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Michela Barbot (ENS Cachan, Paris), Fabrice Boudjaaba (CRH-EHESS Paris), Andrea Caracausi(University of Padua), Luca Mocarelli (Bicocca University, Milan)Session Proposal for the European Social Science History Conference (Wien, 23-26 April 2014)Networks:“Labour” and “Economics”TitleWork and Property in Europe (1500-1900): Toward a Connected HistoryGeneral Aims of the ProjectOver the last decades the history of property rights and the history of work have been deeply renewed.Recent investigations have challenged the traditional idea that the rise of European capitalism was dueto a linear transition from ‘non-private’ to ‘private’ property and from ‘non-commodified’ to‘commodified’ labour (Grossi 1992; Brass, Van der Linden 1997; Steinfeld 2001). Differentinstitutional forms coexisted indeed for many centuries, far beyond the Industrial Revolution.Despite this new evidence, few studies have analysed the historical evolution of work and propertytogether. This absence is regrettable. Work and property were indeed both at the basis of the socialinclusion, citizenship rights and other fundamental institutional devices which are usually considered astypical of the economic growth and political modernity. Therefore an analysis that jointly investigatesthe evolution of the forms of property and work could significantly help to better clarify the historicalmechanisms of development and modernization.Following this perspective several key questions remain still open. They can be summarized as follow:how did ‘work’ and ‘property’ as historical institutions reciprocally interact, and, in turn, which werethe socioeconomic implications of this interaction? This macro-session aims to answer to thesequestions, investigating the relationship between labour and property using a wide Europeancomparison and a long-term perspective, since the 16th century to the beginning of the 20th century.This wide perspective will allow us to evaluate the impact on ownership and work practices of someoutstanding legal changes, such as the movement of English enclosures, the 1804 French Civil Code, orthe Second Serfdom in the Eastern Europe.Starting from the main research questions sketched above, we welcome papers articulated around threemajor research lines, which reflect three different sub-sessions:Sub-session 1. Communities, households, individualsIn this first research sub-session we encourage papers dealing with the analysis of the role of thevarious historical property regimes (private, collective, dissociated, etc.) and labour relations (free andunfree labour; reciprocal and wage labour) in the (supposed) process of ‘emancipation’ of individualsfrom family or communities. More specifically, we would like to understand: (a) If, and how were theforms of work and property based on the model of the domestic household and (b) how did therelations between household systems, property regimes and labour organisations evolve acrosscenturies.Sub-session 2. Appropriations, dispossession, capabilitiesUntil recently, the history of the industrial revolution has been seen as a process of dispossessionstarted in Europe since the agricultural enclosures. Following this interpretation, the closure of openfields had two main effects: the spread of a culture of a ‘full owner’ and the transformation of a mass oflandless peasants excluded from their communities into an exploited and unskilled working class. Inour opinion, this too rigid interpretation could be questioned. We argue that the integration of wagelabour in a series of rules and contractual arrangements may have contributed to the development of aset of individual or collective ‘capabilities’ (in line with the interpretation of Amartya Sen), which wereable to generate inclusion and improve labour skills rather than create division, separation orexploitation. The two main questions here will be: (a) how did property rights and labour relations help,or dampen, the process of acquisition of skills in the various times and context? (b) Was there arelationship between the fragility/imperfection/uncertainty of property rights and the ‘precariousness’in labour relations? How did the status of owners interact with the professional status?Sub-session 3. Embeddedness, evaluation and commodificationA third line of research would test the (‘supposed’) progressive depersonalization and commodificationof economic relations in property and labour systems. The basic question can be expressed as follow:the Polanyi’s hypothesis concerning the “disembeddedness” of the economy from society starting backfrom the Industrial Revolution can be proved comparing and connecting the histories of property andwork? The authors are invited to reflect on these points: (1) when, how and why did the work turn intoa commodity? (2) Did the emergence of full private property have some effects on contractualconditions and negotiations between employers and employees in labour relations, especially in term ofwages fixation and working times?We welcome both micro-historical studies on single cities or communities and macro-approaches onentire regions and States. From a micro perspective, our aim is to compare urban and rural contexts, inorder to understand when and how the so-called ‘modern’ concepts of property and work appeared first.From a macro perspective, we would explore the property and labour ‘divergences’ within Europe, inorder to better highlight the role played by these two institutions in the supposed ‘Great Divergence’between continental Europe and Great Britain, as well as between Eastern and Western Europe.Authors should indicate in which sub-session the paper refers.Abstracts (100-500 words) and one-half page CV have to be sent by 25 April 2013 to:workproperty2014@gmail.com