The Civilisation of Fashion: At the Origins of a Western Social Institution

The coming of fashion created a new world, in which a passion for novelty, combined with rapid changes in taste, interrupted a tradition of well-established habits in ways of dressing and the significance attributed to clothing, introducing to the social structure a new system of values, able to condition the behaviour of the actors. Fashion can be considered as a social institution which regulates the alternation of cyclical changes in dress styles, overcoming the previous regulation based on ascribed principles. Needless to say, it was not a sudden or quick transition, but rather a gradual, progressive but irreversible change. The question is then to ascertain the period in which this process of transformation was begun. The paper argues that it happened in the sixteenth century, when the traditional ‘hierarchy of appearances’ went into crisis for a number of reasons: the difficulty of enforcing the sumptuary laws, the pressure from social classes wanting to move upwards, the new opportunities afforded by the clothing market. The system based on a rigid normative code—the sumptuary laws—was replaced by a social institution, by rules no less strict—fashion—which did not cease to attribute significance of representation and identification to clothing, but carried out this role much more flexibly and, at the same time, more effectively

Between mercantilism and market: privileges for invention in early modern Europe

Abstract: This paper aims at offering a reconstruction of the salient features of the most important formal institution introduced by European states in the Early Modern Period with the aim of recognizing and protecting the intellectual property of the inventors. Such institutions went under different names – ‘Privilegio’ in Venice, ‘Patent’ in England, ‘Privil`ege’ in France, ‘Cedula de privilegio de invenc¸ion’ in Spain – and, in general, took the form of the concession of a special prerogative to the inventor by the sovereign or the republic, by virtue of which he could exploit, in economic terms, his own invention through holding a monopoly. The article starts with the origins of the privileges for invention, of which the first examples are to be found in the Middle Ages, but whose official ‘genesis’ is commonly identified with the Venetian law of 1474. The fundamental characteristics of the Venetian system, which was later imitated by other European states, are analysed. In the following section, the adoption of this model by those other states – Spain, France, England, and the Netherlands – is illustrated. In fact, the majority of these would make legislation on intellectual property an instrument of mercantilist policy, under the same conditions as prevailed in Venice. Further, we will examine some of the opportunities that the diffusion of these measures offered to those involved and the way in which they – as craftsmen, merchants, and speculators – took advantage of the business of privileges. Finally, before concluding, some thoughts on the changes made in the policy of privileges given the transformations that took place in the course of the eighteenth century, in order to understand the ‘adaptive’ capacity of these institutions

Fashion and democracy in Europe, 1860-1960

The article deals with the interaction between fashion and political systems

John Styles, The dress of the people. Everyday fashion in eighteenth-century England

C’est avec la publication, en 1982, du célèbre volume de Neil McKendrick, The consumer revolution in eighteenth-century England que s’est ouvert le débat historiographique sur la transition vers de nouveaux styles de vie au sein des sociétés européennes. McKendrick indiquait que c’est au XVIIIe siècle et en Angleterre que cette transformation se vérifie pour la première fois. Depuis, les historiens se sont confrontés sur ce thème, discutant de « révolution des consommations » en partant de po..

Factores explicativos del endeudamiento en pymes argentinas

Fil: Belfanti, María Pía. Universidad Nacional Villa María; Argentina..Fil: Sader, Gustavo. Universidad Nacional Villa María; Argentina.

In vivo antimicrobial activity of 0.6% povidone-iodine eye drops in patients undergoing intravitreal injections: a prospective study

To investigate the antimicrobial activity of a preservative-free 0.6% povidone-iodine eye drop as an antiseptic procedure in decreasing the conjunctival bacterial load in eyes scheduled for intravitreal treatment and to compare its efficacy to the untreated fellow eye used as the control group. Prospective cohort analysis in which 208 patients received preservative-free 0.6% povidone-iodine eye drops three times a day for three days before intravitreal injection. Before and after the prophylactic treatment, a conjunctival swab was collected from both the study eye and the untreated contralateral eye, used as control. The swab was inoculated on different culture media and the colony-forming units were counted. Bacteria and fungi were identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Treatment with 0.6% povidone-iodine eye drops significantly reduced the conjunctival bacterial load from baseline (p < 0.001 for blood agar and p < 0.001 for chocolate agar) with an eradication rate of 80%. The most commonly isolated pathogen at each time-point and in both groups was coagulase-negative Staphylococci, isolated in 84% of the positive cultures. The study provides evidence about the effectiveness of 0.6% povidone-iodine eye drops treatment in reducing the conjunctival bacterial load in eyes scheduled for intravitreal treatment