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Guilds, product quality and intrinsic value: towards a history of conventions?
Zünfte, Produktqualität und intrinsischer Wert: in Richtung einer Geschichte der Konventionen?
[journal article]
Abstract "This article addresses the issue of conventions from the perspective of the early modern guilds' regulations related to product quality. Starting from the ideas of François Eymard-Duvernay one specific convention is identified: 'intrinsic value' (i.e., value related to the raw materials used). This... view more
"This article addresses the issue of conventions from the perspective of the early modern guilds' regulations related to product quality. Starting from the ideas of François Eymard-Duvernay one specific convention is identified: 'intrinsic value' (i.e., value related to the raw materials used). This convention enabled guild-based artisans to locate product quality in their political standing and, hence, was intimately linked to the (urban) political context. White this may be familiar to the ideas on 'justification' of Boltanski and Thevenot, an historical analysis reveals fundamental conceptual issues. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both the convention of intrinsic value and the guilds' power to define product quality became obsolete because of (among other things) epistemological transformations. White intrinsic value as a convention was connected to the idea of matter possessing mysterious, religious and creative powers in itself, natural philosophers naturalized matter from the seventeenth century on. As a result, value may have become synonymous with either the products' place in a taxonomy of products or the meaning produced in discourses external to the product. Further research should in any case take fundamental epistemic shifts and shifts in the subject object relationships into consideration." (author's abstract)... view less
Keywords
quality; intrinsic motivation; guild system; evaluation; product; value; town; historical development; convention
Classification
Social History, Historical Social Research
Method
descriptive study; historical
Document language
English
Publication Year
2011
Page/Pages
p. 103-124
Journal
Historical Social Research, 36 (2011) 4
Issue topic
Conventions and institutions from a historical perspective / Konventionen und Institutionen in historischer Perspektive
DOI
https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.36.2011.4.103-124
ISSN
0172-6404
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed