This paper aims at presenting an analytical reference that allows understanding pluriactivity as a strategy for social and economic reproduction for rural families. In the introduction, we present the context in which the study of family farming and pluriactivity emerges in Brazil. In the first section, we discuss the origin and evolution of the debate about pluriactivity, a situation mainly related to the reality in developed countries. In the second section, we try to position the analysis of pluriactivity in the context of the theoretical traditions that are classical in agrarian studies, showing how this phenomenon has already been object of concern for others authors. In the third section, we aim to position pluriactivity in the main contemporaneous analytical approaches of the social theory and indicate which one seems to be adequate for the study. In the fourth section, we discuss the central theme of this paper, which is the relationship between family farming and pluriactivity from a theoretical and conceptual point of view. In the fifth section, we indicate a methodological perspective to study pluriactivity in family units.