Trading Environments - Commercial Knowledge and Environmental Transformations

This conference considers the historical relations between commodity markets and environments. We plan to explore the environmental and landscape consequences of trading networks and their associated practices and interdependencies. How have environments been engineered, standardized and transformed within past trading systems? What have been the successes and failures of economic knowledge in dealing with resource production in complex environments? The ‘Trading Environments’ conference will consider the environmental consequences of marketing and commodifying nature through study of such phenomena as the performance of commodity exchanges, trading networks, land markets, debt relations, quality assurance through standardization, insurance, consumer movements, and changes in governance regimes. We look for a diverse range of papers in terms of historical and regional contexts, but are principally interested in papers that deal with the period between 1750 and the present. Papers should innovatively consider the ways in which transnational commodity chains bound distant environments together. Above all, in this conference we will reflect on the history of competing economic knowledge systems and their environmental effects. We envision a conference designed to address this issue organised around five interrelated themes.

Information:
http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/termine/id=17682