Stockholms universitet

Elise Dermineur ReuterswärdUniversitetslektor, docent

Om mig

Jag är docent i ekonomisk historia med ett brett forskningsintresse som inkluderar rättshistoria, ekonomi, genus och kvinnohistoria. Jag studerade historia vid Université de Strasbourg och avlade min doktorsexamen vid Purdue University 2011. Min doktorsavhandling, Women in Rural Society: Peasants, Patriarchy and the Local Economy in Northeast France, 1650–1789 (Purdue University, 2011), undersökte det komplexa samspelet mellan könsroller och ekonomiska strukturer i tidigmoderna rurala samhällen.

Under min karriär har jag haft flera olika stipendier. År 2011 var jag Max Weber Fellow vid European University Institute i Florens. Mellan 2011 och 2013 hade jag en postdoktoral tjänst vid Umeå universitet, och mellan 2013 och 2015 var jag Research Fellow vid Lunds universitet inom det HERA-finansierade projektet ”Marrying Cultures: Queens Consort and European Identities, 1500–1800.” Jag var dessutom Pro Futura Scientia Fellow mellan 2015 och 2022. Efter att ha befordrats till docent vid Umeå universitet 2016 tillbringade jag läsåret 2018–2019 vid Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences vid Stanford University.

Sedan 2019 leder jag Human Economy Lab, en forskningssatsning som utforskar sambanden mellan ekonomiska system och socialt välbefinnande.

Mina publikationer återfinns i Journal of Social History, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Financial History Review och Social Science History, bland andra. År 2017 gav jag ut Gender and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Sweden, en politisk biografi över drottning Lovisa Ulrika (1720–1782). Året därpå publicerade jag en open-access-samling essäer, Women and Credit in Preindustrial Europe, och var medredaktör för Revisiting Gender in European History, 1400–1800. År 2024 gav jag tillsammans med Matteo Pompermaier ut volymen Credit Networks in the Preindustrial World.

Min senaste bok, Before Banks, som undersöker tidiga finansiella marknader, utkom i januari 2025. Jag arbetar för närvarande också med att skriva om begreppet moralisk ekonomi i moderna samhällen, vilket bygger vidare på mitt bredare engagemang för att förstå hur gemenskap, sociala normer och ekonomiska system samverkar över tid.

Publikationer

 

 

I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

  • The evolution of credit networks in pre-industrial Finland

    2021. Elise M. Dermineur. Scandinavian Economic History Review

    Artikel

    This paper examines the specificities of interpersonal credit networks in both a rural and an urban setting in pre-industrial Finland. To analyse peer-to-peer lending, the article studies a sample of 1047 probate inventories from the town of Kristinestad and its surrounding rural area, the parish of Lappfjärd. These probate inventories feature more than 5000 credit relations between households for the period 1850–1855 and 1905–1914. This paper also concerns itself with the changes pertaining to the advent of banking institutions in the mid-nineteenth century. Traditional behavioural sciences argue that formal institutions replaced informal ones because they are more efficient, more inclusive, or both. No longer needed, informal institutions are supposed to have disappeared when formal ones emerged. But this argument does not consider the social context – or embeddedness, a term coined by Granovetter – and the individuals evolving in it. Embeddedness does not disappear. Therefore, one may ask how banks penetrated communities and the credit networks that were already in place in order to supplant private lending. Tools from social network analysis help to draw insights into the features and changes pertaining to credit networks.

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  • Banking Before Banks: The Making of Credit and Debt in Preindustrial France

    2025. Elise Dermineur.

    Bok

    This innovative work delves into the world of ordinary early modern women and men and their relationship with credit and debt. Elise Dermineur focuses on the rural seigneuries of Delle and Florimont in the south of Alsace, where rich archival documents allow for a fine cross-analysis of credit transactions and the reconstruction of credit networks from c.1650 to 1790. She examines the various credit instruments at ordinary people's disposal, the role of women in credit markets, and the social, legal, and economic experiences of indebtedness. The book's distinctive focus on peer-to-peer lending sheds light on how and why pre-industrial interpersonal exchanges featured flexibility, diversity, fairness, solidarity and reciprocity, and room for negotiation and renegotiation. Before Banks also offers insight into factors informing our present financial system and suggests that we can learn from the past to create a fairer society and economy.

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  • Credit Networks in The Preindustrial World: A Social Network Analysis Approach

    2024. .

    Bok (red)

    This open access book examines the formation and sustainability of private credit networks in past societies, gathering a global range of case studies from Europe and the Americas. The book represents a fi rst attempt to coordinate the work of different scholars working on credit networks and aims to explore the possibilities offered by social network analysis for the study of past fi nancial markets and networks.

    Each contribution offers new perspectives for the comprehension of past fi nancial networks, with a broad chronological and geographical scope. The chapters are arranged thematically and study both rural and urban networks, each employing a network perspective to facilitate an increased understanding of the relational dynamics of preindustrial credit transactions. This book models the various ways that SNA can be utilized by economic and fi nancial historians, as well as discusses its limitations and ways in which it can be combined with qualitative archival research. The book is of interest to a broad audience of scholars in the fi elds of economic, fi nancial and social history.

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  • Credit, Solidarity Networks and the Rural Poor in Preindustrial France

    2024. Elise Dermineur. Different Forms of Microcredit and Social Business, 265-288

    Kapitel

    This chapter examines how and why the rural poor used credit in preindustrial France. The absence of landed guarantees to secure loans did not exclude the poor from the local credit market. In the eighteenth century, they could borrow to alleviate a shortage of cash and defer payment for the purchase of foodstuffs, items of necessity and services. This chapter uses a sample of probate inventories collected in the south of Alsace for the period 1770–1790. Probates allow for a reconstruction of credit patterns and networks. Far from being excluded from credit, the poor were fully part of a network of solidarity.

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  • Mutual Aid and Informal Finance: The Persistence of Stokvels

    2023. Elise M. Dermineur, Unathi Kolanisi. The Thinker 95 (2), 35-43

    Artikel

    This paper focuses on stokvels in contemporary South Africa. It examines the resilience and persistence of mutual aid in a modern setting. It seeks to build a qualitative model to understand the persistence and adaptation of the stokvels in a modern society wherebanking institutions coexist with informal credit practices. The concept of cooperation is key to the analysis. We argue that stokvels continue to persist in modern society, despite the rise of banking institutions, because of their cooperative nature.

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  • Financialization and Sustainable Credit: Lessons from Non-Intermediated Transactions?

    2022. Y. Svetiev, Elise Dermineur, U. Kolanisi. Journal of Consumer Policy 45 (4), 673-698

    Artikel

    Does increasing access to finance promote human flourishing? And if so, are there pathways to sustainable credit and finance in the face of the perceived excesses of financialization? Can we reform or regulate the financial sector to promote sustainable credit and avoid over-indebtedness? These and similar questions have attracted considerable scholarly and public debate in the aftermath of the 2007 global financial crisis, with a growing focus on institutional alternatives to market exchange in finance and beyond. In this article, we study the persistence of non-intermediated credit, whereby lenders and borrowers engage in transactions directly and without financial intermediaries. Peer lending was a mainstay source of credit prior to the emergence of financial intermediaries and our benchmark case study outlines common features of credit relationships before modern banking in Europe. The other two case studies come from jurisdictions where non-intermediated credit persists on a broad scale, despite parties having formal access to modern finance. The aim of our contribution is threefold. First, we identify features of non-intermediated transactions that are consistent with a notion of sustainable credit, in the sense that they are not destabilising for the transacting parties (or the broader community). Secondly, we highlight the normative mechanisms that support non-intermediated credit across different settings to identify the scope conditions and limits for such transactions. Third, we evaluate such credit transactions along a set of normative benchmarks to draw out lessons for contemporary finance and financial regulation. We argue that even if non-intermediated credit cannot provide an alternative to modern finance, such transactions can help financial institutions tailor products to the needs of specific consumers or outsource credit assessment and repayment, while also allowing policymakers and regulators to identify and resolve concrete credit access problems for disadvantaged communities.

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Lektor i ekonomisk historia och docent i historia

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