How Bordeaux became Bordeaux: persistence and privilege

About the seminar topic

What factors shape when institutions persist and when they change? How do we understand the prolonged existence of something, such as the 7-day week, the Ivy League, hopefully the US Constitution, in a world where we often experience rapid change. Our historical analysis illuminates how a temporary arbitrary classification created in 1855 persisted, as it became taken-for-granted, baked into social structures, and robust to dramatic challenges over time, including pestilence, multiple wars, the great depression, numerous protests, and now climate change. The context is the Bordeaux wine trade. Typical accounts of long-term durability emphasise either path-dependent, self-reinforcing processes or the efforts of incumbents to maintain the status quo. Drawing from a wealth of archives, we recognise yet depart from these 2 perspectives to explore how institutional persistence can rest upon conservative entrepreneurship, where elite replacement and cultural re-invention maintain a social structure in the context of profound changes.

Speaker bio

Walter (Woody) Powell is Jacks Family Professor of Education (and) Professor of Sociology, Organisational Behaviour Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He is also an External Faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute.  He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, The British Academy and a fellow of the Academy of Management and has honorary degrees from Uppsala University, Copenhagen Business School and the Helsinki School of Economics. He recently served as the Sarah Miller McCune Interim Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is presently Co-President of the Social Science Research Council. His recent books include The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, with John F. Padgett (Princeton University Press) and The Nonprofit Sector, with Patricia Bromley (Stanford University Press). He is currently writing a book with Grégoire Croidieu, How Bordeaux Became Bordeaux, an historical ethnography of the 19th century decline of the aristocracy and the rise of mercantile and financial classes in the French wine world.

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No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Luke Slater.