Coneixement expert i valor de les coses. Peritatge tècnic i econòmic.

ENGLISH

EXPERTISE AND VALUE OF THE THINGS.  

II. COMPETENCES AND FIGURES OF EXPERTS

Competence, control and expertise

On the 27th , 28th and 29th of October of 2011, an international colloquium about expertise and value of the things will be held in Valencia by the Laboratoire de Médiévistique de l’Université Paris I-Sorbonne, the University of Toulouse, the Casa de Velázquez, the Instituto de Historia del CSIC and the Universitat de València. This is the second of other three conferences that, in this case, will focus on the Economic and technical reports, and particularly on the competencies of the expert people.

One of the problems that will be analysed is related to the competencies. The experts were people who controlled a practical and theoretical knowledge. In a building, the architect was considerate as an expert but no juridical meaning. He had to take decisions which were justified by his knowledge of the trade; however, in any case he had to give his opinion about he did. For this, the medieval society relied on an exterior specialist, like in the case of the Cathedral of Milan, where the work of the local architects were examined and fiercely criticized at the beginning of the 15th century by a French architect. In the same meaning, the jurors practised a ferrous control on the quality of the product in the workshops and the stores of the tailors. They had precise information of the possible frauds, which, sometimes, were described in the local law. The knowledge was not only related with the work practises but also with the valour and the equivalences: a moneychanger dominated a specialized knowledge that was essential in the context of certain trades, for example, if were necessary verify the quality of a coining.

The identity and the trajectories of people who had to estimate or to arbitrate about a conflict because of the needs of a law-suit belong to questioning. Likewise, we should investigate how the particular competency that justified the position of the specialist was recognized: it was a public a designation by the public power? Or, on the contrary, the fame of a person in the matter is the reason for his appointment? The alliance between the procedure and the competency will allow us to precise the features of the expert. The professional knowledge was a fact, public or not, that appeared in specific moments of the law-suit: it was not permanent. It made possible to exclude certain products from the market and to pronounce rulings against casual defrauder o a simply negligent masters.

In this colloquium, we will pay attention to the description of the sequence, how the confidence on the expert was built and how this confidence between the parties was established.

It is expected the participation in the colloquium of about fifty researchers from different universities and French and Spanish research centres who will analyze the figure of the specialist people in the Middle Ages, their formation and their technical competencies in a five blocs colloquium:

• Measure the value of the land.

• The cereals and their transformation.

• Technical and artisans activities.

• Trade.

• Credit, heritage and public service.

In the other webpages you will find the program of the colloquium, the abstract of the sessions, links to personal web or to some their articles and large bibliography about the subject, progressively extended. We would like to consider this web not only as a meeting point for the participants in the conference but also beyond it, including all the papers in pdf.