BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//Columba Systems Ltd//NONSGML CPNG/SpringViewer/ICal Output/3.3-
 M3//EN
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20180318T114856Z
DTSTART:20180418T160000Z
DTEND:20180418T180000Z
SUMMARY:CIDRAL Roundtable: 'The Culture of Business in the Middle Ages: T
 hemes\, Approaches and Sources'
UID:{http://www.columbasystems.com/customers/uom/gpp/eventid/}kc8-jchn8ce
 x-e8al9y
DESCRIPTION:This event is part of CIDRAL's 2017/18 programme\, The Constr
 aints of Creativity\n\nThis roundtable will include Georg Christ (Histor
 y\, University of Manchester)\, Rory Naismith (History\, Kings College L
 ondon)\, Catherine Casson (History\, University of Manchester)\, and Ste
 phen Mossman (History\, University of Manchester) (moderator).\n\nBusine
 ss might be the dominant cultural institution and force of our age. It p
 rovides ever more of our products and services\, its values suffuse our 
 cultures\, its language structures our discourses\, its power melds and 
 distorts our politics. This current domination is a product of very long
  run historical processes.\nBusiness history to date has concerned itsel
 f with the growth and development of firms and business systems over tim
 e and their interactions with wider social\, political\, and cultural co
 ntexts. Yet business\, whether or not identified with the firm\, is also
  embedded in social and cultural systems and structures\, from which it 
 derives much of its legitimacy and potency and on which it has a powerfu
 l shaping force. Attitudes towards the conduct of business can reveal a 
 society’s priorities with regard to such critical issues as the creation
  and distribution of wealth\, the organization of production and exchang
 e\, and the distribution of power amongst social\, political\, economic\
 , and cultural institutions.\n\nThis roundtable moves the study of busin
 ess history away from a focus on the firm and its activities and towards
  a broader definition that encompasses a range of activities and practic
 es embedded within systems of value and social and institutional structu
 res. This is particularly appropriate for the middle ages\, when busines
 s was usually conducted by independent merchants rather than by firms. \
 n	\nThe roundtable also launches the edited volume ‘A Cultural History o
 f Business in the Middle Ages: Themes\, Approaches and Sources’\, part o
 f a 6 volume set commissioned by Bloomsbury under the direction of Prof 
 Andrew Popp and edited by Georg Christ and Catherine Casson. Two contrib
 utors to the volume will present their work. Dr Bart Lambert (University
  of York) will discuss how merchants shaped\, and were shaped by\, the d
 istribution of power. Dr Deborah Thorpe (Trinity College\, Dublin) will 
 examine the business opportunities that emerged with the growth of writt
 en records and how the production and exchange of such records was organ
 ised. \n\nIntroduction: Business History Redefined		 \nGeorg Christ and 
 Catherine Casson\nThe middle ages was a period of economic transformatio
 n and expansion. Economic activities developed from the domestic sphere 
 to an urban and meta-regional economy. While the concept of ‘business’ m
 ay have originally been understood by medieval people as the activity of
  being busy in house\, garden and fields\, on the battlefield\, and in c
 hurch\, it began to take on a more specific focus\, associated with the 
 multiplication of professions. Religious and political institutions prov
 ided a communicative and legal framework within which actors could do bu
 siness. Business men and women operating on markets were the catalysers 
 of commercial exchange. They took risks and created innovations in produ
 cts and processes\, but also exercised judgement in their interactions w
 ith government\, customers and colleagues.  \n\nPower and the Politics o
 f Business: Merchants\, Monarchs and States in Medieval Europe	\nBart La
 mbert (University of York)\nBusiness both shaped\, and was shaped by\, p
 olitics in the middle ages. This paper explores the political dimension 
 of business and its relationship to power and the powerful in medieval E
 urope. It links the rise of businessmen as a political force to the emer
 gence of large cities from the tenth century onwards. The theme is devel
 oped further by looking at the involvement of businessmen in governmenta
 l structures in polities where authority was strongly centralised in the
  hands of a prince\, where princes and cities shared power and where cit
 ies had considerable political autonomy. Special attention is given to t
 he relationship between towns and their surrounding countryside and to t
 he position of foreign merchants. Medieval businessmen did not have to p
 articipate in government in order to have political influence. Several c
 ase studies demonstrate how they gained power by exploiting rulers’ depe
 ndency on their economic activities\, their supply of financial credit i
 n particular. \n\nBusiness and Materiality: Business\, Administration an
 d the Production of Literature \nDeborah Thorpe\nThe worlds of business 
 and administration and the production of literature became inextricabili
 ty connected in the middle ages. The scribes who wrote bureaucratic docu
 ments and letters\, and the merchants\, who recorded their everyday tran
 sactions onto paper and parchment\, also composed\, copied\, bought\, an
 d traded literary texts. This paper outlines how\, from the twelfth cent
 ury onwards\, the rise of the ‘business mode’ for the management of an u
 rban\, more specialised economy produced and reproduced the conditions o
 f the material life of the text. It was business concerns that promoted 
 the rise of the written word as property rights\, financial transactions
 \, legal verdicts\, and institutional practices were increasingly record
 ed physically. It was a growth in employment opportunities for the men w
 ho could produce these material records that caused lay literacy to prol
 iferate and push beyond the religious houses.  \nA thriving market for l
 iterary texts grew among this prospering literate class of bureaucrats\,
  merchants\, clergy\, scholars and academics—as well as the gentlemen an
 d women\, nobility\, and royalty who could read but did not necessarily 
 write. This fuelled a ‘business mode’ of literary text production as boo
 ks proliferated\, first in manuscript form from monasteries and then in 
 print amongst the laity. This resulted in a situation where professional
  bureaucratic scribes of the fifteenth century found themselves divided 
 between the ‘bread and butter’ work of royal and civic administration an
 d the composition and copying of literary texts for patrons and members 
 of their own ‘literary circles’. Techniques from the medical humanities 
 are used to understand what happened to these professional writers when 
 they got older - did this work slow-down or dry up\, or did they find th
 at they had more time for this 'freelance' work when they worked fewer h
 ours in their day job?\n\n\n\n\n
STATUS:TENTATIVE
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
LOCATION:A104\, Samuel Alexander Building\, Manchester
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR