Exchanging logoi for aloga: cultural capital and material capital in a letter of Michael Psellos

In a letter to his friend Iasites (Sathas 171), Michael Psellos proposes that he give the letter itself in exchange for a horse. Exploiting the polysemy of alogon and logos in Greek, Psellos is able to frame this playful representation of a gift exchange in a philosophical opposition between materiality and reason. This allows him to present his intellectual competences as an exclusive kind of cultural capital that deserves material support from other members of society

Gifts of words: the discourse of gift-giving in eleventh-century Byzantine poetry

Poets of the Byzantine eleventh-century disposed of a powerful means to have their works patroned without incurring the accusation that they chased ambitions: the gift. Numerous poems are offered as gifts, in exchange for tangible rewards. The rhetoric of 'words as a gift' moreover helped poets to uphold the exquisite nature of their works and to confirm the exclusivity of their elite

The beats of the pen: social contexts of reading and writing poetry in 11th-century Constantinople

This thesis investigates the production and reception of Byzantine poetry as social and cultural practices in a contemporary context. The texts under view are poems composed in the period from 1028 to 1081, predominantly by the three poets Christopher Mitylenaios, John Mauropous and Michael Psellos. The dissertation first seeks to elucidate the conceptual framework in which poetry was embedded, coming to the conclusion that ‘poet’ and ‘poetry’ were in the Byzantine eleventh century no separate categories used for contemporary texts written in verse. The writing of poetry was seen as part of the activities of an intellectual combining the roles of teacher, scholar and orator. Further, it is established that poetry circulated at first separately, on fugitive media, within a limited circle of peers. The dissertation also describes the ways in which the presentation of poems, in manuscript collections or otherwise, affects contemporary reading strategies. Further, the social aspects of writing poetry are investigated. In a society where intellectual qualities were put forward as essential competences of someone belonging to the elite, poems served to demonstrate those qualities. The dissertation makes clear that education was an important background for poetic production. Students composed poetry as exercises and teachers entered into competition with rivals, exchanging poems as tools to harm others’ reputations. Poetry was an apt tool to position oneself in the intellectual field: the poets followed different self-representational strategies to attain that goal. Approaching the problem of patronage of poetry, it is proposed that instead of a sustained system of commission, there was rather a continuous exchange of services, some of which could consist of a poem, which was frequently offered as a gift

Poetry and its contexts in eleventh-century Byzantium

Byzantine poetry of the eleventh century is fascinating, yet underexplored terrain. It presents a lively view on contemporary society, is often permeated with wit and elegance, and is concerned with a wide variety of subjects. Only now are we beginning to perceive the possibilities that this poetry offers for our knowledge of Byzantine culture in general, for the intellectual history of Byzantium, and for the evolution of poetry itself. It is, moreover, sometimes in the most neglected texts that the most fascinating discoveries can be made. This book, the first collaborative book-length study on the topic, takes an important step to fill this gap. It brings together specialists of the period who delve into this poetry with different but complementary objectives in mind, covering the links between art and text, linguistic evolutions, social functionality, contemporary reading attitudes, and the like. The authors aim to give the production of 11th-century verse a place in the Byzantine genre system and in the historic evolution of Byzantine poetry and metrics. As a result, this book will, to use the expression of two important poets of the period, "offer a small taste" of what can be gained from the serious study of this period

L’identité du salarié moderne et l’acculturation à l’entreprise globalisée

Les thèmes de ce colloque me semblent ouvrir un meilleur crédit pour certaines postures en communication des organisations ressemblant par ailleurs à ce qu’on peut observer depuis quelques temps en sociologie des entreprises. Durant une quinzaine d’années, la posture dominante correspondait de façon plus ou moins diffuse au courant dit de la sociologie des organisations et des entreprises. Celle-ci a d’ailleurs été un paradigme de renseignement en communication des entreprises. En France, deu..

Médiations symboliques et communication d’organisation dans les relations socioprofessionnelles

L’organisation des fonctions de communication d’entreprise à partir des années quatre-vingt a introduit une substitution partielle aux processus de médiation dans les relations socioprofessionnelles. L’interdépendance des agents, l’interpénétration de leurs logiques et la formation d’institutions intermédiaires de négociation caractérisent les processus de médiation sociale. La communication institutionnelle est une médiation symbolique nouvelle qui établit une relation directe entre le management et les salariés en deçà des instances syndicales. L’idéologie managériale et l’ingénierie symbolique du marketing sont les technologies intellectuelles utilisées à cet effet.From the eighties on, the organization of the functions of corporate communication partially replaced the traditional mediation processes in industrial relations. The interdependence of the protagonists, the interaction between their various approaches and the development of intermediary bargaining procedures constitute the major characteristics of the processes of social mediation. Institutional communication is a new symbolic mediation that establishes a direct relationship between the management and staff over the heads of the unions. Managerial ideology and symbolic engineering are the intellectual technologies employed in this change