financial organisation are intimately linked but also because notions of justice or fairness are relevant in both domains. This paper extends Dixon and Wetherell’s line of reasoning by suggesting that a discursive approach could also provide a fresh methodological outlook on household money management and an epistemological framework within which previously fragmented or paradoxical findings might be integrated into a larger theoretical whole. The ultimate

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aim, then, is to contribute to Dixon and Wetherell’s vision of a social psychology of domestic life. The term ‘discursive’ has multiple connotations. In its broadest sense, discourse refers to “human meaning-making” and the study of discourse thus relates to the question of how meanings – or patterns of meaning – are produced in social life (Wetherell et al., 2001, p. 3). Human meaning-making, in turn, is crucially related to language. As such, the study of discourse can be more narrowly defined as “the study of language in use” (Wetherell et al., 2001, p. 3). This definition assumes a particular stance on the nature of language. It draws on the poststructuralist notion that “meaning is produced within language rather than reflected by language” (Weedon, 1997, p. 23, emphases added). In other words, neither the social nor the ‘natural’ world are seen to possess intrinsic meanings that are simply conveyed via language. Instead, rather than reflecting a given reality, language becomes constitutive of that reality. Language, or discourse, is therefore viewed as constructive, as a form of social action (see e.g., Wetherell, 2001). This means that any form of text or talk can be conceptualised as a form of social practice (see e.g., Potter, 1996); people’s verbal accounts, for instance, thus become discursive practices. These ideas and their implications for studying household money management will be unpacked in greater detail later. In analytic terms, as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry, discourse analysis spans a variety of approaches, some of which are not even compatible. In social psychology alone, two different versions have developed, namely Discursive Psychology (e.g., Edwards and Potter, 1992; Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell, 1998; Wetherell et al., 2001) and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (e.g., Parker, 1992, 1999). Whilst the two versions differ in terms of their analytic focus (see e.g., Willig, 2001 for a summary), some commentators have argued that this difference should be regarded as complementary (Potter and Wetherell, 1995) and have encouraged a synthesis of the two approaches (Wetherell, 1998). Rather than enter into this particular debate, this paper’s aim is to carve out a broad niche for an alternative methodological approach to studying household financial organisation. Whilst drawing mainly on the vocabulary of Discursive Psychology, ‘discursive’ here is used as an umbrella term to indicate that either approach could provide such a methodological alternative—especially since Discursive Psychology and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis are epistemologically similar in terms of their radical anti-positivism. As indicated above, some of the research findings in the area of household money management seem at a first glance to be paradoxical. Unpacking this observation, the following section outlines a number of key issues that have been raised in studies of household financial organisation, together with the contradictions associated with these. I will then consider some of the explanations that have been offered to account for these contradictions and the underlying assumptions on which explanatory accounts have typically been based. This then leads on to a discussion of some current methodological constraints. The second half of this paper then goes on to provide an outline of what a discursive approach to household financial organisation might look like and the kinds of data it might draw upon. Using data from a group interview, the paper then concludes with an illustration of the way in which data produced by our current methods might be informed by a discursive reading. 1.1. Gender and household financial management One of the most persistent and noteworthy findings that has emerged from research into the intra-household economy concerns the sometimes striking disparities between men and women – even as members of the ostensibly same ‘economic unit’ – with regard to control over and

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access to money.1 These gender disparities often manifest themselves along a number of important dimensions. For instance, various writers have drawn attention to the distinction between financial management and financial control (see e.g., Vogler, 1994; Vogler and Pahl, 1993, 1994), where the former refers to dealing with routine, day-to-day money matters and the latter implies having the ‘final say’ in financial decisions that affect the household. In this context, female management has been associated with households where income is low and where, as a consequence, making ends meet can be rather difficult (Pahl, 1989; Vogler and Pahl, 1994; Wilson, 1987). In particular, findings suggest that when husbands in lower-income households possess a high degree of financial control, their wives tend to be financially disadvantaged and to be subjected to greater economic deprivation (e.g., Vogler and Pahl, 1994). Some researchers have also observed that both control and management are more likely to be conferred onto the husband as family income increases (e.g., Vogler and Pahl, 1994; Wilson, 1987). Interestingly, too, there is some evidence to suggest that breadwinning wives might underplay their potential for greater financial control in an apparent attempt to sustain the normative status of the husband as the head of the household (e.g., Stamp, 1985; Tichenor, 1999). The importance of upholding the notion of the ‘male breadwinner’ (regardless of the scale of his financial input) in the maintenance of gender inequalities has repeatedly been stressed in recent work (e.g. Vogler, 1998; Vogler and Pahl, 1993; Vogler et al., 2006). Another closely related dimension along which gender differences have emerged concerns the relative financial contribution of the respective partners. For example, even in cases where all income is pooled and apparently regarded as ‘joint’, wives tend to feel more restricted in using money for personal spending, especially if their relative financial contribution to household income is less than their husband’s (Burgoyne, 1990; Burgoyne et al., 2006, in press; Nyman, 1999). Of course, this finding relates to the domestic division of labour. Men’s participation in the labour market – in conjunction with the relatively higher wages associated with male employment – and women’s comparatively greater contribution to unpaid household labour and childcare lead to asymmetries in financial contributions. These, in turn, contribute to different levels of access to the family’s monetary resources, placing women and children in a potentially more vulnerable financial position than men (e.g., Burgoyne, 1990; Burgoyne et al., 2006, in press). Furthermore, employed wives have been described as more family-focused than their husbands with regard to spending, devoting a relatively higher proportion of their earnings to the children (e.g., Pahl, 1995, 2000; Nyman, 1999). The existence of different expectations regarding men and women’s contribution to family-related expenditure has also been demonstrated experimentally (Sonnenberg et al., in press). The overall picture that has emerged from studies of the intra-household economy thus shows an intimate link between monetary practices and gender. In other words, financial control and access to monetary resources within marriage appear to be highly gendered2 – even in cases where all household income is pooled and where ownership of financial resources is described as joint (e.g., Burgoyne, 1990; Pahl, 1995). As a consequence, women often seem to lack control

1 As already indicated, most research to date has focussed on married heterosexual couples. The following discussion therefore concentrates on this particular household type, and references to the ‘intra-household economy’, ‘households’ or ‘partners’ from here onwards mainly relate to heterosexual partnerships. This is not in any way to suggest that this particular form of partnership is representative of all households or to underplay the importance of household diversity (e.g., including gay/lesbian partners). Instead, it is intended to reflect the research focus so far. Throughout the remainder of the paper, ‘households’, ‘partners’ or ‘couples’ are not explicitly described as ‘heterosexual’ because I do not wish to imply that discursive ideas are only relevant for studying money management in heterosexual couples. 2 Recent evidence suggests that this may also apply in the context of cohabitation (Vogler, 2005).

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over household finances and to experience greater restrictions when it comes to accessing personal spending money (Burgoyne, 1990; Nyman, 1999, 2003; Pahl, 1995). This, in turn, relates to the higher prevalence of financial deprivation among women (Vogler, 1994; Vogler and Pahl, 1994). The existence of gender asymmetries with regard to controlling and accessing household money seems paradoxical for both socio-structural and social–psychological reasons. In the first instance, these inequalities seem relatively impervious to changes in women’s labour market participation and to the corresponding increases in women’s contribution to household income. Dixon and Wetherell (2004) describe the existence of the same kind of paradox within research on the division of domestic labour where, despite women’s increased involvement in paid employment, a similar resistance towards endorsing less gendered, more equal responsibilities for domestic work is evident. In addition, the financial disparities between husbands and wives that have emerged in research on household money management appear to be strangely at odds with another finding that is repeatedly reported within the same literature—namely that the majority of spouses look upon marriage as a partnership of equals in which all resources should be shared (e.g., Burgoyne, 1990; Nyman, 1999). For instance, when asked, in principle, how to organise household finances most people appear to endorse an ideal of equality (Burgoyne and Routh, 2001; Sonnenberg et al., in press). In other words, financial discrepancies between men and women appear to persist regardless of the generally approved principle of equal sharing in marriage. Here, then, there seems to be a paradox regarding spouses’ commitment to financial sharing on the one hand and their actual monetary practices on the other. This inconsistency between ‘subjective beliefs’ and ‘objective arrangements’, again, parallels some of the contradictions that Dixon and Wetherell (2004) identify within the literature on the domestic division of labour. It also reflects the lack of consistency observed more generally in relation to the ideology and practice of marital equality (e.g., see Blaisure and Allen, 1995; Knudson-Martin and Mahoney, 1998). 1.2. ‘Beliefs versus practice’: making sense of contradictions Within the literature on household financial management a number of attempts have been made to explain this contradiction between the expressed desire for equal sharing on the one hand and the reported inequalities in access to and control over money on the other. Some sociological accounts, for example, have drawn on the resource theory of power (Blood and Wolfe, 1960) to account for this inconsistency. In resource theory, marriage is considered to be an instantiation of an exchange relationship and, consequently, marital power in general and power over decisionmaking in particular are seen to lie with the partner who makes a relatively greater contribution to the household’s resources (Ferree, 1990). However, resource theory is unable to explain why and how considerations of economic contribution should override the notion of equal sharing in marriage. Indeed, the explanatory power of the theory has been criticised for a number of reasons (see e.g., Safilios-Rothschild, 1970; Vogler, 1998), including its tendency to treat the intra-household economy as sociologically neutral, disregarding both historical evidence (see e.g., Zelizer, 1989, 1997) and contemporary findings which suggest that men and women’s economic contributions to the household are viewed and treated rather differently. In order to account for the persisting inequalities within marriage, some critics therefore advocate a focus on what has been termed ‘the sociology of gender’ (see Vogler, 1998) and on the actual money management systems used within households. Psychological accounts of the financial disparities between spouses have invoked a somewhat different – but not entirely unrelated – explanatory framework. Like research on the domestic division of labour, they have drawn on ideas from the psychology of entitlement (e.g., Major,

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1987, 1993) and the social psychology of distributive justice (e.g., Deutsch, 1975, 1985). In particular, these accounts have stressed the psychological significance of notions of ‘entitlement’ or ‘ownership’ in the domestic context. Here the perceived ownership of earned income is seen as an upshot of the fact that we enter the labour market as individuals (rather than members of households). Women’s continuing greater involvement in childrearing and unpaid domestic labour are seen to precipitate men’s greater economic power because of an implicit understanding that the actual earner of the household income is entitled to greater financial control as well as to more personal spending money (Burgoyne, 1990; Burgoyne and Lewis, 1994; Pahl, 1995). Some writers have therefore argued that the discrepancy between monetary beliefs and practices – between the expressed desire for equal sharing and the reported inequalities in access to and control over money – relates to such perceptions of ‘desert’ or ‘entitlement’ (e.g., Burgoyne, 1990, 2004; Nyman, 1999, 2003). Yet, as with the resource theory of power, notions of ‘entitlement’ or ‘desert’ cannot alone explain why their endorsement should take precedence over the ideal of marital equality or, indeed, why breadwinning wives, unlike their male counterparts, often appear to forgo their apparent entitlement to greater control over and access to household finances (see e.g., Stamp, 1985; Tichenor, 1999). In other words, the social psychological mechanisms by which notions of ownership or entitlement might come to override notions of equality or equal sharing remain unexplained. These current attempts to explain the persistence of financial inequalities among spouses highlight a number of issues which are relevant for the present argument in support of an alternative methodological approach to household money management. First, in the search for explanations, there has been an increasing emphasis on delineating the subjective determinants of these gender inequalities (see also Dixon and Wetherell, 2004). For instance, there has been growing concern with people’s gender role beliefs as well as with their views on breadwinnership (e.g., Vogler, 1994, 1998; Vogler et al., 2006) and fairness-related perceptions (e.g., Burgoyne and Lewis, 1994; Nyman, 1999). Recent research has also stressed the importance of individuals’ subjective understandings of intimate relationships in general and of women’s sense of entitlement in particular (e.g., Burgoyne and Lewis, 1994; Nyman, 1999). In general then, the explanatory focus has gradually shifted onto individuals’ perceptions, attitudes, cognitions or feelings regarding household-related matters and research attention is increasingly directed at identifying the social psychological factors that underlie the gender asymmetries evident in household financial organisation. Again, this explanatory shift from the structural to the social psychological closely mirrors the trend observed by Dixon and Wetherell (2004) in the literature on the domestic division of labour where, in trying to make sense of similar inequalities, researchers increasingly focus on the role of subjective determinants. Second, attempts to explain the financial disparities between spouses have led to a growing awareness of the complexity of the intra-household economy. The importance of gender, power relations and notions of fairness are frequently evoked in order to account for findings in the literature. More specifically, recent research has drawn attention to the significance of ‘discourse’ and ‘ideology’ for understanding household financial organisation (e.g., Burgoyne, 1990; Nyman, 1999). For instance, writers have invoked notions of ‘discourses/rhetoric of equality’ and ‘entitlement’ (e.g., Burgoyne, 1990; Burgoyne et al., in press), as well as ‘discourses/ideologies of breadwinnership’ and ‘gender’ (e.g., Vogler, 1998, 2005; Vogler et al., 2006) in attempts to elucidate the paradoxical nature of some of their results. Nevertheless, the methodological approaches that are currently applied in this field of research appear to be rather ill-equipped to capture the complexities associated with the operation of ideological or discursive forces in the context of the domestic sphere. In survey research, for example, ideological processes or ‘discourses’ tend

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to be inferred from attitude measures; these, in turn, often consist of only one or two items. In qualitative approaches, notions of ‘ideology’ and ‘discourse’ have remained equally underspecified in so far as they are taken as literal expressions of people’s beliefs concerning the financial organisation of the household. I will return to these methodological issues shortly. One of the features common to all these concerns with the intra-household economy is their dependence on what Dixon and Wetherell (2004) call the “conventional psychological view of the solitary individual perceiver” (p. 169). The adoption of the solitary perceiver as the main unit of analysis has led to a focus on the subjective determinants of household money management and thus to a perhaps artificial distinction between monetary beliefs and practices. Although cognitions, attitudes and beliefs are certainly important, this paper concurs with Dixon and Wetherell (2004) that, in order to develop a social psychology of the domestic sphere, the solitary perceiver should cease to be the principal unit of analysis. As Dixon and Wetherell argue: “The practices that people perform should become the starting point for social psychological investigation. This is because the forms of pattern and order that interest social psychologists, including emotional expressions, statement of belief and intent, attitudes, identities and presentations of self, are themselves organised by discursive practices. Indeed, they are as much a product of a particular mode of practice as they are a pre-existing or independent determinant of that practice. Consequently, social psychological phenomena often vary markedly as people engage in multiple practices that differ in stability, meaning and history. A sense emerges of dispersed and potentially inconsistent subjects, beings whose subjectivity and domestic relationships are constantly being constructed and re-constructed in different ways” (p. 174). What is implied here is that an adequate social (or economic) psychology of domestic life must be able to theorise and to attend to discursive practice—especially within everyday contexts. According to a discursive perspective, social reality and ‘meaning’ are constructed through sequences of coordinated social action and therefore cannot be reduced to individual cognition (Dixon and Wetherell, 2004). As a consequence, inconsistencies are not only part-and-parcel of people’s practices but they are also fundamental to subjectivity as such. Investigations of financial inequalities in control over and access to household financial resources can benefit from this particular perspective and from the more complex views of subjectivity and social relations it provides. This, however, requires adoption of a different methodological outlook. Before moving on to explore these discursive possibilities in greater detail, I will briefly consider some of the ways in which research in this area has been constrained by our current methodological commitments. 1.3. Current methodological issues The marked lack of attention paid to discursive practices in current studies of the intrahousehold economy appears to be largely a corollary of the methodological stances that researchers in the field have tended to adopt. As already indicated, research on household money management has been informed primarily by large-scale surveys and Grounded-Theory-inspired interview studies. As a consequence, just like research on the domestic division of labour, these methodological commitments have led to an analytic focus on individuals and their attitudes or cognitions; these, in turn, are routinely divorced from the everyday contexts in which the financial practices to which they relate take place. While surveys allow for the comparison of a large number of respondents along various attitudinal dimensions, as stated earlier, they inevitably mask the more complicated social processes that are implicated in the organisation of household financial resources. More

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specifically, the often ambiguous and variable meanings that notions of ‘gender’, ‘breadwinnership’ or ‘justice’ (see also Dixon and Wetherell, 2004) acquire within the context of everyday domestic practices cannot be captured by survey responses alone. What is more, survey responses have only a limited capacity to reveal the multitude of (inter)actions – conversations, negotiations, arguments, etc. – that are fundamental to household financial organisation. These are easily hidden from view in the process of translating survey responses into what we have come to think of as money management systems. As a consequence, the significance or meaning of using particular ‘systems’ of financial allocation becomes divorced from the contexts in which these systems are embedded as day-to-day (discursive) practices. I return to this point below. Moreover, even adoption of a qualitative stance has not entirely exempted research on the intra-household economy from these concerns. Many of the qualitative analyses in the field have been hampered by similar constraints and have been equally ill-equipped to deal with the variability and ambiguity of people’s responses. As already mentioned, qualitative data have generally been derived from one-to-one interviews with spouses (or cohabiting partners) and their analysis has mostly been informed by Grounded-Theory principles (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1998). In terms of the present argument, this reliance on Grounded Theory is significant in so far as it has been accompanied by a somewhat uncritical conception of, and analytic approach to, language. Whilst Grounded Theory comprises a number of different analytic perspectives (see e.g., Charmaz, 1995, 2006), by and large, these tend to subscribe to the view of language as designative or expressive of an underlying reality.3 In other words, language in general, and participants’ qualitative accounts in particular, are viewed as representative of underlying mental processes, cognitions and feelings. However, this conception of language is profoundly problematic and, as already indicated, has been the subject of poststructuralist critiques, including the social constructionist ‘turn to language’ in social psychology (see e.g., Willig, 2001). Due to their endorsement of language as representation, Grounded-Theory-led analyses of participants’ verbal responses are likely to seek and to describe greater consistency within respondents’ accounts than might be found otherwise. Furthermore, in these types of analysis, the emergence of account variability (see Potter and Wetherell, 1987) tends to be treated as contradiction (e.g., between cognition and behaviour)—hence the emergence of apparent paradoxes of the form discussed above. In sum, while there are obvious differences between survey and interview studies in regard to the kinds of data on which they are based, the two approaches are not entirely dissimilar in terms of their analytic focus. Both methods draw attention to individual cognitions which, in turn, are abstracted from their original context. In other words, the analytic emphasis in both cases lies on isolated perceptions, attitudes and feelings related to household money management which are removed from the settings where control over and access to financial resources are actually negotiated. As Dixon and Wetherell (2004) have pointed out, the significance of the interactional quality of domestic negotiation cannot be captured by survey methodology, nor can it emerge from individual interviews in which women and men’s accounts of their domestic financial practices are treated as isolated responses. Both types of approach assume that there is a linear relationship between the adoption of a particular system of money management and individual spouses’ beliefs concerning a whole range of money, gender and fairness-related issues. For example, whilst the directionality of this relationship (i.e., the demarcation of independent

3 More recently, social constructionist versions of Grounded Theory have been presented. Yet, language as such remains under-theorised in these accounts (see e.g., Charmaz, 2006).

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and dependent variables) is not always entirely clear, the endorsement of male breadwinnership or specific views on gender or justice are frequently treated as predictors of the variation that is found in couples’ financial management practices (e.g., Vogler, 1994; Vogler and Pahl, 1993). As a result, current approaches to the intra-household economy have tended to neglect one rather crucial issue, namely that these practices and their associated cognitions “arise ‘in between’ men and women” (Dixon and Wetherell, 2004, p. 177) in ordinary domestic contexts as they negotiate control over and access to household money; in doing so, they not only define the meaning of fairness, entitlement or ownership but also their identities as men and women, husbands and wives, and so on. This, then, brings us back to the importance of paying attention to everyday discursive practices when trying to account for the financial gender inequalities in the domestic sphere. Ideally, a discursive approach to household money management should encourage us to embark on an ethnography of domestic life. This would entail in-depth analyses of the ordinary, day-to-day linguistic practices that occur within the home and by which means spouses (or partners) codefine notions of gender, equality, entitlement, ownership and so on. The nature of the data this approach would draw on – for instance, naturalistic, everyday talk about money-related issues – is thus rather different from the kinds of data yielded by current methods. Whilst an ethnographic account of domestic life would certainly provide insights into the meaning(s) of financial practices within context(s), its development also constitutes a formidable task. Yet, in analytic terms, discursive ideas are still pertinent to the types of data presently available, despite their less naturalistic character. In the remainder of this paper, the main focus is therefore on the implications of a discursive approach for the interpretation of existing findings or forms of data. This starts with a consideration of some of the salient features of such an approach with regard to understanding money management in the household. 2. Towards a discursive approach to household financial organisation What, then, might a discursive approach to household financial organisation look like? What might we gain by looking at household money management through this particular analytical lens? As already indicated, perhaps the most important feature of adopting a discursive approach is that it moves the study of the intra-household economy into an altogether different epistemological terrain (for details see Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Willig, 2001)—which, in turn, has implication for the methods presently employed and, more specifically, for data analysis. The following section outlines the main analytic shift that adoption of a discursive approach would entail for our key units of analysis. Discussion then homes in on this particular shift and outlines its relevance for some of the findings in this research area—drawing on practical examples to illustrate how data produced by current methods might be informed by a discursive reading. 2.1. From the individual perceiver to language As pointed out earlier, qualitative work concerned with household financial management has tended to rely on a representative notion of language. Respondents’ verbal accounts have been regarded as expressions of, or gateways to, their underlying cognitions or feelings. This has not only come close to making us what Potter et al. (1984) call “victims of realread” (see p. 100), but has also contributed to seemingly contradictory findings. Rather than assuming that interview data can be read as a straightforward representation of people’s thoughts or attitudes, as already mentioned, a discursive approach would be characterised by its critical and reflexive awareness

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of language. In particular, a discursive approach to household money management would start from the premise that language is productive or performative (e.g., Potter and Wetherell, 1987, 1995; Wetherell et al., 2001)—that is, participants’ verbal accounts would be regarded as a means by which they construct different versions of reality and by which they accomplish particular interpersonal or social objectives. In other words, language and therefore participants’ talk would be viewed as a form of social action. Such a conception of language has profound implications for analysis and for how we manage qualitative data in this field of research. To begin with, analytic focus shifts from the solitary perceiver to the action orientation of language (see e.g. Potter and Wetherell, 1987, 1995; Wetherell et al., 2001; Willig, 2001).4 This, in turn, draws attention to the importance of social interaction and has implications for what we regard as relevant ‘text’ or data. More specifically, interview responses would not be considered in isolation but would be analysed as part of participants’ interactions with each other or with us as researchers. This notion of talk as social (inter)action is accompanied by an analytic focus on how speakers deal with issues of stake or interest—that is, on the ways in which they manage particular ‘interactional projects’ (see Willig, 2001). Interactional projects include speakers’ attempts to persuade, to explain or justify their actions or position on a particular issue. Such projects might also consist of attributions of blame or attempts to disclaim responsibility as well as efforts to disown an undesirable identity or to assert a desirable one. By focusing our analysis on the action orientation of language, then, we would be shifting our attention from the issue of what participants’ talk might reveal about them to the question of what it does—for them and for the relationships in which they are embedded. This kind of analytic focus appears relevant for understanding the dynamics of the intra-household economy, especially with regard to issues of financial (in)equality. For instance, rather than searching for variables that might account for the apparently paradoxical relationship between beliefs in financial equality and actual monetary practices, analysis would instead ask when, and with what consequences, notions of equality or sharing are invoked in respondents’ talk about these practices. Focus here would be on the interactional dimension of participant’s talk, on what the pertinent interactional projects are, and on how these are being achieved by appealing to notions of justice or equality. In other words, our objective as analysts would be to explore how participants use discursive resources and with what effects. In fact, this means that language, rather than the individual actor, becomes the unit of analysis. In other areas of research, discursive approaches have provided powerful illustrations of how gender discrimination in seemingly egalitarian societies can be rationalised and maintained by means of an often complex and contradictory rhetoric (see e.g., Speer and Potter, 2000; Wetherell et al., 1987). Indeed, the persisting gender asymmetries in control over and access to household money may turn out to be another case in point, where the “vocabulary of equality” (see Dixon and Wetherell, 2004, p. 176) is drawn upon in order to maintain inequality. To examine this possibility, the discursive task would be to provide a detailed analysis of how, exactly, this is being achieved. Knudson-Martin and Mahoney’s (1998) qualitative study of the domestic division of labour offers an indication of the potential fruitfulness of such an approach. These researchers found that partners sustained a “myth of equality” through their shared ways of referring to “give and take”, “oneness” or “partnership” (Knudson-Martin and Mahoney, 1998)—in other 4 This particular focus is associated with Discursive Psychology and its interest in how people use discursive resources to achieve interpersonal ends. A Foucauldian approach, on the other hand, would examine what kind of objects and subjects are constructed by means of particular discourses, alongside the “ways-of-being” these discourses either enable or disable (for a comparison of the two approaches see Willig, 2001).

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words, by using a shared “vocabulary of justice” (Dixon and Wetherell, 2004). Whilst KnudsonMartin and Mahoney adopted a Grounded Theory approach, their findings nevertheless indicate that discourse is fundamental to people’s constructions of their domestic situation. As Dixon and Wetherell point out in their commentary on Knudson-Martin and Mahoney, the interviewed couples “were not assessing their relationship in terms that were purely unique or personal. They were instead employing a shared discourse of equality, a discourse that operated to conceal gender inequalities and to constrain possibilities for their resistance. [. . .] Knudson-Martin and Mahoney’s work illustrates how fairness appraisals are evaluations that couples work up together. Justice is always co-constructed” (Dixon and Wetherell, 2004, p. 176). Knudson-Martin and Mahoney’s (1998) study also illustrates that data initially derived from Grounded Theory-led studies need not necessarily be considered as incompatible with a discursive reading. While Grounded Theory and discursive approaches stem from rather different epistemological roots (positivism and social constructionism, respectively), findings derived by applying the techniques of the former – especially when these point towards variability in people’s accounts – can be informed by critical re-reading within the framework of the latter. This is important because with its analytic focus on individual cognitions, Grounded Theory is theoretically less well-equipped to handle account variability which it tends to represent as inconsistency or as an expression of paradoxical attitudes. A discursive approach, on the other hand, provides an epistemological framework as well as a vocabulary which allows us to deal with account variability. In fact, here variability becomes crucial for understanding both the processes and ideologies that are at play in people’s constructions of their realities—including their domestic ones. A discursive approach thus allows us to integrate seemingly contradictory findings and to make sense of inconsistencies we might not otherwise be able to analytically transcend. It also enables us to examine the ways in which discursive variation or ‘contradiction’ might be deployed strategically in order to maintain domestic inequality. The last section of this paper explores the notion of account variability with reference to the different systems of household financial allocation that have been described in the literature. In doing so, it will draw on some examples to illustrate the potential relevance of looking at interview data through a discursive lens. 2.2. Systems of money management and discursive practices As noted above, in studies of the intra-household economy it has become commonplace to describe and differentiate between households by reference to the systems of money management which they endorse. Pahl’s (1980, 1983, 1989) pioneering work has led to the identification of a number of ways in which household finances can be organised. Originally, Pahl’s (1989) typology of household money management included the following systems: (1) Female Whole Wage, where the husband passes his wage packet (minus his personal spending money) to his wife who then carries the sole responsibility for managing household expenditure, (2) Male Whole Wage, where, retaining his own income, the husband is solely accountable for managing household finances (which might leave non-employed wives without any personal spending money), (3) Housekeeping Allowance, where the breadwinner – traditionally the husband – hands over a fixed or variable sum of money for housekeeping expenses to the other partner, whilst maintaining control over the remainder, (4) Pooling, where both partners have access to all, or nearly all, household income and both are regarded as equally responsible for managing the common pool and (5) Independent Management, where both partners have independent incomes which are kept in separate accounts and where, typically, each partner is responsible for specific items of expenditure.

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Pahl’s typology has been an invaluable tool not only for describing patterns of money management in the intra-household economy but also for tracking change in these patterns. For instance, while pooling is still the most frequently endorsed system, marked shifts have been identified in the numbers of households using a housekeeping allowance or independent management system. Generally, housekeeping allowances appear to be on the decline (e.g., Vogler and Pahl, 1994; Pahl, 2005) and, although less frequent in terms of overall numbers, the popularity of the independent management is steadily increasing—especially amongst re-married and cohabiting couples (Ashby and Burgoyne, 2005, this issue; Burgoyne and Morison, 1997; Heimdal and Houseknecht, 2003; Vogler, 2005). Over the years, however, Pahl’s original typology has undergone various modifications, partly in recognition of the fact that systems of money management might themselves be evolving and partly due to a growing concern with their descriptive accuracy. The original pooling system, for example, has been further sub-divided into different forms of Part-Pooling (Burgoyne et al., 2006, in press; Pahl, 2005) which acknowledge that spouses may pool some but not all of their individual incomes and that contributions to the common pool may be the same or different for each partner (for more detail see Ashby and Burgoyne, this issue). In this way, there appears to be an increasing sentiment amongst researchers that these systems of household financial organisation are too broad to capture the subtleties of what people are actually doing with their money. Qualitative researchers in particular seem to have difficulties in matching these categories to their interviewees’ actual responses (see e.g., Nyman, 1999). One way of dealing with this difficulty is to develop the existing taxonomy further so as to be able to capture a greater variety of financial practices. In fact, some commentators (e.g., Ashby and Burgoyne, this issue; Vogler et al., 2006) have suggested taking this route and refining the current description of household money management systems. Alternatively, though, we could take a step back from the concern with the adequacy of the current taxonomy and focus, instead, on understanding the discursive practices that underlie these systems. For wherever diversity in terms of methodological approaches is limited, there is a danger of reification—even if the original ideas on which such approaches are based have been much more fluid.5 In the case of research on the intra-household economy, one of the upshots of the reliance on Pahl’s typology in general, and on survey methods in particular, has been that the practices the typology was meant to capture have become reified as systems. As already mentioned, these systems have become disembodied and stripped of the day-to-day interactions that give rise to them, including the myriad ways in which they might be ‘talked into being’ (see Willig, 2001, p. 103). Ideally, as stated above, the approach to household financial organisation that is suggested here would start from an ethnographic analysis of these interactions and of the discursive practices related to how money is dealt with in the home. To demonstrate the need for this form of analysis, we can take a closer look at the difficulties that are encountered when trying to classify qualitative responses according to the different systems derived from Pahl’s original typology. The following extract comes from a group interview on household financial organisation that was conducted with six female volunteers who were either married or cohabiting. In response to the interviewer’s general question regarding what people were ‘doing with their money’, one of the participant remarked: (1) Evelyn: [. . .] We actually just put all the money in one pot and share and discuss everything. But I actually deal with all the financial side, the tax forms and things but erm 5

The potential ‘fuzziness’ of the typology was actually acknowledged in its original formulation (see Pahl, 1989).

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(.) We deal- we’re completely open with each other. [. . .] We’re very open in what we decide to do together. Interviewer: Right. So does all that money, all the money gets pooled then in, in // . . . Evelyn: Yes. We’ve got different accounts but we, we both know where everything is and we can make a decision to do something together. Err it doesn’t matter who it comes from. How would we classify such a response? And – perhaps more importantly – what response category might this person have ticked when filling in a questionnaire? The interviewee’s reference to putting “all the money in one pot”, together with the allusion to sharing and openness, certainly sounds as though, in this instance, all household income is pooled and control over resources is shared. This, in other words, might correspond to the “Total Pool (with equal control)” option, which is the most frequently endorsed system of money management in many surveys (e.g., Burgoyne and Routh, 2001; Laurie and Gershuny, 2000; Sonnenberg et al., in press; Vogler, 1994; Vogler and Pahl, 1993, 1994). However, discursive inspection of this excerpt indicates that the respondent quickly pre-empts the interviewer’s attempt to clarify whether all money gets pooled in the same account by stating “yes” they have “different accounts but” that does not matter in terms of pooling—or so it seems. This reference to separate accounts is intriguing and it appears as though the “one pot” the respondent refers to is figurative rather than actual. There are various passages throughout the remainder of the interview which suggest that, in this respondent’s household, finances are kept quite separate—at least if our analysis were to draw on the traditional classification system which, in turn, is based on the existence of joint and separate accounts. Yet, at the level of the respondent’s talk, whenever a degree of separateness in either management or control over finances is implied (“but I actually deal with all the financial side”), this is simultaneously accompanied by allusions to the couple’s ‘togetherness’ (“we’re very open in what we decide to do together” or “we both know where everything is and we can make a decision to do something together”). Where then does this leave the researcher analytically? How are we to deal with these contradictions and decide whether this couple endorses a pooling or an independent management system? If we were to take a discursive approach, rather than trying to decode what the actual financial arrangement is in this case, the analytic focus would be on the verbal account of such an arrangement. In other words, the analytically interesting question would be to understand what is happening in this account. What does the text do? What are its effects or discursive achievements? This then takes us back to the discursive focus on the action orientation of language and to the interactional projects in which people might be engaged—as research participants or as husbands, wives, partners and so on. As already mentioned, a discursive approach starts from the premise that talking is a form of social action which involves managing issues of stake or interest. In this particular case, interactions are taking place between the respondent, the interviewer and the other members of the interview group. For example, one of the issues possibly at stake in the above excerpt is the respondent’s need to justify why she and her husband operate separate accounts and why this financial practice has nothing to do with the ‘togetherness’ of their relationship. The need for a justification of this sort is not entirely implausible when we consider a later exchange in the same group interview: (2) Katherine: Hmm, I mean (.) I know lots of people who are married who have separate bank accounts. And who still (.) very much keep to this notion that “this is my money, this is your money, you’re not going to tell me what to do with it”. You- you know, even though they are (.) married. That doesn’t seem to have, you know, changed things.

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Interviewer: Mm-hm. Christine: Not much point in being married then really, is there!? Katherine: Well. Yeah. I mean, I mean I, I tend to, you know, agree with that. Because they, the people I’m thinking of particularly (.) seem to be very like (.) - to me, it’s almost like they’re saying “I’m married to you but in this part of my life I’m not going to be accountable to you” [“mm-hm” from various other respondents] which seems to, seems to go against getting married. You know, why did they bother?! If they, if they were gonna keep that bit separate. Here having separate bank accounts not only indicates a lack of accountability to one’s partner (“in this part of my life I’m not going to be accountable to you”) but, more fundamentally, goes against the whole notion of marriage (“seems to go against getting married”). Against this backdrop then, holding separate bank accounts needs to be justified, or at least explained. In discursive terms therefore, what is at stake for the respondent in Excerpt (1) is nothing less than the validity of her own marriage. If there is “not much point in being married” when people hold separate bank accounts – in other words, if certain financial practices are constructed as undermining the notion of marriage per se – then some form of justification for such practices becomes necessary, or some form of explanation of why one does, indeed, “bother”. Thus, one possible discursive strategy is to suggest that separate financial spheres need not imply separate lives or an inferior type of relationship. The respondent’s account in Excerpt (1) appears to correspond to such a strategy, hence the discursive emphasis on the common ‘pot’ – regardless of the actual existence of this ‘pot’ in the form of a joint account – and on the notion of ‘togetherness’. This, in turn, averts any threats to the validity of the respondent’s marriage. The above excerpts not only illustrate how difficult it can be to classify qualitative responses according to the existing typology (Excerpt 1) but also highlight the importance of interaction (Excerpt 2) and thus the complexity of people’s accounts regarding their household money management practices. These passages also draw attention to another very important issue, namely that talking about one’s financial practices is hardly a ‘neutral’ activity or one that simply involves some form of ‘factual’ description. Participants do not treat questions regarding their household money management practices as impartial. Instead they orientate towards these questions in particular ways. In this context, terms like ‘pooling’ or ‘keeping money separately’ have specific connotations and, as we saw in the examples above, certain financial practices (e.g., holding separate bank accounts) can be constructed as deviant in terms of certain types of relationship (e.g., marriage). But why should this be so? Why should talking about money be so laden with significance? From a discursive perspective, one answer to this question is that talking about many topics is intimately bound up with matters of identity (e.g., Wetherell et al., 2001). As Excerpt (2) illustrates, respondents’ talk not only relates to potential differences in financial practice or organisation (i.e., separate accounts versus joint account) but it simultaneously constructs different versions of marriage and, consequently, of identity. These accounts define what it means to be married and, by implication, what it means to be a husband or wife. In this way, one version of marriage – and of identity – is discursively rendered as clearly superior to the other (i.e., the “why-did-they-bother” version). Such constructions are by no means uncontested and they do not constitute the only identity-related dimension that is of relevance in accounts of household financial organisation. In research-elicited accounts as well as in people’s private exchanges, money management practices seem to relate to a whole array of identities (both at a

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personal and social level)—and one identity dimension that is absolutely crucial in both types of account is gender. As was argued above, due to their analytic focus on the individual perceiver, survey and Grounded Theory approaches presume that people bring certain notions of gender or ‘breadwinnership’ to bear on their domestic situation. A discursive approach, on the other hand, considers how these identity-related notions are constructed and deployed in people’s accounts of their domestic practices or within their actual domestic interactions. In other words, rather than focusing on gender-related cognitions (gender-role beliefs, attitudes towards breadwinnership, etc.) a discursive approach explores how gendered notions of identity are invoked in discourse and to what effect. The analytic focus here is on how gender is constructed discursively and on what implications such constructions might have for domestic power relations. Talking about money management thus becomes a way of ‘doing gender’ (West and Zimmerman, 1987) or managing gender identity. To conclude this section, it is informative to draw on one final example to illustrate the importance of identity-related issues in people’s talk about their money management practices. The following excerpt comes from the same group interview as the above passages. Here the interviewer attempts to question the construction of marriage as a partnership in which all money is (or ought to be) pooled or shared: (3) Interviewer: I think, you know, in lots of people’s minds marriage means sharing or pooling money or doing something like that, you know, in terms of doing it together. But erm maybe that’s not how people are generally thinking about it these days (.) in reality, I don’t know. I mean it sounds like that’s the case for you [referring to Katherine]? Katherine: Yeah, but I think in my (.) circle, I’m unique. Interviewer: Oh are you? Right. Katherine: Yeah. Certainly. I mean because we’re both Christians (.) erm and so erm, you know, take the relationship part with God quite seriously. And most of our Christian friends work a similar relationship. And most of our non-Christian friends have separate bank accounts. Evelyn: I’m a Christian as well, actually. Yes so . . . In rhetorical terms, the interviewer’s allusion to possible differences in people’s understandings of marriage and its associated financial practices (“maybe that’s not how people are generally thinking about it these days”) demands that the respondent – who has been directly addressed in this instance – provides an explanatory account of her money management practices. The participant, in response, justifies these practices by reference to her ‘uniqueness’ which, in turn, is explained by invoking another identity—namely ‘being a Christian’. Here, monetary matters become intimately linked with “taking [. . .] God quite seriously” and financial practices are drawn upon as a defining feature to differentiate between Christians and non-Christians (“and most of our non-Christian friends have separate bank accounts”). Yet, this particular construction of what it means to be a Christian is neither unproblematic nor does it remain uncontested. This version of Christian identity is challenged, albeit rather subtly, as another respondent lays claim to the same identity (“I’m a Christian as well, actually”) in spite of her ‘non-Christian’ money management practices (see reference to separate accounts in Excerpt 1). There is a definite tension between these two constructions of identity which remains unresolved (“yes so. . .”). Hence, when respondents

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are talking about managing their money, they are, in fact, also managing their personal and social identities. The above observations clearly do not provide an exhaustive analysis of all the issues relevant here. Rather, they are intended simply to illustrate the kind of processes to which a discursive approach can draw attention. By focusing on the interactional context in which people’s verbal accounts are embedded, it becomes clear that money management practices, as well as the identities to which these relate, are far from unambiguous. For instance, notions of ‘pooling’ or ‘togetherness’ can be invoked in defence (or justification) of holding separate bank accounts (see Excerpt 1). By the same token, notions of equality might be invoked to justify inequitable financial practices. This, then, takes us back to the beginning of this paper and to one of the paradoxes identified within the literature—namely the apparent contradiction between people’s beliefs in and their practices of financial equality in the household. To resolve the problems this creates for analysis, the kind of approach sketched out above allows us to be sensitive to the way in which certain fairness-related notions (e.g., the ‘partnership of equals’) and dimensions of identity (e.g., gender, husband and wife, breadwinner) can be invoked in order to achieve particular discursive aims. This approach can therefore assist in the important process of identifying the discursive mechanisms by which notions like ownership or entitlement come to overrule the ideal of equality or equal sharing within intimate relationships. 3. Conclusion The aim of the present paper was to provide some theoretical groundwork for developing a discursive perspective on the intra-household economy. I have argued for an alternative methodological outlook that could shed some light on the seemingly paradoxical findings in the literature on household money management—especially with regard to understanding the apparent contradiction between beliefs in financial equality on the one hand and inequitable financial practices on the other. The alternative approach outlined here requires an analytic shift away from the present emphasis on individual cognition to a focus on language or discursive practices. As a corollary, the social psychological processes implicated in the financial organisation of the household, like those involved in the division of domestic labour, here are considered as “activities accomplished in practice and not simply mental states” (Dixon and Wetherell, 2004, p. 183). Contrary to the methods currently used in this field of research, a discursive approach starts from the premise that cognitions related to household financial organisation (e.g., beliefs about gender or breadwinnership, views on entitlement or ownership) are, in fact, constituted through dealing with and talking about money. Drawing on Dixon and Wetherell’s terms, financial entitlement, ownership or fairness refer to issues that “must be done as well as thought and perceived [and] the organisation of the doing cannot be predicted from the investigation of the perceiving and thinking” (p. 183). It is in this sense then that financial practices can actually be regarded as discursive practices. In outlining the relevance of discursive ideas for understanding household financial organisation, the objective of this paper has been to promote methodological reflexivity. The survey and Grounded Theory methods presently employed in this field of research have been invaluable in charting previously unexplored territory. More importantly, they have shown that the realm of the household is by no means exempt from broader concerns relating to financial inequality and disadvantage. For example, the finding that access to and control over financial resources can be highly gendered within the domestic sphere has brought the intra-household economy into sharp focus, locating it “at the interface between gender inequalities within intimate relationships and gender

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inequalities in the wider society” (Vogler, 2005, p. 4). Existing methodological approaches have thus been crucial in highlighting the fact that economic practices in general, and those occurring in the home in particular, are neither sociologically nor psychologically neutral. The development of a discursive approach to household money management fits well with Vogler’s (1998) attempt to provide a more complex analysis of power in the household. In fact, a discursive perspective highlights the centrality of power for understanding domestic practices more generally; it offers an epistemological framework and the analytic means for addressing questions of ideology, social relations and subjectivity which, in turn, are crucially related to the operation of power (see e.g., Weedon, 1997). It lies beyond the scope of this paper to fully engage with the issue of power. Recently, however, discursive researchers have begun to illustrate the ways in which the exercise of power is implicated in people’s accounts of their money management (e.g., Elizabeth, 2001) and of their intimate relationships more generally (e.g., Elizabeth, 2000). A discursive focus also fits well with the idea that identities, such as gender for instance, are enacted through particular practices (see e.g., West and Zimmerman, 1987)—including those related to household money management. Along these lines, as has been the case in other areas of inquiry, adopting a discursive approach has provided researchers with the vocabulary and the analytic tools to reveal the complex and often paradoxical discourses through which gender inequalities and discrimination can be justified (e.g., Wetherell et al., 1987). Emphasising discursive practices therefore brings back into focus the interactional dynamics among household members (not only between husbands and wives but also between cohabitants more generally) that underlie the financial organisation of the household. Rather than drawing attention to individual cognitions – such as a person’s sense of entitlement, attitudes towards breadwinnership or ownership – the emphasis of a discursive approach lies on co-constructed practices. This approach “thus roots inequality firmly in the politics of the domestic interaction” (Dixon and Wetherell, p. 186) and not solely in individual minds. Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Dr. Carole Burgoyne, Prof. Alex Haslam and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. The completion of this paper was supported by Research Grant PTA-026-27-1029 from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK). References Ashby, K.J., Burgoyne, C.B., 2005. Independently together: an exploratory study of money management in couples. In: Paper Presented at the XXX Annual Colloquium on Research in Economic Psychology, Prague, Czech Republic, 21–24 September. Ashby, K.J., Burgoyne, C.B. Separate financial entities? Beyond categories of money management, this issue. Blaisure, K.R., Allen, K.R., 1995. Feminists and the ideology and practice of marital equality. Journal of Marriage and the Family 57, 5–19. Blood, R.O., Wolfe, D.M., 1960. Husbands and Wives. The Free Press, Glencoe, IL. Burgoyne, C.B., 1990. Money in marriage: how patterns of allocation both reflect and conceal power. The Sociological Review 38, 634–665. Burgoyne, C., 2004. Heart-strings and purse-strings: money in heterosexual marriage. Feminism & Psychology 14, 165–172. Burgoyne, C.B., Lewis, A., 1994. Distributive justice in marriage: equality or equity? Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 4, 101–114.

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