COST is an intergovernmental European framework for international cooperation between nationally funded research activities. COST is sponsoring a series of conferences in the framework of their 'Project for the study of European rural societies' ('Progressore': COST action A 35). In this call for papers, we are asking for contributions from historians and social scientists working in the fields of social network analysis (including formal network analysis), local political history, and agrarian economic history.
The meeting will explore limits and opportunities of state intervention in a threefold perspective. From the perspective of the state, it is to be asked why some policies are not carried out successfully. Local society often provided paths to resources other than those encouraged by reforming and modernizing states. While policies of agrarian reform typically relied on formal organizations and anonymous markets, peasant families often depended on informal networks. Second, networks can also provide possibilities of successful contacts between the state and local societies, particularly when local officeholders act as interpreters or provide local populations with supralocal resources. Third, from the perspective of the peasant families, networks could have quite ambivalent effects, as 'social capital' (as Bourdieu put it), and as ingroups that insulated their members from the wider world. The conference will provide an opportunity to discuss these issues focussing on the following fields that may or may not form the base of separate sessions.

1) Political organisation, clientelism, and the effectiveness of local government

Particularly for the early modern period, it has been frequently observed that laws were not carried out, but repeated time and again. Officials suffered frustration when confronted with the awkward dynamics of local society. A possible explanation for these failures is that the inhabitants of the countryside followed not only their own traditions and worldviews, but also their own interests. Patrons monopolized access to collective funds and used them in the interest of their clients. In dealing with systems of local patronage, territorial states had to choose between confrontation and cooptation: they could try to use local brokers in order to access local networks, or they could try to impose anonymous and formal institutions in order to liberate their subjects from local constraints. The session will be open for contributions aimed at clarifying the relation between communal organization, clientelism, and 'corruption'.

2) Access to resources through networks and institutions

The most common definition of 'social capital' is access to resources through networks. In this perspective, the benevolent aspects of networks are emphasized. This session will therefore focus on the use people made of informal networks, in competition with the use they could make of formal state and suprastate institutions or markets. Contributions might discuss networks of poor support as an alternative to public welfare institutions, or other forms of rather informal access to resources and support.

3) Social networks in the economic sphere: an ambivalent interaction

A classical view on modern society has it that economic action and social relations are separate spheres of human life. For premodern societies it has often been shown how important social networks and personal relationships were for economic success (e.g. in foreign trade), rendering formal institutions irrelevant. However, the drawbacks of embeddedness in strong social networks have so far only gained little attention in historical research. Moreover, the development of modern society did not necessarily lead to a disappearance of social networks. Kinship ties helped European elites to accumulate and maintain power and wealth. But even in modern societies the role of social relations at the economic marketplace (by definition marked by selfinterest and atomistic independence) has led to an increasing interest in the impact of social networks on the economic scopes of action and success.

4) The use of institutions, markets, and networks for families and individuals

In order to understand the interest of local families and individuals, it is useful to take a life cycle approach. What helped peasants to lead a longer life, to suffer from less variation in income, and to place more of their children in marriage? Did the presence and availability of kin, of well-organized financial and state institutions, and of integrated markets result in a better living over time? We invite papers that address the temporal dimension of the way institutions, markets, and networks were used in rural societies.