CALL FOR PAPERS: Exposing and punishing "forgery": the policing of professions in the early modern era (15th-18th centuries) (Paris: 12-13 SEPTEMBER 2024) [DEADLINE 2 FEBRUARY 2024]

(Image source: CRH EHESS)

The aim of this conference is to examine the uses of the notion of ‘forgery’ in policing any given trade or economic activity in the early modern town and/or its peripheries. In other words, to question whether there existed one or more models of such suitable policing through the qualification of what was ‘fraud’.

Our approach inscribes itself in the scholarship that, over the last fifteen years, has revisited the economic practices of Ancien Régime men and women in terms of their inclusion in regimes of power or belonging, also by taking into account the actors themselves challenging these regimes. The focus placed on the possibilities of interpersonal negotiation surrounding the exercise of a given economic activity (manufacturing, retailing, services, access to credit) has shed light on the agents’ practical knowledge or expertise. The fact remains, however, that their skills, whether individual or collective, insofar as they inscribed themselves in social and political contexts, were not without limits. 

Qualifying, judging and punishing ’fraud’, whether rightly or wrongly singled out in a product, a service or a person's legal status, is one of the recurring expressions of such limits. Whether expressed individually or collectively, based on custom or positive law, such an accusation referred to any form of challenge to what had been established as the rule. "Forgery", as it constituted counterfeit or usurpation, could then be employed to qualify the quality of the product as well as the quality of those who manufactured or sold it. To state the ‘fraudulent’ character of a thing implied mobilizing an expertise, but also to recall and endorse an authority, including and perhaps especially in a context of existing competing jurisdictions, or standards. Having said that, is this accusation based primarily on legal, economic, social or religious dimensions? Is pointing at ’fraud’ a manner of making room for obedience or prohibitions, in search of the integrity of goods, prices and services to the public, or on the contrary a manner of circumscribing a status to the happy few? Does this accusation draw lines to exclude, serve to include by means of a constrained procedure, or merely reaffirm an existing rule?

This call for papers welcomes original research spanning the whole prism of craft and commercial situations, at all scales of use of the notion of ’forgery’ - be it in a workshop, a shop, a profession, a town or a territory. Proposals may focus on one-off or recurring uses of this notion. They may examine the constituting elements of the incorporated trade, whether male, female or mixed, right through to the otherwise regulated worlds to which female labour largely belongs. As the urban environment allows for the comparative approach, this call for papers will prioritize proposals focusing on spaces that are necessarily urban, or at least undergo a process of urbanisation.

In particular, proposals may address:

• The nature of the actors qualified as "fraud", as well as that of the actors who mobilize the notion: "fraud workers", "incompetent judges", incorporated or non-incorporated individuals, graduates or non-graduates, on the one hand, trade organizations, various municipal or supra-local bodies, on the other.
• The materiality of objects and tools, whether in terms of inspection and expertise in workshops or factories, or the examination of products at markets, fairs and customs, including in the context of the renewal of techniques and the opening of commercial outlets.
• Characterizing the gestures and authorizations that relate actors to goods: implementation of  labour regulation, or of several competing regulations, submission to tax rubrics, rituals of inspection and registration of individuals and goods in public places or private homes.

Proposals shall be approximately 1,500 characters long, written in French or English, and are to be submitted by 2 February 2024 to the following address: punirlefaux@gmail.com. A brief résumé shall be attached.

More information can be found here.