L'invention de l'inactivité

Abstract

This article is in pursuit of the genesis of the concept of inactivity, which is naturally used to refer to housewives and to farmers' spouses. This concept is first defined in the census of 1896, when the active population is opposed to the idlers, the frontier between the two being the subject of great debates at the time. Inactivity is always defined relatively to its opposite, activity, as defined by the political economy born in the 18th century with Adam Smith, and later the physiocrats, who try to understand the laws that govern economy in order to influence it. The invention of the adjective inactive takes place at the same time. It initially describes an inert substance or an effectless remedy in research in physics and chemistry. If "economists" have excluded the domestic sphere from productive work as an area on which politics could not have an impact, it was because they were in search of action on society. By limiting their field of action to the quantifiable, as did Malthus, they fail to acknowledge the symbolic dimension as well as the creation of social links inherent to any exchange.