Previous events

2024

Geosciences, Knowledge and Property Rights Workshop

The research group History of Capitalism and the project Creative IPR are holding the second workshop on the history of geosciences and rights. Leading specialists will present their papers and projects grounded in the historical method. A roundtable will focus on issues of databases and sources for the history of mining, including patents taken for the mining industry.

Time and place: Dec. 9, 2024 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Sophus Bugges hus Seminaroom 5

Join us on Zoom

Program

09:00 - 09:30: Coffee

09:30 - 09:45: Welcome and Introduction (Véronique Pouillard, Marius Buning, Kristin Ranestad)

09:45 - 10:15: Espen Storli - Historical Process of Price-Setting Mechanisms for Natural Resources

10:15 - 10:45: Pål Thonstad Sandvik - Getting to Denmark: The Scandinavian or Nordic Approach to Land Policy, 1780-1930

10:45 - 11:15: Steinar Sæther - The Value of Gold for Scandinavian Miners in the California Gold Rush 1848-1860

11:15 - 11:35: Discussion

11:35 - 12:35: Lunch

12:35 - 13:05: David Pretel (TBC)

13:05 - 13:35: Bernardita Escobar Andrae - Innovation in the South Under a Strong Patent Regime: The Case of Chile in the 1877-1910 Period

13:35 - 14:05: Israel G. Solares and Ted Beatty (TBC)

14:05 - 14:25: Discussion

14:25 - 14:45: Coffee break

14:45 - 15:15: Sebastian Felten (Zoom, TBC)

15:15 - 15:45: Andreas Dugstad Sanders (TBC)

15:45 - 16:15: Mads Ingulstad (TBC)

16:15 - 16:35: Discussion

16:35 - 16:55: Coffee break

16:55 - 17:25: Véronique Pouillard and Kristin Ranestad - Diamond artisanal mining and trafficking in the South Kasaï region of the Congo in decolonization times (1957-1964)

17:25 - 17:45: Anita Dung Hanh Ngo – short description of the Congo Patent Database

17:45 - 18:00: Discussion 19:00 Dinner (Tekehtopa)

Abstracts

Diamond artisanal mining and trafficking in the South Kasaï region of the Congo in decolonization times (1957-1964)

Véronique Pouillard, University of Oslo

Kristin Ranestad, University of Oslo

This paper examines the extraction and commerce of diamond, a stone that concentrates the highest value in the smallest volume. The geographical focus of the paper is on the region of Kasaï in the South of the Republic of Congo, today the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the commercial relations of the region with the former colony, the state, and neighboring countries. The time frame for this study focuses on the transition from the colonial period to the independence of Congo, obtained on 30 June 1960. The aftermath of the independence was characterized in South Kasaï by greater political instability, which culminated in episodes of violence against the backdrop of peacekeeping interventions from the United Nations. On the institutional level, South Kasaï seceded from the Republic of the Congo from 9 August 1960 to 5 October 1962 and was during this interval governed by a king, the Mulopwe Albert Kalondji.

During the colonial era and into the postcolonial times, the firms Forminière and Bécéka were responsible for the mining of diamonds in South Kasaï, which were commercialized through networks controlled by the South Africa-based De Beers cartel. Previous research has addressed in nuanced manners the activity of so-called artisanal and illicit extraction and trafficking of diamonds in postcolonial contexts. Our critical reading of the archives of Bécéka and Forminière during that period shows how contestations of the industrialized exploitation of the mineral came about during the last years of the colony. The management of Forminière and Bécéka augmented their repression toward exploitations considered to be illicit, while newer political regimes rewrote the mining laws. The broader framework of this research seeks to evaluate the tensions around the secession of South Kasaï in relation to the volatility of mining practices and diamond trade in the region.

Silver refining in the New World: A singularity in the history of useful knowledge

David Pretel Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain and Saul Guerrero Australian National University, Australia

Historians have thoroughly documented the development of mercury-based silver refining in Spanish America in the late sixteenth century, and its use for over 300 years on an industrial scale unknown in Europe. However, we currently lack any consensus about the significance of this technology in the global history of knowledge. This article critically reassesses the invention and improvement of this refining method with the aim of addressing two interrelated issues. Firstly, how experiential knowledge and practical skills in silver refining were deliberately harnessed to solve a specific technical problem. Secondly, how economic incentives and patronage set the stage for empirical practices and a collaborative culture that facilitated the widespread use of this novel technique. In so doing, this article places silver refining within the theoretical constructs and historiography of useful knowledge, and bridges narratives that have remained largely isolated.

"GETTING TO DENMARK" The Scandinavian Or Nordic Approach To Land Policy, 1780-1930

Pål Thonstad Sandvik (paal.sandvik@ntnu.no)

Seen from afar, the Nordic countries often appear quite similar. They undoubtedly have much in common, not the least regarding their historical development. Yet, if one looks closer, the Nordic countries also differ, sometimes very much so. This mixture of similarity and divergence is mirrored when it comes to land policy and land ownership. The 17th- and 18th-century ownership systems and land policies varied significantly. But beginning in the late 18th century, and more strongly in the 19th-century and the interwar era, land policies and to some extent also the ownership structures, tended to converge, although some tangible differences remained.

This paper examines and compares state regulation of agricultural land in the Nordic countries, and its outcome, 1780-1930. We will focus on three issues, namely 1) how agricultural land – up till c. 1900 – increasingly became an ordinary commodity. Aristocratic privileges and state policies which limited the free use of land, land rents and labor were gradually curtailed or fully abolished. Restrictions on the free sale of land were also mostly abolished. However, the timing and the extent of the commodification of agricultural land varied greatly between the Nordic countries. 2) how the commodification of land was partially reversed after 1900 and especially after 1920. State intervention increased. The main aim was to strengthen the social protection of farmers, especially the smallholders. While the policies and the political contexts varied, all five Nordic countries introduced reforms concerning ownership of agricultural land. 3) How can these policy shifts, the convergence and the remaining intra-Nordic differences be explained?

New Datasets for Research in Global Mining History

Israel G. Solares (isgarcia@colmex.mx)

Edward (Ted) Beatty (ebeatty@nd.edu)

Our project examines the role of technical experts – engineers – in the global mining sector between 1870 and 1930. We suggest that engineers provided the critical vehicle for the global mobility of technical knowledge, and that new datasets on engineers and engineering knowledge make these global networks visible. We describe the construction of three related datasets, from 3 major institutions in the professionalization of mining engineering: universities and professional associations; mining corporations; and trade journals. The three datasets collect the information from multiple sources: (1) the professional biographies of professional engineers based on alumni lists and membership lists; (2) corporations in the mining and metallurgical sector of the global economy; and (3) the complete contents of a major trade journal. We describe the historical sources available for building such datasets, our methods of extracting, cleaning, coding, and organizing data, and several strategies for using the data in the historical analysis of technical expertise and knowledge in global mining.

Israel García Solares is assistant professor at the Department of Mathematical Modeling of Social Systems, Institute for the Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems, at the Mexican National University (UNAM). He has held post-docs at Notre Dame, Harvard, and UCSD. He is the author of Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas (University of Nevada Press, 2024). Edward (Ted) Beatty is professor of History and Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Institutions and Investment: The Political Basis of Industrialization in Mexico before 1911 (Stanford University Press, 2001) and Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico (University of California Press, 2015), winner of the Friedrich Katz Prize for best book on Latin America and the Caribbean from the American Historical Society. Solares and Beatty are co-editors of An Engineered World: The Role of Engineers in Global Modernity, forthcoming with MIT Press

The Historical Development of Price-setting Mechanisms for Natural Resources

Espen Storli professor of history at the Department of Modern History and Society at NTNU.

The question of how prices are set is fundamental to business history. In modern history, natural resources have been priced in different ways and by different systems. Historically these pricing systems have often functioned at different times in different markets, but sometimes, different systems have existed simultaneously side by side for the same resource. According to economic thought, the choice of pricing mechanisms for a commodity depends on structural factors within an industry. However, the existing theories of structural factors is challenged by the existence of several pricing mechanisms for similar natural resources at the same time. Neither can the structural theories explain why the structure of an industry can change without that being automatically connected to changes in pricing systems.

This paper analyses the development of pricing systems for natural resources from the start of the second global economy to today. The main research question is why have different natural resources been priced according to different systems? How have these pricing systems changed over time, and which actors have been instrumental in changing them? The paper will be based on extensive analysis of existing research, as well as primary research into a selection of natural resources. The paper will deal with both soft and hard commodities.

Sustained Concerns: Administration of Mineral Resource Extraction in Central Europe, 1550-1850

Sebastian Felten (sebastian.felten@univie.ac.at)

The extraction of mineral resources has sharply increased over the past hundred years, and current policies towards a green energy transition are driving demand for minerals such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt. This talk will discuss the ongoing work of an ERC project on state-directed mining in early modern Central Europe. The project's goal is to provide a critical history of mineral resource extraction and explore alternative, historical ways of providing for communities. I will focus on Electoral Saxony, a textbook case of a cameralist state that pushed capitalist investors out of an active entrepreneurial role. The result was a contradictory set of institutions that aimed at sustaining yields over long periods: Administrators had great managerial discretion, but internalised the (imagined) desires of mine owners, while workers were subject to paternalistic care and systematic attempts to extract more labour. State-directed mining was not the opposite of capitalism but rather one of its varieties, in which bureaucratic genres and procedures structured the flow of materials and information. One promising line of further research is to reconstruct interaction with investors in trading cities like Hamburg, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam, where mining officials encountered mercantile cultures with their own approaches to risk and resources.

Sebastian Felten (PhD, King’s College London) is a historian of science, finance, and bureaucracy in early modern Europe. He is Tenure Track Professor of Early Modern History of Science at the Department of History at the University of Vienna and was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin (MPIWG) between 2015 and 2018. He is PI of the ERC STG Project "Sustained Concerns: Administration of Mineral Resource Extraction in Central Europe, 1550-1850" (SCARCE, 2023-2028). email: sebastian.felten@univie.ac.at.

Organiser

History of Capitalism and Creative IPR

The History of Capitalism, Copyright, and Cultural Heritage

This workshop explores the tensions between cultural identity and evolving concepts of intellectual property.

Time and place: Nov. 15, 2024 1:30 PM – 5:00 PM, Niels Treshows hus, 5th floor, Møterom Håndbibliotek

About

How have capitalist perspectives on ownership influenced debates on cultural property, and how have these debates evolved over time, particularly in relation to copyright laws and the preservation of cultural heritage?

Papers will cover the relationship between AI, heritage and copyright; the digitization of film materials on Ethiopian music; and Swedish debates on morality and cultural heritage in the twentieth century.

Join us on Zoom

Program

13:30-14:15: Irini Stamatoudi (University of Nicosia), Tools and Flexibilities in Copyright law from the Perspective of Cultural Heritage

14:15-15:00: Tsehaye Haidemariam (BI Norwegian Business School), From Filming to Machine Learning: Exploring the Potential of Digitized Ethiopian Cultural Heritage Materials as Training Data for AI (and the Copyright Issues that Arise)

15:00-15:30: Coffee break

15:30-16:15: Martin Fredriksson (Linköping University), Protecting the Classics: Swedish Copyright Law and Cultural Heritage

16:15-17:00: General discussion

Abstracts

Irini Stamatoudi

Tools and Flexibilities in Copyright law from the perspective of cultural heritage

Some argue that IP rights are an essential component of a capitalist economic system since they align with its core principles, such as private property rights, free markets, and the profit motive and those of neoliberalism, i.e., deregulation, privatization, and the primacy of market forces over public interests. Although this point is valid in many respects, it is not always true. Copyright is a set of legal rules aiming at protecting authors and other rightholders to incentivize them to create and invest further in the production of works and other subject matter. Yet, copyright laws strike balances and provide for flexibilities that also favour the public and society at large and secure access to content and knowledge (e.g. exceptions/limitations and fundamental rights, time limitations and the public domain, open initiatives, special legal regimes such as orphan works and out of commerce works). Cultural heritage law aims to serve the interests of cultural heritage as such by exercising state control and restricting ownership (depending on the jurisdiction). Works (protected by copyright) may also constitute cultural heritage. In this case, private ownership may conflict to protect cultural heritage for the common good. My talk will explore the tools provided by copyright, the trends of the era, and the courts’ (creative) stance on the matter. It will also explore whether AI works should be protected by copyright or free for all to use.

About the speaker

Irini Stamatoudi is a lawyer (Greece) and a Law Professor at the University of Nicosia (Cyprus). She was also the General Director of the Greek National Copyright Office (Ministry of Culture and Sports, 2007 – 2018). She has taught various academic courses in Greece, Cyprus, the UK, Turkey, Italy, Switzerland, etc. She has published fourteen books and several scholarly articles, some considered worldwide works of reference, e.g., European Union Copyright Law, 2nd ed., Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021 (edited with Paul Torremans); Cultural Property Law and Restitution. A Commentary to International Conventions and European Union Law, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011, and Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Cultural Heritage, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022.

Tsehaye Haidemariam

From Filming to Machine Learning: Exploring the Potential of Digitized Ethiopian Cultural Heritage Materials as Training Data for AI and the Copyright Issues that Arise

This presentation delves into the potential of utilizing digitized Ethiopian cultural heritage materials as training data for artificial intelligence (AI), while addressing the copyright issues that arise in the process. We will explore the various stages involved in digitizing Ethiopian cultural heritage materials, starting from the filming stage (in Ethiopia), archiving process and digitization (in Hungary) to their possible use for training generative AI models elsewhere. By prioritizing the archival process, we will emphasize the importance of accurate and high-quality digital representations of cultural heritage materials for optimal machine learning readable training data. We will discuss the challenges associated with digitization, including institutional and heritage politics, the need for appropriate hardware and software, metadata creation, and quality control measures along the processes. Finally, the presentation will briefly look into the copyright issues that arise when using culturally sensitive and copyright-protected materials as training data for AI. Specific attention will be given to the complexities surrounding the ever-evolving nature of human values, legal and copy right issues, and the alignment problem that arise at the system level.

About the speaker

Tsehaye Haidemariam is a visiting research fellow at the Norwegian Business school, teaching and conducting research in AI, Blockchain technologies, and the Metaverse. He is a selected member of NORA, the Norwegian Artificial Intelligence research consortium. He has taught at Addis Ababa University, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and the University of Belgrade. He holds a PhD and Master of Science in Performative Algorithms for Understanding the Non-classical Origins and Developments of VR, AR, AI, and Big Data from Coventry University, UK. He also has a PhD course in "Non-locality in Quantum Mechanics" from the University of Oslo. Tsehaye has a diverse educational background, including an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master of Arts and a BA (Honours) in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Open University in the UK, NTNU, Blaise Pascal University, University of Roehampton, Scientific University of Szeged, Hungary, and worked on his own startup company for few years.

Martin Fredriksson

Protecting the Classics: Swedish Copyright Law and Cultural Heritage

This presentation discusses §51 of the Swedish copyright law, known as “the protection of classics”, in relation to 20th century cultural policy and heritage discourses. §51 protects culturally significant works by deceased authors against reproductions that are considered offensive, even if the works are in the public domain and thus not protected by copyright. The protection of classics took shape gradually over the mid-20th century, beginning with a proposal from 1924 that eventually lead to the inclusion of §51 in the copyright act of 1960. While the protection of classics appears alien to the nature of copyright as we understand it today, it was well aligned with contemporary tendencies in international copyright legislation at the time and similar provisions were considered for inclusion in international law.

The presentation will begin by contextualizing the birth of §51 in relation to contemporary discussions about copyright, moral rights and the paying public domain. It continues to analyze potential cases of violation of the protection of classics between 1960 and 2020, where the Swedish authorities threatened to sue for infringement against §51 but refrained for various reasons. Finally, it will consider a recent case, the Swedish Academy (Svenska Akademien) v. Nordfront, where §51 was, for the first time, tried in court as an attempt to prevent the publication of works by romanticist authors in a national socialist context. The cases involving §51 are diverse and the motivations for suing (or not) are different. However, taken together, these examples reflect changing cultural norms and values in Sweden during the twentieth century. The presentation will discuss how the values that has shaped the protection of classics, and its subsequent use are aligned with a cultural policy and heritage discourse where priorities have shifted from protecting fine art against popular culture, to countering the negative consequences of commercialism, and to promoting multiculturalism and inclusion.

About the speaker

Martin Fredriksson is associate professor at the department of Culture and Society (Tema Q) at Linköping University, Sweden, where he studies the intersections of intellectual property rights, cultural heritage and postcoloniality. He has published extensively about copyright history, the politics of piracy and traditional knowledge and currently runs the project The Protection of Classics: Collective Claims to Cultural Heritage in Copyright Law, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

Organiser

History of Capitalism, Creative IPR and B4COPY

The Task and Skill Content of Past Technological Change: The Rise of Cognitive Work in the US Transportation Revolution

Time and place: Sep. 20, 2024 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM, Niels Treschows hus, 5th Floor, Håndbiblioteket

Studies exploring changes in the task and skill content of work have made significant contributions to understanding recent labor market developments (Autor et al 2003, 2006, Goos & Manning 2007, Acemoglu & Restrepo 2019). However, the effects of pathbreaking macroinventions over the long term have not been studied. This paper applies a task-based analysis of work to the three sector-level technological changes of the American Transportation Revolution (c. 1750–1860), including the general-purpose technology of steam power. The paper builds the first new historical task and coded skill profiles of historical jobs based on the methodology used in the US Dictionary of Occupational Titles (US Department of Labor 1991) and a large body of manuscript and printed primary sources. It validates the task descriptions and skill coding using the 20th century DOTs. The analysis shows that new technologies expanded the range of work tasks and firms responded by creating new occupations. Technologies with higher productivity featured a profusion of occupations with more cognitive tasks and varying skill and educational requirements.

09.30-10.00: Coffee and mingling
10.00-11.00: Presentation Ben Schneider
11.00-12.30: Discussion

Organiser

History of Capitalism

Traditional knowledge and Intellectual property: The Misappropriation of Genetic Resources

Brad Sherman (University of Queensland)

Time and place: Sep. 4, 2024 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, Niels Treschows Hus, 4th Floor, Møterom 424

Traditional knowledge and Intellectual property: The Misappropriation of Genetic Resources

After more than two decades of negotiations, countless reports, studies, and meetings, on 24 May 2024 WIPO finally came good on its earlier commitment when the Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge was adopted. The Treaty imposes an obligation of disclosure on patentees who create inventions based on genetic resources and traditional knowledge. It also recommends that contracting parties establish databases of genetic resources and traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources for the purposes of improving the search and examination of patent applications.

Given that a consensus on an international legal instrument was never guaranteed, it is not surprising that the passage of the Treaty was celebrated. At the same time, the Treaty has also been criticised by civil society and Indigenous groups, developing countries, and researchers who had problems with some of comprises that were agreed on in order to get the Treaty across the line. In some ways this is not surprising given that there are many aspects of the new Treaty that are problematic. These range from the lack of a definition for traditional knowledge and uncertainty about whether or not and so if so how the obligation to disclose applies to synthetic biology, through to the place of digital sequence information within the scope of the Treaty. Despite these problems, there is still a possibility that the new law may have a positive impact on the misappropriation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge. Ultimately, however, this will depend on how the Treaty is implemented domestically. The aim of this talk is to look at some of the options available for countries who decide to implement the Treaty in their national law who want to help prevent the misappropriation of genetic resources and traditional knowledge.

Brad Sherman is UQ Laureate Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia where he researches on intellectual property. He is currently working on a history of intellectual property in the citrus industry in California and Arizona.

Join us on Zoom by following this link.

Organizer: History of Capitalism

Co-organized: Be4Copy and Creative IPR

Creative IPR and History of Capitalism Seminar with Naomi Lamoreaux

Professor Naomi Lamoreaux (Yale University) presents Reconciling Democracy and Capitalism: The Transition to General Laws in the US and Beyond.

Time and place: June 10, 2024 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, Niels Treschows Hus, 5th Floor, Håndbiblioteket

Reconciling Democracy and Capitalism: The Transition to General Laws in the US and Beyond

We usually consider it progress when a country begins to move from an autocratic to a democratic form of governance. However, the introduction of elections and other early trappings of democracy often has the perverse effect of exacerbating political instability. It also increases the incentives for those in power to manipulate the economy for political ends and thus often negatively affects economic growth. We argue that the key to getting beyond these pernicious effects—to reconciling democracy and capitalism—is to shift to a governance structure based on impersonal rules that apply in the same way to everyone (or at least to broad categories of everyone). We lay out the theoretical basis for this argument and illustrate it with evidence about how the transformation worked in the case of the US. All the rich capitalist democracies in the world today went through a similar transition, but for most countries comparatively little is known the process of change. An important aim of this project is to stimulate research on this question.

Naomi R. Lamoreaux is Stanley B. Resor Professor Emeritus of Economics and Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University, Senior Research Scholar at the University of Michigan Law School, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She received her Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins in 1979 and taught at Brown, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yale. She has written The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895-1904 and Insider Lending: Banks, Personal Connections, and Economic Development in Industrial New England, edited nine other books, and published numerous articles on business, economic, and financial history. Her current research interests include business organizational forms and contractual freedom in the US and Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the public/private distinction in US history, state constitutional changes mandating general laws in the nineteenth-century US, and the US Patent Office as a site of learning in the administrative state.

About the event

This event is part of Creative IPR and History of Capitalism's series of open seminars. The research group and project hosts open seminars on the last Monday of every month. This is a public research seminar bringing together researchers and other professionals from across the social sciences, law, the humanities and beyond to present their research or field of expertise followed by a Q&A session.

Organiser

Creative IPR and History of Capitalism

Democracy, Freedom and Boundaries and History of Capitalism Seminar with Cathie Jo Martin

The research groups Democracy, Freedom and Boundaries and History of Capitalism would like to invite you to a seminar with Cathie Jo Martin who has recently published the book Education for All? Literature, Culture and Education Development in Britain and Denmark

Time and place: Apr. 17, 2024 2:30 PM – 5:30 PM, PAM, seminar room 5 Organizer

hy did Denmark develop mass education for all in 1814, while Britain created a public-school system only in 1870 that primarily educated academic achievers? Cathie Jo Martin argues that fiction writers and their literary narratives inspired education campaigns throughout the nineteenth-century. Danish writers imagined mass schools as the foundation for a great society and economic growth. Their depictions fortified the mandate to educate all people and showed neglecting low-skill youth would waste societal resources and threaten the social fabric. Conversely, British authors pictured mass education as harming social stability, lower-class work, and national culture. Their stories of youths who overcame structural injustices with individual determination made it easier to blame students who failed to seize educational opportunities. Novel and compelling, Education for All? uses a multidisciplinary perspective to offer a unique gaze into historical policymaking.

Location: PAM, seminar room 5

Organizer: History of Capitalism

The 2nd Winter Games in Economic History January 19 2024

Following up from last year’s resounding success, the Norwegian Economic History Association (NØHF) invites to the second Winter Games in Economic History, to be held at the University of Oslo, January 19 2024.

Time and place: Jan. 19, 2024 12:15 PM – 6:15 PM, Niels Treschows Hus (12th floor).

The format of the Winter Games will be that of a low threshold workshop. The aim is to bring together scholars as well as PhD and master level students to help each other to develop research ideas and paper drafts on their way to publication. We therefore welcome submissions of both paper drafts and outlines of future research projects. Although designated commentators will be assigned each paper/research ideas, all participants are expected to read the papers of others and contribute to discussions.

Regarding scope, the Winter Games are intended as a broad arena. We apply a broad understanding of economic history and welcome also submissions from business history and other, neighbouring fields (i.e. historical political economy, social history, labour history, historical demography etc).

Contributions from master students and junior researchers are as valuable as those from established scholars. “Norwegian” is understood in a most liberal way, i.e., scholars either based in Norway or working on a topic related to it, independent of nationality. Moreover, as a low threshold arena, papers in all stages of preparation are welcome, from your roughest draft to highly polished gems.

Please forward a short abstract (up to 300 words) for consideration to: norwegianeconhist@gmail.com Abstracts deadline: October 16 2023 Successful applicants will be notified by November 2.

Deadline for submission of papers is January 5 2024.

Location: The Winter Games will be held on the University of Oslo campus in Niels Treschows Hus (UiO campus map). The campus is accessible by T-Bane/Metro 4 or 5 (Forskingsparken) or Trikk/Tram 17 or 18 (Universitetet Blindern). Most of the sessions, including both plenaries and lunch and coffee breaks, will be held on the 12th floor, with some parallel sessions in Håndbiblioteket on the 5th floor. Dinner after the Winter Games (at participants' own expense) will be at Villa Paradiso (Majorstua, map).

Program: An updated program is attached to this email. Note that some of the discussant-paper pairings have changed since the previous version circulated before Christmas. The papers are available here. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns, or if any co-authors are missing.

Presentations: The Winter Games is a text-focused low-threshold workshop. Please note that we only expect presenters to give the necessary context for their papers during the Winter Games, not full ‘presentations’. Discussants are expected to give constructive feedback to help authors towards publication. We expect all participants to read the papers in the sessions they attend to facilitate a fruitful discussion.

For the paper discussions (35 minutes total per paper), we ask that you use the following timings:

Brief summary by presenter: 5–7 minutes

Comments from discussant: 5–7 minutes

Questions, comments, and discussion with the audience: 20–25 minutes

Panel Discussion on “The Roots of the Industrial Revolution”: with Professor emeritus Kristine Bruland and Professor Terje Tvedt, both of whom have recently published books addressing aspects of the Industrial Revolution. Bruland’s books is titled Den industrielle revolusjon Kapitalisme, industri og teknologi, and Tvedt’s book is titled Historiens hjul og vannets makt da England og Europa vant, og Kina og Asia tapte.

The discussion will be moderated by Professor Einar Lie.

Organizer: History of Capitalism

2023

Geo-sciences, knowledge and capitalism workshop

Time and place: Dec. 7, 2023 2:00 PM – 6:30 PM, Håndbiblioteket

Program (see details below)

14:00 - 14:30: Pietro Daniel Omodeo
14:30 - 15:00: Göran Rydén
15:00 - 15:30: Discussion
15:30 - 16:00: Coffee break
16:00 - 16:30: Jaco Zuijderduijn
16:30 - 17:00: Veronique Pouillard
17:00 – 17:30: Discussion
17.30 – 18.15: Kristin Ranestad

Presenters

The Socio-Economic Roots of Venice’s Historical Hydrosociology

Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Ca' Foscari University of Venice

This presentation has a two-fold aim. First, it introduces the theme of water heritage in connection with the material and epistemic history of Venice water culture. This topic is connected with the Anthropocene question about the historical nexus between culture and nature, in which human activity has emerged as a major geological force. Second, the communication introduces crucial aspects of the longue-durée history of the lagoon of Venice and the anthropic transformations of its hydrogeological settings, with a special focus on early modernity. Beginning in the sixteenth century, a massive reengineering of the water flows and landscapes began in order to preserve the lagoon of Venice and the aquatic nature of the city. All these socio-environmental interventions should be understood against the background of the historical developments of labour and economy that took place in a crucial center of early capitalism.

A Swedish Plantation, or how Early-Modern Swedish Ironmaking fitted into the Emergence of Global Capitalism

Göran Rydén, Institute of Housing and Urban Research (IBF), Uppsala University

In my talk, I will present some findings from a dense micro study of a few ironworks, in Swedish bruk, in the eighteenth century, centred on work and labour; the preliminary title is Hushållningens praktiker. Arbete och hushåll i Dannemora bergslag under Charles de Geers tid (forthcoming 2024). The key narrative spins around “househoding”, a concept integrated in ideas of cameralism, which was used as an organising principle in the Swedish society. At the bottom, there was the individual householding based on the everyday life of the population. At the level of the entire realm, there was the general householding, subordinated to the ruler, and at the top, there was the Oeconomia Divina where the Creator ruled supreme. With these layers as a background, I will deal with brukshushållning, the householding of ironmaking estates, divided as it was between an internal side, on work and the organisation of labour, and an external side, on aspects of the market and profit making.

Impairments and Incomes: Careers of Impaired Miners at Røros Copper Works, 17th-20th centuries

Kristin Ranestad, University of Oslo

Jaco Zuijderduijn, Lund University

Premodern labour markets consisted of large numbers of early-life and elderly impaired. Young workers suffered accidents and debilitating diseases, and elderly workers experienced wear and tear after many years of hard labour. Even though impairments must have had a severe impact on labour input, economic historians have often disregarded ‘unfit’ workers. To study the development of the labour position, incomes, and living standards of those who suffered accident or disease would require a systematic analysis of career trajectories. Such a quantitative approach would also allow for testing theories from critical disability studies, such as Finkelstein’s industrialization hypothesis which states that the work environment worsened with the rise of industrial capitalism and caused the impaired to be increasingly discriminated against. We intend to use the unique salary administration of Røros copper works in Central Norway, covering 1690-1933 for a systematic analysis of early-life and elderly impairment to compare career trajectories of early-life and elderly impaired to those of healthy workers to study employment discrimination. In addition, we will also study how impairments and gender intersected in labour markets.

An anti-trust case in the diamond industry: the United States against the De Beers cartel (1945–1948)

Véronique Pouillard, University of Oslo

This paper examines an anti-trust case filed in 1945 by the United States Department of Justice against the diamond cartel led by the South African firm De Beers. By the end of the interwar period, the Belgian Congo firms in the cartel were the largest producers of industrial diamonds in the world. Demand for this product had stagnated during the interwar period, but increased during World War II as industrial diamonds were needed by the arms industry. This resulted in a partial shift of De Beers’ production away from jewelry diamonds to support the allied war effort.

This article focuses on the background of the case and engages with historical debates about why the United States Department of Justice filed the complaint. It examines the production of De Beers historically, before investigating the arguments used in the lawsuit. The strategic importance of United States’ diamond stockpile appears to have been the central issue, but De Beers’ advertising on the United States market, which enhanced the cartel’s monopoly, was also important in the proceedings. The paper considers the historiography of the diamond industry and discusses historians’ hypotheses surrounding the case. Although the case was dismissed in 1948, it resulted in changes in the cartel’s organization and in greater scrutiny of De Beers’ activities. The case marks a turning point in the history of the cartel, which then entered a new phase of adaptation that ensured its survival until nearly the end of the century.

Scandinavian Metals in the Asian Century Danish Trade on Asia and in the Atlantic, 1730-1755

Kristin Ranestad, University of Oslo

Göran Rydén, Uppsala University

Research on global trade has developed significantly in recent decades, and scholars have been busy trying to unravel the complicated structures and histories of global commodities being shipped to Europe from far away regions in different continents. The story of the so called colonial goods, such as tea, coffee, sugar, cotton, silk, etc. has been the staple in this endeavours. Recent decades have also improved our knowledge about the trans-Atlantic slave trade. At the same time there are other aspects of the early modern global trade that we know significantly less about. One neglected area is how Europeans paid for the goods they received. The silver trade to Asia, with Latin American silver, is well-known, but there were other goods from other places involved in European shipments to other parts of the world, and the composition of goods might have changed over time. There has been resurgent research about the trade to Africa, but there is still much to do. Another overlocked aspect is the connection between the different segments of the early modern global trade. Indian textiles is crucial in this, imported to Europe, but re-exported to other parts of the world. On the one hand we contribute to the discussion on how Europeans paid for their imports of colonial goods, from ‘overseas’, as we aim to analyse cargoes shipped out of Europe. On the other hand, we aim to highlight the connections that existed between the trade to Asia with Atlantic shipping. In doing so we also want to change the spatial outlook. In the recent surge of early modern global history most studies have dealt with the major powers, such as Britain, France, the Dutch, Spain, etc., but our analysis takes a ‘peripheral’ angle, as we study the Danish Asia Company and the Danish West India and Guinea Company. The crucial connection in our paper is the one linking India to West Africa, but we also bring China and the Caribbean into the frame.

A new Perspective on Innovation and Industrialisation

Kristine Bruland (University of Oslo): A new Perspective on Innovation and Industrialisation

Time and place: Oct. 31, 2023 2:30 PM – 5:30 PM, Håndbiblioteket, 5th floor Niels Treschows hus

Industrialization created a new world which was technology, resource and energy intensive and continuously innovative. The industrial transition led to continuous economic growth, and to the ecological crises we are now experiencing. However, there is still confusion about what this revolutionary process in fact was, and how it happened.

This transition has traditionally been understood as an Industrial Revolution - a British event which took place approximately between 1760 and 1830, driven by mechanized textile factories and steam power, and later emulated elsewhere. I argue against this view and present an alternative.

I argue that growth started much earlier (from around 1400); that innovation took place across the economy (and accelerating from around 1700), and that it was a part of a global restructuring. If technological change took place across the whole economy we need a wide, society-encompassing explanation. I argue that we must bring capitalism back into the history of industrialization. I focus on three drivers which both fostered and forced innovation, namely firm-level technological competition in products, capitalists’ control of the work process within the business, and the development of competitive firms within a specialized machine making industry. Such a perspective means that the industrial transition becomes extended in time and broadened in geographical reach. It was a European process, which again was linked to global changes, which included the growth of the Atlantic system, imports of Asian goods to Europe, and global competition in the west-African slave market, from around 1600.

This proposal builds on my recent publication Den industrieller revolusjon. Kapitalisme, industri og teknologi. Cappelen Damm Akademisk, Oslo, 2022.

Kristine Bruland is a professor emeritus in economic history at the University of Oslo and was previously a professor of economic history at the University of Geneva. She was also an associated professor at the University of Strasbourg for many years. Her work focuses on the diffusion of technology, particularly during the early industrialization period

Practical information

The seminar will be organized as a hybrid event at Håndbiblioteket on the 5th floor in Niels Treschow’s hus, University of Oslo.

Join us on Zoom by following this link

Organizer

History of Capitalism

Creative IPR and History of Capitalism Seminar with Alexander Hartley and Daniel Raff

Alexander Hartley (Harvard University) presents The copyright world system: Modernism, colonial copyright, and literary authorship. Daniel Raff (the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania) presents Radical Agency and Business History.

Time and place: Oct. 19, 2023 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, Håndbiblioteket, Niels Treschows hus (5th Floor)

The copyright world system: Modernism, colonial copyright, and literary authorship
In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the British and French empires expanded and consolidated the reach of copyright across their dominions. At the same time, the local production and circulation of written matter in colonial territories grew explosively. The development of colonial copyright offered both protections and provocations to writers in colonial regions such as the Caribbean where the force of colonial law was strongly felt: copyright offered a way of self-presenting as an author and reaching wide literary markets, but also, for some writers, represented a European individualist and idealist notion of authorship that was sharply at odds with alternative and counterhegemonic ideas of literary production.

His dissertation makes two interlinked arguments. The first is that literary modernism’s
celebrated challenges to the idea of authorship were in part provoked by the legal changes that brought about the copyright world system. I examine the way in which writers such as Claude McKay, C.L.R. James, and Aimé and Suzanne Césaire were prompted by this swelling legal frontier to reevaluate the idea of authorship. These writers move from the periphery to the centre in my account of modernism’s rethinking of authorship; but he shows that even ‘metropolitan’ modernists, such as Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, were crucially influenced, in their thinking about authorship, by the expansion of colonial copyright law.

The second argument concerns the ideological failure of various twentieth-century attempts to critique the copyright world system. I find that the triumph of globalised copyright during the twentieth century resulted from a lack of any successful alternative to economic liberalism as a way of conceptualising intellectual products. Describing how no successful critique of copyright was developed by either Marxist, fascist, or antimodernist thinkers during the early twentieth century, he turns to anticolonial writers as representing the only ideological tradition that can still promise a coherent and compelling critique of copyright world system as it still exists.

Alexander Hartley is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. His dissertation provides a comparative study of colonial copyright in the first half of the twentieth century, examining how writers in the British and French empires responded to the expanding legal frontier of copyright in shaping their self-presentation as authors. Beyond this project, he is broadly interested in twentieth-century culture and critical theory, and a second vein of his research focuses on ‘urban renewal’, race and the city in the poems and novels of Gwendolyn Brooks. His research has appeared in the Journal of Modern Literature and has been supported by the Kennedy Trust and the I. H. Levin Scholarship.

Radical Agency and Business History

In his presentation he will start wit ha brief example of why the approach of forward-looking history (see Lamoreaux, Raff, and Temin in the American Historical Review 108(2) (April 2003): 404-433 and Enterprise & Society 5(3) (September 2004): 376-387) can be valuable and then spend the bulk of its time on the deeper considerations involved in writing the history of organizations and industries in this fashion. In particular, he will attempt to clarify and relate a group of concepts commonly assumed (and often actually deployed) in management academia (in which many active business historians work) and historical research, especially research in either category amounting to the history of organizations. The concepts are analysis, causation, explanation, agency (of individuals and in the context of formal organizations), and those of a causal order and of causal ordering. The paper’s most important conclusions are that statistical analysis common in business schools and the quantitative social sciences more broadly represents a very modest portion of the domain of analysis, that an extended version of the possible worlds semantics deriving from modal logic is helpful in understanding causation and that thorough explanations include answers to “How?” questions as well as “Why?” questions, that the agency of individuals is to be understood in terms of processes rather than mere actions and that in the context of all of the preceding the Nelson-Winter and Feldman-Pentland notions of organizational routines are not as remote from one another as is sometimes thought, and finally that ex ante causal indeterminacy is the most helpful assumption concerning the background causal order when exploring both strategic decision-making and organizational development and evolution. The sharp edge of all of this is that penetrating analysis may well require seeing agency of one sort or another close to the heart of the sort of history in question, a perspective which should be some comfort to many historians. He will argue that this sheds interesting light on how business history is different in more than subject matter from more general economic history. A concluding Section of the underlying text draws out the import of all of the preceding for business education and the discussion of business historical narratives more broadly.

Daniel Raff is Associate Professor of Management at the Wharton School, Associate Professor of History in the School of Arts and Sciences, and Lecturer in the Law School at the University of Pennsylvania and a longtime Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was educated at the Friends School in Sandy Spring, Maryland, and holds an undergraduate degree from New College, Florida, and graduate degrees from Princeton, Oxford, and MIT. He is an economic and business historian, the author or co-author of many articles (in journals such as the American Economic Review, the American Historical Review, Business History, the Business History Review, Enterprise & Society, Entreprises et Histoire, the Journal of Economic History, the Journal of Political Economy, and others) and book chapters and is the co-editor of five collective works, the most recent of which being The Emergence of Routines: Entrepreneurship, Organization and Business History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) [edited with Philip Scranton]. He is a former trustee of both the Economic History Association and the Business History Conference. Prior to coming to Penn, he taught (in reverse order) at the business and law schools of Columbia University, the Harvard Business School, and Magdalen College, Oxford. While teaching at Columbia, he and his colleagues there Ronald Gilson and Victor Goldberg developed what is now the standard way of teaching deal design principles to law and business school students.

Practical information

The seminar will be organized as a hybrid event at Håndbiblioteket on the 5th floor in Niels Treschow’s hus, University of Oslo.

Join us on Zoom by following this link

Dinner registration

About the event

As of spring 2022, seminars will be hybrid, with the option to attend on Zoom and in person. The seminars are open to all.

Organizer

Creative IPR and History of Capitalism
Published July 8, 2024 1:19 PM - Last modified

The Pioneering Entrepreneurship of Early Modern Book Publishers

Angela Nuovo (University of Milan) presents: The Pioneering Entrepreneurship of Early Modern Book Publishers

Time and place: June 26, 2023 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, Zoom and Håndbiblioteket 534, Niels Treschows Hus

The invention of printing was the technological innovation that had the greatest impact on society until more powerful media appeared in the last century. Whereas several demanding factors, as expressions of the purposes of organized groups such as the Church, universities, and merchants, pulled printing into existence in Western Europe, the earliest publishers nevertheless had to invest large resources in marketing printed books.

This seminar will focus on the ambitious strategies pushed by book producers to create a market for their new commodity. Taking into consideration the Italian market and especially Venice, the birth of trade networks and new professions as distributors and booksellers will be analyzed. The focus will be on the juridical and economic aspects of this epochal change, as they have been reconstructed by the EMoBookTrade project, a five-year research project funded by the European Research Council: https://emobooktrade.unimi.it/

Angela Nuovo is Professor of the History of the Book at the University of Milan, Italy. She has published widely on the book trade and private libraries in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She has been Principal Investigator of the ERC project EMoBookTrade (2016-2022), Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, University of Oxford (2012), and recipient of an Ahmanson Research Fellowship at the University of California Los Angeles (2014).

Practical information

The seminar will be organized as a hybrid event at Håndbiblioteket on the 5th floor in Niels Treschow’s hus, University of Oslo.

Join us on Zoom by following this link.

Organizer

History of Capitalism and BE4COPY

Where is Asia in the History of Early Modern Capitalism?

Giorgio Riello (European University Institute) and Michael O’Sullivan (CAPASIA project) presents Where is Asia in the History of Early Modern Capitalism?

Time and place: May 15, 2023 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, Håndbiblioteket 534, Niels Treschows Hus

This talk argues that early modern Asia is fast gaining greater consideration in histories and conceptualizations of capitalism on account of two developments: 1) a new emphasis on land as a natural resource for production; and 2) a view of Asian labour as a reservoir of human capital instead of simply an unskilled, coerced or enslaved population.

In making this argument, we disentangle the question of capitalism from growth and account for disparities within Asia. We also reckon with the reluctance of historians of Asia to embrace the term capitalism. Indeed, since the late 1990s, economic historians of Asia have been united in criticizing the application to Asia of paradigms formulated in reference to early modern European capitalism. Reluctant though many historians of early modern Asia may be to endorse capitalism as an analytical concept, we believe that this creates an imbalance that continues to anchor scholarship to Euro-centred conceptualisations. The danger in this is twofold: in roundabout fashion it enshrines European exceptionalism, and it marginalizes the substantial advances in the study of economic life in early modern Asia over the past generation.

Speakers:

Giorgio Riello is Professor of Early Modern Global History at the European University Institute and the Principal Investigator of the ERC Advanced Project CAPASIA. He is also Professor of Global History and Culture at Warwick University.

Michael O’Sullivan is Senior Research Fellow for the CAPASIA project. Before his current position, he held fellowships at Harvard and Yale universities. His book on the histories of Gujarati Muslim commercial castes will be published by Harvard University Press later this year.

Seminar - History of Capitalism: Woke Washing: Capitalism, Consumerism, Opportunism

Audrey Millet (University of Oslo) presents Woke Washing: Capitalism, Consumerism, Opportunism.

Time and place: May 8, 2023 2:15 PM – 4:00 PM, Håndbiblioteket, 5th floor Niels Treschows hus

Woke. Coming from the United States, the term woke is being aware of social and racial inequalities, homophobia and sexism, or even environmental issues, and to look critically at these injustices and systemic issues. The claims and the are clearly laudable. While it is usually associated with anti-capitalism, this supposed woke ideology is at the heart of the strategy of many companies. Should we see this as a political and societal victory of wokism or rather a commercial or rather a commercial and consumerist deviation of this progressive movement? I propose to question these strategies of the industry which, since the beginning of the 19th century, has adopted a supposedly enlightened behavior to prove to us that it wants to do us good. The woke capitalism is older than it seems: for two hundred years, industrialists have been diverting popular demands to their advantage, in a dangerous manipulation that tends to depoliticize them. But when industry empties our demands of meaning to serve its growth objectives, it deliberately influences our choices and steals our democratic sovereignty.

Audrey Millet is a Marie-Sklodowska Curie researcher at the University of Oslo. The Made in SweatShops project investigates how the implementation of an industrial model in the global clothing industry has led to a de-skilling of the workforce, focusing mainly on the female workforce. She has published Fabriquer le désir. Une histoire de la mode de l’Antiquité à nos jours (2020, Belin), Le livre noir de la mode. Creation, production, manipulation (2021, Les Pérégrines), Les dessous du maillot de bain. Une autre histoire du corps (2022, Les Pérégrines). Her last book is published in 2023 : Woke Washing: capitalisme, consumérisme, opportunisme.

Practical information

The seminar will be organized as a hybrid event at Håndbiblioteket on the 5th floor in Niels Treschow’s hus, University of Oslo.

Join us on Zoom by following this link.

Seminar - History of Capitalism: Moral Economy and Historical Axiology: The Case of Saving Lives from Shipwreck

Henning Trüper (Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research - ZfL Berlin) presents Moral economy and historical axiology: The Case of Saving Lives from Shipwreck

Time and place: Apr. 24, 2023 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, Håndbiblioteket, 5th floor Niels Treschows hus

The talk revisits the concept of "moral economy," as laid out in E. P. Thompson's classical article. I will argue that the concept, which is notoriously strung out between the concretion of Thompson's historical topic - the history of corn riots in eighteenth-century England - and the high level of abstraction of the component terms, can be re-interpreted in terms of both its theoretical and historical underpinnings. I will propose to regard moral economies as sites on which social collectives process the meaning and theory of "value," i.e. "axiology" in philosophical terminology. I will develop this perspective for another historical context, the emergence of humanitarian movements for saving lives from shipwreck in the early nineteenth century. From the vantage point of this context, I will seek to offer an account that also makes clear why axiology is, always, historical in a strong sense, as the site of a constant reworking of the triangulation of the moral, the political, and the economic, the nature of which also changes profoundly around 1800.

Practical information

The seminar will be organized as a hybrid event at Håndbiblioteket on the 5th floor in Niels Treschow’s hus, University of Oslo.

Join us on Zoom by following this link

Creative IPR and History of Capitalism Seminar with Eva Hemmungs Wirtén and Anaïs Fléchet

Eva Hemmungs Wirtén (Linköping University) presents Fighting for Champagne: Bubbles and Intellectual Property, and Anaïs Fléchet (the University of Paris Saclay ) presents Tuned into the World. The UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music (1961-1985)

Time and place: Mar. 14, 2023 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, Zoom and Håndbiblioteket, 5th floor Niels Treschows hus

Fighting for Champagne: Bubbles and Intellectual Property

“Remember, gentlemen, it’s not just France we’re fighting for, it’s Champagne!” The exact date of the quote attributed to Winston Churchill remains difficult to ascertain. It could stem from 1918, when Churchill was Minister of Munitions, but it could also be from 1940, around the time when he as Prime Minister promised the British nothing but “blood, toil, tears and sweat.” Whether speaking to fellow members of Parliament or officers about to embark on Operation Overlord, his motivation had not changed from first to second World War. Nor had the enemy. Losing one inch of this valuable territory to Germany was unthinkable. Yet, the land was secondary to what Churchill most likely really wanted his gentlemen to come to the defense of; namely the effervescent wine bearing the same name. Defending the wine (the miniscule champagne) was defending the region (the majuscule Champagne), with La France coming in a distant third.

It is the underlying premise of this project that the fight for champagne is an ongoing one. In 2023, it does not involve bayonets or trenches or air bombardment, but it is still fierce and results from being one of the “most regulated wine areas of the world” (Georgopoulus 2012: 27). In fact, regulation and control—primarily in the shape of intellectual property (IP)—is at the heart of what makes champagne champagne, the defense of which nonetheless involves a whole panoply of strategies from marriage contracts to trade secrets, materializing through local custom, national law, as well as in European and global trade agreements.

Surveying this legal battlefield of regulation that is the northernmost winegrowing region in France, this project asks one main question: who fights for Champagne with the weaponry of intellectual property, how and why? The who ranges from powerful institutions such as Le Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne to iconic grower champagne makers such as Jacques Selosse. The how is the full arsenal of intellectual property these representatives have at their disposal: from geographical indications (GI), which “authenticate and symbolize an intellectual property right of a label owned collectively by all producers in a region” (Jay & Taylor 2013, n.p.) to trademark law, know-how (savoir-faire) and trade secrets. And then the finale. It is the overarching purpose of this project to answer the third question by unpacking the many cultural, symbolic and economic reasons why champagne is worth fighting for. Reasons that include being an extremely valuable export commodity (60% of the production is sold outside France), since 2015 a UNESCO World Heritage site, a hotly debated topic in global intergovernmental arenas such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), part of a multimillion-dollar luxury industry, and last, but certainly not least, the very embodiment of France and Frenchness.

Eva Hemmungs Wirtén is Professor of Mediated Culture at the Department of Culture and Society, Linköping University, Sweden. She has written extensively on the cultural history of international copyright, the public domain and, more recently, on patents as documents. Her most recent book, Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information was published by University of Chicago Press in 2015. In 2017, she was awarded an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant for the project “Patents as Scientific Information, 1895-2020,” (PASSIM), which runs between October 1, 2017, and June 30, 2023.

Tuned into the World. The UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music (1961-1985)
As a symbol of peace and universal harmony, music soon became part of UNESCO’s mission. In 1949, the International Music Council (IMC) was created to promote musical exchanges across political and cultural frontiers. Although it first focused on Western art music, the IMC started to promote Non-Western music at the end of the 1950s. The quest for “authenticity” and the need to preserve “the musical diversity of the world” became a new motto, which led to the realization of the UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music of the World, a series of 130 albums released by Bärenreiter, Philips and EMI from 1961 to 1985.

Drawing on archival materials, as well as interviews with ethnomusicologists who took part in the collection, this paper defends a “micro-global” approach to music. It explores the role of UNESCO as a driving force of musical globalization, pushing the record industry towards the Global South two decades before the success of world music, but also its limits. In fact, the musical world promoted by UNESCO was far from being universal. Political pressures as well as the quest for “authenticity” led to the exclusion of entire regions and styles, working as a factor of both connectivity and disconnectivity.

Anaïs Fléchet is associate professor at the University of Paris Saclay (UVSQ), member of the Research Team Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines. Her work focuses on music and international history, cultural globalization and Latin American music. She has published several books and articles on these subjects, including: Cultural History in France. Local Debates, Global Perspectives (Routledge, 2019), Histoire culturelle du Brésil (IHEAL éditions, 2019); Littératures et musiques dans la mondialisation (Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015); “Musique et relations internationales” (special issue of Relations internationales, 2013/3-4). She is currently completing a new book on Unesco and music during the Cold War.

Practical information

The seminar will be organized as a hybrid event at Håndbiblioteket on the 5th floor in Niels Treschow’s hus, University of Oslo. After the seminar, the History of Capitalism research group invites all participants to continue the conversation over dinner. If you want to join us for dinner after the seminar, please register your attendance by 12.00 on Friday March 10.

Seminar - Creative IPR and History of Capitalism: Lessons from Oslo - Examining social mobility after the establishment of Norway’s first university

Nick Ford (Lund University) presents Lessons from Oslo - Examining social mobility after the establishment of Norway’s first university

Time and place: Nov. 28, 2022 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, P. A. Munchs hus 489

The first Scandinavian universities were established in the fifteenth century. But it was not until 1811 that the first university was established in Norway: what is today the University of Oslo. Prior to this, aspiring Norwegian academics would travel to Copenhagen to study. Many high-status professions in Norwegian society — including in state administration and the church — required university level qualifications.

The research question considered is: How did the University of Oslo affect patterns of higher education attainment in the years immediately after its establishment? Of particular interest is what changes were induced in the socioeconomic and educational profile of the families from which students came. We propose a difference-in-difference analysis to examine changes before and after the opening of the University of Oslo: both between Denmark and Norway, and within the Norwegian graduate population.

The empirical approach is underpinned by three factors. First, the timing of the establishment of the University of Oslo was not determined by Norway itself — after many decades of advocacy for a Norwegian university, it could not be anticipated that one would finally be founded in the early nineteenth century. Second, the University of Oslo was modelled closely on the University of Copenhagen and offered substantially the same courses — the new university did not offer instruction in new skills. Third, political circumstances acted to cleanly separate the Danish and Norwegian cohorts after the University of Oslo opened: Norwegians no longer moved to Copenhagen to study, and Danes did not study in Oslo.

Nick Ford is a PhD student in economic history at Lund University in Sweden. He is working with Scandinavian economic history and started his studies at Lund University in 2020 after completing a master's degree in economics at the University of Southern Denmark. He is attached to a research project on human capital acquisition across Denmark, Norway and Sweden during the period 1800-1940. The project uses individual-level records to track the background, education and work experience of students to better understand changes in employers’ demands for worker skills during a period of significant economic development.

Practical information

Join us on Zoom by following this link

About the event

As of spring 2022, seminars will be hybrid, with the option to attend on Zoom and in person. The seminars are open to all.

2022

Seminar - Creative IPR and History of Capitalism: Hello Florence - So far so good: Capitalism’s Affective Articulation

Andrew Popp (Copenhagen Business School) presents Hello Florence - So far so good: Capitalism’s Affective Articulation

Time and place: Dec. 12, 2022 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, Håndbiblioteket, Niels Treschows hus and on Zoom

In the summer of 1917, Ray Miller drove with his family from eastern Ohio to visit family living in Los Angeles. At home he left behind his young sweetheart, Florence Roe. During the nine months they were separated across 1917-18 Ray and Florence exchanged almost 200 letters. This paper uses Florence and Ray’s letters to argue that affect is a mode or mechanism of articulation (here thought of as ‘jointing,’ more than as speech), animation, and circulation within capitalist economies. In the paper, these effects are traced to the relationship between affect and the projection of fantasies and future-oriented dreamworlds, replicating or mimicking and co-generating capitalism’s own future-oriented projects, projections and imagined futures. Thus, the paper continues my attempts to open a dialogue between the histories of capitalism and economic life and the histories of emotions and the everyday. At the same time as making these arguments, the paper seeks to be richly empirical, immersing us in Ray and Florence’s world.

Andrew Popp is a professor of history in the Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. He has published on a wide range of topics in British business, social, and cultural history, but most recently he has focused on the relationships between emotions, the everyday, and what might be called the history of economic life. He has been Editor-in-Chief at Enterprise and Society: The International Journal of Business History since 2014.

About the event

Seminar - Creative IPR and History of Capitalism: Lessons from Oslo - Examining social mobility after the establishment of Norway’s first university

Nick Ford (Lund University) presents Lessons from Oslo - Examining social mobility after the establishment of Norway’s first university

Time and place: Nov. 28, 2022 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, P. A. Munchs hus 489

About the event

This event is part of Creative IPR and History of Capitalism's series of open seminars.

Seminar - Creative IPR and History of Capitalism: Postcolonial People - The Return from Africa and the Remaking of Portugal

Christoph Kalter (University of Agder) presents Postcolonial People - The Return from Africa and the Remaking of Portugal

Time and place: Oct. 31, 2022 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, Håndbiblioteket, Niels Treschows hus and on Zoom

Having built much of their wealth, power, and identities on imperial expansion, how did the Portuguese and, by extension, Europeans deal with the end of empire? Postcolonial People explores the processes and consequences of decolonization through the histories of over half a million Portuguese settlers who 'returned' following the 1974 Carnation Revolution from Angola, Mozambique, and other parts of Portugal's crumbling empire to their country of origin and citizenship, itself undergoing significant upheaval. Looking comprehensively at the returnees' history and memory for the first time, this book contributes to debates about colonial racism and its afterlives. It studies migration, 'refugeeness,' and integration to expose an apparent paradox: The end of empire and the return migrations it triggered belong to a global history of the twentieth century and are shaped by transnational dynamics. However, they have done nothing to dethrone the primacy of the nation-state. If anything, they have reinforced it.

Christoph Kalter is a Professor of History at the University of Agder. He is the author of "The Discovery of the Third World: Decolonization and the Rise of the New Left in France, c. 1950-1976" (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and of "Postcolonial People. The Return from Africa and the Remaking of Portugal" (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

About the event

This event is part of Creative IPR and History of Capitalism's series of open seminars.

Seminar - Creative IPR and History of Capitalism: Responsibility Goes Virtual: Lessons from Covid Vaccine Patents

Professor Mario Biagoli (UCLA Law) presents Responsibility Goes Virtual: Lessons from Covid Vaccine Patents

Time and place: June 13, 2022 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, Håndbiblioteket, Niels Treschows hus and on Zoom

Current calls for the global North’s to provide affordable covid vaccine shots to the global South through licenses and tech-transfer programs has triggered a new and intriguing reframing of the notion of responsibility by the pharmaceutical industry. The assumption is that the present will repeat itself, and that we need to be ready for those scenarios even though that may come with human costs in the present. In fact, pharmaceutical industry spokespersons have been arguing that the global north is not responsible for the health needs of the global south, but for those of future global subjects. Loudly affirming responsibility to future generations is applied as an ethical-looking veneer over the rejection of responsibility to present patients in actual need. If the global South’s calls for compulsory licensing of vaccine patents were to be accepted, that would destabilize the present pharmaceutical innovation ecology by showing that IP rights could be arbitrarily weakened or suspended. In turn, this would scare away venture capital, thus starving the R+D ecosystem. Accordingly, acting on the belief that the global north has any responsibility for the health of the global south will have irresponsible, fatal consequences. Today’s unvaccinated masses demanding affordable shots are thus “selfish” – a “special interest” group insensitive and irresponsible to the needs of a much larger number of future global citizens, from the North or South alike. The path to future global health is obstructed not by corporate greed but by the demands of today’s poor.

Mario Biagioli is a Distinguished Professor of Law and Communication at UCLA. Dr. Biagioli’s scholarship is at the intersection of intellectual property and science and technology studies. He was previously a Distinguished Professor in the School of Law, the STS Program, and the Department of History at UC Davis, where he was the founding director for the Center for Science and Innovation Studies, and an Associate faculty member of the Cultural Studies Program and the Critical Theory Program. He is the author of eight books, his most recent publication Gaming the Metrics: New Ecologies of Academic Misconduct was published by MIT Press in 2020. He is currently completing a book on the new forms of scientific fraud and misconduct that are spawn by the introduction of metrics of academic evaluation. Other interests include patentable subject matter, the history of the idea/expression divide, and the role of eyewitnessing in science. [Biography sourced from UCLA Law].

About the event

This event is part of Creative IPR and History of Capitalism's series of open seminars.

Seminar - Creative IPR and History of Capitalism: Regulation or Reputation? Evidence from the Art Market

Professor Kim Oosterlinck (Université libre de Bruxelles) and Dr. Anne-Sophie Radermecker (Université libre de Bruxelles) present their paper, Regulation or Reputation? Evidence from the Art Market.

Time and place: Apr. 25, 2022 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, Håndbiblioteket, Niels Treschows hus and on Zoom

LONDON, UK - FEBRUARY 19, 2014: Christie's auction catalogue, published by Christie's on November 10, 1997. Christie's is currently the world's largest fine arts auction house.Shutterstock.

This paper investigates the role of regulation and reputation in the art market. We look at attribution issues in the art market, and in France in particular, where both regulatory and reputational mechanisms have been implemented. More specifically, we focus on the Marcus Decree––a pioneering decree regulating the authentication process of artworks in France since 1981––and the self-regulated authentication systems developed by international top-tier auction houses.

Our findings suggest that the implementation of the decree did neither significantly strengthen the market for autograph and non-autograph works, nor radically modify the landscape of attributions, whereas similar but stronger trends in prices and volumes are found in reputational markets (UK, US). We also attribute the moderate effects of the Marcus decree to the size and relative depth of the French art market, the concomitant globalization of the art trade and the development of technical art history, compliance mechanisms and legal compliance costs. Our results are supported by empirical evidence from a data set composed of 15th and 16th century Flemish paintings auctioned between 1972 and 2015 in a regulated market (FR), but also in reputational markets (UK, US, and other European countries).

Speakers

Kim Oosterlinck is Professor of Finance at the Université libre de Bruxelles and Research Fellow at the CEPR. His work on arts includes, amongst others, the impact of fake discoveries on art markets, the reactions of art markets to monetary reforms, art dealers’ business strategy and the strategic motivations of banks to create art collections. He has published several articles on the French, Dutch and Belgian art markets during WWII and works on a book comparing these markets with the British and German ones. Kim Oosterlinck is currently Vice-Rector in charge of Prospective and Finance at the ULB.

Anne-Sophie Radermecker holds a Ph.D. in Art history/Cultural Economics from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She is a former B.A.E.F. fellow at Duke University and lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Since 2021, she is assistant professor in Cultural Management at the Université libre de Bruxelles. Her main research interests are the economics of art and culture, the market for marginal heritage, the reciprocal interactions between museums and the art market, and quantitative methods applied to art history. Her book entitled Anonymous Art at Auction was released in July 2021 (Brill, Studies in the History of Collecting & Art Markets).

About the event

This event is part of Creative IPR and History of Capitalism's series of open seminars.

Seminar - Creative IPR and History of Capitalism: The Movement of a Musical Work, Ernst Krenek’s Op, 1923-1940

Johan Larson Lindal (Linköping University) presents The Movement of a Musical Work: Ernst Krenek’s Op, 1923-1940

Time and place: Apr. 4, 2022 2:15 PM – 3:30 PM, Håndbiblioteket, Niels Treschows hus and on Zoom

Johan Larson Lindal discusses the musical work concept and the movement of musical works through a microstudy of Ernst Krenek’s String Quartet no. 3, Op. 20, from its composition in 1923 until its reappearance in New York in 1940. The Quartet belongs to Krenek’s lesser-known works and occupies a rather narrow spot within the ‘New Music’ in the German-speaking avant-garde of its time. Its premiere was at the first International Society for Contemporary Music festival in 1923, after which it was largely forgotten by its composer. Nevertheless, it reappeared several times throughout this period in various formats and with different constellations of people, even after becoming effectively banned in Germany and Austria. These prerequisites, along with its ambiguous formal structure, makes it a compelling case.

The work of art is often discussed from a philosophical viewpoint, with proponents of, for instance, musical works as eternal abstracta or spatiotemporally situated concreta being a main focal point. Lindal instead approaches the work concept from a historical and sociological perspective, claiming that the notion of any individual musical work is based on its movement through societies and processes such as performances, publication, copyright, remediation, and circulation. Lindal draws on Actor-Network Theory and micro-history to construct a framework in which to view the work concept in relation to Op. 20 1923-1940 through the music piece’s various events, or instances in which it became relevant as an entity: for example, as text, performance, and document. He discusses which aspects of the music piece were emphasized depending on context, for example content, form, information, and relations. He thus studies the piece Op. 20 as an actor-network, always existing and transforming within networks consisting of different components, and with different degrees of unity. Studying a musical piece in this way helps us understand how artistic works were continuously fixed, re-performed, and re-defined in the early 20th century.

Johan Larson Lindal has, since 2019, been a PhD Candidate at Linköping University, Sweden: Department of Culture & Society (IKOS), division Tema Q (interdisciplinary research centre for Culture and Society). His main area of research is 20th century music history. He presented a paper at the Creative IPR Conference in February 2022 and contributed a chapter to the upcoming European Network of Avant-garde and Modernism Studies 7th book series on the theme ‘Crisis’. Before enrolling as a PhD student, he was affiliated with the Mistra Urban Futures platform in Stockholm investigating sustainable transdisciplinary co-production in the Stockholm Region.

About the event

This event is part of Creative IPR and History of Capitalism's series of open seminars.

Seminar - Creative IPR and History of Capitalism: Reshaping Intellectual Property Rights to Support Effective Transitions in Fashion

Sara Cavagnero (Northumbria University) presents Reshaping Intellectual Property Rights to Support Effective Transitions in Fashion.

Time and place: Mar. 28, 2022 2:15 PM – 5:30 PM, Håndbiblioteket, Niels Treschows hus and on Zoom

In the current framework, IP assets seem pernicious, with third-party certification marks often cherry-picking issues and individual trademarks being frequently used as unsubstantiated sustainability indicators. Thus, by supporting green marketing campaigns and fostering power imbalance, IP tools are likely to create confusion regarding sustainable practices, giving the illusion that progress is being made – in sharp antithesis with the principles and objectives inspiring IP law.

Strengthening the criteria that brands must meet before they can earn sustainability credentials, eventually conveyed through IP rights, is advocated at all levels. Arguably, though, this top-down approach is not effective as it fosters a business-as-usual perspective and neglects MSEs, which are predominant in the sector. These players are often exploring new ways of doing business, purpose-driven, based on transparency and trust, aimed at benefitting both local and global communities.

Therefore, this research posits theories for reshaping existing IP rights according to a bottom-up perspective, drawing on the sustainable pathways set forth by smaller players. Starting from the assumption that transparency is only the starting point of the sustainability journey, the analysis will focus on the potential of IP rights to convey quality, ethos, and craftsmanship, which come into play when relationship-based business models are at stake.

Sara Cavagnero is a PhD Researcher at Northumbria University and qualified IP lawyer admitted at the Italian Bar, Sara's work has devoted to the use of IP assets as private sustainability governance tools and the legal implications arising thereof. Her analysis is framed within the under-considered SMEs' perspective, and focused on suppliers along the value chain. Sara is involved as an expert at UN/CEFACT "Enhancing Traceability and Transparency for Sustainable Value Chains in Garment and Footwear" project. She is the Law & Sustainability Specialist and one of the co-founders of the NGO rén collective, a platform providing sustainable fashion SMEs with network opportunities and viable options for an industry reset.

About the event

This event is part of Creative IPR and History of Capitalism's series of open seminars.

Published Jan. 19, 2024 3:36 PM - Last modified Feb. 10, 2026 3:51 PM