Branch Office Vilnius of the German Historical Institute Warsaw – Außenstelle Vilnius des DHI Warschau, Vilnius, Litauen (Web)

Venue: Vilnius, Litauen
Time: 20.-21.01.2021
Proposals by: 30.06.2020

The notion of childhood is a socio-historical construction, as it is might be seen differently not only in various cultures but also experienced differently within the same society. Even the definition of who is a child has changed over time, revealing fluctuations of childhood periodization. Therefore, the understanding of childhood is always in the process and its notion might be constantly shifting. French historian Philippe Ariès designated the birth of modern conception of childhood in Western countries in the long eighteenth century, even though he was criticized for overseeing many sources revealing the perceptions of childhood in medieval society.

In this period, children commenced to be separated from the adults and were gradually turned into the objects of new state policies. Nevertheless, it was only in the nineteenth century when childhood became universalized and was inscribed as an important element in the development of nation states and their future. Consequently, children had to be socialized not only within the context of their families and communities, but they had likewise to become part of a national narrative.

Nonetheless, the majority of scholarly research related to the childhood and its history in this period focuses on Western European countries, while the childhood and children experiences in Central and Eastern Europe remain a largely underinvestigated topic. To better illuminate this issue, this conference aims to assemble scholars, who work on the history of childhood in Central and Eastern Europe, to present their current research findings in this field. Read more and source … (Web).

FWF-DACH Projekt „Issues with Europe. A Network Analysis of the German-speaking Alpine Conservation Movement“ (Web) und Universität Innsbruck

Zeit: 21.-23.04.2021
Ort: Innsbruck
Einreichfrist: 31.05.020

Im alpinen Raum trafen und treffen immer wieder Nutzungsansprüche aufeinander, hatte er doch die unterschiedlichsten Aufgaben zu erfüllen: Als Dachgarten, Spielplatz, Wasserschloss und Durchhaus Europas sind die Alpen bereits genutzt worden, wobei hier die Anforderungen an die Berge in den Bereichen Ökologie, Tourismus, Wirtschaft und Verkehr evident werden. Während diese Nutzungsansprüche v.a. auf außeralpine Bedürfnisse zurückzuführen waren, standen dem die Forderungen der inneralpinen Bevölkerung gegenüber, der die Alpen als Lebens-, Kultur- und Wirtschaftsraum dienten.

Jedoch lassen sich die Nutzungskonflikte nicht allein zwischen inner- und außeralpinen Ansprüchen verorten, sondern auch innerhalb dieser Gruppen kollidierten verschiedene Interessen. Hierbei stellten die Alpen ein Kollektivgut dar, bei dem die unterschiedlichsten ökologischen, ökonomischen, sozialen und kulturellen Nutzungsansprüche aufeinandertrafen. In diesem Kontext sollen die Alpen nicht als rein geografisch definierte Region in Europa verstanden werden, sondern als diskursiver Raum, in dem Aneignungsprozesse, Zugehörigkeits- und Besitzformen von den jeweiligen Akteur*innen verhandelt wurden. Darüber hinaus beinhalteten die vielfältigen Nutzungskonflikte auch Debatten über konkurrierende Konzepte für die Entwicklung des Alpenraums, womit letztlich auch Fragen der Deutungshoheit und Machtansprüche inkludiert waren.

Die Tagung konzentriert sich auf Nutzungskonflikte in den Alpen seit 1970, die sich, so die Ausgangsthese, vor dem Hintergrund und in enger Wechselwirkung mit einer Ökologisierung, Europäisierung und Regionalisierung des Alpenbogens entfalteten. Gesucht werden Beiträge zu folgenden Bereichen:
– Tourismus
– Verkehr
– Energie
– Naturschutz
– Land- und Forstwirtschaft
– Kultur. Read more and english version … (Web)

Delphine Barbier-Pain (INRAP-CReAAH), Aline Durand (Univ. du Mans-CReAAH), Sophie Laligant (Univ. de Tours-CITERES) and Aurélie Reinbold (Docteur Univ. de Rennes II) (Web)

Time: 25.–27.11.2020
Venue: Université du Mans, France
Proposals by: 30.05.2020

Numerous hemp kilns abandoned in the countryside, particularly in western France, remind us of the importance of hemp canvas production during modern and contemporary times. Today, our society is re-discovering this plant which appears to be of interest to make agriculture more environment-friendly. Despite this glorious economic past, the history of hemp as a textile crop has yet to be written. Neither in written sources nor in archaeological sources does hemp weigh the true weight it had in the economy of ancient societies.

This is due to (i) the relative scarcity of wet archaeological sites that guarantee the good conservation of organic remains, and (ii) the paucity of developments on these issues in the scholarly literature and in diplomatic and administrative registers up to the end of the medieval period. To remedy this limitation, an interdisciplinary approach between Humanities and biological sciences is necessary to cross historical, archaeological, ethnological and bioarchaeological tools and data and to write the intertwined history of men and hemp.

The conference aims to strengthen the synergies among the many disciplines that aim to investigate textile hemp through its production upstream of the final canvas diachronically over the Protohistory – 21st century period. This event is an opportunity to take stock of the current state of the scientific knowledge and methodologies used to characterize the presence of this plant and the way it is exploited.

Three sessions will be organized on the following themes:

• Hem cultivation: fields, locations, techniques, myths and folklore associated with it.
• Plant processing and waste treatment (processing line, retting, drying, scutching, transformation, waste disposal).
• Movement of goods and knowledge (movement of seeds, fibers, thread, waste, knowledge, local and international trade). Read more, french version and source … (Web)

International Conference on Food Economies in Pre-Modern Europe (Web)

Organisers: Pere Benito i Monclús, Frederic Aparisi Romero, Maria López Carrera, Adrià Mas Craviotto and Guillem Roca Cabau (Univ. de Lleida), and Joan Maltas i Montoro (Univ. de Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis)

New Date: 17.–18.09.2020
Venue: University of Lleida, Spain
Proposals by: extended – 31.05.2020

During the first half of the 20th century, the market was interpreted as an exogenous element to the medieval society, which was considered fundamentally autarkic. Under the influence of the market, medieval society increasingly focused its productive bases on commercialization, whose growth was the primum movens of geographical specialization. Under these premises, a good deal of the historiography of the time maintained that between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, there was a progressive and more or less linear trend of the European economy towards commercialization; feudal institutions were an obstacle for this development, and commercialization emerged from the cities and was introduced into the countryside to transform rural economy.

In the last two decades, a number of studies have reconsidered the role of market economy and commercialization among pre-modern peasant societies and have shown that between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries both had already penetrated strongly in rural areas. Another line of studies, focusing on the importance of interregional exchanges, states that the development and integration of markets did not occur in a linear fashion, and wonders whether the reasons that determined it were more linked to technological or institutional factors.

Within these new lines of research, food markets take a fundamental place. The food that has received the most attention is cereal. The importance of the commercial networks through which it circulated has been determined, as well as the importance of the cereal in determining the conditions of life in the countryside and the city or the relevance of the policies that tried to control or tax its traffic. The relationship between market and dearth or famine remains one of the most controversial issues to date. In the 18th century, … read more (Web).