Worthy Efforts: Attitudes to Work and Workers in Pre-Industrial Europe

Lis, Catharina; Soly, Hugo

doi:10.1163/9789004232778

Cited by 82 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Skilled labour was thus sanctified using an existing Christian language. 87 Moreover, as in various other types of medieval community, the sacraments, especially the mass, were probably the principal occasions for creating a social unity that transgressed differences.…”

Section: A N G U a G E S O F B R O T H E R Ly L O V E A N D C H A Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An aversion to rapid self-enrichment at the expense of poorer colleagues is typical of artisans all over medieval and early modern Europe. 51 But expressing this social and moral criticism in literature often also meant taking a political stand, and guild authors in the Netherlands appear sometimes emboldened by their powerful position. Some of Everaert's plays questioning the government's economic and military policies were effectively banned by the authorities.…”

Section: H O N E S T L a B O U R A N D A D E C E N T L I V E L I H O O Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…98 But the primary purpose of guild charity was to reinforce the brothers' intense communal life based on their shared work. 99 Providing or denying charity to individuals created communities. 100 The fruits of every guild brother's work paid for charity, and it was reserved for those genuinely unable to perform labour.…”

Section: A N G U a G E S O F B R O T H E R Ly L O V E A N D C H A Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“I Thought of it at Work, in Ostend”: Urban Artisan Labour and Guild Ideology in the Later Medieval Low Countries

Dumolyn

2017

Int Rev of Soc His

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From the twelfth and certainly from the thirteenth century onwards, a social group of artisans with their own political and economic aspirations can be clearly delineated in Netherlandish towns. Bound through common skilled work, they made up a distinctive group with a self-image and a developing political vision and economic programme. Their “guild ideology” is increasingly clearly expressed in the sources they produced from the fourteenth century onwards as a self-confident group in urban society. Labour, certainly when organized within guild structures, was the cornerstone of community life, cultural experiences, and practical ethics. Even though there were socioeconomic differences among guildsmen and many geographical and chronological variations in the degree of political power they wielded, the ideal of artisan ideology in the late medieval Low Countries was one of a community of brotherly love and charity centred on the value of skilled labour.

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Section: A N G U a G E S O F B R O T H E R Ly L O V E A N D C H A Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: H O N E S T L a B O U R A N D A D E C E N T L I V E L I H O O Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A N G U a G E S O F B R O T H E R Ly L O V E A N D C H A Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“I Thought of it at Work, in Ostend”: Urban Artisan Labour and Guild Ideology in the Later Medieval Low Countries

Dumolyn

2017

Int Rev of Soc His

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“…Even if young women were paid for their work as servants, they were not acting and negotiating in a free labour market, and their actual work behaviour cannot be explained in terms of free choice only. 9 One could argue, of course, that like coverture and guardianship, the statutes of service were Damoclean swords of little practical importance, but this needs to be studied empirically.…”

Section: N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N W O M E N ' S Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mistress or maid: the structure of women's work in Sweden, 1550–1800

Lindström

Jansson²,

Fiebranz³

et al. 2017

Cont. Change

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Based on the verb-oriented method and a unique collection of observations from court records, this article shows that both men and women did almost all categories of work in early modern Sweden. On the level of concrete tasks, however, there was both difference and similarity between the genders. Marital status exerted a strong influence on women's sustenance activities, creating a clear distinction between unmarried and ever-married women. These patterns were probably the effect of a labour legislation that forced young people without independent means to offer their bodies and time to masters and mistresses.

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“…Having to work with one's hands precluded a contemplative life, as it was considered akin to slavery and opposed to independence and freedom. 29 This, rather than living standards and labor relations, may explain the ferocious and prolonged character of the revolts. In the Low Countries, the military and political successes of the guilds coincided with a shift, first but not exclusively in cloth production, toward high-quality luxury products, the manufacturing of which implied the input of sophisticated skills and product knowledge and an institutional framework to standardize and guard product quality.…”

Section: The Emergence Of Artisanal Citizenshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disassembling the City: A Historical and an Epistemological View on the Agency of Cities

Munck

2016

Journal of Urban History

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Current ideas about the “agency” of cities are dominated by economists and economic geographers who point to agglomeration economies and the clustering of institutions, if not to “creative classes” and a tolerant and diverse cultural climate. In this article, such views will be historized and denaturalized. It will be examined how “urban agency” was fabricated in the late medieval and early modern period, stressing the role of political philosophy and epistemology. First, focusing on guilds and artisanal economic actors, I will describe the coemergence of specific types of skills and knowledge and the urban as a community and body politic. Subsequently, I will argue that the city as an “assemblage” transformed drastically during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, showing that the transformations concerning both the political and economic identity of guild-based artisans and the city as a specific political community were contingent on specific attitudes and practices related to matter and materiality.

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Worthy Efforts: Attitudes to Work and Workers in Pre-Industrial Europe

Cited by 82 publications

References 0 publications

“I Thought of it at Work, in Ostend”: Urban Artisan Labour and Guild Ideology in the Later Medieval Low Countries

“I Thought of it at Work, in Ostend”: Urban Artisan Labour and Guild Ideology in the Later Medieval Low Countries

Mistress or maid: the structure of women's work in Sweden, 1550–1800

Disassembling the City: A Historical and an Epistemological View on the Agency of Cities

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