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
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
Sociabilite urbaine et criminalisation etatique
La justice namuroise face a la violence de 1360 a 1555
Volume 39
The Seven Sorrows Confraternity of Brussels
Drama, Ceremony, and Art Patronage (16th-17th Centuries)
Volume 37
Moving Pictures. Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries
Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries
Volume 34
Governments of the Universitates
Urban Communities of Sicily in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Volume 21
Earning Dignity
Labour Conditions and Relations during the Century of the Black Death in Marseille
Volume 38
Councils, Conflicts, Correspondence
Urban Diplomacy in Reval (Tallinn) and Lübeck (c. 1470–1570)
Volume 67
Des villes en revolte
Les republiques urbaines aux Pays-Bas et en France pendant la deuxieme moitie du XVIe siecle
Volume 23
Urban Hierarchy
The Interaction between Towns and Cities in Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Times
Volume 53
Gouverner la ville au bas Moyen Age
Les elites dirigeantes de la ville de Namur au XVe siecle
Volume 16
La Justice dans une ville du Nord du Royaume de France au Moyen Age
Etude sur la pratique judiciaire a Saint-Quentin (fin XIe-debut XVe siecle)
Volume 24
Similar Books
A Late Antique Harrowing of Hell and Its Medieval Reception
Eusebius of Alexandria's Sermons 15 and 17 (CPG 5524; 5526) and their Latin Rewritings
Volume 99
Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs
An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches
Volume 90
Crossroads of Cultures
Multilingual Diversity in Dutch Literature from Late Medieval Flanders
Volume 41
Linguistic and Cultural Dynamics in a Frontier Society
New Perspectives on Northeastern Bavaria and Western Bohemia in the Early Middle Ages
Volume 9
Medieval Debates on Foreknowledge: Future Contingents, Prophecy, and Divination
Acts of the XXVII Annual Colloquium of the SIEPM, Trento 12-15 September 2023
Volume 31
Medieval Yeghegis, Armenia
History, Archaeology, Society. Local Multiplicities and Global Connections of a Rural Centre on the Silk Road(s)
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Studies from Western Europe and North Africa
Volume 44
Networking through Biography
Constructing Intellectual Junctions in Antiquity, the Renaissance and the Arabo-Islamic World
Volume 19
Un fascicolo di prediche pistoiesi del 1233. (Pistoia, Archivio Capitolare, C.112)
A cura di Gilda P. Mantovani, Marco Petoletti e Riccardo Saccenti
Volume 556
