Social and Labour History News

13 to 14 February 2025 in Mumbai

The International Conference: “Refugees in Global Transit. Encounters, Knowledge, and Coping Strategies in a Disrupted World, 1930s-50s” will take place on the 13th and 14th of February 2025 in Mumbai, India. The conference is organized by Simone Lässig (German Historical Institute Washington), Sebastian Schwecke (Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, Delhi), and Swen Steinberg (Queen’s University, Kingston), in collaboration with Christoph K. Neumann (OI Istanbul), Maria Framke (Erfurt University), and Jens Hanssen (OI Beirut) and is also part of the foundation-wide event series “Ends of War – International Perspectives on World War II” of the Max Weber Foundation.

Refugees in Global Transit: Encounters, Knowledge, and Coping Strategies in a Disrupted World, 1930s–50s

Between the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s and decolonization after World War II, a range of non-Western, in many cases colonial, regions became hubs for people in transit. A growing body of new research on refugees “In Global Transit,” many of them Jews in flight from Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, has highlighted this forced migration to and in the Global South. Scholars are documenting refugee encounters with local populations and colonial authorities, their search for more permanent new homes, as well as their attempts to maintain contact with, and facilitate the escape of, those left behind.

This conference builds on the emerging scholarship on cultural, social, and political encounters – connections and disconnects – among diverse groups of European and non-European refugees and with highly stratified host populations, including existing Jewish communities, colonial officials and settlers, and other migrants. While much of this research has relied on sources produced by state or colonial officials or the refugees themselves, this conference aims to explore new approaches and sources that require knowledge of local and national languages, archives, and histories.

“Transit” refers to individual and collective experiences of living in-between – that is, in spaces people did not envision remaining in permanently. However, it also refers to regions and countries like Turkey, Palestine, and India, where refugees from Nazi Europe found a safe haven while these regions were themselves undergoing turbulent transitions.

Examining this volatile historical moment raises further questions applicable to other refugee and migrant experiences in crisis: What kinds of knowledge transfer can we observe, and what kinds of boundaries and prejudices obstructed such transfers? What were the differential impacts of class, gender, and age on notions of ethnic, national, “racial,” and religious differences? And how can we uncover the long-term memories of this global diaspora of WWII refugees after most of them moved beyond their transit spaces in the decades following independence, state building, and – in some cases – new forms of forced migration?

Programm

Thursday, February 13, 2025

8:30 am – 9:00 am Registration / Coffee and pastries

9:00 - 9:30 am Welcome

9:30 -10:30 am Panel 1: Interactions and Illusions

Refugee Political Thought in Transit: The Interaction between Hindu Bengalis and Jewish Exiles in British Bengal, 1930s-40s
Arnab Dutta (University of Groningen)

End of Utopia: The Photographic Archive of a Disillusioned Refugee in Early Israel
Julia Hauser (University of Kassel)

10:30-11:00 am Coffee Break

11:00 am -12:00 pm Panel 2: Reimagination and Remembrance

Echoes Across Empires: Caribbean Refuge and the Reimagining of Holocaust Histories
Rosa de Jong (University of Amsterdam)

At Home in Transit: German-Jewish Refugees Remember Harbin, Manchuria, 1938-1949
Susanne Hillman (San Diego State University)

12:00 – 1:00 pm Lunch Break

1:00-2:30 pm Panel 3: Negotiating Precarity: German, Polish and Kazakh Refugees in colonial South Asia 1939-1950

Humanitarianism and the Limits of Sovereignty: Polish Refugees in Kolhapur
Pragya Kaul (University of Michigan)

Humanitarianism in Action: Kazakh refugees in Bhopal
Antara Datta (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Barbed-Wire Humanitarianism? : The Internment of German Civilians in Second World War India (1939-1946)
Suchintan Das (University of Oxford)

2:30 - 3:00 pm Coffee Break

3:00 – 4:00 pm Panel 4: Refugees, Hosts and Settlers: The Levant from 1939 to 195

’Nothing to do but speculate about the future:’ Jewish Refugees
in the Beirut Quarantine, 1939
Mohamad El Chamaa (American University of Beirut)

Civic Friendship, Hospitality and Repatriation in 1940s Palestine
Jens Hanssen (Orient Institut, Beirut)

4:00 -6:00 pm Break

6:00 - 8:00 pm Keynote: Atina Grossmann (Cooper Union, New York) followed by a small reception

Friday, February 14, 2025

9:00 - 10:30 am Panel 5: Shalom and Hello Bombay: German Refugees and Migrant Histories of Knowledge in an Indian Metropolis

Ernest Shaffer’s discovery of India: Navigating networks and accumulating expertise in the life of a refugee
Maria Framke (University of Erfurt)

German Camera for an Islamicate Vision: Josef Wirsching, Kamal Amrohi, and the Making of Visual Affect in Bombay Cinema
Razak Khan (University of Göttingen)

“These guys don’t know anything”. Ambivalences from a German aristocratic labour emigrant in Bombay
Jörg Zedler (University of Regensburg / LMU München)

10:30 – 11:00 am Coffee Break

11:00 am -12:00 pm Panel 6: Internationalism and Anticolonialism between the Local and the Global

“Global Transit” in a Colonized World: Internationalism in Colonial Bombay
Ninad Pandit (The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art)

Indian and Indonesian Anticolonialism in Transit: Wartime Colonial Subalterns in an Indian Ocean Anticolonial Moment, 1945-47
Naina Manjrekar (IIT Bombay)

12:00 -12:30 pm Final discussion

12:30 – 1:30 pm Lunch Break

1:30 – 5:00 pm Excursion

6:00 Conference Dinner

Event Website:
https://www.ghi-dc.org/events/event/date/refugees-in-global-transit-encounters-knowledge-and-coping-strategies-in-a-disrupted-world-1930s-50s

About In Global Transit:
Website: https://transit.hypotheses.org/
https://www.ghi-dc.org/research/history-of-migration/in-global-transit

https://www.ghi-dc.org/events/event/date/refugees-in-global-transit-encounters-knowledge-and-coping-strategies-in-a-disrupted-world-1930s-50s

On 7 and 8 April 2025, the University of Oxford will host a conference on the history of global economic governance.

Governing the Global Economy in the Long Twentieth Century

Since the financial crisis of 2007/08, international rivalries, nationalist movements, a global pandemic, and the existential threat of climate change have destabilised the global economic order. From an historical perspective, such strains have many precedents in the tumultuous twentieth century. We seek to bring together scholars for a two-day conference at the University of Oxford to explore the history of global economic governance. We are particularly keen to discuss how national governments, international organisations, businesses, financial institutions and workers all responded to shocks and instability, and how these responses shaped the global economic order.

Many recent historical works have explored the history of political economy, capitalism and global governance from multiple perspectives. There has been important historical research into the effects of wars and conflicts on the global economic order; the birth of global economic development initiatives; the ideological foundations of neoliberalism; and the hegemony of economic growth. Together, these works raise an array of important questions: What economic, political and social factors underpinned the evolution of national and global economic governance in the twentieth century? How have conflicts and crises generated competing ideas and agendas for governing the global economy? And to what extent can these works inform our perspective on present-day challenges of climate change, global poverty, public health, deindustrialization and global economic stability?

The focus of this conference will be on examining the ways in which the world economy has been contested, debated, governed and restructured during moments of crisis and change, as well as how challenging conditions determined relations between states, businesses, individuals and civil society. Our conference will aim to bridge past and present by offering fresh insights into the forces that have shaped our current global economy, and by considering possible future trajectories of the international economy.

Our conference welcomes a broad range of topics that are historical in perspective, including but not limited to those concerned with: global trade and monetary order; the economics of empire and decolonisation; international economic organisations and international economic relations; the governing of global food and commodities; global labour practices and markets; global banking and finance; multinational business enterprises; and international tax and regulation. Following the conference, we may solicit articles for the publication of a special issue.

Proposals should include a brief biographical note, presentation title and an abstract of no more than 300 words emailed to both Aled Davies (aled.davies@history.ox.ac.uk) and Robert Yee (robert.yee@history.ox.ac.uk) prior to the deadline listed below. If accepted, each presenter will be expected to share a pre-circulated memorandum of 2,000 to 3,000 words.

Important Dates
Abstract Submission Deadline: 1 November 2024
Notification by: 30 November 2024
Memorandum Submission Deadline: 1 March 2025
Conference: 7 and 8 April 2025

Conference Organisers: Prof Patricia Clavin, Dr Aled Davies and Dr Robert Yee

This conference is supported by the History & Political Economy Project, the Economic History Society, the Conference for European Studies at Temple University, the Rothermere American Institute, the Oxford Martin School ‘Changing Global Orders’ project, St. John’s College and Wadham College.

1 September to 28 December 2024

Haledon, New Jersey – The American Labor Museum/Botto House National Landmark proudly opens the exhibit Faces From An American Dream by Martin Desht on Sunday, September 1st, 2024.  The Annual Labor Day Parade steps-off at the Museum on September 1st, 2024 at 10:30am.

Faces From An American Dream features black-and-white photographs by Mr. Desht, who notes that “for much of the 20th century, Pennsylvania was the most heavily and diversely industrialized state in America.  Pittsburgh was famous for thirty miles of steel mills, Philadelphia billed itself the "workshop of the world," the Pennsylvania Railroad traversed half the country and the state's anthracite fueled the nation.” By the 1980’s,” Desht continues “both cities were examples of Rust Belt de-industrialization as America's economy shifted from industrial manufacturing to service and information. Faces From An American Dream depicts how this transition re-defined the American industrial city and what it meant for skilled and unskilled workers in search of the American dream.

In 1989, Martin Desht started photographing post-industrial Pennsylvania, a project that would occupy him for the next twenty-six years. Harvard University, Dartmouth College, New York University's Stern School of Business, United States Department of Labor, have exhibited his photography.  Mr. Desht works in black-and-white film and still operates a traditional photography darkroom.

Faces From An American Dream exhibit is on view at the Museum from September 1st through December 28th, 2024.  

This program is made possible in part by a grant administered by the Passaic County Cultural and Heritage Council from funds granted by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

The Botto House National Landmark, headquarters of the American Labor Museum, is located at 83 Norwood Street in Haledon, NJ.  The Museum's hours of operation are Monday through Friday, 9AM-5PM.  Visitors are welcome Wednesday through Saturday from 1PM-4PM and at other times by appointment.  For further information about the Museum, call 973-595-7953 and visit www.american-labor-museum.org.

During the 1970s and 1980s, cultural practises of members of the working class as historical subjects became a topic of interest for West-German historiography. Research focussed mainly on two areas within the study of proletarian ways of life on the micro level of social life: “Arbeiterkultur” (“Workers’ culture”) in organised formats such as workers’ sports clubs or youth groups on the one hand and a history of how (working class) people experienced and perceived everyday life as well as (their) behaviour in and outside the factory that was not based on class consciousness but rather “Eigen-Sinn”. Similar questions were asked by GDR historians. The research focused primarily on phenomena from the time of the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, but also on ruptures and transformations as a result of National Socialist rule and after 1945. New methods and concepts were developed which remain present in historiography to this day, like “Alltagsgeschichte”, “Eigen-Sinn” and “Oral History”. The latter also highlights some historians’ political intention of creating a democratic “History from below” (“Geschichte von unten”) by giving voice to hitherto unheard contemporary witnesses. The same can be said about the formation of History Workshops (“Geschichtswerkstätten”) which enabled self-taught historians (often with roots in the New social movements) to contribute to the historical exploration of everyday cultures, especially on a local level. Thus, the first peak of a history of the “Workers’ culture” has itself become the topic of Contemporary history or History of knowledge (“Wissensgeschichte”).

Today, workers’ everyday culture, although not omnipresent, has its fixed place in historiography. This is also represented by “Arbeit – Bewegung – Geschichte”, where aspects of workers’ everyday culture are occasionally discussed but far less frequently than other topics. That at least some interest in the exploration of a cultural history of the proletariat still exists is best showcased by conferences like “Labour – Everyday Life – Exploitation: Social History of Working Women” (“Arbeit – Alltag – Ausbeutung: Gesellschaftsgeschichte der Arbeiterinnen”), which took place in Heidelberg just last year, while at the same time, a general loss of memory of research approaches and -findings from the 1980s has to be recognised.

With this intentionally wide kept Call for Papers, which covers as many research approaches, topics and perspectives without regional or periodical limitations, it is our aim to make the historiography of working peoples’ everyday culture more visible (again) and to provide an overview of the current research (situation). Connections to earlier studies are encouraged but also especially their extensions in different fields of study. These could include perspectives concerning new studies on workers’ culture and interconnections with aspects of transnational, local, regional or post- and de-colonial historical studies. An intersectional approach, for example the entanglement of Class with other categories of social oppression, can provide valuable findings and help broadening the understanding of this field of study. Furthermore, questions concerning fractures, ambivalences and (points of) reference/s could be formulated. For example: (Where) were similarities and contradictions in workers’ everyday culture and the notions thereof as propagated by parties, organisations or in countries with socialist rule? Were there references to Workers’ culture in the New Left? Which fractures and transformations/continuities can be found in workers’ cultures, for example after fascist rule, “since the Boom” or 1989/90.

Another approach could be the historization of the subjects who studies workers’ cultures, which would in turn enable a critical analysis and reception of their findings and conceptions and to (re-)discover early works either in a review format or articles.

Potential topics:

- The private is political: the negotiation of forms of relationship since the industrialisation

- Solidarity and class consciousness in everyday life

- Workers’ culture and consumption: diet, indulgence, addiction, clothing

- Negotiations and notions of childhood and adolescence

- Access to education: ways of learning and mediating knowledge

- Tenement/ “Rental barracks”, cooperatives and flat shares: living together enforced and voluntary

- Workers’ self-management, cooperatives for production and consumption

- Between emancipation and patriarchy: masculinity, femininity and other images of sex and gender in the proletarian everyday life

- From “Naturfreundejugend” (“Friends of Nature”) to Skinheads: the relationship between workers’ culture/s and sub-cultures

- Proletarian aesthetics: role, form and function in the productions and reception of workers’ literature, art and music

- “Oh, so comrades, come …?” (Inter-)nationalism and (anti-)colonialism in workers’ everyday life

- Grieving, remembering, and hoping: cultures of remembrance and visions of the future

- Competition versus winning mentality? Role, form and function of workers’ sports

- Feasts and celebrations: (ritualised) escapes from everyday life?

- Places of social encounter and political resistance: street, pub, shop, allotment

- Everyday forms of in- and exclusion: discrimination amongst workers

Meaningful research proposals of up to 2500 signs (including spaces) can be submitted until the 30th of September 2024 and should provide an overview of the topic, intended method and source base. We will ask for articles based on the proposals. The deadline for the fully written articles is the 31st of March 2025. All contributions have to pass our internal multi-step review procedure and it is only after the submission of the final version that we will offer a definitive promise of publication. We only publish original works (exemptions are sometimes made for articles initially published in a language other than German). Submissions for “Arbeit – Bewegung – Geschichte” are not reimbursed. Manuscripts may be sent per e-mail in a docx-file. Finalised articles in German may not exceed 50 000 signs including spaces and notes. Articles in English may not exceed 40 000 signs, for publication they will be translated into German.

 

Contact: cfp@arbeit-bewegung-geschichte.de
Deadline research proposals: 30th of September 2024
Deadline articles: 31st of March 2025
Publication expected in September 2025

Just in time for a new academic year, the American Social History Project at the CUNY Graduate Center is releasing a new, expanded, and updated edition of the popular
textbook Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s History. A beta version is now available as a free, open-access digital resource featuring a comprehensive
social history textbook supplemented by thousands of primary sources drawn from our History Matters website and new teaching resources.

Designed for use in college-level classes and high school Advanced Placement and richly illustrated with hundreds of images, Who Built America? takes a social history
approach that is well suited for the US history survey and a range of classes, including labor and immigration history and African American, ethnic, and gender studies. We
encourage you to explore this new edition (currently in its final testing phase), consider adopting it for your classes, and return to the site frequently to see additional features
and content that will become available in the coming weeks.

To view the online resource, visit http://whobuiltamerica.org. For questions or further
information, contact the American Social History Project at cml@gc.cuny.edu.

Rome, 20-21 February 2024

Description

We are pleased to announce a call for papers for an upcoming conference titled "Left-Wing Women's Organizing and Activism in the Twentieth Century." This conference seeks to bring together scholars from different disciplines working on various aspects of the history of women’s activism and organizing. It aims to explore how women across the spectrum of left-wing politics shaped and influenced the twentieth century's political, social, and cultural landscapes. The conference aspires to assess the contribution of left-wing women’s activists to the general struggle for women’s emancipation using intersectional, postcolonial, and critical-feminist approaches, acknowledging the pluralities in forms and methods of organizing.

The twentieth century witnessed a surge of diverse forms of women’s activism and the proliferation of women’s organizations on both national and international levels. Consequently, women fought against multiple forms of oppression and for various, yet interconnected, causes across different contexts. Influenced by significant historical moments such as WWI, the fall of empires, the emergence of nation-states, and the success of the October Revolution, women relied on the frameworks of fast-developing left-wing politics to fight for different forms of emancipation. This same framework allowed them to organize within anticolonial and anti-imperial movements and to engage in black liberation struggles later in the century. In this way, they moved across the political spectrum of left-wing politics, which we hope to explore during this conference.

Despite the notable engagement of women activists across the globe, the historiography of twentieth-century left-wing politics has been notably androcentric, often neglecting the significant contributions women made. For decades, studies on left-wing women's activism in the twentieth century remained limited, often sidelined by Cold War historiography. Furthermore, dismissive attitudes towards left-wing women activists persisted, excluding them from the narratives on the waves of feminism and feminist practices. However, historians have begun to challenge this perspective, striving to illuminate the efforts of women activists within left-wing politics. This conference joins them in this endeavor, fostering discussions on the varied currents and practices of left-wing women’s activism.

We encourage prospective participants from various disciplines to submit paper proposals that will tackle twentieth-century left-wing women’s struggles, ideas, and activism through a broad perspective focusing on intersectionality rather than exclusively on gender. Moreover, we strive to go beyond the discussion of the “unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism” or the "feminist-communist debate." We advocate exploring different forms and frameworks of women’s activism, collaboration, and/or antagonism. We propose exploring continuities and discontinuities within left-wing currents throughout the twentieth century. Lastly, we urge moving away from Western-centric perspectives, looking into the broader history of women's activism.

 

Themes and Topics

We invite paper proposals on a wide range of topics related to left-wing women's activism and organising in the twentieth century, including but not limited to:

Intersectionality and the Left-Wing Women's Activism 

• Left-Wing Women's Grassroots Organizing 

• Queer Left-Wing Movements and Activists 

• Political Participation and Leadership of Women in Left-Wing Movements

• Women's Roles and Experiences in the Socialist States and Left-wing Parties

• Left-Wing Women's Ideas and Writing

• Collaborations and/ or Antagonisms among Women Activists Across the Political Spectrum

• Addressing and Combating Sexism within and Outside Political Parties and Social Movements

• State and Societal Repression of Left-Wing Women’s Activism

• The Role of Women in Labor Movements and Trade Unions

• The Influence of Left-Wing Women on Social Policy and Legislation

 

Submission Guidelines

We welcome proposals for individual or co-authored papers, as well as panel proposals. To submit a proposal, please send the following information to LWWAOC@outlook.com  by November 1, 2024:

1. Title of the paper / Panel

2. Paper Abstract (300 words) 

3. Short biography (100-150 words), including affiliation and contact information for each presenter 

4. Statement on the need of financial assistance, if needed

  Important Dates

• Submission Deadline: November 1, 2024

• Notification of Acceptance: December 1, 2024

• Conference Dates: February 20-21, 2025

 

Funding 

We encourage researchers to seek funding through their respective institutions. We offer limited financial support to graduate students for travel and accomodation, especially those outside the EU.

  Paper Publication 

Selected papers from the conference will be considered for publication. Further details regarding the publication process, including submission guidelines and deadlines, will be announced in the near future. Stay tuned for updates on this exciting opportunity to contribute to the academic discourse on left-wing women's organizing and activism in the twentieth century.

 

https://sites.google.com/view/lwwaoc/call-for-papers?authuser=0

By Richard Temple

This book comprises tales of the Labour Party in the hundred years since the first Labour government. It includes many dramatic episodes, not least the seething anger of the Glasgow rent strikes during the Great War, the looming danger of Hitler in the 1930s, and walkouts over equal pay in the 1960s. The book conjures up lost worlds which have profoundly influenced modern Britain. Above all, this book describes the ways in which the Labour Party has impacted on the lives of ordinary people. How does Labour measure up after a century of government and opposition? The book is accessible and challenges established narratives. It is also original. No-one else, for example, has written so specifically about the Labour Party and Nazi rearmament or about the Wilson government's response to the Beeching cuts. The text draws on a wide variety of sources, including the testimony of public figures such as John Betjeman, Richard Hoggart, Friedrich Engels, and George Orwell. Researched with scholarly rigour, this book will appeal to a wide audience.

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 9781036407186
Number of pages: 307
Dimensions: 212 x 148 mm

 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/taken-as-red-highs-and-lows-of-the-lab…

7 and 8 April 2025, University of Oxford

Since the financial crisis of 2007/08, international rivalries, nationalist movements, a global pandemic, and the existential threat of climate change have destabilised the global economic order. From an historical perspective, such strains have many precedents in the tumultuous twentieth century. We seek to bring together scholars for a two-day conference at the University of Oxford to explore the history of global economic governance. We are particularly keen to discuss how national governments, international organisations, businesses, financial institutions and workers all responded to shocks and instability, and how these responses shaped the global economic order. 

Many recent historical works have explored the history of political economy, capitalism and global governance from multiple perspectives. There has been important historical research into the effects of wars and conflicts on the global economic order; the birth of global economic development initiatives; the ideological foundations of neoliberalism; and the hegemony of economic growth. Together, these works raise an array of important questions: What economic, political and social factors underpinned the evolution of national and global economic governance in the twentieth century? How have conflicts and crises generated competing ideas and agendas for governing the global economy? And to what extent can these works inform our perspective on present-day challenges of climate change, global poverty, public health, deindustrialization and global economic stability?

The focus of this conference will be on examining the ways in which the world economy has been contested, debated, governed and restructured during moments of crisis and change, as well as how challenging conditions determined relations between states, businesses, individuals and civil society. Our conference will aim to bridge past and present by offering fresh insights into the forces that have shaped our current global economy, and by considering possible future trajectories of the international economy. 

Our conference welcomes a broad range of topics that are historical in perspective, including but not limited to those concerned with: global trade and monetary order; the economics of empire and decolonisation; international economic organisations and international economic relations; the governing of global food and commodities; global labour practices and markets; global banking and finance; multinational business enterprises; and international tax and regulation. Following the conference, we may solicit articles for the publication of a special issue. 

Proposals should include a brief biographical note, presentation title and an abstract of no more than 300 words emailed to both Aled Davies (aled.davies@history.ox.ac.uk) and Robert Yee (robert.yee@history.ox.ac.uk) prior to the deadline listed below. If accepted, each presenter will be expected to share a pre-circulated memorandum of 2,000 to 3,000 words. 

Important Dates 

Abstract Submission Deadline: 1 November 2024 

Notification by: 30 November 2024 

Memorandum Submission Deadline: 1 March 2025 

Conference: 7 and 8 April 2025 

Conference Organisers: Prof Patricia Clavin, Dr Aled Davies and Dr Robert Yee

This conference is supported by the History & Political Economy Project, the Economic History Society, the Conference for European Studies at Columbia University, the Rothermere American Institute, the Oxford Martin School ‘Changing Global Orders’ project, St. John’s College and Wadham College. 

The latest issue of Theory & Struggle is now available online.

Liverpool University Press is pleased to inform you of the latest content in Theory & Struggle, a highly regarded publication that is essential reading for those working in and researching critical developments in the labour and progressive movements in Britain and internationally, including movements for gender equality, for racial equality and for peace.

Volume 125 includes a debate from the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School at 90 Symposium on learning the lessons of 1933 and the founding of the Marx Memorial Library in Context. Articles also include work on class mobilisation and class consciousness in the British strike wave of 2022–23, the polycrisis of capitalism, and the concept of BRICS+ in the context of a struggle for a new global order. Other work includes musings on imperialism and the labour aristocracy in Britain, and a reflection on the 90th year of the Marx Memorial Library.

Browse all articles >

Download a free issue >

 

If you would like to access this journal please recommend a subscription to your librarian >

 

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Table of contents

 

EDITORIAL

Editorial

Marjorie Mayo

 

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC DEBATES

Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School at 90 Symposium: Popular Fronts and Resistance to Fascism: Learning the lessons of 1933 and the founding of the Marx Memorial Library in Context

Mary Davis, Sitaram Yerchury, Renate Koppe, and Patrick Theuret

 

Class mobilisation and class consciousness in the British strike wave of 2022–23

Jonathan White

 

The polycrisis of capitalism

Michael Roberts

 

BRICS+ in the context of a struggle for a new global order

Jeremy Cronin

 

Lenin’s lessons

Vijay Prashad

 

Imperialism and the labour aristocracy in Britain

Mary Davis

Breaking up the state and lopping off the parasites: Lenin’s ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ as the state that is ceasing to be a state

Jonathan White

 

TRADES UNION AND COMMUNITY STRUGGLES

On the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese Revolution of April 25 1974

Albano Nunes

 

The carnation revolution of 1974 and its legacy

John Green

 

The right to strike

Steve Gillan

 

THE THIRD PANEL OF THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY SYMPOSIUM

The Forward March of Labour Resumed

John McDonnell, John Hendy, Fran Heathcote, and Alex Gordon

 

CRITICAL TEXT

Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth

Marjorie Mayo

 

MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY AND WORKERS’ SCHOOL

Lenin and the Marx Memorial Library

Meirian Jump

 

Marx Memorial Library 1933–2023: Our 90th year

Meirian Jump

 

The Oration texts

Alex Gordon and John Hendy

 

REVIEWS

Book Reviews

Jenny Clegg, Roger Seifert, John Green, Elaine Mcfarland, John Green, Roger Seifert, and John Foster

 

Best wishes,

Alice Burns

 

On behalf of Liverpool University Press

Lille/France, 22 to 23 May 2025

From the 1880s to the 1980s, student dissidence/resistance in Central-Eastern and Southeastern Europe often came into contact with protest movements in other parts of the world, combining social protest with political and civic struggles. The aim of this conference is to study the dissident/resistant student press produced both in Central-Eastern and Southeastern Europe and by students from these countries abroad. 

Argument

The student press is a body of work that is generally little analysed by cultural history, and by the history of the press in particular. This observation, shared by Kaylene Dial Armstrong for the American field (see Student Journalism History, New York, Routledge, 2023) and Laurence Corroy for the French field (in her article « Une presse méconnue : la presse étudiante au XIXe siècle », Semen, n°. 25, 2008), also applies to the geo-historical context of Central-Eastern and Southeastenr Europe between the end of the nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth century. Throughout this period, from the eve of the First World War - a period that saw the (re)birth or recognition of several universities - to the end of the Cold War, students played a fundamental role in the expression and organisation of resistance and/or dissidence to the established political regimes. From mobilisations against the Austro-Hungarian or Russian imperial order, to protests against post-1945 authoritarian regimes, through resistance to the dictatorial regimes of the inter-war period and clandestine leaves under the Occupation, student reactions followed on from one another in the area we are interested in, stretching from the Baltic States in the north to Greece at its southernmost point, from Germany in the west to Russia in the East.

Apart from the many different ideological typologies of these political sequences, what these regimes had in common was the abolition of the democratic and liberal functioning of society, and the formation of groups of rebels and dissidents, in which students were often a driving force. Some of them went into exile, notably to France, in order to escape persecution and express themselves more freely..

The press has played an important role in the activities developed by dissidents and/or those resisting the regimes on the ground. It also happened that certain countries in Central-Eastern and Southeastern Europe became host countries for dissident students trying to escape dictatorial regimes in their own countries of origin. This was the case with Greek students going into exile in several Western European countries during the colonels' dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s. This latest protest action is part of a socio-political movement, a wider socio-historical sequence, that of the student movements of the 1960s and 1970s, or the ‘68s’, to use the expression used by Ioanna Kasapi and Robi Morder in the issue of the journal Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps that they edited in 2018. If we look at the inter-war period, for example, we find students in dissident/resistance groups in Hungary and Greece, opposing the repressive practices of the authoritarian regimes of Admiral Horthy and General Metaxas respectively. And going back to the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gives us an insight into a student press that was often associative, born out of the melting pot of former or newly-created universities and higher education establishments, a mouthpiece for the literary, cultural, intellectual and political trends of modernity - realism, decadence, socialism, anarchism... A good example of this is the progressive Czech student movement of the 1880s and 1890s, which created an impressive and dynamic complex of periodicals, publishing houses and editorial collections that enabled it to disseminate its ideas and values in opposition to both the national mainstream press and the Austrian authorities.

From the 1880s to the 1980s, student dissidence/resistance in Central-Eastern and Southeastern Europe often came into contact with protest movements in other parts of the world, combining social protest with political and civic struggles. With a view to decentring our gaze, overcoming if possible the historiographical fragmentation surrounding the phenomenon of student movements and placing their press in a wider context, we plan to invite historiographical approaches in terms of transnational history to our reflections at this colloquium. In this sense, we would like to take an interest in the interactions and identify the interdependencies between different societies around the editorial phenomenon of the dissident/resistant student press, and to trace and comment on the cultural transfers and circulations of actors, ideas and protest publishing practices that emerged during the period under study. The aim is to connect different historical experiences, which have sometimes remained isolated or approached in a monographic way rather than through the prism of a history written on a regional and/or international scale. The aim is therefore to try to go beyond national, civilisational and geolinguistic compartments, to show the modes of interaction between the local, the regional and the supranational, as Sanjay Subrahmanyam encourages us to do in his book Explorations in connected history, He proposes a methodological approach and an intellectual posture that Caroline Douki and Philippe Minard have already acclimatised in French historiography in their article « Histoire globale, histoires connectées, un changement d'échelles historiographiques » (Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 2007).

The aim of this conference is to study the dissident/resistant student press produced both in Central-Eastern and Southeastern Europe and by students from these countries abroad. This publishing phenomenon constitutes an object of study in itself, as well as a privileged observatory for gaining a better understanding of the various forms of dissidence and resistance expressed in this way. While the ideological orientations of publishers vary according to the political situation in their countries of origin, linguistic practices also vary between documents published in the official language and/or foreign languages. Allophone publishing occupies a special place in this corpus, in other words, publications in languages other than those established/recognised as official and/or minority in the area in which they are published.

Among the areas of research proposed as part of this conference, papers may contribute to :

• map the editorial landscape of this student press

• outline the careers of its main players (publishers, authors, printers, etc.)

• study the different types of publications

• explore the networks that have supported them and the relationships established between the various publishing initiatives

• to examine the role of this press in the general movement of people and ideas, the cultural transfers to which they have given rise, the mixed identities that emerge, the strategies of those involved in promoting ideological and aesthetic prerogatives

• assess the influence of this press in the countries of origin of their publishers and readers (cultural, political influence, etc.

 

Submission guidelines

If you would like to take part in the work of this conference, please send your proposal in French or English, of 250-300 words maximum, followed by a brief biobibliographical presentation,  to the following addresses: catherine.servant@inalco.fr, nicolas.pitsos@bulac.fr. 

by 30 October 2024

The working languages of the meeting will be French and English.

Scientific Committee

• Boisserie Etienne (CREE/Inalco)
• Cooper-Richet Diana (CHCSC/Université Paris-Saclay)
• Corroy Laurence (Université de Lorraine)
• Hnilica Jiří (Centre tchèque de Paris)
• Kasapi Ioanna (Université d’Angers, Cité des mémoires étudiantes)
• Kolakovic Alexandra (Institut d’Études politiques, Belgrade)
• Madelain Anne (CREE/Inalco)
• Markovic Sacha (Sorbonne Université, Eur’Orbem/ISP Nanterre)
• Mayer Françoise (I.T.I.C, Université Paul Valéry - Montpellier III)
• Morder Robi (GERME, Laboratoire PRINTEMPS/Université Paris-Saclay)
• Pitsos Nicolas (CREE/Inalco, BULAC)
• Servant Catherine (CREE/Inalco)
• Toumarkine Alexandre (CREE/Inalco)

Webinar series

The Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre, the Eastern European Holocaust Studies, the Ukraina Moderna website, and the Austrian Service Abroad are cooperating and partnering in launching a webinar series on the theme of “Othering, Occupation, Violence, and Denial”.

Othering, Occupation, Violence, and Denial: Connecting Past and Present: Historical Analogies and Presentism in Studying the Holocaust

The JHGC, EEHS, UM website and ASA are cooperating and partnering in launching a webinar series on the theme of “Othering, Occupation, Violence, and Denial”. Topics that will be engaged with under the central theme include the way in which historical analogies and presentism in studying the history of the Holocaust are used to foster deeper understanding and critical thinking about the Holocaust, current armed conflicts and the rise of hate speech. Ways in which oversimplifications, misrepresentations, distortions, and denial of these topics can be challenged and safeguarded against will also be grappled with, alongside testimonies, resistance, education, remembrance, and the collection and preservation of history. Previous webinar organised by the JHGC and the EEHS, “Never Again” as well as a series of podcasts, “Sleepwalking Through the Assault on Democracy”, discussed different interpretations of these themes, as well as questions around historical analogies.
The outcomes of the webinar series will firstly be disseminated to a scholarly audience by way of publication in English in upcoming issues of the EEHS journal, and in Ukrainian in the Ukraina Moderna Journal’s website. The project's commitment to inclusivity and dissemination in English and Ukrainian will ensure broad access through educational resources, enhanced public discourse and memorialization. The outputs of the project will also be adapted into an educational program in South Africa, and Austria, available in English and possibly Ukrainian if such an educational program is conducted in Ukraine. The project has an educational component: it targets political decision makers, civil servants, civil society, the media, educational policy makers, academia, museums and memorials, educational institutions, and potentially archives and archivists, all of whom can use the outputs in their educational programs with students, educators, and other volunteers in mediated online discussions. These educational materials will further be integrated into the Austrian Service Abroad educational program, not only equipping their volunteers but also being shared with their hundreds of global partners as effective teaching tools. The webinars will thereby bolster research and education, aligning with IHRA's goals to prevent distortion through shared practices and strengthened international cooperation.
The workshop organisers thus welcome proposals on one of the following four themes and subthemes:
1. Othering:
- case studies of the Holocaust;
- othering of targeted groups such as the Roma and Sinti during the Second World War;
- survivor testimonies;
- witnesses testimonies;
- early warning stages/indicators of mass atrocities in past or current conflicts;
- the rise of hate speech in the wake of current armed conflicts;
- oversimplification, misrepresentation, mis- and disinformation, and distortion;
- resistance;
- the law and othering;
- education on othering;
2. Occupation:
- Nazi occupation of Ukraine and other territories during WW2;
- human behaviour/life/survival/resistance under occupation (i.e. during WW2/the Holocaust/ongoing armed conflicts);
- survivor testimonies;
- witnesses testimonies;
- resilience;
- Russian occupation in Ukraine: oversimplification, reasons provided by Russia for the invasion;
- the impact of occupation on children (disappearance, re-education, deportation and transfer, pro-fascists during WW2 vs now i.e. Russifying children);
- mis- and disinformation, distortions of history;
- behaviour of occupying forces/power towards people,
- siege under occupation (for e.g. Leningrad, Mariupol).
3. Violence:
- against individuals, groups and minorities;
- looting;
- transit/ labour/concentration camps/killing sites and killing centres in the Holocaust;
- Sexual and gender-based violence
- survivor testimonies;
- witnesses testimonies;
- resilience against violence;
- violence against resistance groups;
- collective punishment (for example whole village);
- atrocity crimes/acts against Ukrainians (in history and currently);
- denial, misrepresentation, mis- and disinformation, distortions, propaganda;
- types of violent acts (for example starvation techniques, suppression of Warsaw ghetto uprising with fire etc.).
4. Denial:
- remembrance of the Holocaust to counter denial;
- survivor testimonies;
- witnesses testimonies;
- activism against denial and distortion;
- acknowledging atrocities committed in Ukraine by the Russian Federation (and oversimplification of historical analogies, ensuring continued focus on Ukraine in the context of other global events/armed conflicts);
- use and abuse of Holocaust memory in the discourse of the current Russo-Ukrainian war;
- distortion of Holocaust memory in current armed conflicts and the rise of hate speech;
- archives, collection and preservation of history;
- propaganda by way of oversimplification, misrepresentation, mis- and disinformation, distortions;
- teaching against mis- and disinformation;
- hate speech on social media and in the digital world.

Abstracts for papers on any of the above themes must be sent to Mispa Roux (mispa@jhbholocaust.co.za) not later than 16 September 2024. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words, clearly indicating the theme. Successful candidates will be contacted within four weeks of submission and will be required to submit a draft paper two weeks before the date of the webinar. The webinar, which will be simultaneously translated into Ukrainian, will take the form of online papers presented during four panel discussions structured around the four main themes. Selected papers will then be peer reviewed and published in the Eastern European Holocaust Studies: Interdisciplinary Journal of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and Ukraina Moderna website publications in Ukrainian, translation covered by project funding.
The project is funded by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and matching funding from partner organisations.

Kontakt

Mispa Roux (mispa@jhbholocaust.co.za)

The Interdisciplinary Journal of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, Eastern European Holocaust Studies, is cooperating with the French Holocaust research organization Yahad - In Unum for a special issue on 'Children and Childhood in the Holocaust in Eastern Occupied Territories.'
This issue aims to offer established scholars, early-career academics, and graduate students the opportunity to present their research. In particular, researchers from Eastern Europe are encouraged to submit their papers in English or Ukrainian language.

Children and Childhood in the Holocaust in Eastern occupied territories

For many children war and persecution meant the end of their childhood in “conventional sense” now and then. About 1,1 million Jewish children lost their lives in the Holocaust. Approximately 400,000 further underage victims from other ethnicities should also be acknowledged. The lives of those who survived were shaped by the traumatic experiences.

The research field of childhood experience in Eastern Europe under German occupation faces complex questions and moral dilemmas concerning the capacity of children to act and their liability. Approaches in Holocaust research with a socio-historical perspective therefore require an in-depth analysis of the society in the territories in which the Holocaust took place. Micro-historical approaches are developing increasingly complex analyses of individual crime scenes and more and more include the local community as an “actor”. Beyond the categories of “perpetrators, victims and bystanders” (Hilberg) emerges a “grey zone”, which reveals a range of choices for locals under German occupation.

Coping strategies with the German occupation were entangled with gender, material preconditions and, to a greater extent, age. The complex of childhood in the Second World War and the Holocaust has been portrayed heterogeneously in the post-war period. Children were generally excluded from history or memorized as vulnerable and inactive martyrs. From a historical perspective, this imagined passivity cannot be maintained. While Jewish children were marginalized, exploited, and murdered as victims of the nazi extermination policy soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, there were other conditions for children who belonged to the majority society in which they had to ensure their survival. Beyond German extermination policy in Eastern Europe, recent research shows a wide range of policies in treatment of children, such as the enslavement as forced worker (Ostarbeiter), the colonization of ethnic German children in what is now Ukraine, the forced Germanization of Polish children, the mobilization of Belarusian children in the White Ruthenian Youth Work, the penal camps and extermination for young Roma in Estonia, to name fates of children under German occupation in their various forms without claiming to be exhaustive.
This prompts us to ask how children navigated their choices for action under the constraints, demands and dangers they faced under occupation. And it seems like being a child was not solely a deprivation in the struggle for survival but could be used even more as a “resource” as the historian Yulia von Saal puts it. By focusing more on the “agency” of the child, completely new research perspectives emerge.
Beyond the genuinely historical perspective, newer research approaches, particularly from the memory studies, can be used to take an analytical look at the oral history testimonies of children and point out their special features. How do childhood experiences and narratives differ from those of adults? How can testimonies of children be interpreted with the right hermeneutics? Oral history is now considered to be the most versatile medium of children's memories, additionally autobiographies, drawings and all other material and immaterial cultures of children would be an interesting object of research. Furthermore, psychological research of children in the Holocaust and its aftermath concerning traumatic experiences are appreciated.

Given this background, a special issue of Eastern European Holocaust Studies will focus on the complex of children and childhood in the Holocaust in Eastern occupied territories. Articles of 7,000 words (including references) in English or Ukrainian are invited on any of the following themes:

- Relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish children before, during and after the war
- “Daily life” of Jewish children in camps and ghettos
- Means of survival. Hiding, evasion and help for Jewish children
- Means of resistance. Jewish and non-Jewish children's activity in the resistance
- Commemoration and Memorization. Representation of children in the Holocaust in memorial landscapes and collective memory
- Forced labor, captivity, reprisal and deportation. Nazi policy towards children in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe
- Germanization, colonization, politicization. Mobilization of children in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe
- Memory Studies and Oral History. Perspectives on childhood memories in relation to trauma and reliability
- Differences and perceptions. Comparative analysis of childhood and adult narrative
- Adultification. Children as family providers and as heads of families
- Perception of Gender. Normative expectations of “girls” and “boys” shaping their means and limitations for action
- Vulnerable bodies. Children as victims of sexual violence
- Orphanages as ambivalent spaces for survival and persecution
- In the “grey zone”. Children between forced requisition and collaboration
- Witnessing the Holocaust. Children as eyewitnesses of atrocities, shootings and violence
- Object history and immaterial legacies. Products of children during the Holocaust like drawings, magazines, games, diaries and jokes
- Justifying the Unjustifiable. The perpetrators' narratives of the murder of children during and after the Holocaust

Please submit abstracts of 500 words and a short bio until the first of November 2024. The language of submission can be English or Ukrainian. Article proposals can be submitted to Eastern European Holocaust Studies at eehs@degruyter.com to the guest-editors, Aiko Hillen (University of Cologne), Albert Hytry (Sorbonne University / Yahad - In Unum), and the editor Andrea Peto (CEU). Authors will be notified of acceptance shortly after. Part of the publication process will be an online workshop for the authors, where they have the opportunity to present their articles in advance and receive productive feedback.

https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/eehs/html#specialIssues

Berlin, 9-11 October 2024

Partant du constat que la mémoire coloniale reste encore vivace chez un bon nombre de populations qui ont connu la colonisation, il s’avère important de regrouper les scientifiques de la question dans un creuset de réflexion pour les jeunes chercheurs. Ainsi, en collaboration avec le centre Marc Bloc de Berlin ainsi que la fondation des jardins de Prusse et l’Association des historiens et Archéologues du Togo organise un colloque s’intéressant à la question de lu colonialisme allemand en Afrique. Ce colloque, en prenant en compte une approche pluridisciplinaire est une formidable opportunités pour creuser davantage les différentes facettes du modèle colonial allemand en Afrique. Il se déroulera du 9 au 11 octobre à Berlin en Allemagne. Il sera animé par des scientifique travaillant les questions coloniales venus d’Allemagne et d’Afrique.

Présentation

Ce début d’automne, le Centre Marc Bloch organisera, en collaboration avec la Fondation des Jardins de Prusse, l’Université de Lomé, la Humboldt-University of Berlin et l’Association des Historiens et Archéologues du Togo (AHAT) un colloque pour jeunes chercheurs et chercheuses consacré exclusivement aux nouvelles approches interdisciplinaires de l’écriture de l’histoire de la colonisation allemande en Afrique. Il sera question durant cette rencontre de présenter les nouvelles facettes ainsi que les paradigmes qui structurent une nouvelle façon de voir le processus colonial sous tous ses angles, notamment : le problème de la restitution des objets spoliés, l’histoire de l’art et la photographie coloniale, la question mémorielle, le révisionnisme colonial et la médecine coloniale. Le colloque qui aura lieu du 9 au 11 octobre 2024 et sa direction est assurée par le Prof. Martin Vogtherr de l’Université Technique de Berlin.

Dans le processus réécriture scientifique du passé colonial il est/était nécessaire, voire légitime de repenser le colonialisme allemand avec des narratifs, permettant de mettre à jour ce passé oublié, ou caché dans les sources dites « muettes[1] ». Cet impératif pose certaines interrogations qui méritent d’être posé durant le colloque à savoir : Comment repenser et réorienter les paradigmes de l’écriture de l’histoire de la colonisation ; Quels sont les nouveaux défis qu’il faudrait relever au moment où la question mémorielle du modèle de colonisation allemand ressurgit ? Quelles nouvelles approches permettent de réinventer et revisiter les aspects dits « invisibles » provenant des sources artistiques et photographiques ? Au-delà de ces questions d’autres questions secondaires seront parallèlement abordées, à titre d’exemple : comment les certaines images et photographies coloniales sont réduites au silence et qu’est ce qui se cache derrière ce silence ? Comment les œuvres muséale, images de la colonisation et les vestiges de ce dernier –par leur dimension de représentation et de recherche – s’expriment de manière fidèle ? Dans la photographie en rapport avec la colonisation (K. Azamede) apparaissent d’une part les « sujets » coloniaux, et d’autre part les « atrocités » de la colonisation, qui soulèvent un regard postcolonial. Bien que le colonialisme remonte à plusieurs décennies, il demeure encore dans la mémoire collective (des anciens colonisés comme les colonisateurs) et son héritage éveille encore le rapport avec la littérature à caractère colonial, la littérature de voyage ainsi que les musées et monuments.

Dans ce contexte postcolonial ce colloque se penche sur les approches méthodologiques en donnant la parole aux historiens et historiens de l’art, aux spécialistes en études culturelles, aux Sociologues et par-delà aux littéraires, puisque la colonisation et l’expansion coloniale a aussi joué un grand rôle, non seulement lors de la spoliation sécrète et parfois violente des objets d’arts et cultuels, mais aussi dans les productions littéraires et filmiques qui attirent une attention particulière sur le pillage, l’art spolié, et les collections.

L’approche réductrice liée aux narratifs historiques purs, devrait être plus élargie aux sociologues, aux anthropologues, de mêmes que les juristes (il est clair que le regard d’un ethnologue sur le processus colonial est plus ou moins différent de celui d’un économiste ou d’un politologue vu la diversité des domaines dans lesquels la colonisation a été impliqué) ; ce qui justifie la nécessité des regards croisés et approches interdisciplinaires des sciences humaines et sociales. L’émergence des approches récentes de l’écriture de l’histoire de la colonisation n’est plus à démontrer (approches de l’histoire de l’art et muséale) ainsi que la résurgence du débat sur la restitution et par-delà la réparation, en passant par le révisionnisme et la mémoire coloniale.

Afin de créer un espace de dialogue ouvert et international entre universitaires, chercheurs et étudiants qui mènent des travaux sur la colonisation allemande ou qui ont déjà consacré des études sur la question (pas seulement sous un angle historico-culturel, mais aussi artistique, socio-anthropologique ou encore littéraire), le Centre Marc Bloch –dans sa mission d’encourager la recherche et la discussion scientifique, interdisciplinaire de par son caractère binational – a décidé de donner à travers ce colloque un espace d’échanges et de discussion qui sera ouvert à partir de la matinée du 10 octobre par le Prof. Martin Vogtherr, Directeur Général de la Fondation des Jardins et Châteaux de Prusse (en abrégé : SPSG) à Potsdam. En outre, le Colloque bénéficiera d’un riche programme varié et constitué de panels diversifiés, à caractère international et enrichissant. L’évènement sera clôturé par la présentation d’une personne référence sur la question.

Programme Le 9 octobre 2024

9h00 Arrivée et accueil des participants. Meet and Great. Accompagnement à l’hôtel

• 14h00-16h00 Rencontre avec les responsables du Centre Marc Bloch. J. Rowell/ E. Möller

Le 10 octobre 2024

8h30 – 09h15 Enregistrement et installation des participants/ invités Fogang T./ L. Keutner

• 9h15 – 09h30 Mot de bienvenue et ouverture de la cérémonie par les responsables du Centre. J. Rowell/ E. Möller
• 9h30 – 10h15 Présentation des Participants et conférences inaugurale (Keynote) – Exposé inaugural (Pr. Vogtherr). S. Baller (Moderation)

10h15 – 10h30 Photo de famille et pause-café

• 10h30 – 12h00 Exposés en plénière et discussions panel 1 : Reconstitution of the colonial traces and cultural history of colonial rule. (Reconstitution des traces de la colonisation et histoire culturelle de l’ordre colonial)

Président·e :  Dr. S. Baller

Modération : Chandra Feupeussi

• 1- Mbog Ibock : LA MÉMOIRE HISTORIQUE DU CIMETIÈRE MILITAIRE ALLEMAND DE YAOUNDE (1884- 1912) /Université de Douala
• 2- Ndayisaba éric : Sur les traces du passé allemand au Burundi : Histoire et mémoire du patrimoine colonial / ENS Bujumbura
• 3- Kouzan Koffi : Le palais des gouverneurs de Lomé : un emblème de la colonisation allemande au Schutzgebiet Togo (1898-1914) / Université de Lomé
• 4- Clarisse Nzeuchieu : Les facettes féminines au Kamerun : une redéfinition des acteur·ice-s de la violence coloniale, 1884-1915 /Université de Dschang.       

12h00 – 12h15 Pause-Santé     

• 12h15 – 14h15 Exposés en plénière et discussions panel 2 : Colonialism, revisionism, and the processing of narratives in the culture of remembrance. (Colonialisme, révisionnisme et mise à jour des narratifs dans la culture mémorielle)

Président·e : Dr. Romain Tiquet/

• 1- Fogang Toyem : Seuchenbekämpfungen in Kolonialbesitzen unter der deutschen Kolonialherrschaft (1890-1916) : Vom medizinischen Diskurs zur kolonialen Medikalisierung/ Humboldt-University of Berlin
• 2- Leo Keutner : Die Branntweinfrage vor dem Hintergrund vorkolonialer Geschichte Togos / Gerda Henkel Stiftung (Dortmund)
• 3- Amoussou Moderan/Gabriel Iiyambo :A German Horror Story, 1904-1912 : Remembering the deportation of Nama/Herero in Togo and Cameroon / Ruhr-Universität Bochum-University of Namibia
• 4- Abissi Angéline : LES FORMES PROTESTATAIRES ENDOGENES ET LES RESISTANCES AU TRAVAIL FORCE AU CAMEROUN SOUS ADMINISTRATION ALLEMANDE (1884 -1914) / Université de Douala
• 5- Kwami Agbeve : La rigueur allemande dans l’imaginaire des Togolais : entre nostalgie et aliénation / Université de Lomé. 

14h15 – 15h00 Déjeuner et fin de la journée    

Le 11 octobre 2024

• 09h30 – 11h00 Exposés en plénière et discussions panel 3 : Restitution, art history and colonial photography. (Restitution, histoire de l’art et photographie coloniale)

Président.e : Dr. J. Sissia

• 1- Jie-Jie : Spoliation des biens culturels issus des ex-colonies allemandes d’Afrique : la difficile problématique de la restitution (cas du trône Bamoun au musée de Berlin) /Université de Bertoua. 
• 2- Mbeng Dang : La problématique de la réappropriation des œuvres d’art de la période coloniale allemande au Kamerun : l’exemple du musée de Berlin /Université de Douala
• 3- Barbara Traumann : [Früher] Film und der Restitutions-Eklat von 1925 /Filmuniversität Konrad-Wolf 4- KOKOU AGBANYO : Deutsche koloniale Bauten und Ehrenmäler in Kolonialafrika : Überlegungen über die Bedeutung des Kulturerben in der Postmoderne / Technische Universität Berlin -Université de Lomé.    

11h00 – 11h30 Pause-Café        

• 11h30 – 13h30 Exposés en plénière et discussions panel 4 : Colonial revisionism and postcolonial representations of the memory process. (Révisionnisme colonial et représentations postcoloniales du processus mémoriel)

Président·e : Dr. Perpetual N.

• 1- Pascal Ongossi : Cette Afrique-là ! : Une mémoire postcoloniale de l’ère allemande /Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena
• 2- Kam Kah Henry/Metangwe Ebune :Debates in the Cameroonian Press about Restitution of Art Works to the Country /University of Buea
• 3- Ibrahima Sene :Les voix de la diaspora africaine et des pétitions sur l’héritage colonial (2019-2023) /Universität Bayreuth
• 4- Aqtime Edjabou : Les centres des dynamiques discursives des mémoires de la colonisation allemande au Togo /Université de KARA (Togo)
• 5- Anne D. Peiter : Überlegungen zu erinnerungspolitischen Leerstellen bezüglich der deutschen Kolonialisierung Ruandas / Université de la Réunion         

13h30 – 14h30 Exposé final et épilogue : Yan Legall - Président Ahat /Technical University of Berlin -Université de Lomé -  Ouverture du débat

Fin des cérémonies

Note

[1] Ce sont les vestiges. C’est-à-dire tous les restes du passé comme les monuments, les objets d’art, les ossements, les outils, les bijoux etc…

Naples (Italy) and online, 5–6 December 2024

Organisers:
-  NextGenerationEU Project ‘Ondine’ (Dep. History, Humanities and Society – Tor
Vergata University of Rome);
-  Institute of History of Mediterranean Europe of the Italian National Research Council
(ISEM-CNR).
Dates and location: Naples, 5–6 December 2024 at Fondazione Banco di Napoli, and remotely
Languages: English and Italian  
Under the patronage of: Istituto Nazionale Ferruccio Parri and Fondazione ISEC
 
The workshop aims to highlight the multifaced and dynamic nature of gendered, economic, and
cultural practices in everyday life in maritime contexts in Early Modern and Modern times (17th–20th
centuries).  
 
The analytical tools for studying everyday life are manifold. What all approaches and methodologies
have in common is that they operate as critiques of everyday life. In other words, all possible
approaches have to analyse the ‘structures of the everyday’ (Braudel 1967, 1979) and/or how it was
experienced and produced over time more than the everyday itself (Olson 2011).
 
The first to introduce the concept of everyday – precisely the notions of routine and repetition – into
historiography was Braudel (1967, 1979), who through his ‘historical imagination’ emphasised what he
called ‘material civilisation’, i.e. the ways that women and men had of producing, exchanging, eating,
living, and reproducing at the dawn of capitalism. Braudel’s approach found inspiration in Lefebvre’s Critique de la vie quotidienne, vol. I (1947) and Matérialisme dialectique (1949), the works in which the French philosopher recognised daily life as the place par excellence of production – of a material, social and cultural nature – and appropriation. In this sense, everyday life becomes the battleground – or mediation ground – among nature, capitalism and human beings. It is also where individuals articulate (i.e. appropriate) themselves (Lefebvre 1947, 1949, 1961).During the 1980s in West Germany, the historiographical investigation of everyday life experienced a new impetus. The Alltagsgeschichte (Lüdtke, Medick) sprouted from the will to analyse the lives and survival strategies of the ‘nameless’ multitudes, the aspirations and everyday struggles of the kleine Leute (little/ordinary people) (Lüdtke 1989), the ‘peoples without history’ (Wolf 1982) or those ‘left behind’.This specific approach of ‘history from below’ principally aims to harmonise the micro and the macro levels of analysis by relating the everyday experiences of ordinary people with the major configurations/transformations of a political, economic, and social nature. On those bases, Alltagsgeschichte interprets human practices and experiences as inseparable from the context in which they originated. Moreover, since the everyday is the space of individuals’ articulation, any aspect of human practice in the everyday is a cultural matter.
 
As for gender aspects, we know that it is the everyday that makes ‘feminine women’ and ‘masculine men’ (Holmes 2009). Moreover, since there is almost an automatism in the association between the everyday and ‘women’s affairs’ and experiences, often women’s (daily) activities are considered trivial and oversimple, thus not worthy of analysis or interpretative effort (Lefebvre 1961; Randal 2008). In maritime social contexts, the issue is further complicated. If, on the one hand, in the last forty years, historiography has recognised the value of domesticity and female (re)productive contribution in fishing communities (Thompson et al. 1983; Norling 2000), on the other, port cities continue to be
considered ‘normal’ strongholds of masculinity and male (economic, social, and cultural) production.
 
Given the premises, we are soliciting proposals that deal with:
-  Economic practices in maritime environments (e.g. labour, business, and consumption); abstracts with a gender focus (i.e. history of women, masculinities, and LGBTQ+ communities) will be given priority;
-  Gender relations and production in maritime contexts; abstracts with an economic focus (i.e. labour, business, consumption, household management, and care of the person) will be given priority;  
-  (Pop) Representations and narratives of everyday maritime life (e.g. exhibitions, festivities, documentaries): abstracts with a gender and/or economic angle will be given priority.

Moreover, we would particularly welcome:
-  Proposals based on ‘non-official’ historiographic sources (e.g. paintings, photographs, comics, films, songs, etc.);  
-  Proposals that focus on gender, economic and cultural practices in imperial/colonial city-ports;
-  Proposals from scholars from disciplines other than history (e.g. anthropology, sociology, economics).
 
Please send your 20-minute presentation proposal to Erica Mezzoli at everyday.naples2024@gmail.com by 15 September 2024. The proposal should include:
- max 300-word abstract in English;
- max 250-word bio profile in English with affiliation, position and contact information;
- the language the proponent would prefer to communicate: Italian or English;
- the modality the proponent would prefer to communicate: in person in Naples or remotely.
 
The workshop is organised in the framework of the NextGenerationEU Project ‘Ondine. Women’s Labour and Everyday Life on the Upper and Eastern Adriatic Waterfronts, mid-19th century–mid-20th century’ (Funded by EU; CUP E53C22002420001) hosted by the Department of History, Humanities and Society of the Tor Vergata University of Rome.

Winter School at the University of Tübingen, 09 - 11 October 2024

The Exploring Gender, Human Capital, and Labour Intersections in Economic History winter school is an interdisciplinary meeting of economic and labour historians, and development and labour economists focused on discussing the interplay between gender, human capital, and labour. To understand how these developed over the past centuries, it is necessary to understand how they are linked and interact with each other as observing them in isolation provides only a partial picture. For example, recent publications highlight the centrality of labour and its relation to human capital in the emergence of modern economic growth, as well as the variegated working experiences of individuals based on their gender and ethnicity. At the same time, the relationship between human capital and gender has attracted attention, such as in ongoing debates around the effects of human capital on fertility and marriage patterns as well as the long-run legacies of colonial education systems on gender inequality. Other dimensions, such as the value of reproductive labour, inspire researchers to address questions around the relationship between gender and labour. Hence, together in this winter school, we will explore and discuss these intersections to contribute to a broader understanding of their past development.

The winter school will provide a platform for scholars to share research, approaches, and methodologies for studying labour, gender inequalities, and the evolution of human capital. It comprises two days of academic presentations and a one-day methodological workshop. The methodological workshop consists of two parallel sessions: the first will explore the ways in which marginalized groups can be included in linked census datasets, while the second will provide insight into the processes of establishing and digitizing an archive. The methods workshop will enable researchers to develop their methodological toolkit, including techniques for exploring the winter school's core themes.

 

Keynotes will be given by:​

Prof. Jane Humphries | London School of Economics​

Assoc. Prof. Dácil Juif | Universidad Carlos III de Madrid​

​

Methodological workshops will be given by:​

Dr. Ryah Thomas | WU Wien​

Dr. Bruno Witzel de Souza | Georg-August-University Göttingen​

  Call for Papers

For the academic presentations we explicitly welcome contributions from across time and geographic areas. Abstracts no longer than 500 words and a CV should be submitted to econhist.tuebingen[at]gmail.com. Deadline is 7 August 2024. 

A limited number of stipends is available for travel and accommodation. 

 

Organisers:

Sarah Ferber​

Sophia Jung ​

Dr. Moritz Kaiser​

Caroline Namubiru​

 

https://sites.google.com/view/econhist-wstue2024

Workshop in Bielefeld (Germany), 12 to 14 September 2024

Containerisation began in the 1960s and massively reshaped the global flow of goods since the 1980s. While there is a plethora of economically oriented research on containerisation, much less is known about the people who un/load, process and move containers. Containerisation not only deeply affected dock work but was also accompanied by intermodal transport, the globalised movement of standardized containers between different transport modules. Moreover, containerisation had tremendous repercussions on port security. Thus, dock work, security and intermodal transport are the three integral fields studied at the workshop, which will geographically focus on North America, Europe, and Asia.

Containerisation and Dock Labour since the 1960s: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Work, Security, and Intermodal Transport in an Uncertain Setting

The main aim of the interdisciplinary workshop is to reformulate established and to elaborate new and innovative interpretations of containerised dock labour which are historically informed, socially rooted and culturally sensitive. The approach of the workshop is open to bottom-up perspectives and follows an understanding of globalisation which includes trans-local connections and entanglements. First steps towards employing relational micro-perspectives on containerised dock labour should also be made. A general aim is not only to foster a focused exchange of international scholars from several disciplines but also to initiate mutual learning.
Three main questions and their changes over time will be discussed in all panels:
- First, how has containerisation affected the three sectors (work, security, intermodal transport) of integrated dock labour and vice versa? Particular attention will be paid to the transitional phase from traditional to containerised dock labour.
- Second, what kind of (collective) actions were taken by dock workers in containerised settings, which self-perceptions of and public narratives about dock work(ers) can we find?
- Third, what can be gained analytically from seeing the multiple uncertainties of integrated relational dock work and containerisation not only as threats but also as opportunities for change and innovation?

Programm

Containerisation and Dock Labour since the 1960s: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Work, Security, and Intermodal Transport in an Uncertain Setting
(September 12-14, 2024, Bielefeld, ZiF)

Thursday, September 12
13.00-14.00 Registration and Snacks
14.00-14.30 Welcome / Aims of the Workshop

14.30- 18.00 Keynotes
Chair: Klaus Weinhauer (Bielefeld, D)
14.30-15.15Marcel van der Linden (Amsterdam, NL): Dock Labour and Global Labour History

15.15-15.45 Tea / Coffee

15.45-16.30 Hege Hoyer Leivestad (Oslo, NO): Containerization and Dock Labour: What can anthropology bring to the table?

16.30-18.00Discussion

18.30 Dinner at ZiF

Friday, September 13
09.00- 11.00 Panel 1, Dock Labour in Europe and in the USA
Comment / Chair: Lex Heerma van Voss (Amsterdam, NL)
Peter Turnbull (Bristol, UK): Europe
Peter Cole (Macomb, USA): US-Westcoast

11.00-11.30Tea / Coffee

11.30-13.30 Panel 1 continued: Dock Labour in Asia
Comment / Chair: Lex Heerma van Voss (Amsterdam, NL)
Rahul Maganti (Göttingen, D): Bombay
Laura Yan (Cambridge, UK): Singapore
Greig Taylor (Dubai, UAE): Vietnam

13.30-14.30Lunch

14.30-16:30 Panel 2: Container Logistics and Social-Political Responses: Practices of Comparing in a Logistics Revolution
Comment / Chair: Birte Förster (Bielefeld, D)
Chris King-Chi Chan (London, UK): (Hong-Kong): Social Movements and Port Development
Jesse Halvorsen (Los Angeles, USA): US-West Coast: Intermodal Transport

16.30-17.00Tea / Coffee

19:00 Dinner

Saturday, September 14
9.00-11.00 Panel 3: Ports in Times of Uncertainty
Comment / Chair: Silke Schwandt (Bielefeld, D)
Giorgos Poulimenakos (Oslo, NO): Port of Piraeus: The local and the global
Marcus Boeick (Cambridge, UK): Security in Ports

11.00-11.30 Tea / Coffee

11.30-12:30 Final debate and closing

Contact

Interested colleagues please register until August 20, 2024 at:
zif-conference-office@uni-bielefeld.de
Ms. Taugheda Helterhof

https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/einrichtungen/zif/events/#/event/7404

Slaveries and Post-Slaveries » Journal

This issue examines the long-term situation of Middlemen, both under slavery and in the post-slavery era. Enslaved themselves, overseers, and occasionally even recruiters of workers after the abolition of slavery, these intermediaries in the chain of command of coerced labor were essential to the smooth functioning of the slave and post-slave system. What role did they play? Were they agents of coercion or of worker protection?

Theme of this Issue

Within the vast topic of coercive labor, middlemen, who stood at the intersection of free, enslaved, and indentured status, play a central but relatively neglected role in historiography. This issue examines their long-term situation, both under slavery and in the post-slavery era. In slave-owning societies, for example, it is important to understand the role of plantation overseers. Enslaved themselves, overseers, and occasionally even recruiters of workers after the abolition of slavery, these intermediaries in the chain of command of coerced labor were essential to the smooth functioning of the slave and post-slave system. What role did they play? Were they agents of coercion or of worker protection?

Naturally, these relationships extended beyond the plantation; middlemen played an equally important role in family relations (e.g., as nannies) and in urban and commercial activities (slave traders, peddlers).

These questions need to be addressed both in terms of time – slavery and post-slavery – and space (the Americas, Africa, the Indian Ocean, Eurasia, etc.) in order to grasp the specific characteristics of plantation overseers in different geographical areas and periods. We will also examine whether the role of these overseers changed with the abolition of slavery and how, depending on the region, the type of crop (cotton, sugar, coffee, etc.), the production techniques (farm or factory work), or the type of activity (trade, domestic work). Do these factors also condition the race and gender variables of the workers and the race- and gender-defined attitudes of the slave drivers themselves? In what ways?

Before arriving at the plantation, the role of middlemen is equally central to the trafficking of captives, a phenomenon that has been relatively well documented since the early modern period. In the Atlantic, trans-Saharan, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, and Eurasian slave trades, several powers intervened, relying on local personnel (recruiters, translators, overseers, etc.) who had to be identified and then followed until the “Middle Passage” or deportation to the place of work. After the abolition of slavery, these individuals were sometimes themselves responsible for the activities of the workers’ and their supervision in the various areas mentioned.

Scientific Editor

Alessandro Stanziani, CNRS-EHESS

Submission Procedures

Articles (no more than 45,000 characters, including spaces and references) should be submitted in French, English, Spanish or Portuguese to ciresc.redaction@cnrs.fr

by March 1, 2025.

They should be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 3,600 characters including spaces. The full list of recommended guidelines is available here. Articles will then undergo double-blind peer review.

Final versions of accepted articles must be submitted by December 1, 2025.

Selected References

• Almeida Mendes António de, 2008. “Les réseaux de la traite ibérique dans l’Atlantique Nord (1440-1640),” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, no. 63/4, pp. 739–768.
• Balachandran Gopalan, 1996. “Searching for the Sardar: The State, Pre-Capitalist Institutions and Human Agency in the Maritime Labour Market, Calcutta 1880–1935’,” in Burton Stein & Sanjay Subramanyam (eds.), Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia, Delhi/New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 206–236.
• Carter Marina, 1995. Servants, Sirdars and Settlers. Indians in Mauritius, 1834-1874, Delhi/New York, Oxford University Press.
• Coquery-Vidrovitch Catherine, 2021. Les Routes de l’esclavage. Histoire des traites africaines, vie-xxe siècle, Paris, Albin Michel.
• Manjapra Kris, 2018. “Plantation Dispossession : The Global Travel of Agricultural Racial Capitalism,” in Sven Beckert & Christine Desan, American Capitalism. New Histories, New York, Columbia University Press, pp. 361–388.DOI : 10.7312/beck18524-016
• Mark-Thiesen Cassandra, 2012. “The ‘Bargain’ of Collaboration: African Intermediaries, Indirect Recruitment, and Indigenous Institutions in the Ghanaian Gold Mining Industry, 1900–1906,” International Review of Social History, no. 57/S20, special issue, pp. 17–38.DOI :10.1017/S0020859012000405 r 2012
• Newson Linda A., 2012. “Africans and Luso-Africans in the Portuguese Slave Trade on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Journal of African History, no. 53, pp. 1–24.
• Roy Tirthankar, 2008. “Sardars, Jobbers, Kanganies: The Labour Contractor and Indian Economic History,” Modern Asian Studies, no. 42/5, pp. 971-998. DOI : 10.1017/S0026749X07003071
• Sandy Laura, 2012. “Homemakers, Supervisors, and Peach Stealing Bitches: the role of overseers’ wives on slave plantations in eighteenth-century Virginia and South Carolina,” Women’s History Review, no. 21/3, pp. 473–494. DOI : 10.1080/09612025.2012.661157
• Stanziani Alessandro, 2018. Labor on the Fringes of Empire. Voice, Exit and the Law, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan.
• Stubbs Tristan, 2018. Masters of Violence. The Plantation Overseers of Eighteenth-Century Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, Columbia, University of South Carolina Press.
• Witzenrath Christopher (ed.), 2015. Eurasian Slavery, Ransom and Abolition in World History, 1200-1860, London, Routledge.

Liverpool University Press is pleased to inform you of the latest content in LABOUR HISTORY REVIEW, a highly regarded publication that is essential reading for those working in and researching social and political history, and the working lives and politics of 'ordinary' people.

Volume 89.2 includes articles on William Sharman Crawford and the politics of suffrage; boundary review and the organization and identity of the Peterborough Divisional Labour Party; the British Trade Union movement and Zionism, 1936–1967; plus, reviews of the latest books in the field.

Browse all articles >
Read a free issue >

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Table of contents

RESEARCH ARTICLES

‘THE MOST CONSISTENT OF THEM ALL’: WILLIAM SHARMAN CRAWFORD AND THE POLITICS OF SUFFRAGE

ANTHONY DALY

 

BOUNDARY REVIEW AND THE ORGANIZATION AND IDENTITY OF THE PETERBOROUGH DIVISIONAL LABOUR PARTY

SCOTT RAWLINSON

 

2023 LABOUR HISTORY REVIEW ESSAY PRIZE RUNNER-UP

NOT AN INDUSTRIAL MATTER: THE BRITISH TRADE UNION MOVEMENT AND ZIONISM, 1936–1967

JOHN RUSSELL

 

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS

 

Thomas Fleischman: Leigh Claire La Berge, Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023.

Stephen Hopkins: Brigitte Studer, Travellers of the World Revolution: A Global History of the Communist International, London and New York: Verso, 2023.

Quentin Outram: Jack Taylor, Oil, Nationalism and British Policy in Iran: The End of Informal Empire, 1941–53, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.

Mark Hurst: Matthew Gerth, Anti-Communism in Britain during the Early Cold War: A Very British Witch Hunt, London: University of London Press, 2023.

International Conference of the Network Labour Law History from a Global Perspective, Frankfurt am Main, 3-4 September 2024

Founders and Shapers of Labour Law. National and Transnational Perspectives

Following a successful conference in 2023, the Labour Law History from a Global Perspective network will meet for the second time, this year focusing on the law of labour from a biographical perspective. The focus will be on well-known labour lawyers, but also on people who have had an influence on labour law or the regulation of the world of work in other contexts. We are interested in what influence they had in their respective national contexts, as well as beyond – may that be transnational, transregional or translocal. The conference is co-organised by Johanna Wolf (MPILHLT) and Rebecca Zahn (Strathclyde University).

The conference will be hybrid. If you are interested in participating (in person or online), please send an email to wolf@lhlt.mpg.de until 25 August 2024.

Programm

Tuesdays, 03.09.2024
09:30–10:00 Arrival and Registration

INTRODUCTION 10:00–10:45
Thesis Paper on the State of the Art
Johanna Wolf (MPILHLT) / Rebecca Zahn (Strathclyde University)

Comment:
Christian G. De Vito (University of Vienna)

PANEL I / THE AMERICAS 10:45–12:00
Chair: Raquel R. Sirotti (MPILHLT)
Bora Laskin and the Shaping of Canadian Labour Law
Eric Tucker (Osgoode Hall Law School)

Slavery and Free Labour Under the Same Quill: Joze Thomaz Nabuco de Araujo and the Making of the Law of Labour in Nineteenth-Century Brazil
Marjorie Carvalho de Souza (Università del Salento)

12:00–13:00 Lunch break

PANEL II / AUSTRALIASIA 13:00–14:30
Chair: Prakhar Ganguly (MPILHLT)
The Eight Hour Day Movement and the Development of Australian Labour Law
John Howe (Melbourne Law School)

Transnational Legal Lives and Fiji's First General Strike 1920: Manilal Maganlal Shah
Jasmine Ali (Melbourne Law School)

Mediating Justice: Jurisprudence in India
Megha Sharma (Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence)

14:30–15:00 Coffee break

PANEL III / LAWYERS IN EXILE 15:00–16:30
Chair: Magdalena Gebhart (MPILHLT)
German Labour Lawyers in the British Exile
Rebecca Zahn (Strathclyde University)

Hugo Sinzheimer’s Influence in the Netherlands
Robert Knegt (University of Amsterdam, Hugo Sinzheimer Institute Amsterdam)

The Impact of German Exiles on Labour Law in Argentina: The Case of Ernesto Karz and Ernesto Krotoschin
Leticia Vita and Julieta Lobato (University of Buenos Aires)

17:00–18:00 Dinner

FIRESIDE CHAT: HOW DO WE REMEMBER LABOUR LAWYERS. THE ARCHIVING OF LEGACIES 18:00–19:00
Chair: Rebecca Zahn
Pascal Annerfelt (Hugo Sinzheimer Institute)
Anja Kruke (Archive of Social Democracy)
Paul Smith (Wedderburn Legacy)

Wednesday, 04.09.2024
PANEL IV / EUROPEAN NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES 10:00–11:30
Chair: Nina Cozzi (MPILHLT)
Paal Berg and Norwegian Labour Law
Alexander Sønderland Skjønberg (BI Norwegian Business School)

Gino Giugni
Irene Stolzi (University of Florence)

Eugenia Pragier and the Quest for Women's Labour Protection in Poland
Natalia Jarska (Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences)

PODCAST ON AFRICAN LEGAL HISTORY – HISTORY OF THE INVISIBLE 11:30–12:15
Chair: Johanna Wolf (MPILHLT)
Raquel R. Sirotti (MPILHLT)

12:15–13:15 Lunch break

PANEL V / EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES 13:15–14:45
Chair: Manfred Weiss (Goethe University)
Eliane Vogel-Polsky
Anna Quadflieg (MPILHLT)

Between Paris, Geneva and Beyond: Albert Thomas, From National to International Labour Legislation
Adeline Blaskiewicz (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Paul Pic and the Others. The Transnational Insight of European Legal Culture on Labour at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries
Virginia Amorosi (University of Naples “Frederico II”)

14:45–15:00 Coffee break

FINAL COMMENT 15:00–15:45
Thorsten Keiser (Justus Liebig University)
Stefan Berger (Institute for Social Movements)

Kontakt

wolf@lhlt.mpg.de

https://www.lhlt.mpg.de/events/38352/2077701

New Delhi/India, 17 to 21 February 2025

Actors and spaces have been at the forefront of global history, and we propose to probe a particular type of actor: intermediaries, and a particular type of space: intermediate places. This helps us investigate what lies in-between, the transitions and transformations people experienced in the past and experience in the present. In this Winter School, we aim to benefit from such insights in order to explore intermediaries and intermediate places.

inter School: In-between - Intermediaries and Intermediate Places in Global Labour - Past & Present

Labour history has experienced a profound change in the last twenty years, moving away from a Eurocentric model spotlighting the male, Western industrial worker to a global labour history that seeks to explore labourers, labour regimes and labour relations in different places and different time periods. Importantly, this has led to a questioning of any straightforward free-unfree divide which posits a shift from unfree to free labour that followed a scheme(s) of “modernisation”. In the last decades, labour historians have highlighted the need to move beyond the ‘free’/‘unfree’ divide (van der Linden and Brass, 1997; van der Linden 2008), expanding the range of labour relations under study, and insisting on the relevance of a processual perspective. Especially the latter approach highlights the complex making of labour coercion, and offers the possibility to rethink key concepts, e.g. the ‘working class’, and periodisations in labour history, questioning also the binary approach of ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ labour (De Vito, Schiel and van Rossum, 2020; Schiel and Heinsen, forthcoming).

This new approach has emphasised how ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ and in-between forms of labour co-exist and even reinforce each other.

Furthermore, actors and spaces have been at the forefront of global history, and we propose to probe a particular type of actor: intermediaries, and a particular type of space: intermediate places. This helps us investigate what lies in-between, the transitions and transformations people experienced in the past and experience in the present. In this Winter School, we aim to benefit from such insights in order to explore intermediaries and intermediate places.

Intermediate places include a wide variety of spaces where people have been forced to stay for a limited or transitional period of time, for example the ships which brought enslaved and indentured people to their owners or work sites, or convicts to penal colonies. Other examples include prisons and jails, penal settlements, concentration or prisoner of war camps, gulags, market places, work and living sites of indentured labourers, holding pens, depots where indentured and enslaved people were held, ports, private households, farmers, rural and other workers, who were evicted and had to take refuge in temporary settlements, which could include roadside settlements, school grounds, or public land. For some, time spent in such places were limited, for others it could span years, even decades, and for yet others it might have been a place where they died.

Intermediaries are understood here as people in intermediary positions and contexts. Intermediaries can and could be people who were coerced to inhabit such roles, such as enslaved or indentured overseers, indentured people, convicts, working as overseers, warders, or night-watchmen, or watchwomen, inmates of gulags or concentration camps, i.e. people in coerced contexts, holding a position of power, who, even though they were subjected to a coerced environment, held positions of power, as well as everyone in-between or who moved from one role to another (Arnold, 2015; Dimmers, 2023; Walker, 2007; Wiethoff, 2006). At the same time we want to explore intermediate roles for free or freer intermediaries, who worked and work in same or similar roles as coerced intermediaries and additionally for example as brokers, moneylenders, protectors of immigrants, or recruiters and traders (Bates, Carter, 2017; Delbourgo, 2009; Schaffer, Roberts, Raj, 2009; Schwecke 2021a, 2021b).

We welcome paper proposals that explore these topics in the past and present.

PhD students are invited to submit a paper proposal (approx. 500 words), abstract, a short summary of their argument, current affiliation, and short bio-note latest by 1 August, 2024 to: Michaela Dimmers, Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, New Delhi: dimmers@mwsindia.org

Subject: Winter school: In-between: Intermediaries and Intermediate Places

Candidates with PhD funding are expected to fund their trips. However, candidates without funding can apply in their application for support of their travel expenses.

You will be informed about the outcome of your application by 30 September, 2024.

Successful applicants will be expected to pre-circulate their papers among the participants by 1 December, 2024.

For further information and queries, please contact:

Michaela Dimmers, Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, New Delhi:
dimmers@mwsindia.org.

Contact (announcement)

Michaela Dimmers, Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, New Delhi: dimmers@mwsindia.org