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“Social disciplining” is the name that has been given to attempts by the authorities throughout early modern Europe to regulate people's private lives.1 In explicit contrast to “social control,” the informal mechanisms by which people have always sought to put pressure on one another in traditional societies, “social disciplining” was a set of form...
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... Much weaker guilds which increasingly failed to exclude women from training and skilled work prevailed both in Eastern Europe (in the absence of the EMP) and in England and the Netherlands (in its presence) (Ogilvie, 2003(Ogilvie, , 2004b(Ogilvie, ,c, 2005d(Ogilvie, , 2007b. Other corporative institutions such as village communities were extremely strong both in Russia (non-EMP) and in Germany (EMP) (Ogilvie,1997(Ogilvie, , 2003(Ogilvie, , 2004b(Ogilvie, , 2006Dennison and Ogilvie, 2007;Dennison, 2011). Corporative institutions played a central role in lowering women's economic status but show no systematic relationship with the EMP or any other family institution. ...
... These organizations used their institutional powers to impose"social disciplining"on ordinary people for the benefit of elite interests (Ogilvie, 2006). In many societies, education levels were not chosen by ordinary people themselves, for economic or other reasons, but rather imposed on them by elites to serve their own interests, and thus depended on the powers these elites enjoyed via the wider institutional system: the church, the state, serfdom, communities, guilds. ...
This chapter surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth and points out weaknesses in a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically substituted for public-order ones in enabling markets to function; that parliaments representing wealth holders have not invariably been favorable for growth; and that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England did not mark the sudden emergence of either secure property rights or economic growth. Economic history has been used to support both the centrality and the irrelevance of secure property rights to growth, but the reason for this is conceptual vagueness. Secure property rights require much more careful analysis, distinguishing between rights of ownership, use, and transfer, and between generalized and particularized variants. Similar careful analysis would, we argue, clarify the growth effects of other institutions, including contract-enforcement mechanisms, guilds, communities, serfdom, and the family. Greater precision concerning institutional effects on growth can be achieved by developing sharper criteria of application for conventional institutional labels, endowing institutions with a scale of intensity or degree, and recognizing that the effects of each institution depend on its relationship with other components of the wider institutional system.
... Many historians working on the change in daily life during the early modern age have found the notion of social disciplining useful. Developed in the late 1960s by the German historian Gerhard Oestreich (1982), social disciplining refers to a set of strategies through which the early modern state sought to discipline, rationalize, and organize its subjects' behavior in order to facilitate well-ordered government and to improve the strength of the army (van Krieken 1990;Ogilvie 2006). ...
Over the past decade the idea that Europe experienced a centuries-long decline in homicide, interrupted by recurrent surges and at different speeds in different parts of the continent, became widely acknowledged. So far explanations have relied mostly on anecdotal evidence, usually broadly relying on Norbert Elias's theory of the "civilizing process." One major general theory of large-scale fluctuations in homicide rates, self-control theory, offers a wide range of hypotheses that can be tested with rigorous quantitative analyses. A number of macro-level indicators for so-cietal efforts to promote civility, self-discipline, and long-sightedness have been examined and appear to be strongly associated with fluctuations in homicide rates over the past six centuries.
... Much weaker guilds which increasingly failed to exclude women from training and skilled work prevailed both in eastern Europe (in the absence of the EMP) and in England and the Netherlands (in its presence) [Ogilvie (2003[Ogilvie ( , 2004b[Ogilvie ( , 2004c[Ogilvie ( , 2005d[Ogilvie ( , 2007b]. Other corporative institutions such as village communities were extremely strong both in Russia (non-EMP) and in Germany (EMP) [Ogilvie (1997[Ogilvie ( , 2003[Ogilvie ( , 2004b[Ogilvie ( , 2006; Dennison and Ogilvie (2007); Dennison (2011)]. Corporative institutions played a central role in lowering women's economic status but show no systematic relationships with the EMP or any other family institution. ...
... In many parts of central and northern Europe, school attendance and literacy were imposed and enforced by churches, rulers, landlords, communal officials, and occupational guilds. These organizations used their institutional powers to impose "social disciplining" on ordinary people for the benefit of elite interests [Ogilvie (2006)]. In many societies, education levels were not chosen by ordinary people themselves, for economic or other reasons, but rather imposed on them by elites to serve their own interests, and thus depended on the powers these elites enjoyed via the wider institutional system: the church, the state, serfdom, communities, guilds. ...
This is Part 2 of a two-part paper which surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth. The paper provides a critical scrutiny of a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically substituted for public-order ones in enabling markets to function; that parliaments representing wealth holders have not invariably been favourable for growth; and that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 did not mark the sudden emergence of either secure property rights or economic growth. Economic history has been used to support both the centrality and the irrelevance of secure property rights to growth, but the reason for this is conceptual vagueness. Secure property rights require much more careful analysis, distinguishing between rights of ownership, use and transfer, and between generalized and particularized variants. Similar careful analysis would, we argue, clarify the growth effects of other institutions, including contract-enforcement mechanisms, guilds, communities, serfdom, and the family. Greater precision concerning institutional effects on growth can be achieved by developing sharper criteria of application for conventional institutional labels, endowing institutions with a scale of intensity or degree, and recognizing that the effects of each institution depend on its relationship with other components of the wider institutional system. Part 2 of the paper examines how institutions are situated in wider institutional systems, explores alternative approaches to explaining institutions, and applies the arguments established in earlier sections to the institution of serfdom. It concludes by drawing the implications of both parts of the paper for institutions and economic growth in historical perspective.
Sumptuary laws that regulated clothing based on social status were an important part of the political economy of premodern states. We introduce a model that captures the notion that consumption by ordinary citizens poses a status threat to ruling elites. Our model predicts a non-monotonic effect of income—sumptuary legislation initially increases with income, but then falls as income increases further. The initial rise is more likely for states with less extractive institutions, whose ruling elites face a greater status threat from the rising commercial class. We test these predictions using a new dataset of country and city-level sumptuary laws.
It is unfortunately an established fact that both men and womenfolk have, in utterly irresponsible manner, driven extravagance in dress and new styles to such shameful and wanton extremes that the different classes are barely to be known apart. —Nuremberg Ordnance of 1657, Quoted in Hunt (1996)
The European Experience brings together the expertise of nearly a hundred historians from eight European universities to internationalise and diversify the study of modern European history, exploring a grand sweep of time from 1500 to 2000. Offering a valuable corrective to the Anglocentric narratives of previous English-language textbooks, scholars from all over Europe have pooled their knowledge on comparative themes such as identities, cultural encounters, power and citizenship, and economic development to reflect the complexity and heterogeneous nature of the European experience. Rather than another grand narrative, the international author teams offer a multifaceted and rich perspective on the history of the continent of the past 500 years. Each major theme is dissected through three chronological sub-chapters, revealing how major social, political and historical trends manifested themselves in different European settings during the early modern (1500–1800), modern (1800–1900) and contemporary period (1900–2000).
This resource is of utmost relevance to today’s history students in the light of ongoing internationalisation strategies for higher education curricula, as it delivers one of the first multi-perspective and truly ‘European’ analyses of the continent’s past. Beyond the provision of historical content, this textbook equips students with the intellectual tools to interrogate prevailing accounts of European history, and enables them to seek out additional perspectives in a bid to further enrich the discipline.
The chapter examines instances of conflict in an eighteenth-century Prussian centralized manufactory in order to assess how individual employees navigated between their responsibilities toward the state and the state’s responsibility toward them. Using the example of “troublemakers”—individuals who repeatedly clashed either with co-workers or with their superiors—it reveals the existence of a system of conflict management that allowed individual workers to voice their grievances and be heard. The extant letters written by these workers to the management (and sometimes even to the king himself) illustrate a certain sense of entitlement that conflicts with our understanding of a Prussian “military state” based on obedience and discipline. The chapter argues that this was the case because the administration of this enterprise (and by extension, the state) took over central functions from the trade guilds. In part, the employees transferred certain expectations regarding their well-being from the guilds to the state and acted accordingly.
This short reply considers and rejects from the point of view of Religious Studies , proposals that something of “religious literacy” should be salvaged, either for pedagogical or for other pragmatic purposes. It further rejects suggestions that the critique of religious literacy entails an obligation on the part of the critic to find an alternative raison d’être for Religious Studies. The resonance of religious literacy clearly derives from a powerful legacy of institutional social discipline spanning nearly 500 years; yet only very recently has the concept been re-purposed as core academic mission. Therefore, the costs of abandoning religious literacy now are minimal (except for those institutions who rashly bet everything on the paradigm); by comparison, the costs of pursuing it seem high and include a possible re-assimilation of academic to other historical institutions of social discipline such as penitentiaries (with “residential” and other “reformatory” schools representing significant hybrid or transitional formations).
Noch vor ↗Gold war S. das wichtigste ↗Edelmetall der Nz. Seine überragende Bedeutung lag in seiner Verwendung als ↗Währungs-Metall; daneben wurde es zu kultischen Zwecken — die kath. Kirche sah nach dem ↗Trienter Konzil (1545–1563) die Verwendung von S. für die Ausschmückung von Tabernakeln und anderen Gegenständen der ↗Kirchenausstattung vor -, für luxuriöse Haushaltsgegenstände und zur ↗Schmuck-Herstellung verwendet (vgl. ↗Silberschmied).
The history of consumer behaviour has been studied intensively for a generation. While researchers initially focused on Western Europe and colonial America, questions surrounding consumerism are sparking economic, political and cultural analyses across the world. When new commodities became available this produced profound social and cultural effects. These important comparative studies identify some notable parallels in economic development, urbanization and commercial growth in certain parts of Asia and Europe. This article contributes to the debate, examining the functioning of fashion and the attempts by authorities to limit fashion activity in two world regions. Fashion took root as part of wider economic and social changes, signalling wider societal transformations. Early modern governments struggled to contain plebeian consumption, as economic systems evolved. Clothing is political. Over the early modern period, a growing volume of new fabrics gradually redefined common clothing and encouraged wider participation in fashion. Urban men and women, outside the elites, embraced this cultural project. Fashion systems flourished in both Eurasian regions under study, albeit with different social constraints and economic priorities in play. The reception of Indian cotton textiles is at the heart of this analysis. In Tokugawa Japan and northwest Europe, Indian cottons represented fresh new additions to their material worlds. Indian cottons animated fashion cultures and the material qualities of these textiles presented unique challenges to existing social hierarchies.
