Kolejny, 18. Międzynarodowy Kongres Mediewistyczny odbędzie się w dniach 11-14 lipca 2011 r. Tematem przewodnim kongresu organizatorzy uczynili biedę i bogactwo w średniowieczu.
Propozycje referatów należy zgłaszać do 31 sierpnia 2010 r.
Call for Papers/Sessions
As the global economy attempts to recover from the recent staggering economic downturn, and scholars and journalists describe the enormously uneven concentrations of wealth that took place in the decade preceding that downturn, it seems only natural to turn our scholarly gaze to issues of wealth and poverty in the Middle Ages. For that reason, the IMC has chosen for 2011 the special thematic focus: Poor…Rich
How uneven was the distribution of wealth in medieval communities and polities? How was the distribution of wealth affected by environmental and commercial cycles of paucity and plenty? How was wealth amassed and then redistributed? What were the topographies of wealth and poverty? How permeable were the physical and symbolic boundaries between rich and poor? In what ways did both church and secular authorities attempt to deal with the moral and practical problems arising from poverty and the uneven distribution of wealth?
Areas of discussion could include:
- charity, macro- and micro-economic studies
- archaeological evidence for different economic strata, nutrition, social structures and social mobility
- vagrancy and homelessness
- the rich and the poor in literature
- concepts of ‘expensive’ and ‘cheap’
- rural v. urban poverty
- involuntary and voluntary poverty
- religions and religious orders and their approach to poverty and wealth
- tax structures and their affects on the distribution of wealth
- social value of (manual) labour/work
- spiritual poverty
- concepts or perceptions of relative wealth or poverty
- luxury, conspicuous consumption and magnificence
- sumptuary laws, health and treatment of the sick
- moral attitudes towards individualism
- excessive living, gluttony, avarice, envy, and begging.