The Industrial Division of Labour and National Cultures

1982 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Gellner
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
National Cultures ◽  
Complex Transformation ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Original Event

THE ORIGINS OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY CONTINUE TO BE AN object of scholarly dispute. It seems to be very probable that this will continue to be so forever. An enormously complex transformation occurred in a very large, diversified and intricate society, and the event was unique: no imitative industrialization can be treated as an event of the same kind as the original industrialization, simply in virtue of the fact that all the others were indeed imitative, were performed in the light of the now established knowledge that the thing could be done and had certain advantages (though the emulated ideal was of course interpreted in all kinds of quite diverse ways). So we can never repeat the original event which is to be understood, which was perpetrated by men who knew not what they did, and this was of its essence: we cannot do this, for quite a number of cogent reasons - the sheer fact of repetition makes it different from the original occasion; one cannot in any case reproduce all the circumstances of early modern Western Europe; and experiments on such a scale, for the sake of establishing a theoretical point, are morally hardly conceivable. In any case, to sort out causal threads in so complex a process, we should need not one, but very, very many re-runs, and these will never be available to us.

La otredad: ¿real o inventada? El caso de las brujas

1999 ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Elia Nathan Bravo
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Empirical Content ◽  
Extreme Situation ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The One ◽  
In Virtue Of

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. On the one hand, it offers a general analysis of stigmas (a person has one when, in virtue of its belonging to a certain group, such as that of women, homosexuals, etc., he or she is subjugated or persecuted). On the other hand, I argue that stigmas are “invented”. More precisely, I claim that they are not descriptive of real inequalities. Rather, they are socially created, or invented in a lax sense, in so far as the real differences to which they refer are socially valued or construed as negative, and used to justify social inequalities (that is, the placing of a person in the lower positions within an economic, cultural, etc., hierarchy), or persecutions. Finally, I argue that in some cases, such as that of the witch persecution of the early modern times, we find the extreme situation in which a stigma was invented in the strict sense of the word, that is, it does not have any empirical content.

The Birth of the National Historical Writing in England and France

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Palamarchuk ◽  
◽  
Ekaterina Terenteva ◽  
Sergey Fyodorov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Complex Analysis ◽  
Legal Consciousness ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Past ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Prevalent Form ◽  
Xviith Century

The monograph is a study of main trends of emergence and evolution of the national historical writing in Western Europe in the XVIIth century. Based on a complex analysis of several phenomena which defined the development of the Early Modern historical writing, it provides a comparative analysis of the regional schools of historical writing (particularly those of the English antiquaries and French érudits) in the process of their respective growth and formation accomplished by the end of XVIIth century with the advent of the national historiography. The conceptual unity of the book is verified within the context of the rise of the national states in England and France, which stipulated a consistent demand for reinforcing the nationally orientated discourses not only in a historical writing but also in legal and political thought. The perception of England as an empire, entrenched in the insular historical and legal consciousness, recurring during the reigns of the Stuarts and extending to the whole British archipelago, determined the establishment of chorography as a prevalent form characteristic of the English historiography. Chorographic structure of the narrative unfolding the space of the territorial “empire” to the reader corresponded to the method of “intellectual appropriation” of the British Isles by the English antiquarians which could be defined as “cultural-historical”. A considerable role was devoted to reactualization of ethnogenetic myths at different levels: while some of them (primarily – the Galfridian myth) were regarded as relevant to the pan-British cultural and historical past, others emphasized autonomous dimensions of the past and present of distinct composites (Scotland, Ireland, Wales) The continental French variant of proto-national historiography also utilized the idea of empire but in a different mode defined by the formula “rex in regno suo imperator est”. The emerging school of érudits modelled principles of its narratives on patrimonial structures rooted in the feudal medieval society (dynasty; royal family; aristocratic lineages; seigneurial rights and vassal obligations; the system of offices created by the monarch stemming from the royal household etc.). The unity of the subjects of the French kingdom was ensured not by the shared territorial commonality but by their loyalty to the king. Therefore, the French variant of “intellectual appropriation” was developed in a socio-political direction in contrast to the territorial.

scholarly journals The rise of new knowledge types and their trailblazers, and the management of value chains

2007 ◽  
pp. 40-51
Author(s):  
Marcel Hoogenboom ◽  
Willem Trommel ◽  
Duco Bannink
Keyword(s):  
Information Technologies ◽  
Knowledge Society ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Technical Knowledge ◽  
New Professionals ◽  
Types Of Knowledge ◽  
Group Identities

In this article, the authors argue that there is no such thing as the knowledge society. Like many others authors, they claim that the fundamental transformations of our time can be typified as the end of the national ‘industrial society’ and the move towards some kind of global society dominated by the production and use of knowledge. They argue, however, that these transformations not necessarily produce a convergence of national and regional socio-economic structures. In industrial society two types of knowledge were dominant: ‘technical knowledge’ and ‘social knowledge’. In our time, the growing diverseness of individual and group identities produced by reflexivisation, globalisation and the advancement of information technologies calls for the development and application of a new type of knowledge: ‘cultural knowledge’. They analyse the consequences of the increased significance of cultural knowledge in the economic sphere in terms of the division of labour, and subsequently conceptualise three different types of knowledge societies: ‘the techno-cultural’, ‘the socio-cultural’ and the ‘socio-technical knowledge society’. Finally, they will portray three ‘categories’ of trailblazers of the knowledge societies, new professionals that perform ‘meta business functions’. These trailblazers directly or indirectly create new value chains by linking or destroying existing ones, and breaking up others in to pieces in order to create new combinations. These professionals, in other words, actively manage value chains.

scholarly journals Not for Sale, but for Own Need”: Trade of the Volhynian Gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Second Half of the 16th — First Half of the 17th Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Ihor Huliuk
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Traded Goods ◽  
Classical Economic ◽  
Economic Nature ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe ◽  
General Criticism

The article analyzes socioeconomic processes in the early modern Europe, in particular trade in its separate regions. It considers the classical economic model focused on the industry and agriculture, which Eastern and Western Europe followed in their multifaceted development. It studies legislation, namely the Second Lithuanian Statute and the Sejm Constitutions for assessing the involvement of gentry representatives in commerce. It indicates that the activity of the Volhynian gentry in the internal trade of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was due to both external changes in the market, primarily the demand for products from Eastern Europe, and the tendency observed on the continent when running a household became a business that made incomes grow. It analyzes general criticism in the intellectual circles of the trade activity of the gentry as such, which could lead to a certain deterioration of traditions. Man-knight and man-merchant intersections in the society of that time were acceptable if a nobleman traded goods from his own estates and could prove it with an oath.The article also investigates key areas of trade of the Volhynian gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the basis of documentary material of court books of the 16th–17th-century Volhynia and previously published sources of economic nature. It studies main range of goods sold and bought by the representatives of the elite, observes the participation of the Volhynian gentry in trade operations with the core centers of the Polish-Lithuanian economy, and their involvement in local fairs and tradings. It shows the role of intermediaries, first of all representatives of the Jewish community and peasants from the gentry fоlwarks, in the trade enterprise of the gentry.

Being and Becoming

2021 ◽  
pp. 425-438
Author(s):  
Jan Lorenz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Perceived Threat ◽  
Ethnic Boundaries ◽  
Being And Becoming

This chapter explores conversions to Judaism in pre-modern confessional states that were recognized as central to the experience of European Jews and became common in antiquity in the last two centuries BCE. It talks about the procedure and legal ramifications of conversion to Judaism that first emerged in the reforms that were retroactively attributed to Nehemiah and Ezra. It also explains how conversions to Judaism are considered as a social organization of difference of the situational reorganization of ethnic boundaries, which responds to the perceived threat of Hellenism and assimilation. The chapter looks at accounts of transition to Judaism from early modern western Europe, which were generally kept in secret as they ran the risk of ostracism by the surrounding Christian world. It discusses how individuals who became Jewish at the time were being driven by intellectual and theological reasoning.

Durkheim, Émile (1858–1917)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Paravantes
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Organic Solidarity ◽  
Mechanical Solidarity ◽  
Traditional Communities

David Émile Durkheim was a founding figure of sociology in France. His conceptual development of the "division of labour" (1893) remains key to a sociological understanding of modernity; in social terms, the highly-divided "organic" solidarity of modern nations and industrial society stood against the simplified "mechanical" solidarity of traditional communities.

scholarly journals Servitude and Work at the Dawn of the Early Modern Era The Devaluation of Salaried Workers and the “Undeserving Poor”

2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (01) ◽  
pp. 77-85
Author(s):  
Giacomo Todeschini
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Economic Rationality ◽  
Salaried Workers ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Undeserving Poor

Abstract Thomas Piketty’s analysis of the way that neoliberal economists use false meritocracy to justify growing economic inequality invites historians to reconsider the representation of workers in the economic thought and administrative politics of preindustrial Western Europe. This renewed focus on those termed mercenarii in theological, economic, and legal texts, namely salaried workers, shows that since the thirteenth century the literate elites of Christian Europe have interpreted manual labor as the sign of a competence that was useful but also socially and politically devalorizing. The ancient Roman conception of wages as auctoramentum servitutis, or evidence of servitude, reemerges at the end of Middle Ages in the guise of a complex theological, legal, and governmental discourse about the intellectual incompetence and necessary political marginality of salaried workers as manual laborers. At the dawn of the early modern era, the representation of salaried labor as a social condition corresponding to a state of servitude and lack of intellect characterizes both literary works and the economic rationality embodied by the first “scientific” economists.

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