STASTA shows how states help make standards, and how standards help make states, from the burgeoning super-states founded in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great, down to the linked and competing Roman world-states of the 4th century CE, when the Roman world enacted a far-reaching revolution in standards to be repeated on such a scale only by the (Roman-inspired) metric reform of French Revolution in the 18th century. Combining the study of objects and texts, of poetry and patristics, it explores the hypothesis that the study of states of standardisation is as much a history of the technical tools of standardisation, as it is a history of the representation of such tools.
STASTA addresses “states of standardisation” in two, often opposed, senses. On the one hand, STASTA sees standardisation as central to the formation and centralisation of individual states, and of their competition with other states; these efforts conjure dreams of an ideal state of standardisation, with all differences of region and type fully levelled by centripetal attraction, whether the result of top-down fiat or bottom-up initiative. On the other hand, STASTA sees each such effort at standardisation as but a given state, or stage, in such centralisation, such that the history of standardisation is as much the history of a constant, and constantly mobile, project towards standardisation as of standardisation itself.
STASTA asks to what extent texts written during this period in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic give access to reflections upon the standardisation of market tools, but also the extent to which market tools might represent the State in its efforts to centralise power, and the converse power of regional powers to exercise autonomy in the expression of different forms of State and non-State identity. As market tools served as ubiquitous markers of states’ efforts to standardise economic life—and in ways perhaps tied up with political, religious, social, and cultural life (and opposition to dominant modes of life)—to what extent did they become tools not only to buy, spend, and invest with, but also to think with?
STASTA investigates these questions through three axes, on 1) Representation of market tools and their use, on 2) Metaphors based on market tools, and 3) Ideological formations related to market tools that lead to state-formation or to reflection on such formations.
Internal Reference Number : 23/28-130
Start date : 01/10/2023
End date : 30/09/2028
Partners
Principal Investigator - Spokeperson
Pr. Charles Doyen, UCLouvain, INCAL, CEMA
Co-Investigators
Pr. Geert Van Oyen, UCLouvain, RSCS
Pr. Aaron Kachuck, UCLouvain, INCAL, CEMA
Pr. Matthieu Richelle, UCLouvain, RSCS
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