Social and Labour History News

From Migration to Postmigrant Society: Memory, Identity and Social Inclusion

1 week 3 days ago
Conference in Lund/Sweden, 20-22 August 2025

We encourage scholars from various fields to submit papers addressing any aspect of 20th-century or 21st-century migration and its impact on identity, culture, and social change.

The Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University is pleased to announce the call for papers for the conference on migration and identity, which will be held on August 20-22, 2025, at Lund University in Lund, Sweden. The conference’s aim is to deepen our understanding of postmigrant societies in Europe through an exploration of parallels between migration experiences in the past and present by correlating the dynamics of migration in 20th-century Europe with those of the recent years.

We encourage scholars from various fields to submit papers addressing any aspect of 20th-century or 21st-century migration and its impact on identity, culture, and social change, including but not limited to the following subjects:
- negotiations and concealment of identity as a part of the migration process
- migration and urban transformation
- perceptions of migrants by the host societies
- dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion of the migrants in short and long time spans
- media and migration narratives
- migrations and identity in micro- and macro-perspective
- migrations in individual and collective memory
- global contexts of European migration
- methodological approaches to migration research

Please submit an abstract of up to 300 words and a short biography (one paragraph) to migrationpostmigrant@gmail.com by February 28, 2025, indicating if you would be in need of a travel grant (we will provide a number of such grants). All application materials must be submitted in English. Selected participants will be notified by March 31, 2025.

Contact (announcement)

Magdalena Dziaczkowska (magdalena.dziaczkowska@ctr.lu.se, CTR) and Dorota Choińska (dorota.choinska2@uwr.edu.pl, University of Wroclaw, Open University of Catalonia)
Contact Mail:
migrationpostmigrant@gmail.com

https://www.ctr.lu.se/en/about-us/calendar/event/international-conference-migration-postmigrant-society-memory-identity-and-social-inclusion/

Working Group on ‘Risk, Health, and State Socialism: Central and Eastern Europe, 1950s-1980s’

1 week 3 days ago

While much of this historiography has focused on liberal democracies, less attention has been given to how concepts of risk operated in state socialist contexts. Building on recent studies in the history of medicine and health, we invite scholars to join a working group examining risk, health, and medicine under state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. To what extent did state socialist regimes recognize certain health and medical issues as ‘governable’ through risk? What kinds of practices and ideas emerged in response? And were there differences or similarities between state socialist and liberal democratic models of risk in healthcare and medicine? Our aim is to take an exploratory approach to discuss whether, and in what contexts, the concept of risk can be applied to state socialism, and to examine the risk-related practices, ideas, and technologies observed in healthcare and medicine in state socialism.

Existing scholarship, following the works of Ulrich Beck, Nikolas Rose, or François Ewald, has linked concepts of risk and ‘risk society’ primarily to Western Europe and the United States. Emerging from a shared sense of crisis during the 1970s—intensified by economic recession and growing anxieties about the complexity of modern society—risk became a technique of governance that offered a framework for addressing new social challenges by making them more predictable and calculable. Particularly in the fields of medicine and healthcare, from disease prevention and public health to drug control and biomedical research, the language of risk and risk factors has become increasingly prominent.

While much of this historiography has focused on liberal democracies, less attention has been given to how concepts of risk operated in state socialist contexts. Building on recent studies in the history of medicine and health, we invite scholars to join a working group examining risk, health, and medicine under state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. To what extent did state socialist regimes recognize certain health and medical issues as ‘governable’ through risk? What kinds of practices and ideas emerged in response? And were there differences or similarities between state socialist and liberal democratic models of risk in healthcare and medicine? Our aim is to take an exploratory approach to discuss whether, and in what contexts, the concept of risk can be applied to state socialism, and to examine the risk-related practices, ideas, and technologies observed in healthcare and medicine in state socialism. The outcome of our collaboration is intended to be a publication, such as a special issue.

The initial one-day, in-person meeting of the working group will be held in May 2025 at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine, Charité Berlin. This meeting will focus on outlining the framework for our collaboration, presenting preliminary research ideas (10–15 minute presentations), and discussing potential outcomes of our work. We anticipate at least one or two additional follow-up meetings in autumn 2025 and spring 2026, either online or in person, based on participants’ preferences, to discuss our draft research papers. The aim is to prepare the final manuscripts for submission by the end of 2026, though this timeline may allow for adjustments as needed.

Potential research topics include prevention and self-prevention practices under state socialism; socialist medical innovation and emerging fields such as medical cybernetics; public health and environmental hazards; quantification, forecasting and computational technology in healthcare planning; risk, crime and control; health insurance and workplace safety. Other perspectives and research questions are warmly encouraged.

Submission Guidelines

If you are interested in participating, please send a brief CV and a short abstract (no more than 300 words) describing your research on risk, health, and medicine in state socialism to jakub.strelec@charite.de

by January 31, 2025. 

You are also welcome to include a note on specific themes or questions you would like to explore within the group.

Practical informations

Travel and accommodation costs for the meetings in Berlin can be covered. The exact meeting date in May will be coordinated with participants. The primary language of the working group will be English. Due to the discussion-based format of the group, the number of participants will be limited to six.

The working group is organized by Dr. Jakub Střelec (Charité-Berlin, ERC Leviathan) and supported by the European Research Council (GA No. 854503). Please feel free to reach out with any questions or suggestions you may have.

Scientific coordinator
  • Jakub Střelec, Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin

New Volume of "Labour History: a Journal of Labour and Social History"

1 week 3 days ago

Liverpool University Press is pleased to inform you of the latest content in Labour History: a Journal of Labour and Social History, published on behalf of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, the journal is a highly regarded publication that is essential reading for those working in and researching social and labour history in Australasia.

Volume 127 is devoted to union history. With contributions exploring the causes of union decline; the United Automobile Workers (UAW) in the 1950s; the activism of the Plumbers and Gasfitters Employees Union to raise their wages; the foundation of the Council for Aboriginal Rights in 1951; using union methods in consumer boycotts against hotels in the first two decades of the twentieth century; the historical context of the conditions, poor pay, and vulnerability of migrant labour in the hotel industry; and the policing of drunkenness as labour management in the early colonial period of Australian history.

You will also find an Historical Note on the campaign to have workers’ assembly halls recognised, protected, and celebrated for their part in the international labour movement history, and a tribute to one of Australia’s most outstanding historians, Lyndall Ryan (1943–2024). The issue closes with a generous selection of book reviews.

Browse all articles >  
Read a free issue >

If you would like to read content from this journal, please use our online form to recommend a subscription to your librarian.

 

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Table of contents

 

EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL

DIANE KIRKBY

 

RESEARCH ARTICLES

EXPLAINING UNION DECLINE: REMAKING POWER RELATIONS IN THE PILBARA IRON ORE INDUSTRY

BRADON ELLEM

 

SPEED-UPS AND RELATED PROBLEMS: THE UAW AND GRASSROOTS GRIEVANCES IN THE IMMEDIATE POST-WORLD WAR II PERIOD

TIMOTHY J. MINCHIN

 

MORE LESSONS OF THE ACCORD: THE 1986–87 PLUMBERS’ UNION DISPUTE

LUCIE NEWSOME, DANIELLE MILLER, AND TONY RAMSAY

 

“GUIDING THE WOBBLY HAND OF JUSTICE”: THE EARLY YEARS OF THE COUNCIL FOR ABORIGINAL RIGHTS, C. 1951–55

JENNIFER CLARK

 

PARCHING FOR PRINCIPLE: HOTEL BOYCOTTS IN REGIONAL AUSTRALIA, 1901–20

IAIN MCINTYRE

 

SO HOW DID WE GET HERE? A HISTORICAL CASE STUDY OF MIGRANT EMPLOYMENT IN THE NEW ZEALAND HOTEL SECTOR

DAVID WILLIAMSON AND CANDICE HARRIS

 

ALCOHOL, WORK AND PLAY IN CONVICT AUSTRALIA

SHANNON O’KEEFE, MATTHEW ALLEN, HAMISH MAXWELL-STEWART, AND MICHAEL QUINLAN

 

RESEARCH NOTE

INTERNATIONAL STANDING FOR THE RŪNANGA MINERS’ HALL

RUSSELL DEYELL AND AISLA HART

 

CONFERENCE REPORT

(RE)SOURCES: HISTORICAL INQUIRY AND LABOUR HISTORY ARCHIVES: THE 18TH BIENNIAL CONFERENCE OF THE AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF LABOUR HISTORY, CANBERRA, 23–25 NOVEMBER 2023

MICHAEL P. R. PEARSON

 

OBITUARY

LYNDALL RYAN (1943–2024)

JAMES BENNETT

 

BOOK REVIEWS

IAN ANGUS, THE WAR AGAINST THE COMMONS: DISPOSSESSION AND RESISTANCE IN THE MAKING OF CAPITALISM

MATTHEW D. J. RYAN

 

RALPH DARLINGTON, LABOUR REVOLT IN BRITAIN 1910–14

ALEXIS VASSILEY

 

JARED DAVIDSON, BLOOD & DIRT: PRISON LABOUR AND THE MAKING OF NEW ZEALAND

HAMISH MAXWELL-STEWART

 

MARY DAVIS, UNITE HISTORY VOLUME 5 (1974–1992): THE TRANSPORT AND GENERAL WORKERS’ UNION (TGWU): FROM ZENITH TO NADIR?

BOBBIE OLIVER

 

MICHAEL EASSON, WHITLAM’S FOREIGN POLICY

RICHARD BROINOWSKI

 

LINDSAY FITZCLARENCE, THE DIRTY LIFE OF MINING IN AUSTRALIA: A TRAVELOGUE

ROWAN CAHILL

 

MATTHEW GERTH, ANTI-COMMUNISM IN BRITAIN DURING THE EARLY COLD WAR: A VERY BRITISH WITCH HUNT

JOHN CALLAGHAN

 

DONNY GLUCKSTEIN AND JANEY STONE, THE RADICAL JEWISH TRADITION: REVOLUTIONARIES, RESISTANCE FIGHTERS & FIREBRANDS

JORDANA SILVERSTEIN

 

RICHARD S. HILL AND STEVEN LOVERIDGE, SECRET HISTORY: STATE SURVEILLANCE IN NEW ZEALAND, 1900–1956

CYBÈLE LOCKE

 

NEVILLE KIRK, A NATION IN CRISIS: DIVISION, CONFLICT, CAPITALISM IN THE UNITED KINGDOM; NEVILLE KIRK, BRITISH SOCIETY AND ITS THREE CRISES: FROM THE 1970S GLOBALISATION TO THE FINANCIAL CRASH OF 2007–8 AND THE ONSET OF BREXIT IN 2016

ROB MANWARING

 

JAMES LESH, VALUES IN CITIES: URBAN HERITAGE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AUSTRALIA

CHRIS MCCONVILLE

 

JAN LOKAN AND PHILIP PAYTON, EDS, MORE THAN MINERS: CORNISH ESSAYS FROM SOUTH AUSTRALIA

ROWAN CAHILL

 

NICK MANSFIELD AND MARTIN WRIGHT, MADE BY LABOUR: A MATERIAL AND VISUAL HISTORY OF BRITISH LABOUR C. 1780–1924

DAVID STEPHENS

 

LEE-ANN MONK AND DAVID HENDERSON WITH CHRISTINE BIGBY, RICHARD BROOME, AND KATIE HOLMES, FAILED AMBITIONS: KEW COTTAGES AND CHANGING IDEAS OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

PHILIPPA MARTYR

 

MARIAN QUARTLY, THE MIDDLING SORT: A SOUTH AUSTRALIAN FAMILY HISTORY

MELANIE OPPENHEIMER

 

KEN REIMAN, RON CAREY AND THE TEAMSTERS: HOW A UPS DRIVER BECAME THE GREATEST UNION REFORMER OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

LINDSAY TANNER

 

SAMANTHA J. SIMON, BEFORE THE BADGE: HOW ACADEMY TRAINING SHAPES POLICE VIOLENCE

MARK BRISKEY

 

EVAN SMITH, JAYNE PERSIAN, AND VASHTI JANE FOX, EDS, HISTORIES OF FASCISM AND ANTI-FASCISM IN AUSTRALIA

DAVID GILCHRIST

 

SHELTON STROMQUIST, CLAIMING THE CITY: A GLOBAL HISTORY OF WORKERS’ FIGHT FOR MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM

JANET MCCALMAN

 

ADRIAN WEIR, UNITE HISTORY VOLUME 6 (1992–2010): THE TRANSPORT AND GENERAL WORKERS’ UNION (TGWU): UNITY FOR A NEW ERA

BOBBIE OLIVER

 

SALLY YOUNG, PAPER EMPERORS: THE RISE OF AUSTRALIA’S NEWSPAPER EMPIRES; SALLY YOUNG, MEDIA MONSTERS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF AUSTRALIA’S NEWSPAPER EMPIRES

PETER FRAY

 

RESEARCH NOTICE BOARD

RESEARCH NOTICE BOARD

 

ASSLH DIRECTORY

AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF LABOUR HISTORY

"M.A.L" The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford

1 week 3 days ago

Madeline Linford (1895-1975) was the first woman on the Editorial Board of the Manchester Guardian, working for the newspaper from 1913 to 1953. She wrote theatre, film and book reviews as well as numerous articles on topics ranging from the Manchester sales to the clothing of the Victorian baby. In 1919 and 1921 she visited France, Austria and Poland, reporting on the efforts of the Friends’ Relief Mission to combat suffering and disease. In the autumn of 1939 she wrote articles on how the war was affecting women in Manchester.

Madeline edited the first column for women in the Manchester Guardian from 1922 to 1939, was a picture editor on the paper in the 1940s and, finally, was the editor of the backpage opinion column. Somehow she also found time to write short stories and five novels as well as a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft. When she died at the age of 80 the Guardian in its obituary described her as “…one of the most remarkable newspaperwomen of her time, the creator in the Manchester Guardian of the first women’s page for the ‘intellectual’ woman, and probably, the first woman to become pictures editor of a national newspaper.”

This is the first anthology of her work to appear in print.

https://www.lulu.com/shop/madeline-linford-and-michael-herbert/mal-the-…

Artificial Intelligence in Archives and Collections

3 weeks 1 day ago

Practices, Potentials, and Evidence Production in Dealing with Images and Multimodal Cultural Heritage

The Leibniz Research Alliance ‘Value of the Past’ would like to invite you to this conference.

Marburg, 12-13 December 2024

Hybrid format: in-person and online Conference languages: German and English

Dates and Conference Venue: Thursday, December 12th, 12:30 – 19:30, Friday December 13th, 9.00 – 15:45. Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association, Gisonenweg 5-7, 35037 Marburg

Artificial Intelligence in Archives and Collections. Practices, Potentials, and Evidence Production in Dealing with Images and Multimodal Cultural Heritage

The Research Lab 1.3. “Digital Heuristics and Digital History” of the Leibniz Research Alliance “Value of the Past” is organising a conference in Marburg on artificial intelligence in heritage institutions, such as archives and collections, and how these new technologies are transforming archival institutional practices. Topics will primarily focus on – but will not be limited to – visual sources, such as photography and graphic collections or those with mixed image-text sources and multimodal information processing. The conference will provide a forum for researchers and practitioners from the humanities, archives and collections to connect with researchers and engineers in the fields of artificial intelligence, computer science and the digital humanities, to discuss new findings, and to exchange experiences. The event seeks to promote an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral dialogue between research, development and practice.

We cordially invite stakeholders from all areas in the field. Attendance without contribution to the programme is welcome.

Speakers from Austria, China, France, Germany, USA, UK and Sweden will talk about topics including: Exploring and Analysing Collections from Textual and Multimodal Contexts, Computer Vision: Semantic Segmentation, Classification, Analysing and Understanding Images, The Effects of Computational Methods on Image Analytical Research and Visual Studies in Cultural Heritage, Opportunities and Challenges for the Automated Indexing and Cataloguing of Visual Sources in Archives and Collections.

Key Topic: Dealing with Images and Multimodal Cultural Heritage

In the years to come, curatorial and archival processes in memory and heritage institutions (including key aspects of cataloguing such as description, classification and categorization) will be increasingly supported by automated systems and artificial intelligence. These practices attribute value to sources and link archival materials and collection objects to societal narratives. Collections and archives thus form an essential basis for memory-related discourses and shape our view of the past.

New technologies have now reached the stage where they are potentially suitable for the requirements of cultural heritage institutions. There is potential promise in the partially automated indexing and cataloguing of historical sources, and particularly of digital images, the semantics and meaning of which have until recently only been accessible to the human eye and not the machine. Images can now be automatically described in semantic terms and therefore made findable. AI methods – and most recently multimodal AI processing – are opening up new possibilities for automatic text and layout recognition, automated image annotation, and the analysis of visual sources and their contextualisation (e.g. text-image combinations or audiovisual sources).

At the same time, however, there is a lack of knowledge about how evidence – and facts – are generated and how AI processes affect the attribution of authenticity to archival documents and photos. At this moment, the humanities lack semantically high-quality and subject-appropriate training data sets. Similarly, there is hardly any agreement about what constitutes an acceptable outcome of computational classification processes, or what benchmarks should be used to evaluate the results. We therefore need to develop best practices (that may tap into explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods), benchmarks and goals. To increase the value that the information and knowledge held in our archives and collections have for future research, we need to deepen our understanding of processes and algorithms.

The conference will bring together curatorial and archiving knowledge and new AI-based methods, and will also provide a forum for ethical reflections on the use of AI in academic and archival practices. We will consider how automated processing and AI methods require detailed epistemic reflection and methodological-technical control to ensure that no false or tainted evidence is generated. Thus, the conference will discuss the effects of these new technologies on the production of evidence, thereby contributing to the crucial question of how the digital transformation is changing knowledge creation in the humanities and what this means for scholarship in historical disciplines.

Conference participation: Registration For registration and further information please consult the conference website: https://eveeno.com/441936742

Most Papers will be presented in English. Discussions can be in English and German.

Participation in the conference is free of charge. Kindly refer to the conference website for information on possible costs for meals and the social programme.

Deadline for Applications: please register as early as possible, since it will help us in organizing the event. Hotels are scarce in Marburg. Please reserve a room in good time of you want to take part in person.

Stipendia

Support for travel costs We can assist selected participants with a stipendium towards travel costs and accommodation in Marburg. Please send a letter of explaining your situation of up to 500 words and a CV with your application. The letter should tell us a little about your experience in the topic, what you expect to gain from the event, and what you would like to contribute to the discussion.

Contact for Programme and Stipendium archivesai@herder-institut.de

Organizers:

- Leibniz-Forschungsverbund „Wert der Vergangenheit“, Lab 1.3. Digitale Heuristik und Historik
- Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA), Mainz
- Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung – Institut der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, Marburg
- NFDI4Memory, Task Area Data Quality
Committee: Elke Bauer, Simon Donig, Annette Frey, Dominik Kimmel

Programm

Thursday, 12th December 2024

12.00 pm Warm up

12.30 pm Welcome

12.40 pm Introduction

Keynote 1

12.45 pm Tayler Arnold, University of Richmond (online): Explainable and Auditable Search and Discovery of Visual Cultural Heritage Collections

Panel 1 Exploring and Analysing Collections from Textual and Multimodal Contexts

1.30 pm Günther Mühlberger, Universität Innsbruck: AI as an employee. How the digital transformation is (not only) changing archives

2.00 pm Frank Puppe, Universität Würzburg: Pipeline for Digital Indexing of Archaeological Record Cards

2.30 pm Coffee Break

2.45 pm Mahsa Vafaie, FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure: Separation of machine-printed and handwritten text in archival documents

3.15 pm Markus Huff, Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen: ArchiveGPT: Psychological and technological perspectives on the AI-supported archiving of image material

3.45 pm Elisabeth Mödden, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Frankfurt a. M.: Automatic Indexing with Large Scale Vocabulary – Automatic Subject Indexing as Extreme Multi Label Learning Problem (Presentation in German)

4.15 pm Coffee break

Panel 2 Computer Vision: Semantic Segmentation, Analysing and Understanding Images

4.45 pm Ralph Ewert, TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology / Leibniz University Hannover: Unlocking Cultural Heritage: Computer Vision for Art and History Archives

5.15 pm Karsten Tolle, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main: Potpourri of Computer Vision in Cultural Heritage

5.45 pm N.N. State of the Art Methods in Computer Vision

6.15 pm Evening Reception

Friday, 13th December

9.00 am Warm up

Continuation of Panel 2: Computer Vision: Semantic Segmentation, Analysing and Understanding Images

9.30 am Angelica I. Aviles-Rivero, Tsinghua University, Beijing (online): Dusting Off the Unlabelled Data: Graph Semi Supervised Learning for Large-Scale Datasets

10.00 am Erik Radisch, Leibniz Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig: A new Approach to Semi-Automated Annotations with Segment-Anything (Meta AI)

10.30 am Yury Korolev, University of Bath: Image filtering based on total variation spectral decompositions: an overview of the method and an application in medieval paper analysis

11.00 am Coffee Break

Panel 3: The Effects of Computational Methods on Image Analytical Research and Visual Studies in Cultural Heritage

11.15 am Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb, University of Cambridge (online): Unveiling the invisible – mathematical imaging for cultural heritage

11.45 am Christopher Kermorvant, TEKLIA, Paris: How to use controlled vocabularies to describe early Japanese photographs using deep learning models

12.15 pm Peter Bell, Philipps Universität Marburg: Ways of Seeing in AI and art history

12.45 pm Lunch Break

Keynote 2

1.30 pm James Evans, The University of Chicago (online): The Geometry of Culture: Analyzing meaning through embeddings of text and images

Panel 4: Opportunities and Challenges for the Automated Indexing and Cataloguing of Visual Sources in Archives and Collections

2.15 pm Nicole Graf, ETH Zürich (online): Between ritual and relief – when the computer squints: analysis of Al-based indexing in the Image Archive of the ETH Library

2.45 pm Larissa von Bychelberg, Uppsala University: Research at the Intersection of Archives, AI, and Authenticity. Can Artificial Intelligence contribute to an inclusive and sustainable assessment of archival records’ authenticity?

3.15 pm Plenary Discussion

3.45 pm End of the conference

Kontakt

archivesai@herder-institut.de

https://eveeno.com/441936742

(Re)Gendering Science: Policies, Practices and Discourses in Socialist Contexts and Beyond

3 weeks 1 day ago

This call for papers invites contributors for a special issue of the scientific journal History of Communism in Europe, focusing on the relationship between women and science in socialist contexts. We aim to explore how women engaged with science both within national contexts (in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, or the Global South), and in transnational contexts (whether within the framework of socialist movements and organizations or through academic networks and scientific collaborations that included women from socialist countries and/or took place in these regions).

(Re)Gendering Science: Policies, Practices and Discourses in Socialist Contexts and Beyond

This special issue is based on two premises.

First, both socialism as an ideology and communist regimes encouraged women’s participation in science. To this day, countries of Eastern and Central Europe, Central Asia, and Latin America have a higher proportion of female scientists (around 40% or more) compared to regions like Western Europe and North America (just over 30%), East Asia (a little over 20%), or South and West Asia (under 20%). However, it is precisely these regions, with greater women’s participation in science, that are less represented in the history and historiography of science, and whose scientific contributions tend to be underrated or ignored altogether. Ironically, even in dictionaries and encyclopedias specifically dedicated to women in science, these regions are consistently underrepresented, with most entries coming from Western Europe and North America, a few from South and East Asia, and only a handful from Eastern Europe or the Global South. This special issue aims to shift the focus from “Western science” – too often equated with “real” or “modern” science – toward a more inclusive perspective, analyzing the politics, practices, and discourses of science and women’s involvement within it in state-socialist countries and, more broadly, in socialist environments.

Second, while communist regimes encouraged women’s involvement in science, they also produced specific forms of gender inequality. Although women gained increased opportunities for education and scientific careers, their roles remained largely peripheral within the scientific community. Men continued to occupy the most prominent and powerful positions, maintained visibility in the public communication of scientific developments, and often claimed credit for scientific achievements. The few exceptions to this trend often had political or propagandistic motivations aligned with the logic of the Cold War, and typically occurred in scientific fields considered “feminine”, such as child and elderly care. Additionally, women’s identities were downplayed by authoritarian regimes, subsumed under the broader, politically significant identity of “working people”. In this context, the special issue aims to gather both individual and collective case studies that recover the lost voices of women in science. It also seeks to examine the complex interplay of factors that either encouraged or hindered women’s access to scientific fields and how women negotiated their scientific status, developing strategies for professional achievement. We are also interested in how gender identities were constructed in socialist and state-socialist contexts, and how these identities influenced men and women’s interaction with and within science, as well as the processes of knowledge creation.

An important focus of our special issue is the academic mobility of women scientists and their scientific networking – both crucial strategies for navigating hostile scientific environments and creating professional opportunities that would otherwise be inaccessible.

We use the term “science” to refer to STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) as well as the social sciences. We are interested in the making, education, institutionalization, and communication of science, as well as scientific perspectives related to production, but also to domestic life, and family care.

We welcome contributions from various fields of research, including history of socialism/communism, history of science, women’s history, Cold War studies, gender and feminist studies, or any other related areas of interest, approached from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Topics may address (but are not limited to) the following aspects:

- Policies that encouraged/excluded women from scientific endeavors
- Women and scientific practices in socialist contexts
- Sites of science (professional vs. amateur science; laboratory vs. home)
- Women international organizations and science
- Transnational/global networks of women’s scientific collaborations (professional associations, international conferences, mobility, field work, scientific friendships)
- Women’s recruitment and promotion in scientific fields
- Women and the public communication of science
- Representations of women and gender in science
- (In)visibility of women in science

Contributors are kindly asked to write abstracts in English that do not exceed 500 words.

Deadline: 2nd of December 2024.
You may submit your proposals at: hce-online@iiccmer.ro, irina.matei@fspub.unibuc.ro, mia.jinga@gmail.com.

Selected authors will be notified by the 15th of December 2024.
The deadline for the final draft of the paper is the 15th of May 2025.

The academic journal History of Communism in Europe is edited by The Institute for the Investigation of the Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile, published by Zeta Books and indexed in EBSCO, CEEOL, PDC, Google Books. It is a journal open to all inquiries that have the objectivity, complexity and sophistication required by any research on the issue of communism, as well as on the different aspects of totalitarianisms of 20th Century Europe. These scholarly investigations must remain an interdisciplinary enterprise, in which raw data and refined concepts help us understand the subtle dynamics of any given phenomenon.

Kontakt

hce-online@iiccmer.ro, irina.matei@fspub.unibuc.ro, mia.jinga@gmail.com

https://www.iiccmer.ro/publicatii/2024/open-call-for-papers-history-of-communism-in-europe-no-16-2025/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGXJYhleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHSggsBDRdynJLs5HU2wxlytehc759MGn995msv8hbN6tCaAvXmf9WpfRJg_aem_q4CAOVVqyd17Bq6ILXAQIQ

Labour & Empire seminar series 2024-2025

3 weeks 2 days ago

Organised by the Labour & Empire Working Group of the European Labour History Network - labourempire.elhn@gmail.com

Online, All the events at 4-5:30pm GMT

Register here to receive the Zoom link: https://tinyurl.com/ds547d7k

 

11 December Seminar

Zaen Alkazi

"Workers think they are masters in the mill": Workers’ Shopfloor Committees in the Bombay Cotton Textile Industry, c. 1927-1930

 

15 January Keynote talk

Frederick Cooper

Colonization, Decolonization, and Labor

 

25 February Anarchism & Empire round table

Lucien van der Walt: Bernard Sigamoney and Indian revolutionary syndicalists in Durban, South Africa, 1915-1921: Race, class, and global networks

Isabelle Felici: Italian colonialism: The Augusto Masetti campaign in the Italian Anarchist newspapers published in France (1913-1914)

Ole Birk Laursen: The International Working Men’s Association and Indian Anticolonialism in Weimar Era Berlin

 

5 March Seminar

André Ribeiro Fernandes

Changing to Remain: the Late Portuguese Empire and the Issue of Anticolonial Labour Unionism (1961-1973)

 

TBC, May Panel – new research directions in labour & empire history

Benjamin Constanty, Josephin Nevill, & Eleanor Strangways

Residue and oblivion: the manufacture of toxic legacies. Cross-reflections based on the exemplary case of asbestos. 20th to 21st centuries

3 weeks 2 days ago

Please find attached the call for papers for the international conference ‘ Residue and oblivion: the manufacture of toxic legacies. Cross-reflections based on the exemplary case of asbestos. 20th - 21st centuries’, to be held on 23 and 24 June 2025 in Grenoble.

This conference will bring the AmiEtat research programme to a close. The aim of the conference is to encourage exchanges between researchers in the social sciences and the medical sciences (epidemiology, occupational medicine, etc.).

Proposals for papers should be sent by 15 January 2025 to : 350tonnesetdespoussieres@groupes.renater.fr

Streaming Films about Work and Industry in the Early Twentieth Century Available

3 weeks 2 days ago

The Moving Past website creates the opportunity to see what was being seen in the 1920s, with a focus on work and industry. The fifteen films available on the website are from 4 to 15 minutes long and present varying types of workplaces and industry. They were made by two government sponsored institutions, the Ontario Motion Picture Bureau, which operated from 1917 to 1934 and the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau, was which was created in 1918 and operated until the late 1930s. Several are documentaries about industries such logging, mining and fishing. Others are more didactic, providing guidance on appropriate workplace behaviour, workplace safety, looking for employment and the marvels of emerging technologies in the 1920s.

These films will be of interest to labour historians and students. The website includes a bibliography and description for each of the films. 

Labour History Review essay prize 2025

1 month ago

Entries are invited for the Labour History Review postgraduate essay prize for 2025. The deadline for entries is 31 March 2025, and details are set out below.

The editors of Labour History Review established this essay prize with the purpose of encouraging a high standard of scholarship amongst postgraduate research students in the United Kingdom and abroad.

The winner’s prize will consist of:

  • Publication of the winning essay in Labour History Review
  • A cash prize of £700
  • One year’s free membership of the Society for the Study of Labour History, which includes subscription to Labour History Review

Other entries of sufficient quality may be invited to publish their submissions in the journal. If so, then they will be given one year’s free subscription to Labour History Review.

Brief editorial statement

Labour History Review welcomes contributions in any area of labour history across different countries and periods. The journal has long-standing expertise in economic and social histories of labour as well as in party, trade union and popular politics. The editors are further interested in articles which engage with issues of gender and ethnicity or race, as well as class, and which attempt to broaden the traditional subject matter of labour history.

Entry requirements and rules

The entry requirements and rules for the Labour History Review Essay Prize are as follows:

  • The Essay Prize is open to anyone currently registered for a higher research degree, in Britain or abroad, or to anyone who completed such a degree no earlier than February 2020.
  • Essays are to be no longer than 10,000 words.
  • The essay should be sent as a Word document by email attachment to one of the editors of the journal, either Professor Peter Gurney, Department of History, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ (pjgurney@essex.ac.uk), or Professor Paul Corthorn, School of History and Anthropology, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN (p.corthorn@qub.ac.uk).

Alternatively, it may be submitted via the LHR’s online submission system. Securing permission for the reproduction of illustrations and quotations from copyrighted material is the responsibility of the author. Submissions should conform to the guidelines for authors.

  • All entries must be accompanied by an official Labour History Review Essay Prize entry form, downloaded from the SSLH website.
  • The closing date for entries will be 31 March 2025.
  • Essays can be on any topic of labour history broadly defined, provided that they fulfil the requirements of the editorial statement/aims and scope of Labour History Review, as reproduced above.
  • Essays should conform to LHR style guidelines, copies of which can be found on the websites of the SSLH (Guidelines for authors.) and Liverpool University Press.
  • Entries submitted must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.
  • The decision of the judges will be final, and no correspondence will be entered into by the Editors.
  • If, in the judges’ opinion, the material submitted is not of a suitable standard, no prize will be awarded.
  • All entries will be subject to the normal LHR standards of refereeing and editorial review.
  • There will be a single prize-winner but authors other than the winner may be invited to publish their work in LHR, if the judges of the Essay Prize consider such work to be of sufficient quality.

https://sslh.org.uk/2024/11/06/labour-history-review-essay-prize-2025/

Workers’ Experiences. Lives, bodies, struggles. A digital exhibition

1 month ago

Curated by Gilles Guiheux (Université Paris Cité) and Eric Florence (Université de Liège), this digital exhibition “is the fruit of the collective work of historians and sociologists as part of the Eurasemploi program directed by Bernard Thomann (Inalco) and funded by the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR). The research focused on the workers' experience of precariousness in Japan, France and Belgium during the Trente Glorieuses period, on the one hand, and on China from the 1980s to the present day, on the other. Analyzing how rapid economic growth transformed (or not) the condition of workers in these three contexts, the exhibition helps us to think about the invariants of capitalism.
The exhibition gives voice to the richness and diversity of around a hundred documents of various kinds: texts, images, videos, interviews, and oral records. Some of these documents were produced by employers, trade unions, journalists or experts conducting surveys, and others by the workers themselves (autobiographies, poems, songs). The exhibition allows for a variety of narratives and invites the public to immerse themselves in the three main sections of the site: lives (biographical and migratory trajectories), bodies (processes of control and labor), and struggles (collective mobilizations and cultural practices). Visitors can move between these three entries and create and archive their visit, using the ‘select document’ icon”.

https://experiencesouvrieres.phl-lab.uliege.be/?lang=en

New publication: Les dockers du Havre, de la révolution à nos jours (French)

1 month ago

 

Les dockers du Havre, de la révolution à nos jours
Mont-Saint-Aignan, PURH, 2024
ISBN 9791024017952

Bien que le terme « docker » ne soit largement utilisé au Havre qu’à partir de la construction des docks, les travailleurs portuaires se reconnaissaient entre eux bien avant que la langue n’évolue. Les métiers contrôlés par la municipalité ont graduellement partagé le travail avec les hommes embauchés à la tâche par les capitaines et négociants, puis par la Compagnie des docks et entrepôts. Face à la mécanisation, une identité collective s’est affirmée au travers d’exigences communes, pétitions, grèves et syndicats. De la grève victorieuse de 1928 à la conteneurisation des années 1980, la volonté
d’unité dans une seule organisation, au nom de la défense des intérêts de la corporation, s’est manifestée avec constance. Corporatisme, aristocratie ouvrière ou avant-garde combative : quel est le terme qui explique le mieux la culture et la force syndicale « docker » maintenue depuis près d’un siècle ?

Sommaire

Remerciements
Principales abréviations utilisées
Préface
Introduction
Chapitre 1 : Qui sont les ancêtres des dockers ? La manutention portuaire dans la première moitié du xixe siècle
Chapitre 2 : Le modèle de la manufacture et ses adversaires (1856-1885)
Chapitre 3 : Cargos, grues et statistiques. De la fin des années 1880 à 1928
Chapitre 4 : L’ère de Jules Durand (1885-1928)
Chapitre 5 : Docker = syndiqué (1928-1965)
Chapitre 6 : Mieux payés, moins nombreux (1965-1993)
Chapitre 7 : Rebond (1993-2020)
Conclusion
Annexe
Bibliographie
Table des figures et tableaux

John Barzman est professeur d’histoire contemporaine émérite à l’Université Le Havre Normandie et membre associé de l’UMR IDEES 6063 CNRS. Il a fait des études aux États-Unis (Harvard, Wisconsin, UCLA) et en France (Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne). Parmi ses travaux, citons Dockers, métallos, ménagères, mouvements sociaux et cultures militantes au Havre 1913-1923 (1997), et en collaboration Environnements portuaires (2004), Jules Durand : un crime social et judiciaire (2015), Bombardements 1944. Le Havre, Normandie, France, Europe (2016) et Histoire du Havre (2017). Il est l’auteur de nombreux articles dans des revues telles que Le Mouvement social, International Review of Maritime History et Cahiers d’histoire.

Neoliberal Global Capitalism – Challenges for Postcolonial Studies

1 month ago

Bielefeld/Germany, 29-31 May 2025

At this conference, we invite scholars interested in literature, culture, language and capitalism to come together to rethink materialist analysis for the current moment. How should scholarship attentive to postcolonial power imbalances, interdependencies, historical relations respond to a globalized neoliberal capitalism whose cannibalising propensities (Fraser) have become undeniable yet whose “realism” still seems insurmountable (Fisher; see also Shonkwiler and La Berge)?

Neoliberal Global Capitalism – Challenges for Postcolonial Studies

“Capitalism is back!” announced Nancy Fraser recently, suggesting that now, once more, scholars and commentators were again beginning to name capitalism as the connection and a key cause of the oft-cited “multiple crises” of our age. These crises include advancing climate catastrophe; rapidly growing inequality within many countries and globally; ongoing atrocious working conditions, especially in the global South; the profiting of the global North off the indebted South; mass displacement as a result of all these factors made deadly by increasingly fortified borders; widespread social disintegration and the growing influence of authoritarian and fascist politics – to name some of the effects of capitalism and its present structural crisis of overaccumulation and chronic stagnation. These effects are global and planetary yet deeply uneven, reflecting in particular the history of European imperialism. How can and should postcolonial literary and cultural studies respond, anew, in the 21st century? Or is it prevented from formulating an effective analysis of capitalism by its own philosophical commitments?

In recent years, scholars attentive to questions of culture and capitalism have, for example, returned to working-class literatures from both (former) metropoles and (former) colonies in order to recognise the diversity – and globality – of the category (Clarke and Hubble; Lennon and Nilsson; McMillan; Entin; Perera; see also Attfield;). Others have sought to rethink the history of capitalism from the perspective of peripheral literatures (Beckman, Nir, and Sauri); pursued an explicitly postcolonial economic criticism (Kennedy); or developed new theories of world-literature (Warwick Research Collective). Still others have investigated the relationship between culture and neoliberalism (Elliott and Harkins) and have sought to periodise and explore how neoliberalism is experienced in different world regions via literature (Deckard and Shapiro; Walonen; see also Al Zayed; Niemi).

Much of this scholarship considers literature from formerly colonised regions of the world, or from the contemporary world-system’s peripheries and semi-peripheries; relatively little of it, however, is by scholars disciplinarily situated in postcolonial studies. This suggests the need for a more specifically postcolonial analysis, addressing the interrelation of cultural texts and phenomena with economic and social structures. It also suggests the ongoing actuality of Lazarus’s call for interrogating and expanding the remit of postcolonial criticism. For example, what can postcolonial studies gain from new theories of class (e.g. Chibber) and power in capitalism (e.g. Mau)?

At this conference, we invite scholars interested in literature, culture, language and capitalism to come together to rethink materialist analysis for the current moment. How should scholarship attentive to postcolonial power imbalances, interdependencies, historical relations respond to a globalized neoliberal capitalism whose cannibalising propensities (Fraser) have become undeniable yet whose “realism” still seems insurmountable (Fisher; see also Shonkwiler and La Berge)? How can a materialist postcolonial studies help explain why capitalism has not collapsed? How can we read literary and cultural productions, in particular from the peripheries of the world-system, in order to understand developments and the myriad excrescences of capitalism around the world and imagine breaking through and moving beyond the (neo)colonial capitalist present? How do we teach literature and culture in relationship to capitalism at university, and where might there be space for it in school curricula?

Questions that interest us include (but are not limited to the following):
Form – Style – Aesthetics – Language, e.g.
• What forms, styles and literary techniques lend themselves to the representation of globalised neoliberal capitalism in contexts around the world?
• What is working-class literature and culture today? What are its aesthetics, ethics, politics?
• What is the relationship of “working-class literature/culture” to “postcolonial”, “global”, “peripheral” or “world literature”?
• How can linguistics contribute to materialist postcolonial studies and/or critiques of capitalism?

Genres: Producing and Circulating Knowledge, e.g.
• What new genres, such as the “new social novel” (Abu-Manneh) have emerged or are emerging in response to the most recent global capitalist crisis?
• What understandings and knowledges of global capitalism are offered by migration literature, refugee literature and other writing by migrant and refugee thinkers and activists, in particular from or in the global South?
• How do new cultural productions concerned with rising inequality, exploitation, extraction, enclosures and related processes refer to or draw upon older cultural and literary traditions?

Writing and Reading Capitalist Developments, e.g.
• How do postcolonial or global South literatures represent historical and ongoing enclosures and expand or challenge our understanding of such processes?
• How can materialist postcolonial studies be made productive for the analysis of capitalist developments past and present?
• What insights can culture and literature lend to particular contexts of and ongoing developments in racial capitalism?
• How do cultural productions from various regions of the world represent “postcolonial capitalism”? What subjectivities are produced, how is community imagined in postcolonial writing that “accepts the terms of capitalism’s uneven structure and works within it” (Naruse 114; see also Naruse, Xiang, and Thandra)?

Futures – Social Change – Activism, e.g.
• What is the relation of cultural production to social movements in the global South?
• How do literary and cultural products envision social change?
• How does postcolonial writing from different periods imagine the future?

Research and Teaching, e.g.
• What can a capitalism-critical education in postcolonial literary and studies look like? Is there room for any such discussion in study programmes and/or in school curricula?
• Where and how can scholars in the humanities make room for debates about capitalism in their ways of conducting research (incl. third-party funding)?

Organisers: Gigi Adair and Ellen Grünkemeier, English Department, University of Bielefeld
Please send abstracts of ca. 300-500 words, plus a short academic biography (ca. 50-100 words), to gaps2025@uni-bielefeld.de by 15 December 2024. Applicants will receive notification of acceptance by the beginning of February 2025.
Panel proposals are also welcome; they should include the abstracts, biographic statements and a brief description of the panel.

All presenters must be GAPS members by the time of the conference.

Work in progress in anglophone postcolonial studies – e.g. M.A./M.Ed., PhD – can be presented in the “Under Construction” section, poster presentations are also welcome. Please submit abstracts specifying the under construction section and indicating your chosen format (paper or poster).

A limited number of travel bursaries (1,000€ max.) are available for emerging scholars, part-time, or currently unemployed speakers who are, or will become, members of GAPS. If you wish to apply for a travel bursary, please indicate this when submitting your abstract.

GAPS strives to create a conference in which everyone can participate in critical discussions of all topics. In particular, if a paper contains discussions of and/or representations of violence, presenters are encouraged to consider whether a content note might be warranted in order to prepare audience members. Content notes should be included in submitted abstracts for later inclusion in the conference program. Presenters are also encouraged to think critically about how they might choose to present such content (visually, orally, as text on a slide etc.).

Feel free to contact the organisers if you have any questions or special requirements, including accessibility concerns.

Works cited
Abu-Manneh, Bashir. “Global Capitalism and the Novel.” Modernism/modernity, vol. 2, cycle 4, 2018. https://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0034.
Al Zayed, Sarker Hasan. “Allegorizing Neoliberalism: Contemporary South Asian Fictions and the Critique of Capitalism.” Marx 200, special volume of Crossings: A Journal of English Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, 2020, pp. 117-36. https://doi.org/10.59817/cjes.v11i.
Attfield, Sarah. Class on Screen: The Global Working Class in Contemporary Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
Beckman, Ericka, Oded Nir, and Emilio Sauri. “Peripheral Literatures and the History of Capitalism: An Introduction.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 68, no. 1, 2022, pp. 1-21.
Chibber, Vivek. The Class Matrix. Social Theory After the Cultural Turn. Harvard UP, 2022.
Clarke, Ben, and Nick Hubble, editors. Working-Class Writing: Theory and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Deckard, Sharae, and Stephen Shapiro, editors. World Literature, Neoliberalism, and the Culture of Discontent. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Elliott, Jane, and Gillian Harkins. “Introduction: Genres of Neoliberalism.” Social Text, vol. 31, no. 2, 2013, pp. 1-17.
Entin, Joseph B. Living Labor: Fiction, Film, and Precarious Work. U of Michigan P, 2023.
Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alterative? Zero Books, 2009.
Fraser, Nancy. Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do about It. Verso, 2022.
Kennedy, Melissa. Narratives of Inequality: Postcolonial Literary Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Lennon, John, and Magnus Nilsson, editors. Working-Class Literature(s): Historical and International Perspectives. 2 volumes, Stockholm UP, 2017-2020.
McMillan, Gloria. The Routledge Companion to Literature and Class. Routledge, 2022.
Mau, Søren. Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital. Verso, 2023.
Naruse, Cheryl Narumi. “Writing Postcolonial Capitalism.” Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics, edited by Paul Crosthwaite, Peter Knight, and Nicky Marsh, Cambridge UP, 2022, pp. 114-29.
Naruse, Cheryl Narumi, Sunny Xiang, and Shashi Thandra. “Literature and Postcolonial Capitalism.” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 1-21.
Niemi, Minna Johanna. “Critical Representation of Neoliberal Capitalism and Uneven Development in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body.” Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 47, no. 5, 2021, pp. 869-88. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2021.1959118.
Perera, Sonali. No Country: Working-Class Writing in the Age of Globalization. Columbia UP, 2014.
Shonkwiler, Alison, and Leigh Clare La Berge, editors. Reading Capitalist Realism. U of Iowa P, 2014.
Walonen, Michael K. Contemporary World Narrative Fiction and the Spaces of Neoliberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
WReC (Warwick Research Collective). Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World-Literature. Liverpool UP, 2016.

Contact Information
Organisers: Gigi Adair and Ellen Grünkemeier, English Department, University of Bielefeld
Please send abstracts of ca. 300-500 words, plus a short academic biography (ca. 50-100 words), to gaps2025@uni-bielefeld.de by 15 December 2024. Applicants will receive notification of acceptance by the beginning of February 2025.
Panel proposals are also welcome; they should include the abstracts, biographic statements and a brief description of the panel.
gaps2025@uni-bielefeld.de

Contact (announcement)

gaps2025@uni-bielefeld.de

Genre et socialismes : nouvelles perspectives (mi-XIXe siècle - mi-XXe siècle) (French)

1 month ago

Paris, 4-5 June 2025

Ces deux journées d’étude se proposent d’ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives en histoire du socialisme, en l’interrogeant au prisme du genre. Si l’histoire des femmes et du genre a largement contribué à renouveler l’étude du politique au sens large depuis plusieurs décennies et celle du militantisme en particulier, une telle dynamique n’est que récemment perceptible dans l’historiographie des socialismes, et de nombreux angles morts persistent. Depuis le travail pionnier de Charles Sowerwine en 1978 sur les liens complexes entre féminisme et socialisme sous la IIIe République, aucune synthèse n’a remis sur le métier cette thématique, en dépit de la vitalité des études de genre d’un côté, et des renouvellements qu’a connu l’histoire des socialismes de l’autre .

Argumentaire Introduction

Ces deux journées d’études se proposent d’ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives en histoire du socialisme, en l’interrogeant au prisme du genre. Si l’histoire des femmes et du genre a largement contribué à renouveler l’étude du politique au sens large depuis plusieurs décennies et celle du militantisme en particulier[1], une telle dynamique n’est que récemment perceptible dans l’historiographie des socialismes[2], et de nombreux angles morts persistent[3].

Depuis le travail pionnier de Charles Sowerwine en 1978 sur les liens complexes entre féminisme et socialisme sous la IIIe République[4], aucune synthèse n’a remis sur le métier cette thématique, en dépit de la vitalité des études de genre d’un côté, et des renouvellements qu’a connu l’histoire des socialismes de l’autre[5]

La période qui s’étend du milieu du XIXe siècle au milieu du XXe siècle constitue un terrain d’étude particulièrement riche : l’intense politisation des années 1848 ouvre la voie à de nouvelles expériences socialistes tandis que l’impossible accès pour les femmes au droit de suffrage accélère la prise de conscience féministe. L’idée d’un « rendez-vous manqué[6] » entre féminisme et socialisme ne doit pas faire obstacle à l’analyse des expériences situées de militantisme socialiste au féminin qui peuvent s’insérer dans des configurations conjugales et/ou familiales plus larges tout comme elles peuvent (ou non) transgresser les normes de genre qui structurent alors les sociabilités politiques. À l’autre bout du spectre chronologique, l’adoption tardive du suffrage féminin en 1944 – malgré des réticences persistantes à gauche – ouvre une nouvelle séquence historique.

Si l’espace français (métropolitain et colonial) constituera le cœur de l’analyse, les communications comprenant une dimension comparative avec d’autres espaces nationaux seront encouragées. Une entrée par les acteurs et actrices sera particulièrement privilégiée. Les trajectoires « en socialisme » transcendant bien souvent les frontières idéologiques et partisanes, l’étude des thématiques proposées ci-dessous portera sur les socialismes pris dans leur diversité avec des incursions bienvenues dans des familles politiques proches (communisme, anarchisme, syndicalisme, etc.). 

Axe 1 – Couples et familles : conjuguer le socialisme au pluriel

Au sein du projet de transformation radicale de la société qu’il porte, le socialisme n’ignore pas la dimension intime de la vie des individus[7]. Les analyses produites sur le capitalisme intègrent l’idée que les structures et les dynamiques conjugales comme familiales sont le produit des rapports de production. Dès lors, le socialisme a aussi vocation à transformer les rapports entre celles et ceux qui composent les familles : époux, parents et enfants, adelphies, familles élargies, etc. 

Quels discours les formations et les grandes figures socialistes ont-elles produit sur la famille ? Comment ces discours s’articulent-ils précisément avec les idées politiques qu’ils défendent ? Et parce que les socialistes ne sont pas seuls à gauche, où leurs conceptions se situent-elles par rapport aux autres forces, quant à elles mieux étudiées par l’historiographie – anarchistes principalement au XIXe siècle, communistes surtout au siècle suivant ? 

Espaces sociaux, les partis socialistes ne font pas l’économie d’une prise en compte de la famille au sein de leur organisation. Si les Faucons rouges à destination des enfants de militants sont connus, les autres manières d’appréhender l’échelle familiale, surtout dans les moments de loisirs, restent encore à explorer. Les moments de la vie familiale des militants sont par ailleurs mis sous l’œil des partis. Pour les socialistes, mariages, naissances ou deuils n’appartiennent pas exclusivement à la sphère privée. On en trouve mention dans la presse socialiste, dans les comptes rendus de réunions, dans la correspondance politique aussi. Sont-ils appréhendés de manière particulière par la collectivité politique ? Qu’enseigne leur étude sur les liens entre le politique et l’intime dans le monde socialiste, notamment en comparaison avec les autres tendances du mouvement ouvrier ? 

Dans ce qu’elle a de plus concret, la famille est également une ressource dans la propagande militante. Les récits de vie des grandes figures socialistes accordent par exemple souvent une place importante aux années de formation dans lesquelles les ascendants ou les frères et sœurs – quelles que soient d’ailleurs leurs opinions – jouent un rôle déterminant. Dans une perspective large, comment la famille est-elle racontée et mise en scène dans le monde socialiste ? Au-delà de ses vertus édificatrices, qu’il s’agirait de cerner précisément, quelle fonction peut-elle également occuper ? 

À l’échelle des individus, le couple, la famille et le militantisme sont intimement liés. L’endogamie est une première réalité à interroger : si les couples et les familles de militants sont nombreux, sont-ils des couples et des familles militants ? Autrement dit, peut-on observer une économie spécifique du militantisme qui s’appuierait sur la conjugaison des ressources que représenteraient, les uns pour les autres, ceux que les liens familiaux relient ? Peut-on identifier des formes de répartition des rôles, de complémentarité, et si oui suivant quelles modalités (genre, âge, place dans la famille, expérience, etc.) ?

Dans un autre ordre d’idée, les moments qui rythment la vie des couples et des familles ne sont certainement pas sans conséquence sur le militantisme : investissement, temps dédié, etc. En prenant comme point d’entrée des événements particuliers, comme les mariages, les naissances ou les deuils, il s’agirait de comprendre la manière dont l’histoire proprement conjugale et familiale s’entremêle avec l’engagement politique et peut, ou non, le faire évoluer. Inversement, il s’agirait aussi d’interroger les questions du célibat et de l’amitié : ces thématiques sont particulièrement dynamiques dans l’historiographie, et elles gagneraient à être éclairées par une approche centrée sur l’engagement politique[8].

Enfin, il s’agirait d’entrer dans l’intimité des couples et des familles pour saisir la manière dont le politique s’y niche. Si Jules Guesde estime que « l’ordre nouveau que [les socialistes poursuivent] » a vocation à « en finir avec les servitudes de l’alcôve et du foyer, tout aussi dures et plus humiliantes que les servitudes de l’usine et de l’atelier[9] », reste à voir si le politique s’arrête à la porte du domicile, ou s’il peut être une ligne directrice des manières de vivre – et si oui, il s’agira d’appréhender la manière dont cela se manifeste. Cette approche invite à interroger l’interaction entre le politique et ce qui fonde l’intimité, comme les sentiments (amour, tendresse, complicité), mais aussi ce qui la conditionne, comme le temps disponible que l’engagement politique réduit parfois drastiquement. Le militantisme peut avoir d’importantes conséquences sur les relations à l’autre, qu’il s’agirait d’approcher précisément. Il faudrait aussi s’interroger sur les rapports de genre au sein des couples et des familles socialistes, afin d’en saisir les éventuelles spécificités[10]. Plus généralement, les couples et les familles ancrés dans l’engagement politique sont-ils marqués par une différence qui dépasserait les cas individuels et qui s’inscrirait dans leur fonctionnement interne, dans leur manière de se construire, de se dire, de se vivre ? Une économie politique du conjugal et du familial peut-elle être mise au jour ? 

Axe 2 – Le genre de l’engagement socialiste

Le deuxième axe de ces journées d’études visera à interroger le genre du militantisme et, en particulier, les modalités de l’engagement socialiste au féminin. Si les courants socialistes ne sont pas indifférents à la question des droits des femmes (avec toutefois des nuances importantes, de Proudhon à Bebel), les principales organisations socialistes furent et restèrent longtemps dominées par les hommes. Pour l’historien Charles Sowerwine, après une phase d’hybridation fertile entre socialisme et féminisme dans la France de la Belle Époque, la suite de cette histoire, sous la IIIe République, fut celle d’un « rendez-vous manqué[11] », la SFIO ne cessant de reléguer la thématique de l’émancipation des femmes aux lendemains de la révolution socialiste, renonçant même à un réel combat pour faire advenir la revendication historique en faveur du suffrage féminin au moment du Front populaire. Dans la lignée de cette étude pionnière, les travaux d’historiens et d’historiennes inscrits dans la seconde vague du féminisme se sont surtout penchés sur les textes et les idées, mais aussi sur quelques grandes figures avant-gardistes[12].

L’historiographie du socialisme mériterait donc d’être renouvelée grâce à des études plus systématiques de l’engagement au féminin, qui passerait par une analyse concrète des pratiques, au-delà des seuls débats théoriques sur les liens entre socialisme et féminisme. Au « retard historique » du socialisme (notamment français) vis-à-vis des revendications en faveur de l’émancipation des femmes, par rapport au courant communiste, s’est ajouté un relatif retard de l’historiographie dans ce domaine. Les travaux de plus en plus nombreux sur le genre de l’engagement communiste, en France métropolitaine et dans son empire colonial depuis les années 1920[13], et plus généralement en Europe de l’Est au temps de la Guerre Froide[14], invitent les chercheurs et chercheuses à porter leur regard sur les courants du socialisme non communiste, dans une démarche comparative qui offre des perspectives heuristiques stimulantes.

Il s’agira donc, dans ce deuxième axe, d’interroger les pratiques militantes, avec une attention particulière portée à la division genrée du travail militant ainsi qu’aux espaces du militantisme (le lieu de travail, les structures politiques, syndicales ou associatives, mais aussi le foyer). Il conviendra également de saisir les modalités de l’expression (ou de la difficile expression) d’une parole militante féminine, dans des cadres façonnés par des codes et des pratiques masculines. En retour, on pourra se demander comment ces militantes intègrent, contournent ou transgressent ces normes, faisant émerger des pratiques militantes originales. Il s’agira également de mettre en avant des trajectoires individuelles ou collectives afin de saisir des expériences situées d’engagement en socialisme, qui transcendent généralement les frontières partisanes.

Les communications pourront enfin porter sur les différentes échelles de l’engagement militant, entre local, national et transnational. Les nombreux renouvellements de l’historiographie portant sur l’internationalisme socialiste invitent à réfléchir à la manière dont des militantes ont investi les structures internationales[15] ou en ont créé de nouvelles afin de porter leurs revendications au-delà des frontières nationales. Si les personnalités telles que Rosa Luxembourg ou Clara Zetkin, grandes figures féminines des congrès internationaux, sont bien connues, il s’agirait également de saisir l’émergence de figures intermédiaires, qui s’organisent en groupe ou en section afin d’œuvrer à l’intégration des revendications spécifiques des femmes travailleuses au combat politique des internationales ou qui structurent des pratiques de solidarité transnationales féminines[16]. Une étude comparée de la manière dont le mot d’ordre d’organisation d’une « journée internationale des femmes », initialement lancé par Clara Zetkin, est intégré ou non dans les cultures politiques socialistes nationales et locales pourrait notamment donner lieu à des résultats stimulants.

Axe 3 – Normes et déviances en socialisme

Le troisième axe de ces journées d’études vise à étudier les rapports entre socialismes, normes et déviances. Il s’agit de s’interroger sur la manière dont les idéologies relevant du socialisme se positionnent face aux normes sociales dans une logique de combat contre les diverses formes de domination existant dans une société. Il conviendra également d’étudier le concret des trajectoires militantes dans leurs rapports à ces normes, parfois intégrées, légitimées et acceptées, parfois profondément contestées.

Dans le sillage de leur remise en question fondamentale de la légitimité des hiérarchies sociales, les socialismes ont-ils également mis en cause d’autres structures apparaissant comme des normes ? Qu’en est-il, par exemple, de leur rapport à des conventions sociales produit d’une société patriarcale, comme celles autour de la conjugalité ? Le modèle du mariage bourgeois semble avoir régulièrement été remis en question par diverses figures socialistes comme Charles Fourier[17], Georges Renard[18], Marcel Sembat, Eugène Fournière[19], Léon Blum[20] ou plusieurs penseurs anarchistes[21].

Comment les socialistes se positionnent-il face aux diverses formes de transgression du mariage hétérosexuel comme le divorce, l’union libre, la mésalliance, l’adultère ou l’homosexualité ? Est-ce une question qu’ils abordent ? Et au-delà de leur production théorique, comment s’approprient-ils ou rejettent-ils ces normes dans leur quotidien, à la fois politique et familial[22] ? Dans l’intimité familiale, se conforment-ils à une répartition des tâches « normée » ou adoptent-ils des modèles originaux[23] ? Dans le champ politique, dérogent-ils à « l’imaginaire genré du leadership[24] » qui fait de l’homme hétérosexuel marié, et de préférence père de famille, le modèle intangible de candidat à un poste politique ? Il faut ici attirer l’attention sur le silence complet de l’historiographie quant à la question de l’homosexualité masculine en politique pour la période qui nous intéresse.

Outre cette lacune, qui s’explique peut-être par le mutisme des sources, certains aspects de l’historiographie semblent appelés à évoluer dans une société dont le rapport à la norme est, par définition, mouvant. Ainsi, le travail de référence sur Sébastien Faure, datant de 1989, minimise les suspicions de pédocriminalité qui pesaient, de son vivant, sur le penseur anarchiste, tandis qu’un article récent, influencé sans doute par le contexte actuel, met au jour cette « déviance » jusqu’alors largement invisibilisée[25]. Il faut en effet rappeler que la déviance, qui dépend du regard social posé sur elle, est le fruit d’une définition variable selon les sociétés et les périodes étudiées.

Ainsi, à rebours d’une sensibilité désormais accrue aux crimes sexuels envers les enfants, le regard social sur les couples homosexuels a aujourd’hui évolué vers une meilleure acceptation de ce qui fut longtemps considéré comme une déviance, sans que l’historiographie ne se soit toujours transformée au même rythme. Ainsi, le Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier présente Henriette Izambard et Marguerite Othon comme des « amies » d’Hélène Brion, alors qu’elles furent ses compagnes successives, comme si le tabou associé à l’homosexualité avait influencé les rédacteurs de ces notices, à moins que cela ne soit plus simplement lié à la difficulté à cerner ces relations, largement tues dans les sources[26].

Mais si certains comportements considérés comme déviants à leur époque furent dissimulés par les militants et militantes, d’autres formes de transgression des normes se sont toujours affichées dans une logique de propagande par l’exemple. C’est notamment le cas de Madeleine Pelletier et d’Hélène Brion lorsqu’elles remettent en question les normes vestimentaires en adoptant le costume masculin, ce qui leur attire de nombreuses inimitiés, y compris dans les rangs socialistes. On connaît la déception de Madeleine Pelletier face au conservatisme de ses camarades de la SFIO sur la question des rapports de sexes. La militante persévère pourtant dans sa remise en question des normes, en revendiquant par exemple avec sa camarade Arria Ly un refus de la sexualité et un attachement à une virginité garante de leur intégrité. Ces combats rejoignent ceux des néomalthusiens, qui font du refus de la procréation un acte politique, en questionnant, là aussi, une norme très prégnante entre le milieu du XIXe et du XXe siècle. Nelly Roussel, malgré son combat néomalthusien, pose pourtant avec sa fille dans les bras pour mettre en scène sa maternité, dans une sculpture réalisée par son mari : le message de contrôle des naissances est si révolutionnaire à son époque qu’il faut présenter la propagandiste comme une mère modèle pour adoucir son propos[27].  La réalité de sa vie quotidienne – celle d’une femme horrifiée par des grossesses indésirées et qui confie l’éducation de ses enfants à d’autres – est tue pour sauvegarder son image publique.

S’interroger sur les déviances à la norme invite enfin à étudier les réactions que ces transgressions provoquent et les sanctions qui s’ensuivent, chez des adversaires politiques comme dans les rangs socialistes. Cet axe invite donc à questionner diverses normes – autour du couple monogame, endogame et non-mixte d’un point de vue ethnique, autour du modèle familial, de la répartition des tâches entre hommes et femmes, des choix de vie, de l’image donnée de soi-même dans l’espace public – en étudiant des militant(e)s et théoricien(e)s du socialisme à la fois dans leurs textes et dans leurs pratiques concrètes et en analysant le degré d’acceptation sociale de ces transgressions.

Organisation

Cette double journée d’études est organisée par le Centre d’histoire sociale des monde scontemporains (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), en partenariat avec la Fondation Jean-Jaurès et le réseau EUROSOC - GRHis (Université de Rouen Normandie).

Elle aura lieu à l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers) lesmercredi 4 et jeudi 5 juin 2025.

Modalités de contribution

Les propositions de communications (3000 signes) ainsiqu’une biographie succincte devront être envoyées

avant le vendredi 17 janvier 2025

à l’unedes adresses suivantes : Adeline.Blaszkiewicz-Maison@univ-paris1.fr, melanie.fabre@u-picardie.fr, quentingasteuil@gmail.com

En fonction des ressources et des nécessités, certains frais (notamment de transport etd’hébergement) pourront être pris en charge par l’organisation des journées d’études. Nous invitons néanmoins les participants à solliciter en priorité leurs institutions de rattachement.

Comité de sélection
  • Adeline Blaszkiewicz-Maison (CHS, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne)
  • Mélanie Fabre (CAREF, Université Picardie Jules Verne)
  • Quentin Gasteuil (ISP, ENS Paris-Saclay)
Notes

[1] Olivier Filieule et Patricia Roux (dir.), Le sexe du militantisme, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2009.

[2] Voir notamment Thomas Bouchet, Les fruits défendus. Socialisme et sensualité du XIXe siècle à nos jours, Paris, Stock, 2014. Les renouvellements sont passés par la mise au jour de trajectoires biographiques de militantes socialistes. Voir notamment Françoise Thébaud, Marguerite Thibert. Une traversée du siècle. Femme engagée et fonctionnaire internationale, Paris, Belin, 2017. 

[3] Françoise Thébaud, Socialisme, femmes et féminismes, Paris, Fondation Jean Jaurès, 2010.

[4] Charles Sowerwine, Les femmes et le socialisme, Paris, Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1978.

[5] Par exemple, Razmig Keucheyan, Jean-Numa Ducange et Stéphanie Roza (dir.), Histoire globale des socialismes, XIXe-XXIe siècle, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2021.

[6] Charles Sowerwine, Les femmes et le socialisme, op. cit.

[7] Thomas Bouchet, Les fruits défendus, op. cit.

[8] Claire-Lise Gaillard, Juliette Eyméoud (dir.), Histoires de célibat du Moyen-Âge au XXe siècle, Paris, PUF, 2023 ; Philippe Bourdin, Côme Simien (dir.), L’amitié en révolution, 1789-1799, Rennes, PUR, 2024.

[9] Cité in Adéodat Compère-Morel, Grand Dictionnaire Socialiste du Mouvement Politique et Économique National et International, Paris, Publications sociales, 1924, p. 284.

[10] Mélanie Fabre (coord.), dossier « Couples en socialisme, XIXe-XXe siècles », Cahiers Jaurès, n°247-248, 2023.

[11] Charles Sowerwine, Les femmes et le socialisme, op. cit.

[12] Christine Bard (dir.), Logiques et infortunes d’un combat pour l’égalité. Madeleine Pelletier (1874-1939), Paris, Indigo, 2014. Madeleine Pelletier, Mémoires d’une féministe intégrale, édition critique par Christine Bard, Paris, Gallimard coll. « Folio », 2024.

[13] Elise Abassade, « Des militantes du désordre. Femmes et communistes à Tunis, 1921-1922 », Le Mouvement social, 2020/3, n° 272, p. 145-158 ; Anne Jollet, Fanny Le Bonhomme et Laurence Montel (coord.), dossier « L’Engagement communiste au féminin (de la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale aux années 1970) », Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 2024/1, n° 71.  

[14] Sandrine Kott et Françoise Thébaud (coord.), dossier « Le socialisme réel à l’épreuve du genre », Clio, Femmes, genre, histoire, 2015, n° 41. 

[15] Lola Romieux, « S’organiser entre femmes dans l’Association internationale des travailleurs : l’expérience pionnière de la section féminine de Genève (1864-1876) », Genre & Histoire, n° 23, Automne 2023 [En ligne], https://journals.openedition.org/genrehistoire/8381.

[16]  Nicolas Delalande, La lutte et l’entraide. L’âge des solidarités ouvrières, Paris, Seuil, 2019. 

[17] Charles Fourier, Le Nouveau monde amoureux, 1816.

[18] Georges Renard, « Lettre aux femmes », Revue socialiste, n° 119, novembre 1894, p. 513-524.

[19] Sur Sembat et Fournière, voir Thomas Bouchet, Les fruits défendus, op. cit., p. 137 et 123.

[20] Voir Antoine Tarrago, Léon Blum et l’émancipation des femmes, Paris, Tallandier, 2019.

[21] Voir Anne Steiner, Les En-dehors : anarchistes individualistes et illégalistes à la ‘‘Belle Époque’’, Paris, L’Échappée, 2008.

[22] À ce sujet, mais sur une période postérieure, voir Noëlline Castagnez et Anne-Laure Ollivier, « Tourmente politique, tourment amoureux. Lettres de François Mitterrand à Anne Pingeot, 21 mai 1964 », Parlement[s], Revue d’histoire politique, n° 14, 2019/2, p. 161-175.

[23]  On peut penser à l’originale répartition des tâches dans le couple formé par Madeleine Vernet et Louis Tribier (Mélanie Fabre, « ''Son œuvre autant que la mienne'' :  Madeleine Vernet et Louis Tribier, compagnons de lutte et de vie », Cahiers Jaurès, 2023/1-2, p. 113-146.)

[24] Jamil Dakhlia, « Emmanuel, Brigitte et les ors de la République », Parlement[s], Revue d’histoire politique, n°14, 2019/2, p. 187-194.

[25] Roland Lewin, Sébastien Faure et « La Ruche » ou l’Éducation libertaire, la Bottellerie, Ivan Davy, 1989 et Guillaume Davranche, « 1917-1921 : Et la pédocriminalité fit chuter Sébastien Faure », site : Union communiste libertaire, 2023 : https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/1917-1921-Et-la-pedocriminalite-fit-chuter-Sebastien-Faure

[26] Voir Marie-Geneviève Dezès, « L’intime dans l’archive à l’Institut français d’histoire sociale », in Françoise Blum (dir.), Le genre de l’archive, constitution et transmission des mémoires militantes, Paris, Codhos, 2017, p. 111-124.

[27] « Nelly Roussel et sa fille Mireille », sculpture de Henri Godet, 1904 (une reproduction est visible à la Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand). Voir Elinor A. Accampo, Blessed Motherhood, Bitter Fruit. Nelly Roussel and the Politics of Female Pain in Third Republic France, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

L'adieu au plomb. La Fédération suisse des typographes et le changement technique (1945-1980) (French)

1 month ago

by Frédéric Deshusses

Intitulé L'adieu au plomb: la Fédération suisse des typographes et le changement technique (1945-1980), cet ouvrage est issu d'une recherche dans les archives centrales de la Fédération suisse des typographes, mais aussi sur des fonds individuels de typographes syndiqués.

Dans la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle, l’industrie des arts graphiques traverse une période d’intenses mutations. Ce livre revient sur les trente-cinq dernières années (1945-1980) d’existence de la Fédération suisse des typographes, plus ancien syndicat de Suisse, qui défendait les intérêts des ouvriers spécialistes de l’impression au plomb.

Fortement structuré autour de cette expertise technique devenue caduque, le syndicat est traversé par de violents conflits internes qui mettent aux prises une tendance corporatiste et une tendance oppositionnelle constituée dans le sillage des mouvements de Mai 1968. La première défend la paix du travail et un rapport apaisé au changement technique. La seconde dénonce dans les nouvelles machines la marque d’une emprise accrue du capital sur l’organisation du travail. Avec l’étude de cette controverse historique, ce livre voudrait mettre en perspective des questions contemporaines : Que peut le syndicalisme face aux mutations permanentes des processus de travail? Quel héritage politique et syndical pouvons-nous construire autour de l'idée de contrôle collectif de la production et de l'investissement qui hante les luttes sociales des années 68?

Genre et représentations du « métier politique » en France (fin XIXe–XXIe siècle) (French)

1 month ago

Définie comme la tendance à la monopolisation des activités politiques principales par des individus vivants pour et de la politique, se consacrant à temps complet à des activités dont ils tirent leurs moyens matériels d’existence, la professionnalisation du politique témoigne, dès la fin du XIXe siècle, de l’émergence d’un « nouvel entrepreneur politique ». Ainsi, au moment même où s’invente la politique moderne et se construisent les principes mêmes de la légitimité politique démocratique, les femmes restent pour de longues années exclues du jeu politique et demeurent aujourd’hui encore des outsiders dans cet espace. Il s’agira, dans le cadre de ce colloque international, d’étudier d'une part les mécanismes historiques et sociologiques qui contribuent à construire un ordre politique genré, et d’autre part la manière dont les femmes ont, malgré leur exclusion du champ politique légitime, acquis les savoir-faire et les savoir-être utile à la subversion des règles du jeu politique.

22/23 octobre 2025 

Sciences Po Lille/IRHIS (ULille, Campus Pont de Bois) 

Argumentaire

Définie comme la tendance à la monopolisation des activités politiques principales par des individus vivants pour et de la politique, se consacrant à temps complet à des activités dont ils tirent leurs moyens matériels d’existence[1], la professionnalisation du politique témoigne, dès la fin du XIXe siècle, de l’émergence d’un « nouvel entrepreneur politique »[2]. Ainsi, au moment même où s’invente la politique moderne et se construisent les principes mêmes de la légitimité politique démocratique, les femmes restent pour de longues années exclues du jeu politique et demeurent aujourd’hui encore des outsiders dans cet espace[3]. Le processus de professionnalisation se fait donc sans les femmes et consacre une vision masculine des rôles politiques et des qualités y afférant[4]. Le métier politique a été construit par et pour les hommes et valorise des compétences, des savoir-faire et des savoir-être produits d’une socialisation masculine. Au-delà de leur exclusion de l’espace politique représentatif, les femmes se sont vues de fait interdire l’apprentissage des règles de la politique « légitime », tout en se voyant opposer une figure genrée du représentant politique conforme au modèle d’une masculinité hégémonique, bourgeoise, blanche et hétérosexuelle[5]. Cette exclusion historique pèse aujourd’hui encore sur les difficultés que rencontrent les femmes à atteindre les postes les plus convoités comme celui de président de la République par exemple ou encore de Première ministre [6]

Les travaux sur la féminisation du métier politique ont été nombreux ces dernières années[7]. Ils ont cherché à comprendre les logiques qui conduisent – en dépit des dispositifs paritaires - à la difficile inclusion des femmes dans l’espace politique. Ils ont aussi mis au jour l’existence d’un ordre genré en politique qu’il convient désormais de mieux définir. La question de la fabrique du métier politique (et des représentations qui le dominent) demeure finalement peu étudiée. L’objectif du colloque est donc d’engager des analyses sur les difficultés du métier politique à devenir un « métier de femme », et par ce biais de revenir sur les processus historiques de construction d’excellence à l’œuvre dans l’espace politique et ses transformations. Qu’est-ce qui aujourd’hui définit un « bon » professionnel de la politique ?

Qu’est-ce que cette définition doit à l’histoire de la construction du rôle de « représentants » ? Et en quoi ces normes d’excellence professionnelles « genrées » participent-elles de l’inclusion ou de l’exclusion des femmes politiques et ce, à différents moments donnés de l’histoire ?  Comment les femmes, en dépit de leur exclusion de fait, ont-elles finalement trouvé des espaces d’acquisition des savoir-faire politiques et des manières de peser sur l’espace de la représentation politique ? 

La réflexion s’inscrit d’abord dans le renouveau des études sur la féminisation du champ politique, depuis deux décennies. Elle se penche plus particulièrement sur le métier d’élue et n’est pas sans faire écho au profond renouvellement de l’histoire des femmes, entendue sur un plan historiographique, depuis les années 1970.  La seconde « vague » féministe, et à travers elle la dénonciation des pesanteurs d’une société encore marquée par le patriarcat et la domination masculine, nous rappelle tant la place réservée aux absentes d’une histoire au masculin façonnée depuis le XIXe siècle, que l’influence des women studies qui, visant à remplir les silences de l’histoire, entendent remédier « aux silences patriarcaux du passé »[8]. Il convient également de ne pas négliger l’influence des gender studies dès les années 1980, particulièrement dans l’histoire des rapports de pouvoir. 

 Il s’agit ensuite de rappeler que la vision du « métier politique » par le prisme du genre ne peut s’extraire d’un cadre chronologique qui, au-delà de sa nature éminemment politique et de la place prépondérante accordée aux Grands Hommes du roman national français, se superpose en partie à une périodisation des féminismes, et notamment par le biais des termes – de « vagues » ou de « générations » – communément employés pour désigner un cycle de mobilisation féministe correspondant à un contexte particulier[9]. La temporalité retenue, du mouvement suffragiste de la fin du XIXe siècle à l’actuel mouvement MeToo, propose à ce titre une approche non pas pluridisciplinaire, à laquelle on pourrait reprocher de contribuer à un morcellement du propos, mais véritablement interdisciplinaire dans son épistémologie et dans sa méthodologie, favorisant une démarche comparatiste permettant de prendre en compte les dynamiques, les ruptures et les échanges au sein d’un cadre hexagonal qui renvoie à une cristallisation d’une multitude de représentations, de significations, d’images correspondantes aux enjeux politiques et aux conflits idéologiques qui marquent la période[10].

Il s’agira enfin de montrer que l’absence des femmes des institutions politiques ne signifie pas pour autant leur totale invisibilité dans le champ politique, et plus encore leur renoncement ou leur incapacité à s’approprier les savoir-faire du professionnel de la politique, et ce en dehors même de l’espace politique stricto sensu ?  Bien que cantonnées à l’espace privé dans un XIXe siècle décrit comme « le siècle du triomphe de la virilité »[11], les femmes contribuent à leur manière à une professionnalisation du politique en marche. Le regard qu’elles portent sur une activité politique exclusivement masculine, et plus encore leur politisation croissante, participe ainsi à la construction sociohistorique d’une masculinité d’une part, et d’une féminité d’autre part, toutes deux encastrées dans l’ère de la modernité. L’ambition vise alors à décrypter, pour mieux les reproduire (et les contourner par la suite), les mécanismes masculins de compétition conférant aux hommes les ressources et les aptitudes nécessaires à asseoir leur domination politique ; en somme, et en des termes plus actuels, leur assurer une intégration dans le « royaume des hommes »[12] qui suppose abnégation et parfois de douloureux sacrifices. Cette entrée en politique « par la marge » voire par effraction suppose alors de saisir y compris au travers de cas singulier comment des femmes s’imposent en politique et comment, elles mettent en œuvre des stratégies de contournement des normes de genre qui s’imposent à elles, et ce quelles que soient les conditions d’ouverture du champ politique.  

 

Les communications pourront s’inscrire dans deux axes principaux, le premier étudiera les mécanismes historiques et sociologiques qui, d’hier à aujourd’hui, contribuent à construire un ordre politique genré. Le second s’intéressera davantage à la manière dont les femmes ont, malgré leur exclusion du champ politique légitime, acquis les savoir-faire et les savoir-être utiles à la subversion des règles du jeu politique.

1)    La construction historique d’un ordre politique genré  

 Le premier axe pourra accueillir les travaux qui, à la fois du point de vue des institutions, mais aussi des acteurs et actrices politiques, contribuent à une analyse de la fabrique d’un ordre politique genré.  Comme le fait Juliette Rennes13 lorsqu’elle étudie comment la Troisième République joue la nature contre le mérite pour interdire l’accès des femmes aux professions à diplômes, il s’agit ici d’étudier les dispositifs qui historiquement ont conduit à exclure les femmes du jeu politique et à justifier cette exclusion. Si les débats sur le difficile accès des femmes au droit de vote sont emblématiques des mécanismes de naturalisation des qualités féminines comme fondement de leur exclusion de la citoyenneté, d’autres cas pourront être mobilisés et étudiés. Comment dans les discours publics, mais aussi dans les prises de parole privées sont définies la légitimité et illégitimité d’un personnel politique[13] féminin ? Comment au cours du temps se dessinent comme dans d’autres métiers des normes d’excellence professionnelle qui conduisent à exclure les femmes du « bon » gouvernement ? Si les sources politiques (débats parlementaires), ou les sources de presse nous renseignent sur ce processus d’inclusion et d’exclusion de la féminité en politique, d’autres matériaux (fictions, récits biographiques) pourront être mobilisés pour saisir ce qui hier comme aujourd’hui dessine les fondements de la légitimité politique. 

2)    Les apprentissages « genrés » des savoir-faire et savoir-être en politique

Le second axe de notre colloque privilégiera les travaux qui permettent de saisir comment les femmes, malgré leur exclusion de l’ordre politique légitime, peuvent à leur manière en subvertir les règles. Si la participation des femmes aux mobilisations féministes ou non constitue le creuset de leur apprentissage politique, d’autres espaces moins conventionnels pourront aussi été étudiés.  Comment se produit l’apprentissage politique du métier dans les marges et comment peut-on les saisir ? À titre d’exemple, les près de neuf mille feuillets qui composent la correspondance de la marquise Arconati-Visconti – misogyne, fière de l’être, aux antipodes de toute pensée féministe –, émanant de correspondants tous masculins, simples relations ou amis intimes, signés de grands noms de la politique ou de la vie intellectuelle[14], nous invitent à élargir notre champ d’études. Les travaux qui proposent d’explorer les chemins de traverse de l’accès au champ politique en particulier ceux qui proposent de nouvelles sources pour analyser le métier politique pourront être soumis. La presse féminine, les archives privées de celles qui ont soutenu une « maisonnée politique »[15], les journaux intimes17 de celles qui aspirent à une carrière politique sont autant de matériaux qui pourront renouveler l’analyse des stratégies mise en œuvre par de nouvelles entrantes (ou du moins celles qui aspirent à rentrer) pour changer les règles d’un jeu auquel on refuse qu’elles participent. 

Modalités de contribution

Les projets de communication sont à envoyer à l’adresse suivante colloquemetierpolitique@gmail.com

avant le 31 janvier 2025.

Les réponses seront données durant la 2e quinzaine du mois d’avril 2025.

Afin de faciliter le travail des discutantes et des discutants, les communications sont attendues pour le 15 septembre 2025.  

Comité d’organisation 
  • Sandrine Lévêque (Sciences Po Lille, Université de Lille, CERAPS)
  • Julien Rycx (Sciences Po Lille, Université de Lille, IRHIS)
  • Thierry Truel (Université de Bordeaux, CEMMC et Lab-E3D)

 

Comité scientifique   
  • Catherine Achin, PU science politique (Université Paris Dauphine, IRISSO)
  • Aurélie Audeval, PU junior histoire contemporaine (Université de Lille, IRHIS)
  • Fanny Bugnon, MCF histoire contemporaine (Université de Rennes, TEMPORA)
  • Fanny Gallot, MCF histoire contemporaine (Université Paris-Est Créteil, CRHEC)
  • Alban Jacquemart, MCF science politique (Université Paris Dauphine, IRISSO)
  • Eric Phélippeau, PU science politique (Université Paris Nanterre, ISP)
  • Florence Tamagne, MCF histoire contemporaine (Université de Lille, IRHIS)
  • Sidonie Verhaeghe, MCF science politique (Université de Lille, CERAPS)
Notes

[1] Gaxie (Daniel), Les professionnels de la politique, Paris, PUF, 1973.

[2] Offerlé (Michel) [dir.], La profession politique, XIXe-XXe siècles, Paris, Belin, 1999.

[3] Bard (Christine), Pavard (Bibia), « Femmes outsiders en politique. Introduction », Parlement[s], Revue d'histoire politique, 2013/1 (n° 19), p. 7-15. Riot-Sarcey (Michèle), Histoire du féminisme, Paris, La Découverte, 2006 [2002] ; Scott (Joan W.), La citoyenne paradoxale. Les féministes françaises et les droits de l’homme, Paris, Albin Michel, 1998

[4] Tellier (Philippe), « Professionnalisation politique », in Catherine Achin, Laure Bereni, Dictionnaire. Genre et science politique, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2013.

[5] Arambourou (Clément), Paoletti (Marion), « La virilité mise à mâle », Travail, genre et sociétés, 2013/1 (n° 29), p. 149-152 ; Connell (Raewyn), Masculinities, Cambridge, Polity Press, Sydney, Allen & Unwin; Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995 (ouvrage traduit et publié en 2014 sous le titre Masculinités. Enjeux sociaux de l'hégémonie, Paris, Éditions Amsterdam).

[6] Matonti (Frédérique), Le genre présidentiel. Enquête sur l’ordre des sexes en politique, Paris, Éditions La Découverte, 2017 ; voir le récent témoignage d’Elisabeth Borne (Vingt mois à Matignon, Paris, Flammarion, 2024).

[7] Achin (Catherine) et alii, Sexes, genre et politique, Paris Economica, 2007. Navarre (Maud), Devenir élue. Genre et carrière politique, Rennes, PUR, 2015.

[8] Zemon Davis (Nathalie), «Women and the world of the “Annales”», History Workshop Journal, 33, 1992, p. 121.

[9] Bergès (Karine), « Remous autour des vagues féministes », in Féminismes du XXIe siècle : une troisième vague ?, Rennes, PUR, « Archives du féminisme », 2017, p. 11-27.

[10] Verhaeghe (Sidonie), Vive Louise Michel ! Célébrité et postérité d’une figure anarchiste, Vulaines-sur-Seine, Éditions du Croquant, 2021.

[11] Corbin (Alain), Courtine (Jean-Jacques) et Vigarello (Georges) [dir.], Histoire de la virilité. Volume II, Le triomphe de la virilité. Le XIXe siècle, Paris, Le Seuil, 2011.

[12] Bachelot (Roselyne), Fraisse (Geneviève), Deux femmes au royaume des hommes, Paris, Hachette, 1999. 13 Rennes (Juliette), Le mérite et la nature. Une controverse républicaine : l'accès des femmes aux professions de prestige 1880-1940, Paris, Fayard, 2007

[13] Offerlé (Michel). Illégitimité et légitimation du personnel politique ouvrier en France avant 1914, in Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 39ᵉ année, N. 4, 1984. pp. 681-716.

[14] Poulain (Martine), Marie Arconati-Visconti. La passion de la République, Paris, PUF, 2023.

[15] Gris (Christelle), Femmes d’élus. Sociologie d’un second rôle, Le Bord de l’eau éditions, 2021, p. 10. 17 Pensons aux Mémoires de Louise Michel, au Journal longtemps disparu d’Hubertine Auclert, aux Mémoires d’une européenne de Louise Weiss ou encore aux Combats de Simone Veil).

Gender and Money: Historical Approaches. A Research Workshop

1 month ago

Paris, 19-20 June 2025

Introduction
The control and use of money are clearly perceived as a gender issue in the present day. In France, the possibility for a married woman to open a savings account in her own name dates to 1881, to control her own salary to 1907, and the right open a current account to 1965: so many milestones on the road to emancipation. As a pessimistic counterpoint, in The Handmaid's Tale, published in 1985, Margaret Atwood imagined a dystopian future in which the brutal suppression of access to money was the first marker of the enslavement of women. Historians, however, have not yet fully taken up this theme, which makes it difficult to understand developments over the long term and from a comparative perspective. Specialists in the literature have been more active, tracing, for example, the conceptual link between the corruption brought about by money and the corruption brought about by women. Women’s work, too, has been and still is a well-established theme in historical research. Yet money itself - its management and control, the way it can be used as a tool of domination or as a lever for action, the question of who owns it and who controls it - has rarely been posed as an independent long-term historical question. Although the question of gender and money has emerged peripherally in many fields of study, it has never been taken on as an issue in its own right.

One of the main reasons for this relative neglect is the difficulty of defining what money is over a very long period and in a wide variety of historical societies. This polysemous term refers both to wealth (income and assets, in stock or in flow, which can be accounted for abstractly through accounts, tables or balance sheets) and to the materiality of money in circulation (cash, coins and banknotes, as well as the alternative currencies studied, for example, by the sociologist Viviana Zelizer). Sociologists and anthropologists have helped to distinguish money - which is a social, political and moral fact - from currency, a more limited concept used in economics to designate the instrument of exchange. Money encompasses, but is not limited to, cash, because it takes on its meaning through the prism of the social context, but also of affects, values, mores, beliefs, the collective imagination and, more generally, the symbolic order that underpins them (Baumann et alii, 2008). This definition invites us to look at the gendered aspects of relationships with money: money is a concrete means of ensuring masculine domination, but it can also be a tool used by women to create room for manoeuvre. This broad understanding of money is also a welcome invitation to historians: highly variable from one era to the next, money becomes a powerful indicator of gender norms and social relations between men and women.

To open up this field of study, still largely unexplored in history, we are propose this call for papers for a two-day research workshop to analyse the many interactions between money and gender from the early Middle Ages to the present day. The approach is open chronologically and geographically, based on historical case studies, where gender is not reduced to the history of women, but also takes into account masculinities and the structuring role of money in relations between men and women. Thus the issues of possession, management and control of money will be central to the contributions to this workshop, as will the question of money as a useful lever of domination or of agency.

I. Norms and Language
The first area to be explored in this workshop will be gendered conceptions of money over the long term. The relationship between gender norms and money, from the perspective of cultural history or of representations, could be explored in dialogue with literary studies and art history in particular. How does the gender order of a given period and society determine our relationship with money? Jeanne Lazarus (2021) notes that women's relationship to money is seen as less legitimate than that of men, and is marked by a triple suspicion. Firstly, there is the suspicion of impurity, inherited from Christian exegesis: women are considered impure if they possess money, which is always implicitly linked to a suspicion of prostitution. Secondly, there is the suspicion of incompetence, as women are considered frivolous and wasteful, and always less rational than men. Finally, there is the suspicion of dependence, which leads women to be seen only as financially protected by their husbands, families, communities or the state. These general observations can be illustrated or qualified by case studies. Men, on the other hand, are thought to be on the side of rationality, forecasting and money management. But can we distinguish between economic masculinities that vary in time and space? Are there hegemonic and subordinate masculinities in the financial sphere, depending on the era? The distinction between the capitalist (a powerful decision-maker) and his accountant (a figure of submission and execution), for example, provides some clues as to how to nuance masculine representations of money. Since the work of R.W. Connell, it has been clear that ‘middle-class masculinity’ can be hegemonic or subordinate in the contemporary world (Connell 2005 [1995]). How can this tension be historicised?

Secondly, how have the languages of law and religion constructed imaginative systems concerning money and created representations of the possible relationships between men and women and wealth since the Middle Ages? For while ecclesiastical language casts suspicion on women’s management of and their relationship to material goods since Eve and her original sin, it also opens up areas of legitimacy, particularly for consecrated women who belong to the nobility and head powerful monasteries whose property they administer. Similarly, not all men were recognised as being capable of legitimately administering common funds (of the State, the Church, etc.), but it was men consecrated to God (clerics and monks) who were designated from the early Middle Ages onwards as good administrators, those who knew how to make money work and to ensure collective salvation. At the end of the Middle Ages, this virtuous model was applied to secular society, as the Church pointed to the great merchant as the one who worked for the salvation of society.

Finally, the imaginary world of money has been materialised in legal norms that restrict men’s and women’s relationship to money, depending on their status (minor or adult) and their place in the family, particularly in the case of women (daughter, wife or widow did not have the same rights). But legal systems are varied (customary law and Roman law do not have the same relationship to the inheritance of daughters and sons or to the dowry, for example) and there are many specific national features (for example, the principle of ‘couverture’ in English Common Law from the end of the Middle Ages to the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882). Papers, potentially in dialogue with legal history, on the legal framing of succession, property or the matrimonial alliance from a gender perspective will be welcome. This normative framework must not be confused with the social practices that may conform to it or, on the contrary, circumvent it, however: concrete case studies on the ways in which men and women deal with money, with or against the law, are encouraged.

II. Accounting and Control
Counting, consuming, saving, investing: how does the circulation of money within the family, and between the family and institutions, reveal gender relations, between domination and autonomy? Who counts, what is counted and what is not counted? In what way? And in whose interests? This workshop will delve into the question of control over a couple’s resources, with studies of ordinary family accounting (in the vein of ethnographic studies of accounting practices, for example). It will also consider the power relationships involved in receiving and rendering accounts, and even in keeping accounts for oneself.

Pioneering historical studies encourage us to look beyond stereotypes and what the law says - admittedly restrictive for wives in France from the time of the Napoleonic Code onwards - to highlight women, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in daily struggle for control of the earnings of the couple and very aware of the property issues at stake within the family (Sohn 1996). At the same time, the revival of interest in accounting and accountability from the central Middle Ages to early modernity has opened the possibility of a hitherto unexplored gender analysis. The women of the elite, as landlords, were accountable, while lower down the social ladder, the women in charge of the laundry, the farmyard or the dairy were accountable. Between the two, however, bookkeeping was mainly a male affair. On the other hand, it is possible that the management of estates or businesses gave some women autonomy over expenditure and investment, and that bookkeeping was, at least in early modern England, a particularly feminine skill. But if bookkeeping was seen as a woman’s job, the degree of empowerment can be questioned: was it a thankless and time-consuming task that was delegated to women precisely because it bound them to the domestic sphere? Can the management of money be equated with control of it? The question of education is also key. Gender inequalities can be illuminated by what happens earlier in life, in terms of education in income and asset management. From savings education in the schools of the Third Republic, through domestic economics taught in girls’ schools from the inter-war years onwards, to budget education in the technical schools of the 1980s-2000s, has money education been a tool for promoting and maintaining patriarchy, or for providing autonomy and possibilities for individual action to women within the family?

III. Credit, Remuneration and Care
Women’s participation in credit markets has been considered in different ways. Is it easier for women to borrow than to lend? Lending can encourage autonomy, but much depends on the legal context and on marital status. However, the focus has been on women’s borrowing and, in particular, microcredit, first perceived by development economists as a means of empowering poor women. But this has not always been the case. Who were the women who lent and borrowed? Who did they lend to and who did they borrow from? More broadly, it’s a question of questioning the gender of debt. Laurence Fontaine describes the moral economy, structured by the bonds of debt, in terms of vertical links between rich and poor, but a large part of credit, like other forms of solidarity, may well have consisted of horizontal links between relatives and neighbours.

Recognising that money and cash are not the same allows us to take a broader view of what constitutes an economic transaction or a form of income. Olwen Hufton’s innovative concept of the ‘makeshift economy’ has long recognised the importance to poor households of a range of activities and forms of income other than paid work, including small-scale credit, the use of common rights such as gleaning and access to communal land, embezzlement, smuggling, theft, prostitution, begging, poor relief and mutual aid. Often regarded as criminal activities, they have recently been examined for their economic value by historians. Gleaning could account for up to 10% of household income. Proposals are awaited on the nature of these ‘bricolage’ activities as forms of income-generating work. How much did sex workers earn in the past? How much income can begging or ragging bring into the household economy?

A recent development in economic history, in the wake of feminist economics and development economics, calls for a monetary value to be placed on care activities. The interpersonal and emotional dimensions of care cannot be neglected. However, they have often led to the idea that care work used to be carried out within the family, by women, particularly married women, and without remuneration. However, new studies show that, historically, a large proportion of care work was not carried out within the family and that this work was in fact paid for. Who was paid to provide this care, in what contexts and why? Under what circumstances did households choose to pay for care work, rather than seeing it as a ‘natural’ part of women's unpaid work? To date, studies of care work from this perspective have attempted to assign monetary values on the basis of cases where it was paid for. However, does assigning a monetary value to care work reproduce masculine categories and values of productivity and efficiency? Is care work priceless? Can we put a price on work that has an emotional dimension? Or is it all the more important to insist on value, in order to avoid the trap of seeing care work as a ‘calling’ or a ‘labour of love’?

IV. Conflicts, Violence and Collective Mobilisation
This workshop will also address conflicts over money and its management. We particularly encourage proposals which consider economic violence: how does this manifest itself in the relationship to money within families and couples? But also how is the control of money one of the means of exerting violence on women and dependents, particularly on minors?

Economic violence is one form of violence within the family. This recent concept refers to all acts designed to deprive the victim of her financial autonomy, increasing her isolation and making it more difficult for her to leave the family unit (deprivation of resources, exclusive management of family income, endangerment of family assets, refusal to pay maintenance). Over the longue durée, economic violence has long been considered legal, like other forms of physical violence (paternal or marital correction) or sexual violence (the conjugal debt), because marriage placed wives in a position of legal minority and the management of the family patrimony fell exclusively to the husband. However, more work is needed to refine the spatial, temporal and social patterns of economic violence. Which social groups are most affected by economic violence? Which regions most firmly assert patriarchal domination over resources and which can be seen as more egalitarian?

Furthermore, in practice, there are many conflicts and negotiations over the management of economic resources, which are documented in archives (divorce proceedings, wills, autobiographies, correspondence, etc.). How do women negotiate access to money in patriarchal systems, particularly when resources are limited? Finally, men’s domination of money was also challenged collectively. The demand for economic emancipation for married women has been at the heart of European feminist struggles since the nineteenth century, and has been achieved at different rates in different countries. The dismantling by civil law of the economic guardianship of wives is in fact the fruit of a long process, begun in the nineteenth century and completed in the second half of the twentieth century. Who were the key players in this struggle? Beyond political texts and legislative battles, are these demands for financial autonomy perceptible in women’s struggles that focus on other aspects of women's lives (work, control of fertility, etc.)?

Proposals for contributions (abstract of less than 500 words in English or French + brief CV) may cover any historical period, any country or cultural area, with or without a comparative approach. They should specify the sources used and the main bibliographical references.

They should be sent jointly to the organisers of the event: Anais Albert (anais.albert@u-paris.fr); Christopher Fletcher (christopher.fletcher@univ-lille.fr); Julie Marfany (julie.marfany@durham.ac.uk); Marianne Thivend (marianne.thivend@u-paris.fr); and Valentina Toneatto (valentina.toneatto@univ-lyon2.fr) by 6 January 2024.

A Very Brief Bibliography
Baumann, Eveline, Bazin, Laurent, Ould-Ahmed, Pepita, Phélinas, Pascale, Sélim, Monique and Sobel, Richard (eds.), L’argent des anthropologues, la monnaie des économistes, L’Harmattan, 2008.
Bellavitis, Anna, Famille, genre, transmission à Venise au XVIe siècle, École française de Rome, 2008.
Briggs, Chris, ‘Empowered or marginalized? Rural women and credit in late thirteenth-century and early fourteenth-century England’, Continuity and Change, no. 19, 2004.
Cady, Diane, The Gender of Money in Middle English Literature: Value and Economy in Late Medieval England, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Connell, R.W., Masculinities, 2nd edn., Polity/University of California Press, 2005.
Cottereau, Alain et Marzok, Moktar Mohatar, Une famille andalouse. Ethnocomptabilité d’une économie invisible, Bouchene, coll. « Méditerranée », 2012.
Courtemanche, Andrée, La richesse des femmes: patrimoines et gestion à Manosque au XIVe siècle, Vrin, 1993.
Davidoff, Leonor and Hall, Catherine, Family Fortunes : Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850, Chicago University Press, 1987.
Fontaine Laurence, L’économie morale: pauvreté, crédit et confiance dans l’Europe préindustrielle, Gallimard, 2008.
Groppi, Angela et Houbre, Gabrielle, dir, Femmes, dots et patrimoines, special edn. of the journal Clio: Femmes, genre, histoire, no. 7 (1998).
Haemers, Jelle, Bardyn, Andrea and Delameillieure, Chanelle, La femme dans la cité au Moyen Âge, Racine, 2022.
Howell, Martha, Commerce before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Hufton, Olwen, The Poor of eighteenth-century France, c.1750-1789, Oxford University Press, 1974.
Lazarus, Jeanne, ‘L’argent des femmes. Quelques pistes de recherche’, Sensibilités, no. 9/1, 2021, 60-71.
Plumauzille Clyde et Rossigneux-Méheust Mathilde, ‘Le care, une “voix différente” pour l’histoire du genre’, Clio: Femmes, Genre, Histoire, no. 49, 2019, p. 7-22.
Seabourne, Gwen, Women in the Medieval Common Law, c. 1200-1500, Routledge, 2021.
Shepard, Alexandra, ‘Care’ in Catriona Macleod, Alexandra Shepard and Maria Agren (eds.), The Whole Economy. Work and Gender in early modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 53-83.
Sohn, Anne-Marie, Chrysalides. Femmes dans la vie privée (XIXe-XXe siècles), Publications de la Sorbonne,1996
Whittle, Jane and Griffiths, Elizabeth, Consumption and Gender in the Early-Seventeenth Century Household. The World of Alice Le Strange, Oxford University Press, 2012.
Yates, Alexia, ‘The Invisible Rentière: The Problem of Women and Investment in Nineteenth-century France’, Entreprises et histoire, 2022/2, no. 107, 76-89.
Zelizer, Viviana, La Signification sociale de l’argent, Le Seuil, 2005 [1994].

Contact (announcement)

Anais Albert (anais.albert@u-paris.fr); Christopher Fletcher (christopher.fletcher@univ-lille.fr); Julie Marfany (julie.marfany@durham.ac.uk); Marianne Thivend (marianne.thivend@u-paris.fr); Valentina Toneatto (valentina.toneatto@univ-lyon2.fr)

Moving Workers: Historical Perspectives on Labour, Coercion and Im/Mobilities

1 month 1 week ago

by Claudia Bernardi, Viola F. Müller, Biljana Stojić, Vilhelm Vilhelmsson

This book explores how workers moved and were moved, why they moved, and how they were kept from moving. Combining global labour history with mobility studies, it investigates moving workers through the lens of coercion.

The contributions in this book are based on extensive archival research and span Europe and North America over the past 500 years. They provide fresh historical perspectives on the various regimes of coercion, mobility, and immobility as constituent parts of the political economy of labour.

Moving Workers shows that all struggles relating to the mobility of workers or its restriction have the potential to reveal complex configurations of hierarchies, dependencies, and diverging conceptions of work and labour relations that continuously make and remake our world. 

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111137155/html

Beyond Camps and Forced Labour. Current International Research on Survivors of Nazi Persecution

1 month 1 week ago

London, 7-9 January 2026

This conference is planned as a follow-up to the seven successful conferences, which took place at Imperial War Museum London in 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015 and at Birkbeck, University of London, and The Wiener Holocaust Library in 2018 and 2023. It will continue to build on areas previously investigated and open up new fields of academic enquiry.

Beyond Camps and Forced Labour: Current International Research on Survivors of Nazi Persecution

Eighth international multidisciplinary conference, to be held at Birkbeck, University of London, and The Wiener Holocaust Library, London, 7-9 January 2026

The conference will be held in-person only, with no opportunity to attend virtually.

Call for Papers
This conference is planned as a follow-up to the seven successful conferences, which took place at Imperial War Museum London in 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015 and at Birkbeck, University of London, and The Wiener Holocaust Library in 2018 and 2023. It will continue to build on areas previously investigated and open up new fields of academic enquiry.

The aim is to bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines who are engaged in research on all groups of survivors of Nazi persecution. These will include - but are not limited to - Jews, Roma and Sinti, Slavonic peoples, Jehovah’s Witnesses, LGBTQIA+, Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents, members of underground movements, people with disabilities, the so-called ‘racially impure’, and forced labourers. For the purpose of the conference, a ‘survivor’ is defined as anyone who suffered any form of persecution by the Nazis or their allies as a result of the Nazis’ racial, political, ideological or ethnic policies from 1933 to 1945, and who survived the Second World War.

The organisers welcome proposals which focus on topics and themes of the ‘life after’, ranging from the experience of liberation to the trans-generational impact of persecution, individual and collective memory and consciousness, and questions of theory and methodology.

In response to recent scholarly debate and feedback we have received from the last conference, for this eighth conference we are keen to encourage in particular papers on:
- Testimonies and ego-documents
- Digital humanities methodologies
- Antisemitism and racism after 1945
- Survivors of the Roma and Sinti genocide

As previously, we also warmly welcome new research in the following areas
- DPs in post-war Europe
- Former forced labourers in central, east and south-east Europe
- Early post-war Holocaust research
- Yiddish studies, including Yiddish sources
- Relief and rehabilitation
- Reception and resettlement
- Comparative experiences of Jewish and non-Jewish survivors
- Jewish returnees from the Soviet Union
- Literary representation of survival
- Survivors in ‘grey zones’, including kapos
- Victimhood and survival in changing public discourse
- Soviet and other prisoners of war
- The legacy of euthanasia and medical experiments
- Exiles, émigrés and refugees in the reconstruction process
- Rescuers and liberators
- Child survivors
- Gender and survival
- Physical and psychological consequences
- Trials and justice
- Reparation and restitution
- Visual representations and ethics of new technologies
- Museums, exhibitions and memorials
- Archives and record-building

Panel proposals are welcome.

We particularly encourage early career scholars and PhD candidates to apply; and we are pleased to announce that the Center for Holocaust Studies (Munich), the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies (Yale University), and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (Vienna) will financially support a number of speakers.

Please submit an abstract of 200-250 words together with a biography of 50-100 words through our online application form by 31 March 2025: https://forms.gle/PY4r8KDHH7WXg3Kg8

If you have any trouble with this form, please contact Christine Schmidt: cschmidt@wienerholocaustlibrary.org

All proposals are subject to a review process. The organisers aim to respond to all applications received by summer 2025.

Fee: GBP 120 for speakers. The fee includes admission to all panels and evening events, lunches and refreshments during the conference. Further information and registration details will be made available in due course.

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