Bert De Munck
Biographic Data
| ID | 288895 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bert De Munck |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bert |
| FAMILY NAME | De Munck |
| SIGNATURE | DE MUNCK B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Antwerp |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1927-9254 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 41 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Hoe het teleologische denken de pandemie overleefde
How teleological thinking survived the pandemic This essay starts from the observation that historians have remarkably uncritically followed the biopolitical logic behind the approach to the Covid-19 pandemic. It explores why our knowledge and understanding of the historical background thereof did not prevent most from going along with the idea that there was no alternative to it. I argue that historians too were stuck in a teleological notion of…
Assembling Path Dependency and History: An Actor-Network Approach
Historians and social scientists struggling to redefine the relationship between synchrony (structure) and diachrony (events and human agency) have recently turned to the notion of path dependence, the core idea of which is that history matters. But history and path-dependence theory have less in common than might appear at first glance. Actor-network theory (ant) helps to bridge the gap between history and path dependence by incorporating the co…
Commons and the nature of modernity: Towards a Cosmopolitical View on Craft Guilds
This paper argues that historical research on late medieval and early modern craft guilds fails to escape teleological and anachronistic views, including when they are addressed as commons or 'institutions for collective action'. These present-day conceptual lenses do not only create idealized views on guilds, but also of the contexts in which they operated, especially the state and the market. This is especially the case with neo-institutional v…
Knowledge and the Early Modern City: A History of Entanglements
Knowledge and the early modern city
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents case studies with the use of very different analytical lenses. It aims to compare European and non-European cities or address long-distance networks. The book addresses one city in particular include other scalar levels with a focus on social and intellectual networks, the circulation of concepts and of objects. The book…
Artisans as knowledge workers: Craft and creativity in a long term perspective
Rewinding Civil Society: Conceptual Lessons from the Early Modern Guilds
Traditionally it is assumed that “modern” civil society originated in the associations, clubs, and public sphere of the eighteenth century as a result of the “liberation” of the individual from the “shackles” of absolutism, religious intolerance, and the patriarchal family. However, recent research goes further back in time. Scholars such as Robert Putnam (sociologist), Antony Black (political scientist), and Katherine Lynch (historian) associate…
Relocating Civil Society: Theories and Practices of Civil Society between Late Medieval and Modern Society
Civil society is widely considered as a crucial element in contemporary society. Academics and policy makers have traditionally associated it with voluntary associations and organizations, assuming that associational life is an ideal intermediary between citizens and government. While members of associations form large social networks, which they can mobilize at critical moments, the conviviality of group sociability fosters the development of a …
Disassembling the City: A Historical and an Epistemological View on the Agency of Cities
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 philosoph…
Gated Communities: Regulating Migration in Early Modern Cities
Re-assembling Actor-Network Theory and urban history
Few theories have left their mark on urban studies to the extent that Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has in the last few decades. Its background in Science and Technology Studies (STS), its critique of the explanatory value of such abstractions as ‘class’ and ‘society’ and its efforts to transcend society/nature and local/global binarisms inevitably challenged conventional views on cities, urbanization and urban phenomena. Economic and Marxist approa…
Artisans, Products and Gifts: Rethinking the History of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe
Following the material turn in the social sciences, historical research has sought to assign a place to materiality and to the agency of objects in early modern societies, although this has proved a difficult task.1 While agency is hard to pinpoint, narratives of modernity have loomed large, and they still do. Urban sociologists and geographers have argued, for example, that the materiality of cities shaped human behaviour and thought, but, if we…
The agency of branding and the location of value. Hallmarks and monograms in early modern tableware industries
This article addresses early modern guild-based hallmarks from the perspective of modern branding. Although guilds could have firm-like functions and create ‘brand names’, collective marks at least in ‘strong guilds’ (on the continent) served a primarily socio-political function for small manufacturing masters who controlled and sanctioned branding practices themselves. While helping to solve problems of information asymmetry, the collective mark…
One counter and your own account: Redefining illicit labour in early modern Antwerp
This article examines the problem of illicit labour from the perspective of transformations in the (local) distribution channels. Rather than large masters circumventing the guilds’ rules regarding labour market entry or large merchants shifting from a Kauf to a Verlag system, early modern manufacturing guilds in Antwerp confronted mercers and wholesalers who entered into production without being masters. In response, the guilds extended their ru…
From brotherhood community to civil society? Apprentices between guild, household and the freedom of contract in early modern Antwerp
This article examines the nature and impact of late medieval and early modern guilds through the lens of the master–apprentice relationship. Starting from a conceptual distinction between the ‘guild ethos’ and ‘civil society’, it is shown that Antwerp craft guilds stopped being ‘brotherhoods’ and ‘substitute families’ and retreated into a sphere separate from household and family. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, masters can no longer…
Corpses, Live Models, and Nature: Assessing Skills and Knowledge before the Industrial Revolution (Case: Antwerp)
This article addresses changing assessment procedures for (guild-based) artisans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Discussions in and on two new educational institutions (the art academy and the medical college) in the seventeenth century (and beyond) reveal that manual skills and embodied knowledge were gradually devalued. The egalitarian guild-ethos was substituted with a more individualistic approach based on "ingenium," which was r…
Skills, Trust, and Changing Consumer Preferences: The Decline of Antwerp's Craft Guilds from the Perspective of the Product Market, c.1500–c.1800
The main reason for the decline of craft guilds in Antwerp should not be sought in the labour market but rather in the product market. Apprenticeship systems, master pieces, and trademarks were conducive to a labour market monopsony but at the same time to the representation of product quality. On the one hand, product quality was legitimized through the superior manual skills of masters; on the other, it was objectified through the attribution o…
Learning on the Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship
La qualité du corporatisme: Stratégies économiques et symboliques des corporations anversoises, XVIe - XVIIIe siècles
Malgré le regard neuf qu'on pose depuis peu sur les corporations de métiers, leurs fonctions précises demeurent toujours floues. En ce qui concerne l'époque moderne par exemple, on considère les quotas de compagnons par maître et la lutte contre l'utilisation de certaines techniques comme des «corrections sociales» dans le contexte d'un «marché libre» émergent. Toutefois, étant donné que les corporations de métier ne s'opposaient ni à la sous-tra…
In loco parentis? De disciplinering van leerlingen onder het dak van Antwerpse ambachtsmeesters (1579-1680)
TSEG (Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis) - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, is het Nederlands-Vlaamse vaktijdschrift op het gebied van de sociale en economische geschiedenis
Free Choice, Modern Love, and Dependence: Marriage of Minors and Rapt De Séduction in the Austrian Netherlands
In the 18th-century Southern Netherlands, rapt de séduction - synonymous with the marriage of minors without parental consent - wasn’t an extinguishing practice. Among the elite groups courtship behaviour of minors was an acute problem. The question was not, however, one of changing norms and values of youngsters. Due to changing relations between different social groups - e.g. between high aristocrats and rich merchants - traditional barriers se…
Le produit du talent ou la production de talent? La formation des artistes à l'Académie des beaux‐arts à Anvers aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
The transition from the Ancient Regime to the contemporary period was often regarded as the transition from a "selective" to a "productive" mode of professional training. The problem, however, is that the product of education is imprisoned in arbitrary practices of signification and cannot be considered objectively. This theoretical conclusions result from researching the genesis of the Academy of fine arts in Antwerp. The creation of the academy…
Skills, Trust, and Changing Consumer Preferences: The Decline of Antwerp's Craft Guilds from the Perspective of the Product Market, c.1500–c.1800
The main reason for the decline of craft guilds in Antwerp should not be sought in the labour market but rather in the product market. Apprenticeship systems, master pieces, and trademarks were conducive to a labour market monopsony but at the same time to the representation of product quality. On the one hand, product quality was legitimized through the superior manual skills of masters; on the other, it was objectified through the attribution o…
One counter and your own account: Redefining illicit labour in early modern Antwerp
This article examines the problem of illicit labour from the perspective of transformations in the (local) distribution channels. Rather than large masters circumventing the guilds’ rules regarding labour market entry or large merchants shifting from a Kauf to a Verlag system, early modern manufacturing guilds in Antwerp confronted mercers and wholesalers who entered into production without being masters. In response, the guilds extended their ru…
From brotherhood community to civil society? Apprentices between guild, household and the freedom of contract in early modern Antwerp
This article examines the nature and impact of late medieval and early modern guilds through the lens of the master–apprentice relationship. Starting from a conceptual distinction between the ‘guild ethos’ and ‘civil society’, it is shown that Antwerp craft guilds stopped being ‘brotherhoods’ and ‘substitute families’ and retreated into a sphere separate from household and family. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, masters can no longer…
The agency of branding and the location of value. Hallmarks and monograms in early modern tableware industries
This article addresses early modern guild-based hallmarks from the perspective of modern branding. Although guilds could have firm-like functions and create ‘brand names’, collective marks at least in ‘strong guilds’ (on the continent) served a primarily socio-political function for small manufacturing masters who controlled and sanctioned branding practices themselves. While helping to solve problems of information asymmetry, the collective mark…
Artisans as knowledge workers: Craft and creativity in a long term perspective
Re-assembling Actor-Network Theory and urban history
Few theories have left their mark on urban studies to the extent that Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has in the last few decades. Its background in Science and Technology Studies (STS), its critique of the explanatory value of such abstractions as ‘class’ and ‘society’ and its efforts to transcend society/nature and local/global binarisms inevitably challenged conventional views on cities, urbanization and urban phenomena. Economic and Marxist approa…
Corpses, Live Models, and Nature: Assessing Skills and Knowledge before the Industrial Revolution (Case: Antwerp)
This article addresses changing assessment procedures for (guild-based) artisans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Discussions in and on two new educational institutions (the art academy and the medical college) in the seventeenth century (and beyond) reveal that manual skills and embodied knowledge were gradually devalued. The egalitarian guild-ethos was substituted with a more individualistic approach based on "ingenium," which was r…
La qualité du corporatisme: Stratégies économiques et symboliques des corporations anversoises, XVIe - XVIIIe siècles
Malgré le regard neuf qu'on pose depuis peu sur les corporations de métiers, leurs fonctions précises demeurent toujours floues. En ce qui concerne l'époque moderne par exemple, on considère les quotas de compagnons par maître et la lutte contre l'utilisation de certaines techniques comme des «corrections sociales» dans le contexte d'un «marché libre» émergent. Toutefois, étant donné que les corporations de métier ne s'opposaient ni à la sous-tra…
Relocating Civil Society: Theories and Practices of Civil Society between Late Medieval and Modern Society
Civil society is widely considered as a crucial element in contemporary society. Academics and policy makers have traditionally associated it with voluntary associations and organizations, assuming that associational life is an ideal intermediary between citizens and government. While members of associations form large social networks, which they can mobilize at critical moments, the conviviality of group sociability fosters the development of a …
Disassembling the City: A Historical and an Epistemological View on the Agency of Cities
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 philosoph…
Artisans, Products and Gifts: Rethinking the History of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe
Following the material turn in the social sciences, historical research has sought to assign a place to materiality and to the agency of objects in early modern societies, although this has proved a difficult task.1 While agency is hard to pinpoint, narratives of modernity have loomed large, and they still do. Urban sociologists and geographers have argued, for example, that the materiality of cities shaped human behaviour and thought, but, if we…
Assembling Path Dependency and History: An Actor-Network Approach
Historians and social scientists struggling to redefine the relationship between synchrony (structure) and diachrony (events and human agency) have recently turned to the notion of path dependence, the core idea of which is that history matters. But history and path-dependence theory have less in common than might appear at first glance. Actor-network theory (ant) helps to bridge the gap between history and path dependence by incorporating the co…
Rewinding Civil Society: Conceptual Lessons from the Early Modern Guilds
Traditionally it is assumed that “modern” civil society originated in the associations, clubs, and public sphere of the eighteenth century as a result of the “liberation” of the individual from the “shackles” of absolutism, religious intolerance, and the patriarchal family. However, recent research goes further back in time. Scholars such as Robert Putnam (sociologist), Antony Black (political scientist), and Katherine Lynch (historian) associate…
Free Choice, Modern Love, and Dependence: Marriage of Minors and Rapt De Séduction in the Austrian Netherlands
In the 18th-century Southern Netherlands, rapt de séduction - synonymous with the marriage of minors without parental consent - wasn’t an extinguishing practice. Among the elite groups courtship behaviour of minors was an acute problem. The question was not, however, one of changing norms and values of youngsters. Due to changing relations between different social groups - e.g. between high aristocrats and rich merchants - traditional barriers se…
Le produit du talent ou la production de talent? La formation des artistes à l'Académie des beaux‐arts à Anvers aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
The transition from the Ancient Regime to the contemporary period was often regarded as the transition from a "selective" to a "productive" mode of professional training. The problem, however, is that the product of education is imprisoned in arbitrary practices of signification and cannot be considered objectively. This theoretical conclusions result from researching the genesis of the Academy of fine arts in Antwerp. The creation of the academy…
In loco parentis? De disciplinering van leerlingen onder het dak van Antwerpse ambachtsmeesters (1579-1680)
TSEG (Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis) - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, is het Nederlands-Vlaamse vaktijdschrift op het gebied van de sociale en economische geschiedenis
Free Choice, Modern Love, and Dependence: Marriage of Minors and Rapt De Séduction in the Austrian Netherlands
In the 18th-century Southern Netherlands, rapt de séduction - synonymous with the marriage of minors without parental consent - wasn’t an extinguishing practice. Among the elite groups courtship behaviour of minors was an acute problem. The question was not, however, one of changing norms and values of youngsters. Due to changing relations between different social groups - e.g. between high aristocrats and rich merchants - traditional barriers se…
Learning on the Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship
La qualité du corporatisme: Stratégies économiques et symboliques des corporations anversoises, XVIe - XVIIIe siècles
Malgré le regard neuf qu'on pose depuis peu sur les corporations de métiers, leurs fonctions précises demeurent toujours floues. En ce qui concerne l'époque moderne par exemple, on considère les quotas de compagnons par maître et la lutte contre l'utilisation de certaines techniques comme des «corrections sociales» dans le contexte d'un «marché libre» émergent. Toutefois, étant donné que les corporations de métier ne s'opposaient ni à la sous-tra…
Skills, Trust, and Changing Consumer Preferences: The Decline of Antwerp's Craft Guilds from the Perspective of the Product Market, c.1500–c.1800
The main reason for the decline of craft guilds in Antwerp should not be sought in the labour market but rather in the product market. Apprenticeship systems, master pieces, and trademarks were conducive to a labour market monopsony but at the same time to the representation of product quality. On the one hand, product quality was legitimized through the superior manual skills of masters; on the other, it was objectified through the attribution o…
One counter and your own account: Redefining illicit labour in early modern Antwerp
This article examines the problem of illicit labour from the perspective of transformations in the (local) distribution channels. Rather than large masters circumventing the guilds’ rules regarding labour market entry or large merchants shifting from a Kauf to a Verlag system, early modern manufacturing guilds in Antwerp confronted mercers and wholesalers who entered into production without being masters. In response, the guilds extended their ru…
From brotherhood community to civil society? Apprentices between guild, household and the freedom of contract in early modern Antwerp
This article examines the nature and impact of late medieval and early modern guilds through the lens of the master–apprentice relationship. Starting from a conceptual distinction between the ‘guild ethos’ and ‘civil society’, it is shown that Antwerp craft guilds stopped being ‘brotherhoods’ and ‘substitute families’ and retreated into a sphere separate from household and family. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, masters can no longer…
Corpses, Live Models, and Nature: Assessing Skills and Knowledge before the Industrial Revolution (Case: Antwerp)
This article addresses changing assessment procedures for (guild-based) artisans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Discussions in and on two new educational institutions (the art academy and the medical college) in the seventeenth century (and beyond) reveal that manual skills and embodied knowledge were gradually devalued. The egalitarian guild-ethos was substituted with a more individualistic approach based on "ingenium," which was r…
The agency of branding and the location of value. Hallmarks and monograms in early modern tableware industries
This article addresses early modern guild-based hallmarks from the perspective of modern branding. Although guilds could have firm-like functions and create ‘brand names’, collective marks at least in ‘strong guilds’ (on the continent) served a primarily socio-political function for small manufacturing masters who controlled and sanctioned branding practices themselves. While helping to solve problems of information asymmetry, the collective mark…
Artisans, Products and Gifts: Rethinking the History of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe
Following the material turn in the social sciences, historical research has sought to assign a place to materiality and to the agency of objects in early modern societies, although this has proved a difficult task.1 While agency is hard to pinpoint, narratives of modernity have loomed large, and they still do. Urban sociologists and geographers have argued, for example, that the materiality of cities shaped human behaviour and thought, but, if we…
Gated Communities: Regulating Migration in Early Modern Cities
Re-assembling Actor-Network Theory and urban history
Few theories have left their mark on urban studies to the extent that Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has in the last few decades. Its background in Science and Technology Studies (STS), its critique of the explanatory value of such abstractions as ‘class’ and ‘society’ and its efforts to transcend society/nature and local/global binarisms inevitably challenged conventional views on cities, urbanization and urban phenomena. Economic and Marxist approa…
Rewinding Civil Society: Conceptual Lessons from the Early Modern Guilds
Traditionally it is assumed that “modern” civil society originated in the associations, clubs, and public sphere of the eighteenth century as a result of the “liberation” of the individual from the “shackles” of absolutism, religious intolerance, and the patriarchal family. However, recent research goes further back in time. Scholars such as Robert Putnam (sociologist), Antony Black (political scientist), and Katherine Lynch (historian) associate…
Relocating Civil Society: Theories and Practices of Civil Society between Late Medieval and Modern Society
Civil society is widely considered as a crucial element in contemporary society. Academics and policy makers have traditionally associated it with voluntary associations and organizations, assuming that associational life is an ideal intermediary between citizens and government. While members of associations form large social networks, which they can mobilize at critical moments, the conviviality of group sociability fosters the development of a …
Disassembling the City: A Historical and an Epistemological View on the Agency of Cities
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 philosoph…
Artisans as knowledge workers: Craft and creativity in a long term perspective
Knowledge and the Early Modern City: A History of Entanglements
Knowledge and the early modern city
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents case studies with the use of very different analytical lenses. It aims to compare European and non-European cities or address long-distance networks. The book addresses one city in particular include other scalar levels with a focus on social and intellectual networks, the circulation of concepts and of objects. The book…
Assembling Path Dependency and History: An Actor-Network Approach
Historians and social scientists struggling to redefine the relationship between synchrony (structure) and diachrony (events and human agency) have recently turned to the notion of path dependence, the core idea of which is that history matters. But history and path-dependence theory have less in common than might appear at first glance. Actor-network theory (ant) helps to bridge the gap between history and path dependence by incorporating the co…
Commons and the nature of modernity: Towards a Cosmopolitical View on Craft Guilds
This paper argues that historical research on late medieval and early modern craft guilds fails to escape teleological and anachronistic views, including when they are addressed as commons or 'institutions for collective action'. These present-day conceptual lenses do not only create idealized views on guilds, but also of the contexts in which they operated, especially the state and the market. This is especially the case with neo-institutional v…
Hoe het teleologische denken de pandemie overleefde
How teleological thinking survived the pandemic This essay starts from the observation that historians have remarkably uncritically followed the biopolitical logic behind the approach to the Covid-19 pandemic. It explores why our knowledge and understanding of the historical background thereof did not prevent most from going along with the idea that there was no alternative to it. I argue that historians too were stuck in a teleological notion of…
Political science (15 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · History (6 works) · Social science (6 works) · Art (5 works)