Other by Anna Bellavitis
in M. Arnoux, P. Monnet (dir.), Le technicien dans la cité en Europe occidentale, 1250-1650, Rome... more in M. Arnoux, P. Monnet (dir.), Le technicien dans la cité en Europe occidentale, 1250-1650, Rome, Ecole Française de Rome 2004, pp. 161-179 L'incompatibilità tra arti meccaniche e nobiltà è un principio antico, ma che viene ribadito con forza nel Cinquecento, un po' in tutta Europa e soprattutto negli Stati italiani, spesso tradizionalmente più tolleranti, soprattutto per quanto riguardava i patriziati urbani e il loro diritto ad esercitare attività mercantili e industriali su larga scala. 1 La definizione dello statuto nobiliare e delle attività che si addicono al nobile prende un significato e un'importanza del tutto particolari laddove le difficili circostanze politiche e militari cinquecentesche portano a dei mutamenti costituzionali e di governo, il che accade in quasi tutti gli Stati italiani. 2 La Repubblica di Venezia, e il suo patriziato, sopravvivono invece alla crisi delle guerre d'Italia, alla rivolta delle élites delle città suddite al momento della Lega di Cambrai, affermandosi come l'unico tra i grandi Stati italiani capace, a prezzo di rinunciare a nuove espansioni e, col tempo, anche ad intervenire nella politica internazionale, di mantenersi del tutto indenne dall'influenza o dalla dominazione della Spagna di Filippo II. 3 Certo, né la Repubblica né il suo governo uscirono totalmente indenni dalla crisi e ne sono testimonianza le riforme del Consiglio dei Dieci del 1581 ma anche, come è stato osservato di recente, l'affermazione di una nuova "immagine di sè" del patrizio come magistrato, come uomo di governo, assai più che come homo oeconomicus impegnato soprattutto nei traffici marittimi. 4 I limiti del patriziato veneziano non sono però ridefiniti in quest'epoca, lo saranno a metà del XVII secolo e allora sarà necessaria una lunga e complessa elaborazione per stabilire quali criteri fossero pertinenti per "selezionare" gli aspiranti al titolo, ai quali si chiedeva essenzialmente di essere pronti a sborsare 100.000 ducati per 1 Cfr. C. Donati, L'idea di nobiltà in Italia, secoli XIV-XVIII, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1988. 2 Ibidem, in particolare, 205-233. 3 La bibliografia su questo periodo della storia veneziana è vastissima e tocca diversissimi aspetti, per delle sintesi recenti, si vedano i saggi contenuti nella Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima,
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The aim of the 8th conference of the network Gender Differences in the History of European Legal ... more The aim of the 8th conference of the network Gender Differences in the History of European Legal Cultures will be to analyse the consequences of different European juridical systems on the development of specific economic roles for men and women. At the core of the comparative analysis, at the European scale, there will be the different economic evolutions of European regions in the early modern and modern times. Customary laws characterized Northern Europe and Roman law characterized Southern Europe, but at the local level there were many differences, depending on urban statutes, craft rules, family structures, political and economic systems.
The aim of the conference is to question the narrative of the “great divergence” between the economies of Northern and Southern Europe in relation with the opportunities that different juridical systems gave to women and men to act in the society as economic actors. Were they so different? Were women allowed to play a public role, recognised at an institutional level? Which role did women’s property play in the urban economy? And how did a specific kind of marital economy influence the economic development? Are “industrious” and “industrial” revolutions useful tools to understand the economic development and, if it is the case, are they related to specific juridical systems?
Conference languages: English, French
Please, send suggestions for contributions in the form of an abstract in English or in French (3000 characters max) by July 30th 2016 to : anna.bellavitis@univ-rouen.fr and to beatrice.zucca@gmail.com.
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Conferences and meetings by Anna Bellavitis
Con il suo ultimo libro (Il lavoro delle donne nelle città dell’Europa moderna, Viella 2016), Ann... more Con il suo ultimo libro (Il lavoro delle donne nelle città dell’Europa moderna, Viella 2016), Anna Bellavitis ha dato un contributo importante alla visibilità del lavoro femminile nella storia dell’evoluzione economica della società europea. Le sue pagine raccontano le vite delle donne che affollavano le città moderne coniugando la storiografia internazionale con la ricerca di archivio in un racconto immediato e affascinante che travalica l’interesse specialistico fino ad aprire squarci inattesi sulla condizione femminile contemporanea, eternamente sospesa lungo l’incerto confine tra vulnerabilità e risorsa
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Events by Anna Bellavitis
genesis, 2022
Inequalities have always been present in human societies in various ways. They are at the very f... more Inequalities have always been present in human societies in various ways. They are at the very foundation of hierarchies of wealth, prestige, honour and culture..., but also at the basis of those ideologies that legitimize or condemn them, in general and in particular.
The problem is at the forefront of the agendas of many historians and economists, who may either look at the more or less distant past, or take into account the present and future outlooks. To mention but a few works that have enjoyed widespread attention, one can think of, for example, the recent volume by French economist Thomas Picketty who, starting from a harsh critique of current capitalism and its contradictions, considers directly and explicitly the theme of equality and its history (Picketty, 2021). Similarly, historian Walter Scheidel’s work, published a few years earlier (2017), pays particular attention to when and why the curve of inequality has turned in the history of human societies. The 2019 annual conference of the Datini Institute in Prato, dedicated to economic inequalities in pre-industrial societies was explicitly inspired by these two works. The aim in this case, was to address from more specific and local perspectives the same theme which is rightly considered a central issue in the contemporary debate (Nigro, 2020), to which legal historian Aldo Schiavone made an important contribution, by tackling the legal implementations that accompany inequalities over time (Schiavone 2019).
These studies all have in common a certain indifference towards gender inequalities which admittedly have always been present in history, also from an economic point of view. This silence implies, among other things, a deformation of the general perspective of the analyses: the history of the path towards equality seems to concern exclusively the male gender without questioning the validity and legitimacy of analytical and political viewpoints that evaluate the world as more or less just, regardless of the substantial inequality between men and women, which is taken so much for granted as to become (once again) invisible. A long- or very long-term perspective and the attention to (macro)economic aspects of inequality further unites these studies.
How can we correct these perspectives that seem to take women out of the equation, once again dismissing their relevance in measuring the progress or regression of human societies with respect to (in)equality? Such an approach revives a type of historical analysis that forgoes to consider the conceptual contributions of women’s and gender history.
A double “course correction” may be taken in order to modify this deformed image of history. On the one hand, we should scale down the historical and economic analysis in order to trace the countless paths designed by and for (individual and collective) protagonists within societies dominated by specific conceptions of inequality, based in turn on distinct perceptions of justice and equity that are not only manifested in economic spheres. Precisely for this reason, on the other hand, we should bring to the forefront of history the interrelation of different dimensions of life and social practices. If the economy has been, at least until the “Great Transformation” described by Polanyi, systematically and effectively integrated into a broader social framework, it is then necessary to re-acknowledge the importance of this dimension in explaining facts and the behaviors (including economic ones) of social actors. This broader framework has a great influence in defining possible ideological scenarios, the categories within which action is thought and evaluated, and justice thought and reworked.
The aim of this issue of Genesis is therefore to collect papers that allow to redirect the analysis in a more adequate and open direction of inequalities in general history starting from the partiality of women’s history, as well as from a critique of the existing historiographic and economic literature.
The subtitle: “The value of women” already suggests the direction that should be followed, focusing on the analysis of the economic, legal, social value... attributed to women - their work, their words, their legal, intellectual, political capacity - in different periods and cultural contexts. This value attributed by institutions, legal systems, as well as by social norms and standards, can be quantitative (as, for example, in the case of wages), but it may also refer to more intangible aspects (the value of female testimony in the courts, or the value of female prayer in some religions, for example). This can be observed from the point of view of both norms, and individual and collective actions aimed at “correcting” inequalities created by such norms when these are perceived as unfair, contrary to a subjective idea that justice should be enforced on the basis of case by case evaluation.
This perspective opens up another one, concerning the implicit ideas of justice and injustice that support redistributive practices, whether on a collective and institutional, or individual scale. What criteria determine the relative position of individuals and “groups” (including women) within a given society? How is women’s inequality systematically reiterated, affirmed and reproduced in all fields - from economics to politics, from rights to religion, through culture and access to education? What discourses and practices underpin it over time? How do these conceptions evolve and affect the fundamental social transformations from which they are themselves generated? At what levels - individual, collective, normative or informal... - can redistributive actions be registered that show, among other things, women’s agency in restoring particular forms of equity?
The transition to contemporary times, to the age of equality as a shared prospect, is certainly an essential field of study, which should be revived starting from the analysis of the criteria that govern the persistence of fundamental inequalities (in law and in practice) now inscribed within a perspective that, contrary to the pre-contemporary period, envisions equality as possible if not desirable. How do women behave in a world in which proclaimed equality is echoed by actual unrelenting inequality? What kinds of actions are taken to redress a state of affairs that contrasts with an ideal right, and what are the outcomes?
The article proposals must address these questions through specific case-studies or through critical reinterpretations of the more or less recent economic, historiographic and historical-legal bibliography related to the issues of inequality, from a gender perspective.
Bibliography
Guido Alfani e Matteo di Tullio 2019, The Lion’s share. Inequality and the Rise of the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe, Cambridge UP
Céline Bessière e Sibylle Gollac 2020, Le genre du capital. Comment la famille reproduit les inégalités, La Découverte
M. Bracke, R. Clifford, C. Donert, R. Glynn, J. McLellan, & S. Todd (2019). “Women, Work and Value in Post-War Europe: Introduction”, Contemporary European History, 28(4), 449-453
Laura Lee Downs, "Wages and the Value of Work. Women's Entry into French and British Mechanized Industries Under Conditions of Inequality (1914–1920)", Travail, genre et sociétés, 2006/1 (No 15), p. 31-49
Giovanni Levi 2003, “Aequitas vs. Fairness. Reciprocità ed equità fra età moderna ed età contemporanea”, Rivista di storia economica, 2, p. XX
----- 2015, “Breve storia della società ingiusta”, Psiche, 1, p. XX
Hélène Périvier, 2020 L’Economie féministe. Pourquoi la science économique a besoin du féminisme et vice-versa, Les Presses de Science Po
Thomas Picketty 2013, Le Capital au XXIe siècle, Le Seuil
----- 2021, Brève histoire de l’égalité, Le Seuil
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La “Tavola ovale di storia moderna” è un ciclo di incontri seminariali pensati per favorire un co... more La “Tavola ovale di storia moderna” è un ciclo di incontri seminariali pensati per favorire un confronto e uno scambio scientifico tra chi si occupa di storia moderna, uno spazio libero e informale di aggiornamento storiografico sulle ricerche in corso.
29 settembre 2017 con Anna Bellavitis
Il seminario sarà l'occasione per riflettere su come come viveva una lavoratrice in una città dell’Europa moderna, quali opportunità le si offrivano e quali barriere si opponevano alla sua carriera lavorativa e ancora quali attività poteva svolgere e a quali salari poteva aspirare. Con l'autrice si discuterà del recente volume "Il lavoro delle donne nelle città dell'Europa moderna", Roma 2016 che ricostruisce il ruolo di artigiane, commercianti, balie e prostitute, ma anche mercantesse, artiste, giornaliste e capitane d’industria, che ebbero un peso fondamentale nell’evoluzione economica della società europea, nonostante i molti limiti che leggi e tradizioni imposero alla loro libertà di azione e movimento.
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Histoire sociale de la France (mobilité, titres... by Anna Bellavitis
(avec Anna Bellavitis & Monica Martinat, dir.), Mobilité et transmission dans les sociétés europé... more (avec Anna Bellavitis & Monica Martinat, dir.), Mobilité et transmission dans les sociétés européennes (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), actes des colloques «Mobilités sociales en Europe (XVI-XVIII siècles)» et «Les contraintes de la transmission à l’époque moderne. Enjeux symboliques et patrimoniaux», tenus en septembre 2005 et décembre 2006 à l’université Paris X Nanterre, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009.
Cet ouvrage renouvelle les approches traditionnelles des sociétés de l’Ancien Régime en interrogeant la reproduction et la mobilité sociale associées à la mobilité géographique. Il insiste sur les difficultés rencontrées par les acteurs et les solutions qu’ils sont amenés à inventer. Comment les familles de la noblesse, du commerce et de l’artisanat organisent-elles la transmission de leurs patrimoines matériels et symboliques ? Comment les groupes familiaux et socioprofessionnels contrôlent-ils leur renouvellement ? Pourquoi se convertit-on ? Quelle est la part du libre choix et de la contrainte dans les trajectoires des individus qui migrent ?
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Book Chapters by Anna Bellavitis
Ilja Van Damme, Bert De Munck and Andrew Miles (eds), Cities and Creativity from the Renaissance to the Present (New York: Routledge), 2017
It is often assumed by economic geographers and economic historians that cities foster innovation... more It is often assumed by economic geographers and economic historians that cities foster innovation and creativity on account of their very nature. Our chapter sets out to denaturalize and historicize this assumption by focusing on the way in which such views have emerged from the history of Renaissance cities. To that end, we will connect the history of Renaissance myth-making to the economic fate of the cities while taking into account the constructed and conventional character of product quality. Comparing Italian cities with cities in the Low Countries, we argue that the renown and fame of Renaissance artisans and artists resulted from discourses and power-knowledge formations in which urban actor groups claimed to be making superior products. These actor groups not only enforced urban monopolies on the production of high quality products in a military and political way, but they also constructed product quality by connecting it to the urban context in a material and discursive way. Thus, the skills and knowledge of the artisans and artists involved became intricately bound to the imagined qualities of the cities they worked and lived in. While the connection between urban ideology and economic self-understanding runs through the perception and assessment of the value of products, the perceived superiority of certain cities became inseparable from the perceived superiority of specific skills and talents of specific urban groups – and vice versa.
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Conference by Anna Bellavitis
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Papers by Anna Bellavitis
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Nov 4, 2019
International audienc
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Routledge eBooks, Dec 12, 2022
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International audienc
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Anche se i diritti patrimoniali delle donne a Genova diminuiscono a partire dalla metà del XII se... more Anche se i diritti patrimoniali delle donne a Genova diminuiscono a partire dalla metà del XII secolo, le loro attività economiche e la loro libertà di azione permangono importanti. L'intervento propone un confronto tra la realtà genovese e altre realtà urbane italiane, in particolare Venezia.
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Speculum, 2017
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The History of The Family, 2014
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Uploads
Other by Anna Bellavitis
The aim of the conference is to question the narrative of the “great divergence” between the economies of Northern and Southern Europe in relation with the opportunities that different juridical systems gave to women and men to act in the society as economic actors. Were they so different? Were women allowed to play a public role, recognised at an institutional level? Which role did women’s property play in the urban economy? And how did a specific kind of marital economy influence the economic development? Are “industrious” and “industrial” revolutions useful tools to understand the economic development and, if it is the case, are they related to specific juridical systems?
Conference languages: English, French
Please, send suggestions for contributions in the form of an abstract in English or in French (3000 characters max) by July 30th 2016 to : anna.bellavitis@univ-rouen.fr and to beatrice.zucca@gmail.com.
Conferences and meetings by Anna Bellavitis
Events by Anna Bellavitis
The problem is at the forefront of the agendas of many historians and economists, who may either look at the more or less distant past, or take into account the present and future outlooks. To mention but a few works that have enjoyed widespread attention, one can think of, for example, the recent volume by French economist Thomas Picketty who, starting from a harsh critique of current capitalism and its contradictions, considers directly and explicitly the theme of equality and its history (Picketty, 2021). Similarly, historian Walter Scheidel’s work, published a few years earlier (2017), pays particular attention to when and why the curve of inequality has turned in the history of human societies. The 2019 annual conference of the Datini Institute in Prato, dedicated to economic inequalities in pre-industrial societies was explicitly inspired by these two works. The aim in this case, was to address from more specific and local perspectives the same theme which is rightly considered a central issue in the contemporary debate (Nigro, 2020), to which legal historian Aldo Schiavone made an important contribution, by tackling the legal implementations that accompany inequalities over time (Schiavone 2019).
These studies all have in common a certain indifference towards gender inequalities which admittedly have always been present in history, also from an economic point of view. This silence implies, among other things, a deformation of the general perspective of the analyses: the history of the path towards equality seems to concern exclusively the male gender without questioning the validity and legitimacy of analytical and political viewpoints that evaluate the world as more or less just, regardless of the substantial inequality between men and women, which is taken so much for granted as to become (once again) invisible. A long- or very long-term perspective and the attention to (macro)economic aspects of inequality further unites these studies.
How can we correct these perspectives that seem to take women out of the equation, once again dismissing their relevance in measuring the progress or regression of human societies with respect to (in)equality? Such an approach revives a type of historical analysis that forgoes to consider the conceptual contributions of women’s and gender history.
A double “course correction” may be taken in order to modify this deformed image of history. On the one hand, we should scale down the historical and economic analysis in order to trace the countless paths designed by and for (individual and collective) protagonists within societies dominated by specific conceptions of inequality, based in turn on distinct perceptions of justice and equity that are not only manifested in economic spheres. Precisely for this reason, on the other hand, we should bring to the forefront of history the interrelation of different dimensions of life and social practices. If the economy has been, at least until the “Great Transformation” described by Polanyi, systematically and effectively integrated into a broader social framework, it is then necessary to re-acknowledge the importance of this dimension in explaining facts and the behaviors (including economic ones) of social actors. This broader framework has a great influence in defining possible ideological scenarios, the categories within which action is thought and evaluated, and justice thought and reworked.
The aim of this issue of Genesis is therefore to collect papers that allow to redirect the analysis in a more adequate and open direction of inequalities in general history starting from the partiality of women’s history, as well as from a critique of the existing historiographic and economic literature.
The subtitle: “The value of women” already suggests the direction that should be followed, focusing on the analysis of the economic, legal, social value... attributed to women - their work, their words, their legal, intellectual, political capacity - in different periods and cultural contexts. This value attributed by institutions, legal systems, as well as by social norms and standards, can be quantitative (as, for example, in the case of wages), but it may also refer to more intangible aspects (the value of female testimony in the courts, or the value of female prayer in some religions, for example). This can be observed from the point of view of both norms, and individual and collective actions aimed at “correcting” inequalities created by such norms when these are perceived as unfair, contrary to a subjective idea that justice should be enforced on the basis of case by case evaluation.
This perspective opens up another one, concerning the implicit ideas of justice and injustice that support redistributive practices, whether on a collective and institutional, or individual scale. What criteria determine the relative position of individuals and “groups” (including women) within a given society? How is women’s inequality systematically reiterated, affirmed and reproduced in all fields - from economics to politics, from rights to religion, through culture and access to education? What discourses and practices underpin it over time? How do these conceptions evolve and affect the fundamental social transformations from which they are themselves generated? At what levels - individual, collective, normative or informal... - can redistributive actions be registered that show, among other things, women’s agency in restoring particular forms of equity?
The transition to contemporary times, to the age of equality as a shared prospect, is certainly an essential field of study, which should be revived starting from the analysis of the criteria that govern the persistence of fundamental inequalities (in law and in practice) now inscribed within a perspective that, contrary to the pre-contemporary period, envisions equality as possible if not desirable. How do women behave in a world in which proclaimed equality is echoed by actual unrelenting inequality? What kinds of actions are taken to redress a state of affairs that contrasts with an ideal right, and what are the outcomes?
The article proposals must address these questions through specific case-studies or through critical reinterpretations of the more or less recent economic, historiographic and historical-legal bibliography related to the issues of inequality, from a gender perspective.
Bibliography
Guido Alfani e Matteo di Tullio 2019, The Lion’s share. Inequality and the Rise of the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe, Cambridge UP
Céline Bessière e Sibylle Gollac 2020, Le genre du capital. Comment la famille reproduit les inégalités, La Découverte
M. Bracke, R. Clifford, C. Donert, R. Glynn, J. McLellan, & S. Todd (2019). “Women, Work and Value in Post-War Europe: Introduction”, Contemporary European History, 28(4), 449-453
Laura Lee Downs, "Wages and the Value of Work. Women's Entry into French and British Mechanized Industries Under Conditions of Inequality (1914–1920)", Travail, genre et sociétés, 2006/1 (No 15), p. 31-49
Giovanni Levi 2003, “Aequitas vs. Fairness. Reciprocità ed equità fra età moderna ed età contemporanea”, Rivista di storia economica, 2, p. XX
----- 2015, “Breve storia della società ingiusta”, Psiche, 1, p. XX
Hélène Périvier, 2020 L’Economie féministe. Pourquoi la science économique a besoin du féminisme et vice-versa, Les Presses de Science Po
Thomas Picketty 2013, Le Capital au XXIe siècle, Le Seuil
----- 2021, Brève histoire de l’égalité, Le Seuil
29 settembre 2017 con Anna Bellavitis
Il seminario sarà l'occasione per riflettere su come come viveva una lavoratrice in una città dell’Europa moderna, quali opportunità le si offrivano e quali barriere si opponevano alla sua carriera lavorativa e ancora quali attività poteva svolgere e a quali salari poteva aspirare. Con l'autrice si discuterà del recente volume "Il lavoro delle donne nelle città dell'Europa moderna", Roma 2016 che ricostruisce il ruolo di artigiane, commercianti, balie e prostitute, ma anche mercantesse, artiste, giornaliste e capitane d’industria, che ebbero un peso fondamentale nell’evoluzione economica della società europea, nonostante i molti limiti che leggi e tradizioni imposero alla loro libertà di azione e movimento.
Histoire sociale de la France (mobilité, titres... by Anna Bellavitis
Cet ouvrage renouvelle les approches traditionnelles des sociétés de l’Ancien Régime en interrogeant la reproduction et la mobilité sociale associées à la mobilité géographique. Il insiste sur les difficultés rencontrées par les acteurs et les solutions qu’ils sont amenés à inventer. Comment les familles de la noblesse, du commerce et de l’artisanat organisent-elles la transmission de leurs patrimoines matériels et symboliques ? Comment les groupes familiaux et socioprofessionnels contrôlent-ils leur renouvellement ? Pourquoi se convertit-on ? Quelle est la part du libre choix et de la contrainte dans les trajectoires des individus qui migrent ?
Book Chapters by Anna Bellavitis
Conference by Anna Bellavitis
Papers by Anna Bellavitis
The aim of the conference is to question the narrative of the “great divergence” between the economies of Northern and Southern Europe in relation with the opportunities that different juridical systems gave to women and men to act in the society as economic actors. Were they so different? Were women allowed to play a public role, recognised at an institutional level? Which role did women’s property play in the urban economy? And how did a specific kind of marital economy influence the economic development? Are “industrious” and “industrial” revolutions useful tools to understand the economic development and, if it is the case, are they related to specific juridical systems?
Conference languages: English, French
Please, send suggestions for contributions in the form of an abstract in English or in French (3000 characters max) by July 30th 2016 to : anna.bellavitis@univ-rouen.fr and to beatrice.zucca@gmail.com.
The problem is at the forefront of the agendas of many historians and economists, who may either look at the more or less distant past, or take into account the present and future outlooks. To mention but a few works that have enjoyed widespread attention, one can think of, for example, the recent volume by French economist Thomas Picketty who, starting from a harsh critique of current capitalism and its contradictions, considers directly and explicitly the theme of equality and its history (Picketty, 2021). Similarly, historian Walter Scheidel’s work, published a few years earlier (2017), pays particular attention to when and why the curve of inequality has turned in the history of human societies. The 2019 annual conference of the Datini Institute in Prato, dedicated to economic inequalities in pre-industrial societies was explicitly inspired by these two works. The aim in this case, was to address from more specific and local perspectives the same theme which is rightly considered a central issue in the contemporary debate (Nigro, 2020), to which legal historian Aldo Schiavone made an important contribution, by tackling the legal implementations that accompany inequalities over time (Schiavone 2019).
These studies all have in common a certain indifference towards gender inequalities which admittedly have always been present in history, also from an economic point of view. This silence implies, among other things, a deformation of the general perspective of the analyses: the history of the path towards equality seems to concern exclusively the male gender without questioning the validity and legitimacy of analytical and political viewpoints that evaluate the world as more or less just, regardless of the substantial inequality between men and women, which is taken so much for granted as to become (once again) invisible. A long- or very long-term perspective and the attention to (macro)economic aspects of inequality further unites these studies.
How can we correct these perspectives that seem to take women out of the equation, once again dismissing their relevance in measuring the progress or regression of human societies with respect to (in)equality? Such an approach revives a type of historical analysis that forgoes to consider the conceptual contributions of women’s and gender history.
A double “course correction” may be taken in order to modify this deformed image of history. On the one hand, we should scale down the historical and economic analysis in order to trace the countless paths designed by and for (individual and collective) protagonists within societies dominated by specific conceptions of inequality, based in turn on distinct perceptions of justice and equity that are not only manifested in economic spheres. Precisely for this reason, on the other hand, we should bring to the forefront of history the interrelation of different dimensions of life and social practices. If the economy has been, at least until the “Great Transformation” described by Polanyi, systematically and effectively integrated into a broader social framework, it is then necessary to re-acknowledge the importance of this dimension in explaining facts and the behaviors (including economic ones) of social actors. This broader framework has a great influence in defining possible ideological scenarios, the categories within which action is thought and evaluated, and justice thought and reworked.
The aim of this issue of Genesis is therefore to collect papers that allow to redirect the analysis in a more adequate and open direction of inequalities in general history starting from the partiality of women’s history, as well as from a critique of the existing historiographic and economic literature.
The subtitle: “The value of women” already suggests the direction that should be followed, focusing on the analysis of the economic, legal, social value... attributed to women - their work, their words, their legal, intellectual, political capacity - in different periods and cultural contexts. This value attributed by institutions, legal systems, as well as by social norms and standards, can be quantitative (as, for example, in the case of wages), but it may also refer to more intangible aspects (the value of female testimony in the courts, or the value of female prayer in some religions, for example). This can be observed from the point of view of both norms, and individual and collective actions aimed at “correcting” inequalities created by such norms when these are perceived as unfair, contrary to a subjective idea that justice should be enforced on the basis of case by case evaluation.
This perspective opens up another one, concerning the implicit ideas of justice and injustice that support redistributive practices, whether on a collective and institutional, or individual scale. What criteria determine the relative position of individuals and “groups” (including women) within a given society? How is women’s inequality systematically reiterated, affirmed and reproduced in all fields - from economics to politics, from rights to religion, through culture and access to education? What discourses and practices underpin it over time? How do these conceptions evolve and affect the fundamental social transformations from which they are themselves generated? At what levels - individual, collective, normative or informal... - can redistributive actions be registered that show, among other things, women’s agency in restoring particular forms of equity?
The transition to contemporary times, to the age of equality as a shared prospect, is certainly an essential field of study, which should be revived starting from the analysis of the criteria that govern the persistence of fundamental inequalities (in law and in practice) now inscribed within a perspective that, contrary to the pre-contemporary period, envisions equality as possible if not desirable. How do women behave in a world in which proclaimed equality is echoed by actual unrelenting inequality? What kinds of actions are taken to redress a state of affairs that contrasts with an ideal right, and what are the outcomes?
The article proposals must address these questions through specific case-studies or through critical reinterpretations of the more or less recent economic, historiographic and historical-legal bibliography related to the issues of inequality, from a gender perspective.
Bibliography
Guido Alfani e Matteo di Tullio 2019, The Lion’s share. Inequality and the Rise of the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe, Cambridge UP
Céline Bessière e Sibylle Gollac 2020, Le genre du capital. Comment la famille reproduit les inégalités, La Découverte
M. Bracke, R. Clifford, C. Donert, R. Glynn, J. McLellan, & S. Todd (2019). “Women, Work and Value in Post-War Europe: Introduction”, Contemporary European History, 28(4), 449-453
Laura Lee Downs, "Wages and the Value of Work. Women's Entry into French and British Mechanized Industries Under Conditions of Inequality (1914–1920)", Travail, genre et sociétés, 2006/1 (No 15), p. 31-49
Giovanni Levi 2003, “Aequitas vs. Fairness. Reciprocità ed equità fra età moderna ed età contemporanea”, Rivista di storia economica, 2, p. XX
----- 2015, “Breve storia della società ingiusta”, Psiche, 1, p. XX
Hélène Périvier, 2020 L’Economie féministe. Pourquoi la science économique a besoin du féminisme et vice-versa, Les Presses de Science Po
Thomas Picketty 2013, Le Capital au XXIe siècle, Le Seuil
----- 2021, Brève histoire de l’égalité, Le Seuil
29 settembre 2017 con Anna Bellavitis
Il seminario sarà l'occasione per riflettere su come come viveva una lavoratrice in una città dell’Europa moderna, quali opportunità le si offrivano e quali barriere si opponevano alla sua carriera lavorativa e ancora quali attività poteva svolgere e a quali salari poteva aspirare. Con l'autrice si discuterà del recente volume "Il lavoro delle donne nelle città dell'Europa moderna", Roma 2016 che ricostruisce il ruolo di artigiane, commercianti, balie e prostitute, ma anche mercantesse, artiste, giornaliste e capitane d’industria, che ebbero un peso fondamentale nell’evoluzione economica della società europea, nonostante i molti limiti che leggi e tradizioni imposero alla loro libertà di azione e movimento.
Cet ouvrage renouvelle les approches traditionnelles des sociétés de l’Ancien Régime en interrogeant la reproduction et la mobilité sociale associées à la mobilité géographique. Il insiste sur les difficultés rencontrées par les acteurs et les solutions qu’ils sont amenés à inventer. Comment les familles de la noblesse, du commerce et de l’artisanat organisent-elles la transmission de leurs patrimoines matériels et symboliques ? Comment les groupes familiaux et socioprofessionnels contrôlent-ils leur renouvellement ? Pourquoi se convertit-on ? Quelle est la part du libre choix et de la contrainte dans les trajectoires des individus qui migrent ?