Brepols editors has recently published a series of 4 edited volumes, entitled: Rural economy and society in North-Western Europe, 500-2000.
In these volumes, an international team of more than 60 well-known researchers aims to explain how rural societies around the North Sea coped with the enormous social changes between the sixth and the twenty-first centuries. These publications investigate the relationship between economic growth and ecological constraints, between markets and income structures as well as between lords, governments and peasants. Over the past millennium and more, the regions surrounding the North Sea have developed from the periphery of the Mediterranean world to the core of the modern world economy. A crucial element in this world-historical process is the restructuring of physical, demographic, economic and social relationships within these rural societies. The four volumes of the series focus on the rural producers as central actors. They explore four core processes that configured rural production and survival.
The four volumes are:
- Struggling with the environment: Land use and productivity (eds Erik Thoen and Tim Soens)
- The agro-food market: Production, distribution and consumption (eds Leen Van Molle and Yves Seegers)
- Making a living: Family, income and labour (eds Eric Vanhaute, Isabella Devos, and Thijs Lambrecht)
- Social relations: Property and power (eds Bas J.P. van Bavel and Richard W. Hoyle)
Several authors are or have been members with the IASC.
