Labnet: CFP: WEHC 2009 - Industrious women and children of the world

[labnet at lists.labourhistory.net]

From: Nederveen Meerkerk, E.J.V. van
E.J.V.van.Nederveen at let.leidenuniv.nl 



Call for papers - World Economic History Congress Utrecht, 3-7 August
2009 



Proposed session - Industrious women and children of the world? Jan de
Vries' 'industrious revolution' as a conceptual tool for researching
women's and children's work in an international perspective

 

Session organizers: 

Jane Humphries (Oxford University, All Souls College)

Ariadne Schmidt (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam)

Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (Leiden University, History Department)

 

In August 2009, The International Economic History Association (IEHA)
will hold its fifteenth World Economic History Congress in Utrecht, the
Netherlands. The conference organizers have issued a second call for
sessions, which will be decided upon this fall. 

 

We intend to propose the following session about the use of Jan de
Vries' concept of 'the industrious revolution' for the investigation of
pre-industrial women's and children's work around the globe. With this
session, we hope to contribute to the conference, by offering a gender,
age and global comparative perspective on the economics of household
behaviour.

 

Below you will find a description of the session proposal we would like
to submit. 

 

We want to invite economic and labour historians studying women's and
children's work from all over the world. We especially welcome scholars
working on regions outside Western Europe, in order to attain a broad
geographical comparison. Scholars working on East Asia and Southeast
Asia, Central Europe, or the Ottoman Empire are specifically invited to
send in a paper proposal. 

 

Please send your paper proposal (max. 500 words, by e-mail) before
Friday 12 September 2008 to: 
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
e.j.v.van.nederveen.meerkerk at let.leidenuniv.nl
<mailto:e.j.v.van.nederveen.meerkerk at let.leidenuniv.nl>  

 

Session proposal 
Industrious women and children of the world? Jan de Vries' 'industrious
revolution' as a conceptual tool for researching women's and children's
work in an international perspective

 

In the early 1990s, Jan de Vries launched his concept of the
'industrious revolution'. He assumed that, from the mid-seventeenth
century onwards, households, as units of reproduction, consumption and
production, decided to change both their consumptive and their
productive behaviour. Families chose to re-allocate their time and
labour power in order to expand their consumptive possibilities. This
household-based resource allocation, increased the supply of market
goods as well as the demand for marketed commodities, thus laying the
foundation for economic development in the period before
industrialization. According to De Vries, one important means to reach
this goal, was mobilizing (married) women and children as wage
labourers.

 

With this session, we aim to get a better understanding of the household
economy and its contribution to the larger economy by discussing the use
of the industrious revolution as a conceptual tool. To what extent is
the industrious revolution a valuable concept for theorizing about
changing patterns in women's and children's work? How do actual
empirical findings on women's and children's work relate to De Vries'
larger theoretical framework? And, very importantly, what is the
geographical scope of De Vries' theory? To what extent is it applicable
to economies outside Western Europe, for instance in Southern or Central
Europe, the Ottoman Empire, India, or Japan?

 

 


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