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Wed 24 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Thu 25 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Fri 26 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Sat 27 March
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    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.00

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Thursday 25 March 2021 12.30 - 13.45
O-6 ELI10 Regions and Colonies: Groups, Structures, Spaces
O
Network: Elites and Forerunners Chair: Marja Vuorinen
Organizers: - Discussant: Jacopo Lorenzini
Idamaria Fusco : The Role of Administrative Elite in Territorial Control. The Kingdom of Naples in the Second Half of the 17th Century
In the second half of the 17th century the Kingdom of Naples, a part of the Spanish “polycentric” Monarchy, was emerging from serious events, such as the Masaniello risings in 1647-48 and the plague epidemic in 1656-58, and again throughout the second half of the century the Kingdom went on ... (Show more)
In the second half of the 17th century the Kingdom of Naples, a part of the Spanish “polycentric” Monarchy, was emerging from serious events, such as the Masaniello risings in 1647-48 and the plague epidemic in 1656-58, and again throughout the second half of the century the Kingdom went on facing other social and sanitary tensions, not easy to govern: among the others, banditry, which used to re-emerge continuously in the Southern Italy, and the Apulian plague in 1690. In these years the government of the territory, characterized by Naples, the capital city, often far from the provinces, was a difficult task: a task which was managed frequently at the local level, both in situations of relative “normality”, and on the occasion of extraordinary events. This government was often made possible and effective thanks to the action of officials who operated locally on behalf of the capital city. The construction of an efficient administrative élite, made up of trustworthy men, and the full confidence in this élite’s well-acting are key factors in order to understand the government of the territory in the second half of the century.
Therefore, in this paper I will deal with some aspects of a provincial official’s government at the local level: don Marco Garofalo, Marquis of Rocca. At the end of the 17th century this official acted with care and sense of duty in different provinces in the Kingdom of Naples. It was above all thanks to him if in these years Naples managed to govern well and to control distant provinces in unfavourable and sometimes not easy situations. Studying this kind of figures can be an interesting and useful key to better understand the government of Southern Italy in these years. (Show less)

Marijn Molema, Martin Åberg : Planning for Decline: Policy Elites and Multi-level Governance in the Netherlands and Sweden, 1990 - Present
Demographic challenges in terms of declining birth rates and increasingly ageing populations pose a particular challenge to mature welfare states. Cases in point are the Netherlands and Sweden. A growing sensitivity for these challenges has led governance systems in both countries to develop ‘planning for decline’ over the last decades. ... (Show more)
Demographic challenges in terms of declining birth rates and increasingly ageing populations pose a particular challenge to mature welfare states. Cases in point are the Netherlands and Sweden. A growing sensitivity for these challenges has led governance systems in both countries to develop ‘planning for decline’ over the last decades. This process, however, also involves a number of features that have enhanced the importance of regional and local policy makers, but also altered their role in relation to governance. Regional and local level policy makers have in effect assumed a new type of elite-role since the 1990s, but a role that in several respects remain unexplored, particularly from a cross-country perspective.
First, policies that aim to mitigate losses in terms of socio-economic vitality has evolved hand-in-hand with a strong trend towards decentralization. Specifically, this means that the political task of sustaining social welfare has devolved and is now to greater extent the responsibility of local and regional government. Second, the trend towards devolution, in combination with de-regulation, had an impact on welfare policies more generally. The extent of feasible political interventions, notably in demographically vulnerable regions and localities, has changed and sometimes diminished. Although we will analyse these processes in both Sweden and the Netherlands, we expect to find differences in both countries, differences that connect to variation in welfare institutions between countries and localities.
In this paper, we explore how local and regional policy making-elites have coped with demographic decline in the Netherlands and Sweden, and how strategies of intervention relates to nation-level policy-making strategies between 1990 and the present. How were demographic issues received and transformed at national, regional and local levels, considering the impact of different welfare institutions? What characterized the roles of policy making elites after 1990 on both the national and the regional/local level, and to what extent has European welfare states such as the Netherlands and Sweden differed in this respect? Has changes in the role of policy makers involved conflict between this group and established elite-segments in local society?
Particularly with respect to the local/municipal level, previous research allows for extrapolating two possible, main strategies for policy implementation: ‘high-priority agendas’ are immediately addressed by local governance and strictly according to policy, or local government elites address critical issues and policies on demographic challenges step-by-step, and by adjustment to specifically local conditions. As a means to probe our hypothesis we compare two municipalities (one gemeente, one kommun) in their Dutch and Swedish region-level administrative context. We address national, region-level and local-level differences and similarities in the analysis. (Show less)

Radu Nedici : From Subversive Leaders to Mainstream Rural Elites: the Orthodox Clergy inTransylvania in the Age of Theresian Toleration
In terms of the naked figures, the public rise of the Greek Orthodox Church in mid-eighteenth-century Transylvania happened at an impressive pace. From Empress Maria Theresa’s decree on toleration (1759) and the subsequent appointment of Dionisije Novakovic to head the newly recognized religious body (1761) to the retirement of that ... (Show more)
In terms of the naked figures, the public rise of the Greek Orthodox Church in mid-eighteenth-century Transylvania happened at an impressive pace. From Empress Maria Theresa’s decree on toleration (1759) and the subsequent appointment of Dionisije Novakovic to head the newly recognized religious body (1761) to the retirement of that same bishop (1767), more than half a million people openly identified themselves as Greek Orthodox, for whose spiritual needs some 1,200 priests were confirmed or ordained in close to 1,000 parishes. While convincing explanations for why this religious choice had proved so successful have already been given, it is the creation of the rural clerical elite in only a matter of years that still raises important questions about who they were and how they came to prominent positions within their communities of residence.
Reconstructing the collective biography of this social group is the main objective of my current research project ‘Dissent and toleration in Habsburg Transylvania: A socio-political history of the Orthodox protests (1740s–1760s)’, which also covers the decades of contention that lead to the establishment of the eparchy. The records created by the Habsburg state and those internal to the Transylvanian diocese provide historians with just enough elements to use prosopography as an investigative tool for better describing the Orthodox leadership. A relational database that will be made available online by the end of 2019 on the project’s website (www.dat18.ro) allows the piecing together of the scattered information concerning clerical careers, including name, age, birth place or residence, time and location of the ordination, social status, economic resources etc., thus escaping the gaps in knowledge that have until now plagued our understanding.
This data sample will be interrogated in order to answer two main questions: (i) to what extent was the rise of the Orthodox elite the result of religious conflict? and (ii) how did this new elite make the transition from the age of contention to the free exercise of religious belief, given the institutional changes of the early 1760s? Still in the early stages of my research, I contend that many of those who embraced the clerical career had previously fought at the forefront of religious dissent and that they did so in order to protect and enhance an already distinguished social and economic position at village level. The paper also considers the social mechanisms behind the process of elite formation in terms of both recruitment and validation, which acquire particular significance since the transformations involved just one generation. (Show less)

Scott Viallet-Thevenin : The Emergence and Structure of an Imperial Social Space - Elites in the French Colonial Empire from 1870 to 1939
This research aims at describing the emergence and structure of an imperial elite social space at the scale of the French colonial empire, from the 1870 to 1939. My main hypothesis is that the imperial space of power – drawing from the concept of field of power (Bourdieu, 2011) - ... (Show more)
This research aims at describing the emergence and structure of an imperial elite social space at the scale of the French colonial empire, from the 1870 to 1939. My main hypothesis is that the imperial space of power – drawing from the concept of field of power (Bourdieu, 2011) - is structured by the circulations of the individuals inside the colonial space and the interactions between elite groups participating to colonization project. This space has strong connections with the metropolitan field of power, but is distinct in terms of population, careers and structures.

Rather than selecting individuals, I propose to identify social groups - considered as social entities (Abbott, 2016) - engaged in the government of the colonial empire. I propose to grasp the space of imperial power through the three groups identified by Charle (1996) in 1900 for the metropolis: economic elite – the directors of the main colonial firms -, the administrative elite - the colonial governors and colonial inspectors in charge of inspecting the governors - and the armed forces - the generals commanding colonial troops. I add the political elite as represented by the members of parliament representing the colonies in the French Senate and National Assembly. The paper is build around a systematic comparison of these colonial elite groups together with comparable metropolitan elite groups, so as to highlight the special features of the imperial social space.
Drawing on biographical data drawn from individual career records and biographical dictionaries and analyzed through sequence and network analysis, I reveal the specific structure of that field. The analysis builds on a database containing the professional and geographical careers of the imperial elites.
The paper shows how the imperial space emerges and structures itself around the professionalization of the elite groups pertaining to it. That professionalization is fueled by the relatively popular origins of the imperial elites and their difficulty to have successful metropolitan careers and convert their colonial successes in the metropolis. It shows the institutionalization of that space around a domination of the economic and administrative elites.

Abbott, A. (2016). Processual sociology. University of Chicago Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Champ du pouvoir et division du travail de domination. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 2011, no 5, p. 126-139.
Charle, C. (2006). Les élites de la République. Fayard. (Show less)



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