IMC 2017: Sessions

In this series of sessions organised by 'The long history of identity, ethnicity and nationhood' research network, sponsored by Birmingham Research Institute for History and Cultures (BRIHC) and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), we will focus on the reproduction of collective identities in the Middle Ages. While a generic constructivist approach is widely shared in research on pre-modern identities, it often remains uncritical. On the one hand, it sometimes conceals latent essentialism (best represented by the formula 'identities are constructed, but having been constructed become real'), and, on the other hand, restricts our capacity to arrive at a systemic understanding of how exactly collective identities are asserted and reproduced over long periods of time. Hence, our main goal is to tackle the difficult question of long-term reproduction of the same projected identities, often alongside broadly similar constructs, without resorting to essentialist or objectifying explanations. The second session provides a globally comparative perspective, focusing on different thematic areas. The first paper examines the questions of economic circulation and social value in the early medieval trade between England and the continent. The second paper analyses the interplay between ethnic and religions identifications in medieval Spain.