Markets and their Actors in the Late Middle Ages

Markets and their Actors in the Late Middle Ages
Author: Tanja Skambraks
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2020-11-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110643758

Markets feature prominently in recent research of premodern historians as well as economists. Discussions cover the questions, for example, how a market can be grasp as a place, an event or a mechanism of exchange, or whether premodern economies have just hosted markets or if some of them can even be regarded as market economies. The proposed volume will now turn to the agents who forged and connected markets. Exchange was done between persons and with the help of persons: Artisans, retailers and poor people tried to better their living conditions by engaging on the market, merchants interconnected different markets, urban personnel (such as brokers, men working at the public scales, or the town council as a whole) regulated and facilitated exchange. By focusing on economic practices and the agents who performed them, the volume aims at analyzing the specific characteristics of premodern markets, the reasons why people became active on the market and the institutions which formed exchange processes and were in turn shaped by them.

Cities and Economy in Europe

Cities and Economy in Europe
Author: Katalin Szende
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2024-02-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1003851584

Exploring new perspectives concerning regions traditionally considered “on the margins” of Europe, this book fills a gap in current historiography through its analysis of cities, space, and economy from the High Middle Ages to the present. Markets, trade, and economy in general have formed the backbone of urban life ever since the emergence of cities and towns, but classical theorists have largely focused on developments in Western Europe. Urban research in the last few decades has advanced in many ways to supersede and correct this still influential image and to include other parts of Europe into the analytical framework. Building on these emerging methodologies, this volume pays close attention to the fringes of Europe in the East, North, West, and South. The essays discuss the development of various spaces as nodal points for the exchange and production of commodities that took place in cities and towns. The scope of this work allows for a point of comparison to frequently studied examples in Europe, encouraging readers to identify larger patterns beyond individual examples. Cities and Economy in Europe: Markets and Trade on the Margins from the Middle Ages to the Present is the perfect resource for students and researchers of economic and urban history.

Reassessing the Moral Economy

Reassessing the Moral Economy
Author: Tanja Skambraks
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2023-10-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3031298349

This book examines the concept of moral economy originally established by E.P. Thompson, focusing on the impact of religious norms on economic practice. With each chapter discussing a different empirical case study, the interrelations of the economy and religion are explored from antiquity through to the 20th century. The long-term trajectory and comparative perspective allows for moral economy to be seen in relation to ancient Greek commerce, medieval pawn-broking, Christian and Jewish economic ethics, urban social politics during the Plague, the Jesuit mission in Paraguay, the Ottoman Empire, religion in modern American capitalism, and Catholic attitudes toward taxation. This book aims to provide insight into how moral thinking about the economy and economic practice has evolved from a long historic perspective. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in economic history and cultural economics.

Managing the Wealth of Nations

Managing the Wealth of Nations
Author: Philipp Robinson Rössner
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2022-04
Genre: Capitalism
ISBN: 1529211220

This pioneering work debunks the neoliberal origin myth of how capitalism came into the world.

Moving Workers

Moving Workers
Author: Claudia Bernardi, Viola Franziska Müller, Biljana Stojić, Vilhelm Vilhelmsson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2023-05-13
Genre:
ISBN: 3111137686

Coercion and Wage Labour

Coercion and Wage Labour
Author: Anamarija Batista
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2023-12-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1800085389

Coercion and Wage Labour presents novel histories of people who experienced physical, social, political or cultural compulsion in the course of paid work. Broad in scope, the chapters examine diverse areas of work including textile production, war industries, civil service and domestic labour, in contexts from the Middle Ages to the present day. They demonstrate that wages have consistently shaped working people’s experiences, and failed to protect workers from coercion. Instead, wages emerge as versatile tools to bind, control, and exploit workers. Remuneration mirrors the distribution of power in labour relations, often separating employers physically and emotionally from their employees, and disguising coercion. The book makes historical narratives accessible for interdisciplinary audiences. Most chapters are preceded by illustrations by artists invited to visually conceptualise the book’s key messages and to emphasise the presence of the body and landscape in the realm of work. In turn, the chapter texts reflect back on the artworks, creating an intense intermedial dialogue that offers mutually relational ‘translations’ and narrations of labour coercion. Other contributions written by art scholars discuss how coercion in remunerated labour is constructed and reflected in artistic practice. The collection serves as an innovative and creative tool for teaching, and raises awareness that narrating history is always contingent on the medium chosen and its inherent constraints and possibilities. Praise for Coercion and Wage Labour Coercion and Wage Labour is a pioneering volume. It makes a well-founded break with the widespread misconception that wage labour is by definition free from coercion. The fourteen historical case studies ... lead to the conclusion that wage labourers too were subject to many forms of coercion and that usually their “freedom” was and is only relative. But something else makes this book special: throughout the text there are artistic illustrations that enter into a dialogue with the individual chapters, which in turn reflect on the images. This creates an inspiring interaction that complements the volume’s interdisciplinary nature. Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam

Sensual and Sensory Experiences in the Middle Ages

Sensual and Sensory Experiences in the Middle Ages
Author: Carme Muntaner Alsina
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2018-06-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1527512347

Where was the line between pleasure and irritation in the sensory overload caused by the sounds, colours, and smells of a medieval market? How could pain and suffering be relieved by hoping for, and desiring to experience, an intimate, almost familiar, contact with Christ? This volume shows the different aspects of sensory experiences that medieval people conveyed through documents, literary accounts, and religious practices. The unifying theme here is how pleasure, pain, desire, and fear appear in different—sometimes conflicting—combinations and settings: from the private space of the monastic cell to the shared hustle of the market. The geographic focus of this volume is Mediterranean Europe, although it also touches on other Western contexts. The combination of different points of view here provides an original contribution to the study of sensory experiences in the Middle Ages.

Handbook of the Sharing Economy

Handbook of the Sharing Economy
Author: Russell W. Belk
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 421
Release:
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1788110544

With the radical growth in the ubiquity of digital platforms, the sharing economy is here to stay. This Handbook explores the nature and direction of the sharing economy, interrogating its key dynamics and evolution over the past decade and critiquing its effect on society.

Environment, Society and the Black Death

Environment, Society and the Black Death
Author: Per Lagerås
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2016-01-30
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1785700553

In the mid-fourteenth century the Black Death ravaged Europe, leading to dramatic population drop and social upheavals. Recurring plague outbreaks together with social factors pushed Europe into a deep crisis that lasted for more than a century. The plague and the crisis, and in particular their short-term and long-term consequences for society, have been the matter of continuous debate. Most of the research so far has been based on the study of written sources, and the dominating perspective has been the one of economic history. A different approach is presented here by using evidence and techniques from archaeology and the natural sciences. Special focus is on environmental and social changes in the wake of the Black Death. Pollen and tree-ring data are used to gain new insights into farm abandonment and agricultural change, and to point to the important environmental and ecological consequences of the crisis. The archaeological record shows that the crisis was not only characterized by abandonment and decline, but also how families and households survived by swiftly developing new strategies during these uncertain times. Finally, stature and isotope studies are applied to human skeletons from medieval churchyards to reveal changes in health and living conditions during the crisis. The conclusions are put in wider perspective that highlights the close relationship between society and the environment and the historical importance of past epidemics.

Markets and Exchanges in Pre-Modern and Traditional Societies

Markets and Exchanges in Pre-Modern and Traditional Societies
Author: Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2021-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1789256143

Markets emerge in recent historical research as important spheres of economic interaction in ancient societies. In the case of ancient Egypt, traditional models imagined an all-encompassing centralized, bureaucratic economy that left practically no place for market transactions, as many surviving documents only described the activities of the royal palace and of huge institutions?mainly temples. Yet scattered references in the sources reveal that markets and traders were crucial actors in the economic life of ancient Egypt. In this perspective, this volume aims to discuss the role of markets, traders and economic interaction (not necessarily organized through markets) and the use of “money” (metals, valuable commodities) in pre-modern societies, based on archaeological, anthropological and historical evidence. Furthermore, it intends to integrate different perspectives about the social organization of transactions and exchanges and the different forms taken by markets, from meeting places where exchanges operated under ritualized procedures and conventions, to markets in which profit-seeking activities were marginal in respect with other practices that stressed, on the contrary, community collaboration. The book also deals with social forms of pre-modern exchanges in which trust and ethnic solidarity guaranteed the validity of commercial operations in the absence of formal codes of laws or accepted authorities over long distances (trade diasporas, guilds, etc.). Finally, the volume analyzes a critical aspect of small-scale trade and markets, such as the commercialization of agricultural household production and its impact on the peasant economic strategies. In all, the book covers a diversity of topics in which recent research in the fields of economic sociology, archaeology, anthropology, economics and history proves invaluable in order to analyze the role of Egyptian trade in a broader perspective, as well as to suggest new venues of comparative research, theoretical reflection and dialogue between Egyptology and social sciences. The book will also address pre-modern social organizations of trade activities in which trust and ethnic solidarity guaranteed the validity of commercial operations in the absence of formal codes of laws or accepted authorities over long distances, particularly trade diasporas, guilds, etc. This book will be the first in the new series from Oxbow, Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Societies.