Conferência com a IHC Visiting Scholar Lavinia Maddaluno, sobre as respostas socioeconómicas, culturais, científicas, tecnológicas e médicas à expansão da cultura do arroz no Norte de Itália.

Rice: ersatz, cultural artifact, object of knowledge, unruly crop

A dietary mainstay in non-European societies and a cornerstone of dishes like Northern Italian risotto, rice has diverse culinary significance. However, the timing of its introduction to Northern Italy remains unclear. Examining this event offers insights into the process of integrating new crops into both diet and cultural imagination. This talk is about the socio-economic, cultural, scientific, technological, and medical responses to the expansion of rice cultivation in northern Italy between the sixteenth and the eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries. Bringing together the history of knowledge and environmental history, in this talk I will reflect on how rice was appropriated by several actors, and on how these appropriations were intertwined with perceptions and constructions of the landscape and material environment. By interlacing narratives of rice cultivation and of the landscapes rice forms, alongside discussions of infrastructural development and knowledge systems, I will also delineate the progression of interactions between humans and their environments, as well as the evolution of water management practices, scientific advancements, medical understandings, and political-economic ideologies across different historical periods. Additionally, the talk will highlight how resources were conceptualized in the early modern period, reconnecting to contemporary debates on the Anthropocene and on the agency of non-humans.

About IHC’s 2024 Visiting Scholar:
Lavinia Maddaluno is Assistant Professor in early modern history at the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari, Venice, working on David Gentilcore’s ERC project The Water Cultures of Italy 1500-1900. She is a historian of science interested in exploring the nexus between humans, nature and economy in early modern Europe. Lavinia has just completed her first monograph Science and political Economy in Enlightenment Milan (1760-1805), forthcoming with the Voltaire Foundation in autumn 2024. She is currently editing a book on rice in the Mediterranean with Rachele Scuro and a special issue on Water Knowledge with Giacomo Savani and Davide Martino. Lavinia has held multiple fellowships since the end of her PhD (Cambridge UK, 2018), from a Rome Fellowship at the British School at Rome, to a Max Weber Fellowship at the EUI and a joint Warburg/I Tatti Fellowship in the History of Science. More recently, she has been Fellow at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and the Fondazione Einaudi, working on a new project on rice-related knowledge networks between France and Italy in the Enlightenment.

Attendance is free.

Encontro organizado pelo projecto VINCULUM para discutir temas situados na confluência da História e da Arquivística, com foco particular nos arquivos e casas históricas.

História e Ciência Arquivística:

questões comuns na construção de conhecimento complexo

Nos dias 19 e 20 de Julho, o Palácio Fronteira (Lisboa) recebe o encontro História e Ciência Arquivística: questões comuns na construção de conhecimento complexo, organizado pelo projecto VINCULUM. Este encontro pretende discutir temas situados na confluência da História e da Arquivística, com foco particular nos arquivos e casas históricas.

Para além de investigadores nacionais, o encontro reúne também em Lisboa investigadores internacionais, bem como entidades ligadas ao turismo e ao património cultural e arquivístico. No primeiro dia, a Sessão 1 é dedicada ao estudo dos arquivos enquanto instituições integrantes e potenciadoras de uma História em construção. No segundo dia, a Sessão 2 debate os arquivos de família e as casas históricas, colocando em análise a importância da manutenção, preservação e promoção dos arquivos de família, públicos ou privados. Neste contexto, as casas históricas assumem igualmente particular importância, não só por serem guardiãs de muitos desses arquivos, mas também por desempenharem um papel valioso na promoção do turismo e na preservação do património cultural.

Palestrante convidado: Eric Ketelaar, professor emérito de Arquivística da Universidade de Amesterdão

>> Programa do encontro (PDF) <<

Seminário de investigação com a IHC Visiting Scholar Lavinia Maddaluno, sobre um caso de intervenção hidráulica em zonas rurais do norte de Itália, nomeadamente a bomba hidráulica fabricada por Carlo Castelli para reivindicar terras.

Perpetuating private property:

machines and hydraulics at the time of the Enlightenment

This paper considers a case of hydraulic intervention in some rural areas of the Duchy of Milan under Joseph II (1780s). It explores how practical and philosophical considerations shaped improvement projects, and how these intersected with the consolidation of private property, and an increase in productivity. More specifically, the paper reconstructs the not well-known case of the hydraulic pump made by the idraulico (expert in hydraulics) Carlo Castelli to reclaim lands in the northern-eastern areas of Lake Como. However, this paper is not only about a local project of land reclamation, rather also dealing with the function of material artefacts in revealing contemporary attitudes towards technology, natural and social order. How did institutions and naturalists conceive technical intervention on nature? Which were the political economic connotations of the practice of emulation of techniques? And how did institutions and experts in hydraulics philosophically address technical failure and errors at the time of the Enlightenment? Despite receiving governmental investments and support to build his machine, Castelli failed at his project of land-reclamation. The paper will thus also use this case study to reconsider the public and social role of technology itself, as well as of emulation at the time of enlightened reforms.

Comments by Ricardo Noronha and José Miguel Ferreira (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST).

About IHC’s 2024 Visiting Scholar:
Lavinia Maddaluno is Assistant Professor in early modern history at the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari, Venice, working on David Gentilcore’s ERC project The Water Cultures of Italy 1500-1900. She is a historian of science interested in exploring the nexus between humans, nature and economy in early modern Europe. Lavinia has just completed her first monograph Science and political Economy in Enlightenment Milan (1760-1805), forthcoming with the Voltaire Foundation in autumn 2024. She is currently editing a book on rice in the Mediterranean with Rachele Scuro and a special issue on Water Knowledge with Giacomo Savani and Davide Martino. Lavinia has held multiple fellowships since the end of her PhD (Cambridge UK, 2018), from a Rome Fellowship at the British School at Rome, to a Max Weber Fellowship at the EUI and a joint Warburg/I Tatti Fellowship in the History of Science. More recently, she has been Fellow at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and the Fondazione Einaudi, working on a new project on rice-related knowledge networks between France and Italy in the Enlightenment.

The seminar requires prior registration by 17 July via miguelcarmo@fcsh.unl.pt.
Registrants will receive a chapter from the author’s book (to be published after the summer) on which the seminar discussion will focus. For a presentation of the book, see this link.