Since the groundbreaking publications by Igor Kopytoff and Arjun Appadurai on the biographies of objects and the social life of things in the mid-1980s, the idea of writing history through things has become firmly established in the historical sciences. The final breakthrough came with the BBC radio series and publication ‘History of the World in 100 Things’ in 2009/10. This initiative by the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, focused on objects as sources and made them accessible to a large audience.

This year’s conference aims to discuss the potential and limitations of the material cultural studies approach for current economic history of the Middle Ages. Methods and research results from various fields such as archaeology, art history and anthropology shall be taken into account. Therefore, insights into the complexity of the medieval economy will be provided, which can be divided into five areas of interest: 1) economic thinking, 2) production, 3) distribution and consumption, 4) finance and 5) everyday life.

Questions that could be discussed include, for example:
1. How did the use of objects in economic contexts affect medieval people in general? What ‘affordance’ (Schmitz-Esser, Keupp 2015) did /do objects have in economic contexts?
2. How did objects structure work and production processes or lead to their transformation?
3. How can we interpret specific consumer preferences visible in objects, for example in connection with the development of trade and the market?
4. Which objects (pictures, maps, etc.) reflect certain ideas and knowledge about economic processes?
5. How do objects (such as textbooks, illustrations, tally sticks) function as stores and media of economic knowledge?
6. What role did objects play in the context of economically relevant communication processes (quality control or advertising)?
7. What do objects reveal about power relations regarding economic processes (measurement and control in the sale of goods, human trafficking)?

We warmly invite researchers at all career levels to present and constructively discuss their projects on the above-mentioned aspects and questions. Please send a short abstract (max. 500 words) and a cv by 1 May 2025 to: tanja.skambraks@uni-graz.at

The conference will be held from September 24 -26 2025 at the University of Graz. Conference languages are English and German. All travel and accommodation expenses will be covered.

Source : H-Soz-Kult