Socioeconomic Structures

Code:

MHP006

Acronym:

ESE

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	History

Instance: 2025/2026 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Department of History, Political and International Studies
Course/CS Responsible:	Master in History and Heritage

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
MHP	18	MHP - Study Plan	1	-	6	41	162

Teaching language

Portuguese

Objectives

The main aim of this course is to study and contextualize heritage regarding the nature of the Master and the three branches (Memories Construction, Historical Archives, and Mediation). The specific aim is:  to understand the construction of human societies, from a socioeconomic and environmental perspective: rural and urban, work organization, markets, trade, and evolution of landscape construction (industrial, urban, maritime, and so on), and that also takes into account the evolution of environmental contexts.

Learning outcomes and competences

 

Students are expected to gain critical theoretical and conceptual knowledge and acquire specific skills:
- in the articulation and debate of current topics and proposals for historiographical research:
- in the reconstitution of the organic and functional structures of societies, economies, and institutions;
- clarifying the role of chronology as a tool for analyzing changes in the long term;
- in the identification, certification, preservation, study and dissemination of multiple forms of heritage, taking into account contextual reconstitution paths that contribute to the old and new uses of heritage;
- in the development of research capabilities, by developing a path of analysis of bibliographic sources that allow monitoring knowledge, the result of research projects.

Working method

Presencial

Pre-requirements (prior knowledge) and co-requirements (common knowledge)

Not applicable

Program

- Nature and objectives of the discipline (“economic” and “social” – operational notions, historiographical evolution)
1. Agrarian societies and environment - resource exploitation - impacts and limits
1.1. The exploitation/regulation/depletion of resources: environmental conflicts and landscape transformations
1.2 Property: diversity of resources and their protection - “res nullius and res communis”.

2. Work, occupation, and social recognition
2.1. Work or occupations - an “invented” classification or the threshold of social exclusion and inclusion; the limits of quantifying a socio-professional structure; reproduction or social promotion?
2.2 Work identities and “cultures” - contours and strategies of work representations (from corporations to companies - from work to employment).

3. Uses and representations of the market(s)
3.1 Buying and selling: products, markets, routes, and prices – mercantile economy and political economy.
3.2 Consumption and material life - wealth and poverty
3.2 Giving and believing: credit and micro-credit, goods of the soul and goods of the body - moral economy and informal economy.
3.3 Hierarchies and sociability networks – family, life cycles, fortunes, values, consumption.

Mandatory literature

BEN-AMOS, Ilana Krausman ; The Culture of giving. Informal support and gift-exchange in Early Modern England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008
MÉDA, Dominique ; O trabalho, um valor em vias de extinção, Lisboa, Fim do Século, 1998
FONTAINE, Laurence ; L’économie morale. Pauvreté, crédit et confiance dans l’Europe préindustrielle, Paris, Gallimard, 2008
Lains, Pedro e Álvaro Ferreira da Silva; História Económica de Portugal 1700-2000, ICS, 2005
OSTROM, Elinor ; Governing the Commons, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990
Flandrin, Jean; Famílias : parentesco, casa e sexualidade na sociedade antiga
Dulce Freire; An^agrarian history of Portugal, 1000-2000. ISBN: 978-90-04-31153-4
Andrew C. Isenberg; The^Oxford handbook of environmental history. ISBN: 978-0-19-067348-2

Comments from the literature

Specific bibliography will be provided for each topic.

Teaching methods and learning activities

Discussion of program topics taking into account individual projects.
Document analysis and commentary.
Documentation analysis and systematization (to be developed throughout the course, depending on the students’ projects and their relation with this subject).
Debate and presentation of topics and preliminary results.

keywords

Natural sciences > Environmental science > Natural resources management
Humanities > History > Economic history
Humanities > History > History of agriculture
Humanities > History > Local history
Social sciences > Geography > Historical geography
Humanities > History > Social history

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Trabalho escrito	70,00
Apresentação/discussão de um trabalho científico	15,00
Participação presencial	15,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Estudo autónomo	112,00
Frequência das aulas	26,00
Apresentação/discussão de um trabalho científico	4,00
Trabalho de investigação	20,00
Total:	162,00

Eligibility for exams

Attending 75% of classes.

Calculation formula of final grade

The presence of 75% of the sessions, will be evaluated according to the following parameters:

- Active participation in class (data analysis and debate) - 15% 
- Presentation and discussion of the final work - 15%.

Elaboration of a written work (70%) taking into account:
- the results of a literature search, according to a previous guide, allowing a critical historiographic review.

Examinations or Special Assignments

Not applicable

Internship work/project

 

Not applicable

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Not applicable

Classification improvement

Only possible with regard to written work.

Observations

Not applicable