Rethinking innovation in Byzantium
Seventh annual memorial lecture on Julian Chrysostomides
London, 16th October 2015
Apostolos Spanos
University of Agder
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Dear Students, dear Colleagues, dear Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I had the privilege of meeting Julian Chrysostomides just a few times. Just a few, but extremely valuable. Even if I was not one of her students, she was my “daskala”, an exemplary teacher and an inspiring scholar. A memory that illuminates my wanderings in the dark jungle of the academic life is related to a telephone call in the year 1999, the first time I talked to her. It was a life lesson in a quarter of an hour. I was happy to experience many of her human and academic qualities. And when I told her that I would be honoured to learn from her, I was blessed to experience one of her academic and pedagogical principles: ”It is the other way around”, said the gentle voice on the phone; “I will learn from you”. Being very well aware of my ignorance, I could understand that this had not to do with me; but with her. That she was such a great scholar and so eager in learning, that she could find something to learn, even from me. I remember myself hanging on the phone and making a wish, or creating a dream: if I was to become a university teacher, I would be like her: I would give my students her love, her time, her care, her ideals.
Giving a memorial lecture for Julian is a great honour, so I have to thank my old friend Charalambos, the Hellenic Institute and the Hellenic Centre for an invitation and an honour I think I do not deserve.
But since they were so kind, I will try to honour her memory by sharing with “her friends, her students, her people”, all of you, some thoughts on the study of Byzantine innovation and the Byzantine notion of innovation. The leitmotif of my thoughts on this question is a very simple one:
Can we understand better the Byzantines, their history and culture, by approaching them through innovation?
It sounds like a rhetorical question. But what I believe, or at least I hope, will make my lecture more challenging in real terms, is the complementary non-rhetorical question: how can we do so?
I will begin by presenting some central problems and challenges in the study of innovation in general and the historical study of innovation in particular, including one of the main difficulties, namely the lack of a common definition of innovation. Next, I will proceed to a brief discussion of problems and challenges in studying innovation and the notion of innovation in Byzantium. Finally, I will close by sharing some thoughts on how we could approach Byzantium by using innovation theories.
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I would like to open the first part of my lecture by underlining what is common knowledge: innovation is discussed today by almost everybody. But not in the humanities, where the study and the theorization of innovation, as both a concept and a phenomenon, is in reality absent. The academic field of History makes no exception. The historical study of innovation suffers from an undeveloped theorization, which causes a limited understanding of specific innovations, of innovation as a historical phenomenon, as well as of the conception of innovation in various periods, in our case Byzantium.
Let me now try to make a sketch of the main problems in the field of innovation studies. The field has been dominated in the last sixty years by two main epistemological approaches:
· First, the sociological, focusing on the social impacts and dimensions of innovation, and,
· Secondly, the economic approach, studying mainly companies, technological innovations, commercialized products and services, and the economic impact of innovation.
In the field of the economic approach to innovation, I would like to include the so-called managerial approach, focusing on the organization and strategy of companies, institutions, organizations et cetera.
Unfortunately, since the 1970s the economic/managerial approach has prevailed, putting aside the sociological. As a result, the study of innovation has favoured, to quote Martin Fougère and Nancy Harding, “a science devoid of any human element” (unquote)[1]. Even if this remark is slightly unfair when it comes to the managerial approach, which applies sociological theories and takes into consideration the human dimension, it illustrates one of the main problems in the study of innovation: the fact that the economic and managerial approach essentially seem not to be interested in anything outside the world of material values.
An overview of the relevant literature demonstrates that in the recent decades the economic approach has assumed an egocentric “hegemony”, in other words the “naturalization” of the idea that innovation means solely economic innovation or innovation for economic purposes[2]. This naturalization is manifest in numerous anthologies published as handbooks of innovation in general, while in fact they are dedicated to economic innovation alone.
The Oxford Handbook of Innovation[3] may be used here as one of many characteristic examples. This anthology of twenty-two papers is indeed an important handbook of managerial and commercialized innovation, neglecting though any noneconomic viewpoint. From a historical point of view, the most characteristic example is the chapter entitled «Innovation through Time»[4] which limits itself to an overview of technological, organizational and commercialized innovation from the first industrial revolution to the present.
This ”naturalization” of the hegemony of the economic approach to innovation is also evident in the field of History, where it has been an established notion that innovation is something that mainly deals with technology, applied science, and economic development. As a result, it is only economic history and the history of technology that have so far paid serious attention to innovation. But what about the innovation of worldviews, identities, social norms, religious beliefs and practices? What about innovations in education, literature, or art?
Another syndrome both innovation studies in general and History in particular suffer from is what has been presented in modern scholarship as “the prevailing pro-innovation bias”, that is to say: the notion that innovation is always positive and desirable[5]. But this is not always the case. One may think of weapons of mass destruction, or narcotics, or a number of other innovations that could not be evaluated as neither positive nor desirable –at least if the social group we focus on is anything other than those who gain from these innovations.
Let us now focus on distinctive problematic features of the historical study of innovation. The first among them, related to the inadequate theorization of innovation, is the lack of a definition of innovation, a definition suitable to the historical study of innovation in areas other than economy, technology and the like.
The lack of a historical definition of innovation results in two main deficiencies: The first is that most historians approach innovation as a self-explanatory word and not as a concept demanding definition and theoretical reflection: “innovation means innovation”, that is to say it may mean everything and nothing, any newness that impresses the historian or any change to the established order of things.
The second deficiency caused by the lack of a historical definition of innovation is a semasiological one: in a considerable amount of publications, innovation is presented inconsistently as homonym to change, novelty, transformation, revolution, creativity, invention, or originality. A characteristic example: summing up the anthology Originality in Byzantine Literature, Art and Music, Anthony Cutler realizes that the contributors to the volume (I quote) “treat originality variously as a synonym for creativity, invention, or innovation”[6] (unquote). Exceptions to this misunderstanding are few and they may be located in the fields of economic history and the history of technology, where one meets, as expected, an economic approach to the content, meaning, and impact of innovation, occasionally flavoured with social perspectives.
But is the economic approach enough, or even relevant, to study innovation as a historical phenomenon? I believe that economic approaches and definitions may be fruitful only in the relevant fields, but unproductive, or even misleading, in other areas, as for example political, social, religious, or intellectual innovation. History as a discipline demands a broader approach to, and definition of, innovation.
So, how could we define innovation in the humanities? So far, I have based my studies on a classic sociological definition, published by Gerald Duncan, Robert Nelson and Jonny Holbek. In 1973 they defined innovation as “any idea, practice, or material artifact perceived to be new by the relevant unit of adoption”[7]. I use this definition not only because it approaches innovation in relation to three of the most important historical operations of the human being (thinking, interacting, and creating) but also because it focuses on the importance of the adoption unit –in other words, the historical entity behind any innovation.[8]
But I am afraid that this definition is not enough to signify innovation as a composite historical phenomenon. My main objection to it is that it may lead to the understanding of anything new as an innovation, to a blending of innovation with mere change. This is why I am proposing a revised version of it, defining innovation as follows:
any idea, practice or artefact that is perceived to be new by the relevant unit of adoption and introduces a quantitative and/or qualitative alteration to this adoption unit and/or its relationship to other relevant contemporaneous units.
To be honest, I am not completely satisfied with this definition either, but I am working on it in the hope that I will come up with a more accurate one soon. For the time being, however, I will use this one in my attempt to answer the question on how we may study innovation and the notion of innovation in Byzantium.
We may start by rethinking the very subject of our study. In other words, to facing the semasiological question: what is it we define by defining innovation? The answer is related to three different things:
· First, according to a content approach to innovation, we define a result, that is: an innovative idea, an innovative practice, or an innovative artefact.
· Secondly, if we use a process approach, we define a process (of implementation, adoption, adaptation etc.), a process from a previous state to the new innovated historical situation.
· Thirdly, we define a phenomenon, the very fact, or sometimes the possibility, for an ontological alteration, or the wish or the need of an alteration resulting to what Reinhardt Koselleck would probably call a new historical situation (Zustand).
Let us now think about studying innovation in Byzantium. The easiest way is to begin with specific innovations or innovations in specific areas. Two students of mine, for example, have submitted their master dissertations on innovations in the Byzantine army, while a third one is studying public health in Byzantium including innovation approaches. We may, of course, think of many more similar thematic approaches, as for example innovations in Byzantine technology, administration, legislation, book production, literature, theology, liturgy, art and architecture, et cetera.
Another possible approach could be to study specific periods. Innovations in the age of Justinian, for instance. In this case, our effort should focus on creating an “innovation profile” of the period, by studying both innovations in various thematic areas, as well as the conception of innovation in the period. But how should we do so? I will present some ideas on the study of innovations first, so that I proceed afterwards to the study of the notion of innovation.
First of all, when studying a specific innovation or a set of innovations, I think we should not limit ourselves to just registering an idea, a practice, or an artefact as innovation. This is a very important step, but just the first one. It should be followed by the study of the innovation’s type, its process, and its diffusion, as well as the study of the relevant people; that is, first, the innovators, secondly, those who oppose the innovation, and, third, those who adopt it (what we have called “the unit of adoption”).
When it comes to the adoption unit, it would be better to avoid what we historians like to do: to focus on super-structures, or “mega-units” of adoption. To give an example: a number of historians have presented Byzantium as a civilization sceptical, if not hostile, towards innovation[9]. What underlies this thesis is a hypothesis that Byzantium comprised one adoption unit of innovation, which had one notion of innovation common for every Byzantine. This hypothesis seems to neglect the fact that the Byzantine period lasted for over a millennium and that the Byzantine territory included huge geographical areas, inhabited by various peoples, sometimes very different between them, in terms of language, traditions, educational background and so on. How all these peoples could possibly have the same understanding and evaluation of innovation?[10] My main point here is that it is important, when studying any Byzantine innovation, to identify the relevant unit, or units, of adoption.
A civilization, a society, any complex group of people, in our case Byzantium, should be considered as a mega-system (probably it could be better to call it a multi-unit system) encompassing countless adoption units of various types, including –to name but a few– the emperor, the court, the state, social and religious institutions, various local societies and social groupings, as well as professional associations, intellectual circles, et cetera. To make the point clear: a new idea or practice, for example a law or a new regulation in Byzantium, could be accepted or enforced by the political authority (one adoption unit) and opposed by, for example, a religious institution or a social group (for example the big landowners as another adoption unit within the same mega-system, that is the Byzantine Empire).