【学术讲座】社会与生活:18世纪里昂丝绸工业的商业化创意

Date & Time: 15:00-16:30, Monday 30th, December 2019

Venue: Room 2101, Tongji Building A

Language: English

Speaker: Dr. Tao Wang (Grenoble Ecole de Management)

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how gatekeepers in creative industries select creative workers as partners to commercialize creativity. Drawing on relational work proposed by Viviana Zelizer, we examine the effects of occupational differences and the evolution of those differences on partnership formation. We combine qualitative and quantitative data from the silk industry of Lyon in the 18th century to suggest that (i) gatekeepers engaged in both collaborative and in competitive social relations with silk designers, and that (ii) the locus of attention of these collaborative and competitive relations shifted with the professionalization of silk design. On the collaborative side, while partnership uncertainty was initially mitigated by kinship ties, the professionalization of silk design moved the emphasis to skill-based assessments. As for competition, the growing number and legitimacy of silk designers made merchants aware of them as a potential threat. While neighborhoods were initially considered the loci of this threat, the professionalization of silk design escalated competition to the level of the city as a whole. A quantitative analysis of 676 designers from 1700-1788 lend support to our hypotheses. The contributions of our work to the literature are extensively discussed.

All the faculties and students are welcome to attend this lecture!