Innovation and Medieval Communities
The Circulation of Ideas and Practices in and out of the Town (1200-1500)
Edited by Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin Edited by Nils Bock Edited by Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin
This book highlights the complex relationships of innovation and transformation in communities in Northwest Europe between 13th and 15th century by observing the reception of innovations and the strategies of their diffusion or rejection.
The creation of new things and the destruction of old things is a principle of capitalism and apparently well known to us. The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter expressed this in the formula of “creative destruction”. In this way, destruction is not a defect of market activity, but the necessary consequence of something new coming into being. If we accept this logic, which contrasts every general gain with a concrete loss, as one of the contradictions of the capitalist economy, well studied for the 19th and 20th centuries, we must admit that medieval culture also demonstrated its mastery of the art of the paradox when the question of innovation is raised. Indeed, dynamics of the relationship between old and new are not, by the focus on technical and industrial progress or digital change, specific to modernity and postmodernity. Cultural change characterises all cultures, although the characteristics and perceptions differ. This is particularly true for times of cultural change, which must not be reduced too quickly to the epochal change of Antiquity-Middle Ages-Modern Times. The European Middle Ages between 13th and 15th century exhibits such dynamics of old and new and therefore offers the possibility of tracing them analytically. In this context, the long-held image of an epoch in which all change was slowed down or prevented can be rejected. On focusing on problem solution and conflicts, the studies gathered in this collective book provide a variety of strategies which can be qualified as new on the basis of the use of reflections, materiality, technical solutions, sciences or innovative methods. Different combinations are conceivable, from the new as an impulse for change, to the use of the new to preserve the old state, and even to the rejection of the new. In this way, by looking through the mirror of the past, this book also contributes to a differentiated view of innovation in our contemporary societies.
- Edited by Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin
- Edited by Nils Bock
- Edited by Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin
Other Titles in this Series
Power of Space in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
The cities of Italy, Northern France and the Low Countries
Volume 30
city, the duke and their banker
The Rapondi family and the formation of the Burgundian state (1384-1430)
Volume 7
Usuriers publics et banquiers du Prince
Le role economique des financiers piemontais dans les villes du duche de Brabant (XIIIe-XIVe siecle)
Volume 28
Sixteenth-century Antwerp and its Rural Surroundings
Social and Economic Changes in the Hinterland of a Commercial Metropolis (ca. 1450 - ca. 1570)
Volume 14
Subaltern City?
Alternative and Peripheral Urban Spaces in the Pre-modern Period (13th-18th Centuries)
Volume 46
Epitomes of Evil
Representations of Executioners in Northern France and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages
Volume 8
La police de Bruxelles entre reformes et revolutions (1748-1814)
Police urbaine et modernite
Volume 29
Message in a Bottle
Merchants' letters, merchants' marks and conflict management in 1533-34. A source edition
Volume 57
For the Common Good
State Power and Urban Revolts in the Reign of Mary of Burgundy, 1477-1482
Volume 17
Public Opinion and Political Contest in Late Medieval Paris
The Parisian Bourgeois and his Community, 1400-1450
Volume 60
Urban public debts, urban government and the market for annuities in Western Europe (14th-18th centuries)
Volume 3
Economies, Public Finances, and the Impact of Institutional Changes in Interregional Perspective
The Low Countries and Neighbouring German Territories (14th-17th centuries)
Volume 36
Les identites urbaines au Moyen Age. Regards sur les villes du Midi francais
Actes du colloque de Montpellier 8-9 decembre 2011
Volume 32
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