Guilds, product quality and intrinsic value: towards a history of conventions?

"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

Conventions, the great transformation and actor network theory

"This article proceeds from the field of tension between the synchronical approach of the economics of convention and the diachronical approach of economic anthropology (in the tradition of Karl Polanyi). It is argued that the economics of convention remain problematic to historians in that they fail to capture the long term transformations traditionally referred to as the emergence of modernity and the coming about of homo economicus. As a possible solution, the use of concepts and insights from Actor Network Theory is proposed. While this cluster of theories enables an historical perspective without considering modernity as a natural process, it confronts changing relationships between subjects, objects and cultural systems of meaning head on." (author's abstract

Access to the trade: monopoly and mobility in European craft guilds, 17th and 18th centuries

One of the standard objections against citizenship systems and trade organizations in the premodern world has been their exclusiveness. Privileged access to certain professions and industries is seen as a disincentive for technological progress. Guilds, especially, have been portrayed as providing unfair advantages to established masters and their descendants, over immigrants and other outsiders. In this paper the results of detailed local investigations of the composition of citizenries and guild apprentices and masters is brought together, to find out to what extent this picture is historically correct. This data offers an indirect measurement of the accessibility of citizenship and guilds that allows insight into the mechanisms of exclusion and their impact. The paper finds that guild masterships were in most towns open to large numbers of immigrants and non-family, as were training markets for apprentices. Therefore, we argue, our understanding of urban and guild ‘monopolies’, and the measure of protection and reward they supplied to established citizens, is in need of serious revision

Influencia de los Componentes Metalúrgicos C, Cr y P en la Permeabilidad del Hidrógeno para Aleaciones Férreas

186 p.La alta dependencia del sistema energético actual con respecto a los combustibles fósiles es un problema al que la humanidad debe hacer frente. Más allá de las consideraciones medioambientales que se puedan asociar a la combustión de los propios combustibles fósiles, las reservas de los mismos son finitas y a largo plazo se verán agotadas. Para afrontar esta situación se plantea el uso de la energía nuclear de fusión como opción tecnológica alternativa a medio plazo. En términos generales se espera que la fusión nuclear pueda suponer una fuente de energía masiva inagotable, limpia y segura.En este contexto el proyecto ITER pretende demostrar la viabilidad tecnológica de la fusión nuclear por confinamiento magnético mediante la construcción de un reactor de fusión que obtenga una potencia superior a la aportada para ponerlo en marcha. Uno de los elementos críticos de este tipo de reactores son las envolturas regeneradoras, a través de las que se debe extraer la energía generada por las reacciones de fusión y, a su vez, proporcionar todo el tritio necesario para mantener la reacción termonuclear durante la vida de la planta.Los materiales que constituirán los diferentes componentes de las futuras plantas de fusión estarán sujetos a la interacción con los isótopos de hidrógeno. El conocimiento de esta interacción resulta fundamental, sobre todo en las mencionadas envolturas regeneradoras, ya que condiciona la viabilidad de regeneración de tritio. Se debe recoger el tritio generado y transportarlo adecuadamente sin que se produzcan pérdidas sustanciales por difusión y absorción en el seno de dichos materiales, de manera que la gestión del combustible tritio se realice de manera eficiente.Todas las envolturas regeneradoras propuestas para ser ensayadas en ITER utilizarán un acero ferrítico-martensítico de baja activación neutrónica como material estructural. Resulta fundamental, por tanto, conocer los parámetros de transporte de los isótopos de hidrógeno en dichos acerosLa presente tesis tiene por objeto analizar los flujos de permeación de hidrógeno en diferentes aleaciones ferríticas con composiciones metalúrgicas controladas para poder analizar el efecto de dicha composición metalúrgica en la permeabilidad del hidrógeno. Para ello se ha empleado la técnica de permeación, una técnica clásica de caracterización del transporte de gas. Las 9 muestras ensayadas son aleaciones adquiridas por EFDA (European Fusion Development Agreement) que cumplen unos estrictos requisitos en cuanto a la composición y a la microestructura. Mediante el ensayo de dichas muestras en la instalación de permeación del Laboratorio de Materiales de Fusión perteneciente al Departamento de Ingeniería Nuclear y Mecánica de Fluidos se ha podido analizar la influencia del C, del Cr y del P en la permeabilidad del hidrógeno para regímenes difusivos. Adicionalmente, se han propuesto expresiones matemáticas para cuantificar la variación de la permeabilidad del hidrógeno en función del contenido de cada uno de los tres componentes mencionados

Access to the trade: monopoly and mobility in European craft guilds in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

One of the standard objections against guilds in the premodern world has been their exclusiveness. Guilds have been portrayed as providing unfair advantages to the children of established masters and locals, over immigrants and other outsiders. Privileged access to certain professions and industries is seen as a source of inequality and a disincentive for technological progress. In this paper we examine this assumption by studying the composition of guild masters and apprentices from a large sample of European towns and cities from 1600 to 1800, focusing on the share who were children of masters or locals. This data offers an indirect measurement of the strength of guild barriers, and by implication their monopolies. We find very wide variation between guilds in practice, but most guild masters and apprentices were immigrants or unrelated locals: openness was much more common than closure, especially in larger centres. Our understanding of guild ‘monopolies’ and exclusivity is in need of serious revision. [157 words

A prediction model for underestimation of invasive breast cancer after a biopsy diagnosis of ductal carcinoma in situ: based on 2892 biopsies and 589 invasive cancers

Background: Patients with a biopsy diagnosis of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) might be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer at excision, a phenomenon known as underestimation. Patients with DCIS are treated based on the risk of underestimation or progression to invasive cancer. The aim of our study was to expand the knowledge on underestimation and to develop a prediction model. Methods: Population-based data were retrieved from the Dutch Pathology Registry and the Netherlands Cancer Registry for DCIS between January 2011 and June 2012. Results: Of 2892 DCIS biopsies, 21% were underestimated invasive breast cancers. In multivariable analysis, risk factors were high-grade DCIS (odds ratio (OR) 1.43, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.05–1.95), a palpable tumour (OR 2.22, 95% CI: 1.76–2.81), a BI-RADS (Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System) score 5 (OR 2.36, 95% CI: 1.80–3.09) and a suspected invasive component at biopsy (OR 3.84, 95% CI: 2.69–5.46). The predicted risk for underestimation ranged from 9.5 to 80.2%, with a median of 14.7%. Of the 596 invasive cancers, 39% had unfavourable features. Conclusions: The risk for an underestimated diagnosis of invasive breast cancer after a biopsy diagnosis of DCIS is considerable. With our prediction model, the individual risk of underestimation can be calculated based on routinely available preoperatively known risk factors (https://www.evidencio.com/models/show/1074)