Workshop – Institutions of Popular Mobilisation
Ghent
5th December 2014
Project « Politisations ordinaires »/« Common Politisations »
Labex SMS, University of Toulouse, University of Ghent, University of Leuven, University of Sevilla
Coordinated by Jan Dumolyn (Ghent), Jelle Haemers (Leuven), Rafael Oliva Herrer (Sevilla) et Claire Judde de Larivière (Toulouse)
Keynote Speakers : Marc Boone (Ghent), Marcel van der Linden (Amsterdam)
In the middle ages and the early modern period, the common people were part of various institutions that regulated collective life. Some of these were structured formally and had statutes, for instance guilds, confraternities and church-fabric committees. Workers as well as urban elites belonged to these groups, which means they involved people from different social groups in their practices. These institutions regulated the organisation of labour, organised collective devotion, financed and took care of church buildings. Men and women were active in these institutions and they regularly assembled to decide for instance about rules and regulations regarding labour time, the duration of contracts, the age of apprenticeship, or the nature and quality of production.
In order to come to agreements, the members negotiated and discussed, imposed their views on others, followed or resisted the leaders’ ideas and proposed alternatives. These spaces and moments of collective life provided occasions for the commoners to elaborate upon and discuss the frameworks and rules of their communities and to come to a shared understanding, whether tacit or explicitly formulated on codes of action and of reflecting on the common good. This implied integrating the rules of negotiation in a habitus of collective deliberation, of learning how to convene, how to behave, how to vote and how to discuss.
The objective of this workshop is to identify how these institutions functioned and how they provided the common people with a political culture necessary to build up a critical public discourse and a set of resources for popular mobilisation. Whether the elites ignored this capacity or took it into account, in the end these discourses created a practice of power by themselves.
We are seeking papers from across the disciplines, and especially in late medieval and early modern history, which explore the role and functions of ordinary people in these institutions, the way they worked, their organisation, their composition ; the forms of action of their members, their means of action, the topics of discussion and debate, their political resources and tools of actions ; the places of gathering ; and the sources which can help study them.
Please send a brief abstract (max. 250 words) and a brief narrative CV (max. 150 words) to Jan Dumolyn (jan.dumolyn@ugent.be) and Claire Judde de Lariviere (judde@univ-tlse2.fr) by 15 May 2014.
Source de l’information : Vlaamse Werkgroep Mediëvistiek
L'Agenda des Médiévistes 