Labnet: Conf. Ann: Technology and Human Capital Formation in the East and West (S.R. Epstein Memorial Conference) - London, UK 06/08

[labnet at lists.labourhistory.net]

[Cross-posted, with thanks, from H-Soz-u-Kult. AB]

From:    Tracey Keefe <T.J.Keefe at lse.ac.uk>

Conf. Ann: Technology and Human Capital Formation in the East and West
(S.R. Epstein Memorial Conference) - London, UK 06/08
------------------------------------------------------------------------

London School of Economics, Department of Economic History, London, UK
19.06.2008-21.06.2008, Morishima Room, Suntory-Toyota Centre, LSE

Since 2003 scholars from 5 disciplines and 28 universities located in 10
countries, have collaborated in the Global Economic History Network
(GEHN), funded by the Leverhulme Trust and sponsored by the London
School of Economics. When Leverhulme funding expired, other sponsors
allowed the GEHN initiative to continue. This conference seeks to
investigate a range of industries that could be recognised as global in
scale, scope and location before the industrial revolution in an attempt
to analyse the particular technologies associated with those industries
and the way in which the workforce acquired the expertise necessary to
perform their often complicated tasks. The topic for the conference was
inspired by the work of S.R. (Larry) Epstein, who died unexpectedly on
February 3rd 2007.

For several years Larry Epstein worked on a project that he hoped would
reshape the study of technology and skills in the pre-industrial era.
His approach was distinctive in two related ways. First of all, Larry
concentrated on small product and process innovations. In his view,
technological development before the Industrial Revolution was a
cumulative process of micro-innovation produced by numerous anonymous
craftsmen, rather than a sequence of macro inventions typified by the
steam engine and associated with celebrated men like Newcomen and Watt.
He recognized that, for centuries before the industrial revolution,
technological change emanated from dedicated craftsmanship located in
urban communities of practice and organisation. In such a world where
technological development is primarily the result of the application of
skills, their transfer becomes crucially important.  In Larry's own
work, two dimensions of diffusion were emphasised. First he insisted on
the significance of tacit knowledge and institutions which shaped the
formation of human capital for the manufacturing industry. Furthermore,
he also maintained that the circulation of skilled labour was the single
most important avenue for the diffusion of skills and product and
process innovations. 
Larry worked mainly on European history, but was keenly aware of the
need for global comparisons, and contributed to numerous conferences on
global economic history. This memorial conference has been designed as
an occasion to elaborate and test some of Larry Epstein's seminal ideas
in a global context. It has been set up as a three-day event.  Papers
will be pre-circulated to allow maximum time for discussion during the
conference itself. Contributors are expected to address the issues
outlined above from their own perspective and region of expertise, but
to try to include comparisons from other parts of the world, to allow
debate to range across the various industries of Eurasia. We are hoping
to bring together papers on such diverse industries as shipbuilding,
silk making, cotton textiles, porcelain, printing, building, and brick
making, and to publish the papers as a tribute to our friend and
colleague, as well as more general reflexions on human capital
formation.

The reasons behind the renaissance in global history are familiar. The
means and the media of modern transportation and communication have
opened up discourses (in English) around and about the world that are
re-shaping identities and transforming behaviour, especially among
younger generations. Students arrive at universities more curious about
'other' cultures and are now less easily persuaded to feed on diets of
national or western histories. Alas, academe is not constituted to
offerthe long run, geographically unbounded and ecologically informed
access to properly processed historical knowledge that could satisfy
their ecumenical interests and nourish a truly cosmopolitan sensitivity
for the 21st century. Clearly the chronologies, confined preoccupations
and
spatial parameters with which national histories have traditionally been
delivered are ready for reform. To be recognized as contemporary
syllabuses could make space within higher education (in both history and
the social sciences) that will analyse major environmental, economic and
geopolitical forces at work in the evolution of humanity as a whole; and
thereby offer a prospectus that might avoid the condescension of
cultures, the myopia of fore-shortened time spans and the arrogance of
nations, implicit in dominant styles of writing, studying and
communicating historical knowledge.

Although this new field is now developing everywhere, most of the
academics involved are scattered in departments around the world and
continue to operate as recognized specialists on European, Indian,
Chinese, Japanese, African and South American studies. As aspirant
global historians they are aware of gaps in the published literature,
the absences of calibrated data to facilitate comparisons of economic
trends across continents and centuries, and acutely conscious of the
methodological, epistemological and pedagogic problems they have
encountered in attempting to persuade colleagues, students and
university administrations that the field is not only contemporary, but
can be constructed and communicated at intellectual levels, comparable
to those attained in research and teaching on the economic histories of
America, Europe, the United Kingdom and Japan. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Preliminary Programm:

Wednesday 18th June:
Plenary Lecture, 6pm, The Old Theatre:

Speaker: Ken Pomeranz, UC Irvine, Skills, Rights and Resources in the
East Asian Path to Development
Chair: Chris Wickham, All Souls, Oxford

This lecture is open to all and no ticket is required.  It will be
followed by a reception in the LSE Atrium

Thursday 19th June:

Morning session: The Metal Industry
Chair: Patrick O'Brien, LSE

Prassanan Parthasarthi, Boston College: t.b.c
Philip Hoffman, CALTECH: Skills, Experience and the Diffusion of
Military Technology in the Early Modern World

Afternoon session: Popular/Luxury Goods
Chair: t.b.c

Christina Moll-Murata: Chinese Porcelain and Delft Fayence -
Repercussions and Mutual Interests
Jan-Luiten Van Zanden, Utrecht: Technology, Factor Prices and Human
Capital: The Global Distribution of Book Production before 1800
Chan-hui Mau: Technology and Human Capital Formation in the Silk
Industry in France and China

Friday 20th June:

Morning session: Building  
Chair: t.b.c

Jan Lucassen, IISG: t.b.c
Maarten Prak, Utrecht: Mega Structures: Religious Buildings in Europe
and Asia, c.1000-1500

Afternoon session: Skills and Human Capital
Chair: Patrick Wallis, LSE

Ted Collins: Change and Continuity in the Manufacture of Agricultural
Hand Tools, 1750-1950
Karel Davids, Amsterdam: Moving Machine-Builders. Mobility and Training
of Machine-Builders in Late Imperial China and Early Modern Europe
Tirthankar Roy, LSE: Skill and Industrialisation in India

Saturday 21st June:

Morning session: Capital Goods  
Chair: t.b.c
Richard Unger, British Columbia: The Technology and Teaching of
Shipbuilding, 1300-1800
John Langdon, Alberta: The Windmill: A Medieval 'Steam Engine'? 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tracy Keefe
Department of Economic History 
London School of Economics 
Houghton Street 
London, WC2A 2A
Phone: (020) 7955 7860
Fax: (020) 7955 7730

Homepage
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/Epstein%20Memorial%20Co
nference/Default.htm 

URL zur Zitation dieses Beitrages
http://geschichte-transnational.clio-online.net/termine/id=9337 




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