Social and Labour History News

From Warfare to Welfare? Resocialisation and Democratisation after World War II

2 months ago
Conference in Odense M/Denmark from 8 to 9 October 2025

The conference will focus on societal and political challenges to postwar societies after World War II. The aim is to discuss how and if former collaborators, refugees, resistance fighters and other groups were reintegrated into societies after the war, and to what extent new ideas and practices of welfare, democratisation and resocialisation in postwar Europe influenced these processes.

From Warfare to Welfare? Resocialisation and Democratisation after World War II

How were former collaborators, displaced refugees, resistance fighters or war veterans reintegrated into societies after 1944/45? Did efforts to reintegrate them pave the way for welfare and democracy?

This international history conference on 8-9 October 2025 seeks to explore the processes of resocialisation and democratisation in postwar Europe.

The conference takes inspiration from ongoing research in Denmark (supported by VELUX FONDEN) at the University of Southern Denmark and three museums, which discusses to what extent authorities after the war tried to integrate German refugees into democratic frameworks and how the resocialisation of convicted collaborators as well as the reintegration of resistance fighters into postwar society was handled.

However, we aim to expand this scope to include broader geographical and historical perspectives.

By bringing together researchers from different disciplines and regions, this history conference seeks to contribute to broader understandings of how societies recover, rebuild, and lay the groundwork for democracy and inclusion in the wake of conflict.

We invite scholars to present their research on related topics in postwar European cases or in transnational comparisons.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Strategies for managing and reintegrating collaborators or former combatants.
- Narratives on punishment and resocialisation among convicted collaborators.
- Approaches to refugee resettlement.
- Democratisation of refugees and prisoners of war.
- Ideas of citizenship and welfare after the war.
- Welfare ambitions and ideals among the resistance movements.
- Policies addressing radicalisation and extremism in post-war societies.
- The role of state authorities in fostering reconciliation and citizenship.
- The role of civil society in fostering reconciliation and citizenship.
- Challenges faced by resistance fighters in adapting to peacetime societies.
- Recognition and commemoration: contested narratives and their social and political impact.
- The role of war victims in shaping post-war democratic and social policies.

Submission Details:
Please send proposals for contributions with a 300-word abstract and a brief bio to PHD Henrik Lundtofte, Archives of Danish Occupation History at Museum Vest hl@musvest.dk

Submission deadline is 1 May 2025. Accepted speakers will be notified by 15 June. We welcome submissions from established academics and early career researchers alike. Presentations will be 30 minutes, followed by discussion.

The conference will take place on 8-9 October 2025 at University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. Attendance and accommodation are free.

We prefer physical participation but are open to online talks as well. Contact: hl@musvest.dk

Kontakt

PhD Henrik Lundtofte hl@musvest.dk

7th Socialism on the Bench: Global Socialism and Non-Alignment

2 months ago

Conference in Pula/Croatia from 18 to 19 September 2025

The series of biennial international conferences Socialism on the Bench have been organised since 2013 by the Centre for Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism (CKPIS), Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia. Around a hundred participants per conference have been gathering to discuss different main themes. Selections of papers have been published in edited volumes and journals. This time the theme is defined as Global Socialism and Non-Alignment.

7th Socialism on the Bench: Global Socialism and Non-Alignment

The series of biennial international conferences Socialism on the Bench (Socijalizam na klupi) have been organised since 2013 by the Centre for Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism (CKPIS), at the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula. Around a hundred participants per conference have been gathering to discuss different main themes: Cultural and Historical Interpretations of Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Societies (2013), Socialism: Construction and Deconstruction (2015), Communists and Communist Parties: Policies, Actions, Debates (2017), Continuities and Innovations (2019), Antifascism (2021), and Crises and Reforms (2023). Selections of papers have been published in edited volumes and journals.

Recent years have been marked by war conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, challenges of the pandemics, shifting roles among global powers and continents, as well as growing migration, social tensions and environmental issues. By focusing on global socialism, the conference seeks to explore the reach of socialist ideas, their impact over the past century and a half, and their relevance to the present day, with particular emphasis on the period from the early 1950s to the late 1980s. This era saw socialism intersect with Cold War dynamics, decolonization and the rise of the Non-Aligned Movement. During this period, socialist ideas and revolutionary movements influenced societies across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Progress, cooperation, internationalism and peace often coexisted with conflict and competition in political, economic, cultural and other spheres. While maintaining a focus on the discourse and practice of socialism and non-alignment, their histories and legacies, the conference aims to address policies, ideologies, manifestations and actions on the international, national and local levels, both within and beyond the blocs, in Europe and the Global South, from the global stage to individual interactions within societies.

The conference programme will include three keynote speakers:

CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
TVRTKO JAKOVINA (University of Zagreb)
PAUL STUBBS (The Institute of Economics, Zagreb)

The goal of our conferences, as well as the entire mission of the Centre, remains the same: strengthening the cooperation among scholars with similar research interests, revealing thematic, methodological and theoretical similarities, getting to know different interpretations, enhancing dialogue and new research.

The conference languages are Croatian (and mutually understandable languages) and English. Participants’ presentation time is 15 minutes. We accept individual applications, but it is possible to indicate the desire to participate in a specific panel. It is also possible to suggest events like book launches and round tables.

The conference will be held at the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula (Faculty of Humanities, Aldo Negri Street/Negrijeva 6, Pula), and in partnership with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation SEE. There is no conference fee. Conference organizers will provide a meal per day and arrange a discount at the recommended hotel. Participants will have to arrange and cover their own trip and accommodation.

APPLICATION DEADLINE IS APRIL 1, 2025. By April 30, applicants will be notified about the acceptance of their proposal. For more information and the application form, please visit the conference website

https://www.unipu.hr/ckpis/en/socialism_on_the_bench/2025, or contact us at ckpis.conf@gmail.com.

Programm

Application process is open until April 1. Full programme will be available by June 30, and will include three keynotes and at least 65 participants. The programme starts on September 18 at noon and ends on September 20 early afternoon.

Kontakt

ckpis.conf@gmail.com

https://www.unipu.hr/ckpis/en/socialism_on_the_bench/2025

Transnational Pop Culture and Work

2 months ago

Discover Global Society: Special Issue on Transnational Pop Culture and Work

Guest Editors

  • Professor Anja Louis, Sheffield Creative Industries Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
  • Dr Will Kitchen, Department of Creative Industries, University of Chichester / Bournemouth Film School, Arts University Bournemouth, UK

Deadline for Full Chapter Submissions: 30th August 2025

This topical issue of Discover Global Society aims to explore the intersections of popular culture and labour across national boundaries, examining how global flows of media, film, music, literature, video games, fashion, and other cultural forms influence, and are influenced by, work practices, identities, and economies. Cultural products play a vital role in establishing, maintaining and transforming our shared experiences of labour – both the forms of behaviour that we adopt during working and leisure hours, as well as the values that determine our vocational choices, training, expectations and relationships. 

This special issue aims to compile a global dossier of interdisciplinary critical analysis to illuminate and challenge how the cultural metaphysics of modern labour are disseminated and negotiated by various forms of art, entertainment and community production. 

Topics of Interest:

We invite submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  • Global perspectives on the values of labour (i.e., the culturally constructed and ideologically determined meaning of 'success', 'creativity', 'skill', etc.)
  • Global perspectives on pop culture, wealth and social mobility
  • Sustainable cultural production in a global context
  • Global perspectives on leadership and pop culture
  • Global perspectives on craft and craftsmanship in pop culture
  • Financial and economic themes in pop culture production
  • The relationship between popular culture, labour, AI technology and other forms of automation 
  • The relationship between global pop cultures, work and gender
  • The impact of transnational media on local labour markets and work cultures
  • The role of pop culture in shaping transnational labour identities
  • Case studies of specific cultural industries (e.g., film, music, fashion) and their global labour dynamics
  • The influence of digital platforms on transnational work and cultural production
  • Comparative studies of pop culture and work in different regions
  • Theoretical approaches to understanding the relationship between pop culture and labour in a global context

Submission Guidelines

If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch with the Guest Editors at a.louis@shu.ac.uk and wkitchen@aub.ac.uk with the subject line “Special Issue Submission: Transnational Pop Culture and Work.”

IMPORTANT NOTE

All articles published by Discover Global Society are freely and permanently accessible online without subscription charges. However, please be advised that Authors are required to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC). We therefore strongly advise publication via research funding, and encourage authors – particularly early-career and precariously employed academics – to explore the options below: 

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover APCs and other open access publishing costs. For more information, please visit: https://link.springer.com/journal/44282/how-to-publish-with-us.

For a list of the 350 global funding organizations that can help cover the APC, visit: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-science/funding.

For information about fee waivers and discounts for scholars from particular global regions, please visit: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-science/policies/journal-policies/apc-waiver-countries.

The Guest Editors do not personally receive any financial remuneration from Springer Nature.

Contact Information

Please submit articles via the link: https://link.springer.com/collections/ahbhaibhbi

Professor Anja Louis, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Dr Will Kitchen, University of Chichester / Arts University Bournemouth, UK

Contact Email wkitchen@aub.ac.uk

Indispensables et indésirables Les travailleurs coloniaux de la Grande Guerre (French)

2 months ago

by Laurent Dornel

Quelques mois après le déclenchement de la Première Guerre mondiale, le gouvernement français décide de mobiliser des dizaines de milliers de travailleurs dans les colonies afin de pallier la grave pénurie de main-d'œuvre en métropole. Il s'agit d'organiser non seulement leur recrutement aux quatre coins de l'Empire – en Indochine, à Madagascar, en Afrique du Nord, et jusqu'en Chine –, mais aussi leur acheminement, leur affectation professionnelle et leur gestion quotidienne.
Cette vaste entreprise, première expérience d'immigration " organisée ", conduit quelque 220 000 hommes dans les usines et dans les exploitations agricoles de l'Hexagone. Et elle secoue en profondeur l'ordre racial et les habitudes coloniales héritées du XIXe siècle.
Les nouvelles circulations impériales font en effet émerger des problèmes inédits. Afin d'assurer la continuité de l'autorité coloniale, comment adapter le régime de l'indigénat en métropole ? Comment empêcher que ces travailleurs transplantés ne s'affranchissent du nouvel ordre disciplinaire que l'administration s'efforce de leur imposer ? Comment prévenir les amours interraciales qui subvertissent radicalement la domination coloniale ? Et que faire des enfants métis qui naissent en métropole ?
Alors que la participation des soldats mobilisés dans l'Empire français à partir de 1914 est désormais bien documentée, le sort des travailleurs coloniaux de la Grande Guerre, perçus comme à la fois indispensables et indésirables, demeure largement méconnu. À l'aide d'archives inédites, Laurent Dornel ouvre un nouveau pan historiographique et éclaire un épisode qui a durablement marqué l'histoire des migrations vers l'Hexagone.

https://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/indispensables_et_indesirables-9782…

Asynchronous Histories Summer School

2 months ago

First Edition: Conceptual Change

22–26 September 2025, Warsaw

The Asynchronous Histories Summer School aims to explore regions and moments in history marked by the coexistence of asynchronous sociopolitical tendencies and processes. These conditions often reveal paradoxical outcomes when seemingly well-established actors and mechanisms are put into practice. The absence—or inefficiency—of “The Great Synchronizer,” whether imperial order, centralized state apparatus, or the power of capital, has, in various periods and regions, created fertile grounds for blending the old and the new in unequal and unexpected ways.

Rather than viewing this coexistence of asynchronicities as a static phenomenon, we understand it as a dynamic and intricate process. In such situations, old forms may act as tools paving the way for new developments, while new forms may consolidate old arrangements, laws, and privileges. This interplay also triggers epistemological challenges, as research tools developed in global centres often fail to yield productive results when applied to these complex settings. This is why it is both challenging and indispensable to abandon normative definitions of phenomena and states of affairs in favour of listening to local actors, whose diversity ultimately calls into question apparently universal models and descriptions of reality—models that, in practice, are deeply rooted in Western centres.

In the first edition of the Asynchronous Histories Summer School, we seek to stimulate reflection on the theme of conceptual change, broadly understood. Our goal is to examine how concepts, ideas, and ideologies evolve amidst the coexistence of asynchronicities. We aim to move beyond binary perspectives, such as portraying given actors as never-fully-Western imitators or as guardians of domestic traditions. Instead, we propose thinking outside such frameworks, exploring the diverse intellectual stakes pursued by actors in the world’s “grey zones.”

Exemplary areas of inquiry include:

  1. Western ideologies in non-Western settings.
  2. Domestic political terminologies and procedures.
  3. Christian ideas in non-Christian worlds.
  4. Non-institutionalized areas of intellectual debate.
  5. Transfers as resistance; transfers as domination.
  6. Unrealized potentials, repressed imaginaries, and projects halted midway.
  7. Local academic traditions in the history of ideas or philosophy.

Confirmed Lecturers

Among the distinguished lecturers for the first edition are:

  • László Kontler (Central European University)
  • Franz Fillafer (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
  • Augusta Dimou (University of Leipzig)
  • Waldemar Bulira (University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska in Lublin)
  • Jan Surman (Academy of the Sciences of the Czech Republic)
  • Elías José Palti (University of Buenos Aires; National University of Quilmes)
  • Olena Palko (University of Basel)
  • Banu Turnaoglu (Sabancı University)
  • Maciej Janowski (Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences)
  • Jani Marjanen (University of Helsinki)

Organizing Institutions

Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw

in partnership with

Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences

The History of Concepts Group

Organizing Comittee

Anna Gulińska, Bartłomiej Błesznowski, Jan Krakowian, Piotr Kuligowski

Eligibility and Application

We welcome submissions from PhD students. Advanced MA students and early career postdocs (up to two years post-defence) are also encouraged to apply.

How to Apply

Please submit the following materials by May 31, 2025:

  • A short CV (maximum two pages).
  • A concise description of your research interests (up to 1,000 words).

Send your application to ahss.warsaw[at]gmail.com

Participation Fee

The participation fee is 150 EUR. In justified cases, this fee may be reduced.

Protecting Bodies at Work: Technical Devices, Materialities of Health, and Political Imaginaries

2 months ago

University of Geneva, September 18-19 2025

How have workers' bodies been protected in hazardous working environments? Masks, gloves, goggles, helmets, ventilators, fume hoods, radiation detectors, shields, and fuses are just some of the devices deployed to safeguard health and ensure safety in dangerous spaces. Beyond their materiality and functionality, they carry with them the stories of technical innovations, workers' resistances, social transformations, and adaptations to toxic and polluted environments. They also reveal the complex trade-offs involved in the governance of risks, always marked by tensions between industrial productivism, health preservation, and social justice, between assigning responsibility to individuals and to collectives, and between the temporalities of accidents and chronic illness. What can these objects teach us about the strategies that past and present societies have adopted to balance protection and exploitation, technical progress and bodily vulnerability, and the impacts of industrialization on public health and the environment?

The international conference Protecting Bodies at Work: Technical Devices, Materialities of Health, and Political Imaginaries aims to explore the history of health technologies from the Middle Ages to the present in workplaces, urban areas, and colonial contexts. Through multidisciplinary and transnational perspectives, this conference will investigate how health-related objects and devices have both shaped and been shaped by social, cultural, scientific, and industrial dynamics. We invite researchers from all disciplines to submit original contributions in the field of occupational health and environmental health, focusing on the materiality, symbolic significance, circulation, uses, and disuses of sanitary objects.

Imaginaries of Risk and Prevention
Health protection devices are more than practical solutions; they embody a complex interplay of materiality, scientific knowledge, and social imaginaries. Designed to address health concerns, they carry beliefs, values, and norms, reflecting the ambitions and contradictions of their time. Inspired by Gilbert Simondon’s notion of technical objects as mediators between humans and their environment, and the works of Sheila Jasanoff, Soraya Boudia and Nathalie Jas on how technologies co-construct societal values and power structures, this theme examines how health-related objects have been perceived over time. How do they symbolize concepts like “healthy work,” “clean air,” “industrial hygiene,” or “protected environment”? How do they reflect tensions between prevention and productivity, innovation and inequality? Who are the actors and institutions promoting these devices? Moving beyond a functional analysis, this theme explores objects as reflections of broader social, scientific, and political transformations.

Circulation of Objects and Reconfiguration of Space
Health protection devices can be seen as tools for conquering spaces deemed dangerous, hostile, or unhealthy, often designed for multiple uses. These devices act as "boundary objects," crossing and linking distinct realms such as workshops, hospitals, urban spaces, and natural environments. What knowledge, practices, and narratives accompany these circulations? How are these devices transformed or reinterpreted as they move between spaces or across national and cultural borders? This theme invites contributions exploring not only their circulation but also how their transnational movement reveals flows of ideas, knowledge, and techniques while shaping local and global public health norms, working conditions, and environmental challenges.

The Politics of Objects and Negotiated Uses
Health devices are deeply embedded in power dynamics. Imposed as solutions to industrial, epidemic, or environmental risks, they reflect sanitary norms advanced by employers, medical professionals, hygienists, or states. Yet, they also face resistance, reappropriation, or rejection. This theme explores these tensions, examining how such devices function as both instruments of control and catalysts for social change. How are these devices introduced and legitimized? How do workers or targeted populations perceive and adapt them in their daily lives? How do they reshape work routines or individual and collective relationships with health and the environment? By studying their uses, appropriations, or rejections, this theme sheds light on the power relations surrounding health devices and how they redefine interactions between employers, workers, scientific institutions, regulatory bodies, and the public, revealing the ongoing tensions between bodily health, productivity, social justice, and environmental health.

Submissions:

Proposals should include a brief description of the research question(s) and the sources to be studied (300–500 words), and a short biography (150 words).
Contributions in French or English are welcome, and those focusing on non-European contexts are particularly encouraged.

Submission Deadline: March 1, 2025

Send your proposals to: veronique.stenger@unige.ch, yohann.guffroy@unige.ch, bruno.strasser@unige.ch

Références principales / Main References :
1. Boudia, Soraya, and Nathalie Jas, editors. Powerless Science? Science and Politics in a Toxic World, Berghahn Books, 2014.
2. Bruno Anne-Sophie, Geerkens Éric, Hatzfeld Nicolas, Omnès Catherine (dir.), La santé au travail, entre savoirs et pouvoirs (19e-20e siècles), Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011
3. Greenlees Janet, When the Air Became Important: A Social History of the New England and Lancashire Textile Industries, Rutgers University Press, 2019.
4. Guignard, Laurence, et al., éditeurs. Corps et machines à l’âge industriel. Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011.
5. Jarrige, F. et Le Roux, T. La Contamination du monde. Une histoire des pollutions à l'âge industriel, Paris, Le Seuil, 2017.
6. Jasanoff Sheila, Sang-Hyun Kim (ed.) Dreamscapes of Modernity. Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, University of Chicago Press, 2015.
7. Moriceau, Caroline, Les douleurs de l'industrie: L'hygiénisme industriel en France, 1860-1914, Paris, Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2010.
8. Rainhorn Judith, Blanc de plomb. Histoire d'un poison légal, Paris, Les Presses de Sciences Po, 2019.
9. Rosental Paul-André (dir.), Silicosis. A World History, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.
10. Rosner, David, and Gerald Markowitz, eds. 1989. Dying for Work: Workers’ Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
11. Sellers Christopher, Hazards of the job: from industrial disease to environmental health science, Chapel Hill and London, University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
12. Weindling Paul (ed), The Social History of Occupational Health, London, Croom Helm, 1985.

How to Decolonize Political History

2 months ago

APH Conference, Antwerp, 18-20 June 2025

In the light of current geopolitical constellations, the contemporary resonance of political history seems more relevant than ever. At the same time, the subdiscipline of political historiography has struggled to maximize its global relevance and to overcome its own historical biases. One of the longstanding critiques of the field has targeted its elitist character. It was written by North Atlantic elites about North Atlantic elites, about the institutions they had created and the struggles they waged. New forms of history-writing that came into being since the last decades of the nineteenth century were meant to be more democratic alternatives to political history. When political history was reinvented at universities in the North Atlantic world since the 1990s, this reproach of elitism was addressed. ‘The political’ which became the object of the new political history was not the realm of the rich and mighty, but involved all aspects of life in which power relations are somehow negotiated.

Still, this renewal of political historiography largely took place within the boundaries of the North Atlantic world, and therefore tended to replicate its fundamental paradigms. This did not exclude a growing interest for colonization and decolonization as political processes, but the subdiscipline did hardly question its origins in an era of colonialism, and the stamp it still carries from them. The decolonization of history-writing, therefore, has mainly taken place outside the ‘new political history’, even if it is intrinsically a political undertaking. Subaltern studies, gender history, new imperial history, area studies are some of the fields where the decolonizing efforts have been made – much less so in political history strictly speaking.

The aim of this conference is precisely to catch up with this delay, and to ask what it can mean to decolonize the field of political history. Should it only mean that we study processes of political decolonization, or does such an approach, on the contrary, perpetuate the focus on the colonizer? Should decolonizing political history entail a focus on pre-colonial political structures and actors, and how they survived during and/or after the colonial period? Or should it also make us question the ways in which we tackle political history in the North Atlantic world, both in modern and early modern times? Is every attempt to view political history from the perspective of non-hegemonic groups a form of historiographical decolonization? And if we answer positively to that last question, wouldn’t that devalue the term decolonization as such? Is ‘decolonization’ the most appropriate paradigm to renew the field of political history, or do we need other concepts?

Rather than theoretical answers to these questions, we expect to gain insights in this matter through empirical and methodological approaches. We hope to receive papers in which authors present the results of their historical research through the lens of these questions, and by doing so reflect on the possibilities and the limits of a decolonizing approach for political historiography. Of particular interest are papers in which the methodological and infrastructural challenges for this approach are being tackled. Questions that have been at the core of other subdisciplines deserve to be treated from a political history perspective. What kind of sources should we use to uncover power relationships in nonliterate societies? To which degree and in which ways can we use concepts from North Atlantic societies to describe pre-colonial political realities? How can we overcome language gaps? Which contributions can scholars from other disciplines offer to the decolonization of political history? How can we stimulate collaboration between scholars from
different parts of the world in order to genuinely practice what Carola Dietze has called a “history on equal terms”?

We welcome proposals both for individual papers and for full panels (3-5 papers). These panels can be dedicated to specific regions, periods and/or topics, or they can focus on conceptual or methodological challenges. Potential titles of panels include “Decolonizing the Cold War”, “The persistence of pre-colonial political structures”, “Decolonial epistemologies”. We encourage the submission of panel proposals which do not exclusively consist of presenters from the North Atlantic, and we would be glad to receive proposals in which decolonial perspectives are applied to ongoing conflicts. We expect the proposals in English, but we promote multilingualism and linguistic flexibility during the panels.

Doctoral students and junior scholars are warmly encouraged to submit proposals. For doctoral scholars whose proposals are accepted, a preparatory webinar will be organized in spring. In this preparatory seminar, first drafts can be discussed, and suggestions with regard to the presentations will be offered.

Paper proposals should not exceed 500 words. Panel proposals should contain, moreover, an introduction of maximum 500 words, in which a rationale is given for bringing these specific papers together. Please send your proposals by 10 February at the latest to marnix.beyen@uantwerpen.be. The organizers will put everything to work to make the conference affordable and accessible for all participants.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Roland Ndille (Buea University), Jihane Sfeir (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Musa Sroor (Birzeit University), Adriana Salay (Universidade de São Paulo)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
Marnix Beyen (UAntwerpen, Margot Luyckfasseel (UAntwerpen), Burak Sayım (UAntwerpen), Jan Schmidt (KULeuven), Jihane Sfeir (Université Libre de Bruxelles),

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:
Anne-Sophie Gijs (UCLouvain), Gillian Mathys (Ghent University), Roland Ndille (Buea University, Cameroon), Adriana Salay (Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil), Roschanack Shaery-Yazdi (UAntwerpen), Musa Sroor (Birzeit University, Palestine)

https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/conferences/how-to-decolonize-political-hi…

Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools

2 months 1 week ago

by Christopher D. E. Willoughby

Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be viable as experimental subjects, as cadavers, and for use in the training of medical students. By taking a hard look at the racial ideas of both northern and southern medical schools, Christopher D. E. Willoughby reveals that racist ideas were not external to the medical profession but fundamental to medical knowledge.

In this history of racial thinking and slavery in American medical schools, the founders and early faculty of these schools emerge as singularly influential proponents of white supremacist racial science. They pushed an understanding of race influenced by the theory of polygenesis—that each race was created separately and as different species—which they supported by training students to collect and measure human skulls from around the world. Medical students came to see themselves as masters of Black people's bodies through stealing Black people’s corpses, experimenting on enslaved people, and practicing distinctive therapeutics on Black patients. In documenting these practices Masters of Health charts the rise of racist theories in U.S. medical schools, throwing new light on the extensive legacies of slavery in modern medicine.

https://uncpress.org/book/9781469672120/masters-of-health/

Why Does Labour Matter? The Past, Present, and Future of Labour and Labour Studies

2 months 1 week ago

Université du Québec à Montréal, 14-15 November 2025

In 1976 the Canadian Committee on Labour History (CCLH) launched its journal Labour/Le Travail, hoping to “foster imaginative approaches to both teaching and research in labour studies through an open exchange of viewpoints.” With the fiftieth anniversary of this event approaching, scholars, activists, unionists, and workers are invited to convene in the spirit of this tradition to exchange views and to consider new and renewed imaginative approaches to the study of labour and the working class.

Labour/Le Travail was founded in the mid-1970s amidst an apparent crisis in capitalism that can, in hindsight, be seen as a key moment of transition. In a period of stalled economic growth characterized by high inflation, unemployment, and a pattern of deindustrialization pushing production towards low-wage, less unionized jurisdictions, the nascent intellectual project of neoliberalism proposed solutions that would free capital from the regulation of the state and from the concessions won by the labour movement in the decades following World War II. Yet this was not the only vision of the future animating this historical conjuncture. This was also an era in which a wide array of social and political movements, organized labour among them, mobilized against inequality and oppression in their many forms and for a more just, sustainable, democratic, and humane world. Though there were tensions and contestations within and between these movements, they did create numerous local, regional, national and transnational networks of solidarity. It was in this milieu that Labour/Le Travail began its intellectual and political project, opening its pages to a diversity of analyses of the history of working-class life, culture, politics, and struggle with the conviction that such studies were of pressing relevance to the present and the future.

Fifty years later, the journal carries on its work in a context that is in some ways very different, but in others strikingly familiar.  Union membership and power has unquestionably declined, and yet a new generation of activists has emerged, in labour and other social movements, continuing the fight for social justice in a changed set of circumstances. These activists confront a capitalist order that, while faced once again with inflationary challenges, is transformed in important ways – a transformation that was already underway in the mid-1970s. Financial capital has superseded industrial capital as the principal agent of accumulation in Canada and other Western countries. With its distance from the site of production, finance capital is better positioned to evade workers’ collective resistance and, more broadly, from the legislative restraints of the state. This is particularly the case in the private sector, where the strategies of finance capital have been most directly imposed, but workers in the public sector, too, have struggled against a neoliberal logic that, using the public debt and the globalized competition to attract capital as imperatives, demands austerity.

If the social and intellectual relevance of labour and the labour movement was not in doubt in the context of the mid-1970s, today this relevance is no longer self-evident. It would be worthwhile, then, for researchers and activists to gather to revisit, reconsider, and, potentially, affirm the significance of labour history/studies. Why, fundamentally, does labour still matter? 

In recognition of the journal’s upcoming 50th birthday, the conference committee seeks proposals from researchers, activists, and public history practitioners for panels and papers that explore the past, present, and future of labour and labour studies. Questions and topics might include:

Why does labour history and labour studies – including in the domain of public history –  matter in our contemporary moment? What have been the contributions and the shortcomings of the past half-century of work in labour history/studies? How do we write about labour during a time of crisis and opportunity for labour and the left? How can issues of the past and present be reassessed in response to current challenges?

  • What lessons does the study of past workers afford workers in the present as they confront an array of economic, social, political, environmental and other challenges? Conversely, how can current working-class struggles inform our understanding of the working-class past?
  • How does context matter in our studies of labour and the working class across time and space? We especially invite panels that consider a theme in labour history/studies compared across national, regional, temporal, racial, linguistic, gendered, colonial or other contexts. How have labour, the left, and social movements worked together – or worked at cross purposes? What lessons about coalition-building (or its failure) can we take from the past?
  • What can labour scholars learn from public history practitioners? How can scholars, teachers, and public history practitioners effectively collaborate? How can university researchers support the work of community groups and agencies involved in memory work?
  • How can labour history/studies help us understand the evolution of political movements on the left and right alike? How can we deepen our understanding of the appeal of right-wing and far-right politics to working-class constituents?    

Submit a proposal:

Proposals for presentations, panels, or round tables can be submitted in English or French before 14 March 2025. Proposals, including a title, up to 250 word summary of the presentation, and up to 150 words biography of the presenters, should be submitted using this link:

https://forms.gle/tBaf5uz6fzMoDAYQ9

Travel subsidies:

Some funding will be available to subsidize travel expenses for students, precariously employed, or anyone else facing financial barriers to participating in the event.

Questions? info@cclh.ca

Organizing Committee:

Edward Dunsworth, Kassandra Luciuk, Benoit Marsan, Kirk Niergarth, Martin Petitclerc, Camille Robert, Joan Sangster  

Churchill and Industrial Britain Liberalism, Empire and Employment, 1900-1929

2 months 1 week ago

by Jim Tomlinson

This book offers a new understanding of the main economic and political trends of 20th-century Britain, through the lens of Churchill's early career and approach to industrialisation.

Shedding fresh light on Churchill's political endeavours between 1900 and 1922, this study analyses his work within his political constituencies, and highlights how he attempted to balance their local concerns with his larger imperial agenda. Tomlinson guides readers through Britain's industrial challenges at the start of the twentieth century - with a particular focus on the textile economies of Churchill's constituencies in Lancashire and Scotland - and shows how industrial competition within the Empire exemplified the tensions between domestic economic policy and attempts at globalization, and influenced Churchill's later politics.

Tomlinson acknowledges the role of the First World War in boosting the industrial output and bargaining power of countries within the Empire, and analyses these alongside key moments in Churchill's early career, such as his defeat at Dundee, and time at the Exchequer. In doing so, the author highlights the context in which Churchill's ideas on the politics and economics of Empire were first formed, particularly in relation to the impact of imperial economic policy on British domestic prosperity. Ultimately, this book delivers a new assessment of twentieth-century British economic history, in the light of Britain's relationship to the Empire and the 'first great globalization'.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/churchill-and-industrial-britain-97813504…

Big Flame: Building the Movements, New Politics

2 months 1 week ago

by Max Farrar and Kevin McDonnell

This book addresses the ideas and experiences of a small British revolutionary socialist and feminist organisation in the 1970s and 1980s.

Written by two former members, it sets out the organisation’s eclectic influences: Italian Marxism, libertarianism, anarchism ― and its complex relationship with Leninism and Trotskyism. Big Flame lost momentum in the early 1980s when many leftists joined the Labour Party. It includes a critical interpretation of Big Flame’s successes and failures.

The analysis is interspersed with vignettes from 40 members reflecting on their days in the organisation. ‘Our book is aimed at those in the radical movements of every type who are seriously interested in political ideas and their relationship to political struggle. We are writing for an audience wider than those in the academy. This book seeks to assist those who continue to expose racist, patriarchal capitalism and to organise for a future where love and equality will prevail. The book explains Big Flame’s unconventional organisational structure and it includes descriptions of its interventions in a wide variety of struggles.”

https://www.merlinpress.co.uk/page/book-of-the-month

The British Miner in the Age of De-Industrialization: A Political and Cultural History

2 months 1 week ago

by Jörg Arnold

  • offers a new interpretation of the place of the miners in late twentieth-century Britain
  • Embeds the story of Britain's miners in an innovative methodological framework that shows how understandings of time were themselves historically contingent
  • Uses the methodological framework to challenge teleological readings of late twentieth-century British history
  • Reinserts the 1970s into the story of the coal industry, showing that the miners were admired and feared long before they came to be patronised and pitied
  • Draws on the rich archival holdings of the National Union of Mineworkers' archive, much of it previously inaccessible, as well as a wealth of other primary source material

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-british-miner-in-the-age-of…;

Revista Izquierdas (53): Luis Emilio Recabarren: Educador Marxista de la Clase Obrera Chilena (Spanish)

2 months 3 weeks ago

Rueda, María Alicia. (2024). Luis Emilio Recabarren: Educador Marxista de la Clase Obrera Chilena. Izquierdas, 53.  http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/s0718-50492024000100230

http://www.izquierdas.cl/images/pdf/2024/53/art20.pdf

Resumen: El presente artículo ofrece una aproximación filosófica e histórica al estudio de Luis Emilio Recabarren y lo reivindica como un educador marxista de la clase obrera chilena del primer cuarto del siglo XX. En primer lugar, el artículo revisa la historiografía chilena centrándose en el debate en torno a Recabarren como pensador marxista. Basándose en un análisis crítico de los ensayos de Recabarren, se identifica el pensamiento marxista que los cruza y, a través de los textos de prensa, la praxis educativa de Recabarren en las organizaciones y prensa obreras.

Acronia: History of Anarchism and Radical Movements: "Decolonizing the History of Anarchism and Radical Movements"

2 months 3 weeks ago

«Acronia. Studies in the history of anarchism and radical movements»

https://mimesisjournals.com/ojs/index.php/acronia/index

Decolonizing the History of Anarchism and Radical Movements

Deadline for submission of the abstract (not more than 1,000-1,500 words and a short bio of the author): February 15th, 2025.

The ongoing debates and controversies surrounding the cultural and hegemonic legacies of colonization have emphasized the necessity of re-evaluating the history of labor movements from perspectives that challenge the West's centrality. In recent years, a growing body of scholarship - stimulated by the transnational turn and driven by decolonization and Indigenous movements - has begun to critique and revise the Eurocentric paradigm that has long shaped the historical narrative of anarchism. This research has opened new and promising avenues of inquiry, prompting a reconceptualization of anarchism and the broader libertarian movement, traditionally viewed as an intrinsically Western phenomenon rooted in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. An expanding body of research focusing on the Global South (among the others those by Benedict Anderson, Maia Ramnath, Ciccariello-Maher, Ole Laursen, Lucien van der Walt, Steven J Hirsch) has provided alternative perspectives to the dominant view that anarchism in these regions was simply an "imported" ideology from the West, passively adopted by local populations. In contrast, these recent studies highlight the originality of anarchist movements beyond Europe, while simultaneously exposing some contradictions within the Western anarchist movements, particularly their occasional alignments with colonialist attitudes and hegemonic cultural frameworks in their interactions with native populations.

A decolonial perspective, therefore, holds the potential to challenge established paradigms and offer a fundamental re-interpretation of the history of anarchist and radical movements on a global scale, while simultaneously raising critical theoretical, methodological, and empirical questions.

The editorial board of Acronia: History of Anarchism and Radical Movements is pleased to announce a call for submissions for its upcoming issue on the theme: Decolonizing the History of the Anarchist  and radical movements. Contributions are invited in Italian and/or English and may explore any aspect of decolonizing anarchist and radical movements . Submissions may engage with theoretical debates, historiographical analyses, reconstructions of specific historical experiences, or examinations of cultural productions.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • The experiences of anarchist and radical movements in the Global South
  • Theoretical reinterpretations of anarchism from a decolonial perspective
  • Anarchy and Indigenous movements
  • Interactions between European anarchist refugees and local populations
  • The role of anarchists within or in relation to national independence and decolonization movements
  • Anarchists as carriers of colonizing cultural ideas and practices
  • The intersections of anarchism and racial issues
  • Anarchism and Orientalis
  • Critique and opposition (or complicity?) of Western anarchisms toward the colonialism of their respective countries.

The editorial board welcomes submissions that contribute to broadening and diversifying the understanding of anarchist history through innovative and critical approaches.

Editor
Pietro Di Paola (University of Lincoln, UK)

For any inquiries, please contact the following address: acronia@mimesis-group.com

Looking back at the African Lefts. Call for papers for the Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique

3 months ago

Abstract: This call for papers from Cahiers d'histoire. Revue d'histoire critique focuses on left-wing activism in Africa, particularly that which can be considered as revolutionary, underpinned by anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, from the 1960s, with access to independence, to the 1990s, with the implementation of a multi-party system and the imposition of structural adjustment policies. The aim is to shed light on histories that are often overlooked in academic literature, because they were often lived underground, during the long periods when post-colonial states prohibited multipartyism de facto or de jure. Priority will therefore be given to studies that provide new elements or develop an innovative approach to existing knowledge, whether in contemporary African political history or Africanist political science.

 

Practical details:

a)    Send an abstract ranging from 400 to 600 words by February 15, 2025 (preferably in French), together with a brief CV and a bibliographical selection that will enable you to situate the author's field(s) of specialization. Please send this to both email adresses : martinmourre@hotmail.com and bianchini@gmx.fr

b) The selection of draft articles will take place during the second half of February.

c) Articles must be completed by July 15, for an issue to be published in early 2026.

 

The review publishes articles in French; English versions are accepted but will be later translated for publication in French.

Strikes and Social Conflicts in Hostile Environments

3 months 1 week ago

Call for Conference Papers: “Strikes and Social Conflicts in Hostile Environments”, September 5-6, 2025

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: March 1, 2025

Seventh Conference of the International Association of Strikes and Social Conflicts

Co-Organized by

    The Arrighi Center for Global Studies, Johns Hopkins University and the
    International Association of Strikes and Social Conflicts (IASSC)

Conference Venue: The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC (USA)

Conference Theme: Strikes and Social Conflicts in Hostile Environments

While workers and other subordinate groups are always operating under conditions that limit their range of action—that is, circumscribing the kinds of protest demands or action repertoires that are considered normative or acceptable—there are historical periods and geographical spaces in which the environment is especially hostile to collective action from below.

Our premise is that we have entered one of these especially hostile periods on a global scale. As such, there is an urgent need to examine and draw lessons from instances (both contemporary and historical) in which subordinated groups navigated through, organized in, protested against, and at times, successfully transformed the “hostile environments” in which they were embedded.

Historically, many would point to the labor repressive colonial regimes and the spread of fascist movements in the first half of the twentieth century as one example of a period of widening/deepening “hostility” on a global scale.  Likewise, the early-twenty-first century, with the current global resurgence of fascist and far right regimes and movements in new forms, can be understood as another period of widening/deepening hostility.

At the same time, spatial unevenness of hostile environments has been central to the functioning of historical capitalism in any given period. For example, in the decades after the Second World War, the apartheid regime in South Africa and military dictatorships in Latin America and East Asia existed at the same time that the right of workers to strike and form independent trade unions were at their height in many core countries. Equally important, workers in the same location (e.g., within the same country, city, workplace) are regularly divided between those who are ruled through consent and those who feel the brunt of the hostility—with distinctions drawn along the lines of gender, migration/citizenship, race/ethnicity, urban/rural, etc.  

Finally, even in the darkest periods in world history, there have been local pockets of hope in which successful mobilizations around (and advances of) labor rights and social justice have prevailed. Here we might think of the settlements established by enslaved people who had escaped from bondage (marronage); or Rojava, the autonomous polyethnic socialist regime established in northeast Syria in the midst of the Syrian Civil War; or the experiences of other liberated areas in the midst of wars and revolutions.

Call for Abstracts:  

In line with the above discussion, we welcome abstracts for papers focused on:

  • case studies of strikes and social conflicts under colonial, fascist, neofascist, far-right, and other hostile regimes, both past and present;
  • workers organizing to break down internal class divides (within countries or between countries) and their lessons for working class solidarity and labor internationalism today;
  • the experiences—past and present—of the “rays of hope” that shined through (even for a short time) in deeply hostile environments, and their lessons for today.

We also encourage the submission of abstracts that focus on the following specific aspects of the overall conference theme:

  • the contemporary university as hostile environment (for faculty, students and workers—not assuming these are mutually exclusive categories);
  • strikes and social conflicts in wars and hostile geopolitical environments, past and present;
  • the role of ecology and climate crisis in contemporary hostile environments.

We welcome papers that are contemporary or historical as well as papers that are single case, comparative or global in perspective. We encourage all paper presenters to grapple with and make explicit the lessons of their analysis for our present-day hostile environment(s).

Finally, we welcome abstracts for papers on strikes & social conflicts beyond the conference theme.

Procedures for Abstract Submission

Paper abstracts of 250-500 words should be submitted via this google form.  The deadline for submissions is March 1, 2025.  Decisions will be announced by April 1, 2025.

There are no conference fees for attendees. Buffet meals will be provided at the conference itself; however, participants should plan to cover their own travel/accommodation expenses. Information on hotel options and other conference updates will be posted on the conference webpage.

Papers presented at the conference will be considered for a special issue of the IASSC’s journal, Workers of the World.

Conference Organizing Committee (Contact email for conference queries: arrighi@jhu.edu).

Committee Chair: Beverly J. Silver (Johns Hopkins University); Arrighi Center Committee Members: Zophia Edwards (Johns Hopkins), Ricardo Jacobs (UC Santa Barbara), Mateus Alves de Mendonca (Johns Hopkins), Corey Payne (University of Richmond), Christy Thornton (New York University); IASSC Committee Members:  Ralph Darlington (University of Salford) and Alice Pate (Kennesaw State University).

 

Control and punishment devices: 3rd International Conference on History of Prison and Punitive Institutions

3 months 1 week ago

“Control and punishment devices”

3rd International Conference on History of Prison and Punitive Institutions

https://www.unavarra.es/congreso-historia-prision/?languageId=1

14 to 16 January 2026, Iruñea - Pamplona.
Universidad Pública de Navarra – Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa.

Introduction

The Group for the Study of History of Prison and Punitive Institutions organises the 3rd
International Conference on the History of Prison and Punitive Institutions, under the title Control
and punishment devices, following up the 2nd Conference held in Albacete in September 2019.
The aim of the Conference is to articulate a space for fruitful exchange, for sharing lines of research
recently carried out in the field of punitiveness, taking into account the control and disciplinary
logics that are projected in different institutions and geographies. As in previous editions of this
Conference, there is a clear intention of bringing closer contributions both from the
historiographical field (from the Middle Ages to Contemporary History and even immediate
history) and the analyses most concerned with current modulations of the punitive, which are being
promoted from other disciplines such as Sociology, Anthropology or Law. This will be a great
opportunity to update the state of the historical investigation on control and punishment
experiences and institutions from a multidisciplinary perspective. Furthermore, in a context
marked by a growing presence of warfare, projecting itself onto different social dimensions, we
deem necessary and urgent to reflect again with a critical eye on the ways in which the notion of
punishment can be rethought and the forms it has taken and takes in different social spheres.

The conference has been organised in the framework of a research project:
“Historia y presente del control social, las instituciones punitivas y los cuerpos de seguridad en
España (siglos XX-XXI): Prácticas, discursos y representaciones culturales”
(PID2021-123504NB-I00)

Proposal submission

Proposals for interventions at the conference may take two forms, each of which has its own
peculiarities.

• Written communication: A first version of the texts will be distributed among
the participants of each table or session before the conference, and a final version
will be published in a collective book, if the authors are interested in doing so.
The proposal should include:
◦ Title
◦ Short introduction of the author (5 – 10 lines)
◦ Abstract (200 words)
◦ Chronological and thematical axis in which is included

• Talk: In this case there is no commitment to publication by the organising
committee, although the proposal will be distributed in advance to the
participants of each round table. The proposal must include:
◦ Title
◦ Short introduction of the author (5 – 10 lines)
◦ 2.000-word text explaining the broad outline of the intervention
◦ Chronological and thematical axis in which is included

The scientific committee, taking into account the number of proposals received and the logistical
capacity of the conference, will be responsible for accepting the proposals and placing them in the
different sessions according to what it deems most appropriate. As a general rule, priority will be
given to interventions accompanied by a written communication.
The conference will have a face-to-face format, although at some tables, depending on the proposals
received and logistical issues, there will be the possibility of on-line participation by speakers from
other continents.
With regard to language, written communications will be accepted in any of the official languages
of the Spanish state, as well as in English and Portuguese. The sessions will generally be held in
Spanish, although those responsible for each session may facilitate the participation of speakers in
other languages, depending on the proposals received

Fees and registration procedure

Regarding registration for the conference, it is necessary to bear in mind that:
• Registration to the conference is required for the definitive acceptance and incorporation of
the papers into the structure of the conference.
• The date and procedure for registration will be detailed in the second circular and online:
https://www.unavarra.es/congreso-historia-prision
• The registration fee will be 25 euros
• Enrolment in the conference may be recognised with 1 ECTS credit for UPNA students

Schedule and registration

With a view to the preparation and spreading of the conference we would like to make known
from now on what will be some reference dates:

• Submission of communication proposals:
◦ Deadline: 14 March 2025.
◦ Proposals will be sent to the following e-mail address:
congreso.historiaprision@unavarra.es

• Second circular letter:
◦ Publication date: May 2025
◦ The second circular will indicate the structure of the conference sessions and the
papers accepted in each of them.
◦ Depending on the proposals finally received, this structure may be slightly modified
in the third circular.

• Submission of the texts of the communications:
◦ Texts may be submitted until 20 October 2025.
◦ The scientific committee will evaluate the texts and reserves the right to
request corrections before the final acceptance of the papers.

• Access to the texts of the communications:
◦ During the month of November 2025, the submitted texts will be sent to those
registered for the conference.

• Publication of the proceedings:
◦ In the course of 2026 the GEHPIP will publish a book in digital format with the final
proceedings of the conference.

More info: https://www.unavarra.es/congreso-historia-prision/presentation?language…

Images du travail, travail des images (n° 21, septembre 2026): Représenter les scientifiques au travail (French)

3 months 1 week ago

Responsables scientifiques du numéro : Jérôme Lamy (CNRS), Jean-François Bert (Université de Lausanne). Coordinateur de rédaction du numéro : David Hamelin

Proposition de dossier pour la revue Images du travail, travail des images (n° 21, septembre 2026)

L’image scientifique et, plus généralement, la culture visuelle des pratiques savantes, ont fait l’objet de nombreuses enquêtes historiennes et sociologiques. Ainsi les travaux de Lorraine Daston et Peter Galison sur l’émergence de différents régimes d’objectivation par l’image se sont fondés sur une analyse précise des façons de représenter les objets de recherche (Daston, Galison, 2012). L’ouvrage classique dirigé par Michael Lynch et Steve Woolgar, Representation in Scientific Pratice (Lynch, Woolgar, 1990), donnait à voir la multitude des entrées visuelles dans les manières de connaître. De même, l’administration de la preuve par l’image a fait l’objet d’intenses recherches, permettant de situer un régime scopique étendu au public le plus large (Bigg, Vanhoutte, 2017). Plus généralement, la place des images dans les dispositifs politiques de recherche – notamment dans les tentatives de domination coloniales (Bleichmar, 2012) – rejoint celle des pratiques discursives. Enfin, les enjeux commerciaux d’une science prise dans les intérêts marchands (Margócsy, 2014) mettent au jour des cultures visuelles historiquement spécifiques.

Cependant, il est un domaine où l’attention aux images de la science reste à confirmer, c’est celui des savant∙e∙s au travail. Les corps des savant∙e∙s (Bert, 2023), leurs positions mises en scène pour témoigner du labeur de la pensée, les démonstrations collectives publicisées (comme dans les Congrès et les colloques [Miskell, 2016]), les représentations médiatiques (Babou, Le Marec, 2008) ou les implications plus didactiques (Robert, 1995 ; Gauthier, 1996) restent encore à explorer.

Cette proposition de dossier vise à restituer la diversité des grammaires visuelles du travail savant : qu’il s’agisse des portraits, des peintures, des sculptures, des photographies, des films, des effigies, ou encore des images plus populaires, comme les timbres. Ce sont tous les supports de l’image laborieuse de la science qui pourront être évoqués. L’enjeu est de saisir ce que les représentations disent (ou reconstruisent) à la fois du travail savant, de ses spécificités (e.g. l’usage des instruments [Dekker, Lippincott, 1999 ; Lamy, Bert, 2021], les différences selon les disciplines), des tensions qu’il porte (e.g. entre le collectif et les tropes du génie), des mythologies qu’il reconfigure (e.g. le travail sur le terrain vs. le travail en laboratoire), des forces politiques qui l’animent (e.g. les luttes des scientifiques et leur médiatisation), des hiérarchies sous-jacentes (e.g. les effets du genre [Mitchell, McKinnon, 2018], la place des technicien∙ne∙s, des assistant∙e∙s [Shapin, 1989]).

Les propositions veilleront à mettre au centre de leur questionnement les représentations, leur matérialité et leurs spécificités. De même, il importera de ne pas s’en tenir à des approches purement descriptives. Le dossier mettra plutôt en valeur les articles prenant en compte les processus de fabrication des images.

Les approches pourront émaner d’historien∙ne∙s, de sociologues, d’anthropologues. Le comparatisme est bienvenu dans les analyses. Le dossier accueillera des articles se concentrant sur les images conçues dans leur diversité matérielle, processuelle et pratique la plus grande : de l’image fixe (peinture, photographie, dessins, BD), aux films, aux jeux-vidéos…

Quelques grands axes peuvent orienter les propositions d’articles

  • Représenter l’ergonomie savante : les bureaux, les cabinets, les bibliothèques, les laboratoires, les observatoires, les savant∙e∙s sur le terrain. L’enjeu, ici, est de donner à voir les arrangements spatiaux et matériels mis en scène et/ou construits pour les besoins d’une représentation savante dont on pourra chercher à repérer les stéréotypes et les motifs : l’écrivain∙e assis à son bureau ou dans son cabinet ; le lecteur ou la lectrice représenté le livre ouvert, sur une table de bibliothèque, mais aussi en dehors, en promenade, ou encore lors d’un déplacement ; le ou la scientifique montré en train de regarder au travers de ses instruments (Dibie, 2020 ; Bernasconi, Nellen, 2019).
  • Représenter le travail en action : les images détaillant les gestes savants selon leur spécialité (le ou la médecin, l’architecte, les naturalistes…) dessinent les contours d’une grammaire des compositions visuelles selon les lieux-communs attachés à une discipline. On peut penser, par exemple, à l’historien∙ne∙s dans les archives (Artières, 2015). L’enjeu pour certains savant∙e∙s peut d’ailleurs être de déjouer parfois l’image attendue. C’est le cas par exemple du sociologue Erving Goffman, qui s’ingéniait à se faire photographier sans livre, sans feuille et sans stylo (Winkin, 2022).
  • La difficile représentation des savoir-faire : le coup d’œil, la maîtrise du corps, l’instrument dédié forment quelques-uns des moyens visuels mis en œuvre pour évoquer une pratique difficilement descriptible, opaque dans ses subtilités, échappant, pour l’essentiel, aux ordinaires matrices de la représentation. Que donne-t-on à voir dans ces images d’une manière de faire science ? Que laisse-t-on filtrer visuellement de l’ordinaire des recherches qui reposent sur des savoir-faire particuliers ?
  • Les petites mains du travail savant : les secrétaires, les technicien∙ne∙s, les ingénieur∙e∙s, les assistant∙e∙s… Le travail savant est d’abord et avant tout collectif (Waquet, 2022). Une partie importante de l’imaginaire visuel occidental moderne s’ingénie à réduire ce foisonnement d’acteurs∙trices à la seule personne du savant, intronisé en génie solitaire. Comment les représentations imagées travaillent-elles cette tension ? Quelle place est donnée aux agent∙e∙s de la recherche ? Existe-t-il des codes graphiques et visuels pour les évoquer ?
  • Les lieux communs de la représentation : Einstein tirant la langue met en tension le sérieux du savant et sa capacité à faire rire, la photographie de Watson et Crick autour de la représentation de l’ADN fait surgir l’infiniment petit au côté des savants, Andrew Wiles, pris devant un tableau noir, est un véritable point nodal des représentations de mathématicien∙ne∙s (songeons au film Le théorème de Margueritte [2023])… Ces allant-de-soi visuels supposent des consolidations perpétuelles du champ des représentations dont il conviendrait d’analyser les soubassements sociaux, culturels, politiques… (Chambers, 1983). Ainsi la figure du savant-explorateur, image canonique de la virilité scientifique (Oreskes, 1996), constitue, par exemple un code visuel relativement commun. Il est possible, également, d’intégrer à l’analyse la caricature du/de la savant∙e∙ au travail, qui, d’une certaine manière, distingue les traits saillants et communément admis de la figure du ou de la scientifique (on pense ici à Darwin ou Newton par exemple). La caricature et la bande-dessinée procèdent d’une même exploitation de figures partagées du savant au travail.
  • Et ailleurs ? Qu’en est-il de ces représentations de savants au travail dans d’autres configurations (historiques et culturelles) savantes ? Qu’est-ce que ces représentations nous disent du savoir et du savant en Inde, dans les mondes musulmans, ou au Japon ? Comment le savoir y est-il compris et surtout montré ? Est-il de l’ordre d’un sacrifice, d’une joie, d’une aventure ? L’occasion d’une fuite ou d’un retrait du monde qui peut aussi être représenté ?
  • L’évolution historique des représentations. Si l’on se fixe sur un savant et son image, peut-on repérer, sur le long cours, des transformations des postures dans lesquelles il est présenté ? D’Ada Lovelace à Pasteur, de Newton à Marie-Curie, les scientifiques les plus connu∙e∙s ont été pris dans des régimes successifs de représentations très différents. Des enquêtes longitudinales pourront être menées sur ces figures célèbres, afin de déchiffrer les codes historiques de leur présentation.

Ces axes ne sont que quelques éléments d’indication pour orienter les propositions ; toutes les enquêtes et les analyses sur l’ordre visuel qui sous-tend le travail des scientifiques sont bienvenues dans ce numéro.

Les propositions de contributions peuvent être issues des différentes sciences sociales. Elles reposent nécessairement dans leur démonstration sur un corpus d’images mobilisées dans l’enquête. Ces images en noir et blanc ou en couleurs doivent être reproduites dans l’article. Rappelons que Images du travail, Travail des images est une revue scientifique entièrement numérique, gratuite et ouverte. L’auteur doit à ce titre s’assurer de la disposition des droits d’utilisation et de diffusion. Les articles sont d’un format de 30 000 à 50 000 signes maximum. Dans un premier temps, sont attendues des propositions d’articles soit un texte d’intention de 2000 à 3000 signes en tenant compte du calendrier suivant :

15 mars 2025 : date limite de réception des propositions d’articles par courriel aux adresses suivantes.

30 septembre 2025 : envoi des articles en vue de leur soumission au comité́ de rédaction de la revue (les publications devront être rédigées en français).

Contacts pour toutes informations complémentaires et pour l’envoi des documents :

 

Références

Artières, P. (2015) « L’historien face aux archives », Pouvoirs, n° 153, p. 85-93.

Babou I & Le Marec J (2008) « Les pratiques de communication professionnelle dans les institutions scientifiques. Processus d’autonomisation », Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances, vol. 2, n°1, p. 115-142.

Bert J.F. & Lamy J. (2021) Voir les savoirs, Lieux, objets, gestes de la science, Paris, Anamosa.

Bert J.F. (2023) Le corps qui pense. Une anthropologie historique des pratiques savantes, Bâle, Schwabe.

Bigg C. & Vanhoutte K. (2017) « Spectacular astronomy », Early Popular Visual Culture, vol. 15, n°2, p. 115-124

Bernasconi, G., Nellen, S. (dir.) (2019) Das Büro. Zur Rationalisierung des Interieurs, 1880-1960, Bielefeld, Transcript Verlag

Bleichmar D. (2012) Visible Empire. Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.

Chambers, D.W. (1983) « Stereotypic Images of the Scientist : The Draw a Scientist Test », Science Educaton, vol. 67, n°2, p. 255-265.

Daston L. & Galison P. (2012) Objectivité, Dijon, Les Presses du Réel, 2012

Dekker E. & Lippincott K. (1999) « The Scientific Instruments in Holbei’s Ambassadors : A Re-Examination », Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 62, n°1, p. 93-125.

Dibie, P. (2020) Ethnologie du bureau. Brève histoire d’une ethnologie assise, Paris, Métaillié.

Gauthier G. (1996) « La représentation des enseignants dans le cinéma français, 1964-1994 », Recherche & Formation, n° 21, p. 43-56.

Lynch M. & Woolgar S. (dir.) (1990) Representation in Scientific Practice, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press.

Margócsy D. (2014) Commercial Visions. Science, Trade and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.

Miskell L. (2016) Meeting Places. Scientific Congresses and Urban Identity in Victorian Britain, Londres, Routledge.

Mitchell M. & McKinnon M. (2018) « ‘Human’ or ‘objective’ faces of science ? Gender stereotypes and the representation of scientists in the media », Public Understanding of Science, vol. 29, n°2, p. 177-190.

Oreskes N. (1996) « Objectivity or Heroism ? On the Invisibility of Women in Science », Isis, vol. 11, p. 87-113.

Robert A. (1995) « Quelques aspects de l’image des enseignants à travers leur presse syndicale », Recherche & Formation, n° 21, p. 57-71.

Shapin S. (1989), « The Invisible technicians », American Scientist, vol. 77, n°6, p. 554-563.

Waquet F. (2015), L’ordre matériel des savoirs. Comment les savants travaillent XVIe-XXIe siècles, Paris, CNRS éditions

Waquet, F. (2022), Dans les coulisses de la science. Techniciens, petites mains et autres travailleurs invisibles, Paris, CNRS éditions.

Winkin Y. (2022), D’Erving à Goffman. Une œuvre performée ?, Paris, MKF.

Imagining the Anti-Fascist City: Contested Geographies of Resistance and Solidarity

3 months 1 week ago

University of Helsinki, 5–6 June 2025

The anti-fascist urban experience is traditionally depicted through the lens of symbolic spatial politics and confrontational tactics: marches, demonstrations, street battles, anarchist-inspired movements, and anti-fascist block tactics. These are aimed at challenging fascist territorial claims in cities, often resulting in the creation of “temporary autonomous zones” and the denial of the possibility for fascists to engage with the broader public, epitomised by the slogan “They shall not pass”. However, this depiction captures only a fragment of the anti-fascist urban experience.

This conference invites contributions that challenge and expand the traditional understanding of the anti-fascist urban experience, approaching the city itself as a multilayered space of resistance, solidarity, and community-building that evolves along the constant interplay of past struggles, present actions, and a collective projection of an imagined anti-fascist urban future. It asks: How have anti-fascists envisioned and practiced the liberation of urban communities from fascism, racism, sexism, patriarchal values, and structural oppression in both the global North and the global South during the past century (1919–today)? How have they sustained solidarity across diverse and intersecting struggles while grappling with the challenges posed by gentrification, social atomisation, neoliberal urban planning, and intensified policing?

Also of interest are contributions on anti-fascist resistance to eco-fascism in the urban setting, particularly from decolonial, Indigenous, and environmental perspectives. How have anti[1]fascists understood their relationship with and responsibility to the non-human life forms that also exist in the urban space? How has the dichotomy between “rural” and “urban” reinforced colonial understandings of civilisation? How do we understand the anti-fascist city in the context of sustaining life?

We encourage submissions that explore any geographical area, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• The spatial dynamics of anti-fascist protest activity

• The anti-fascist city as a layered memory space

• Class and race in the anti-fascist city

• Anti-fascism in the post-colonial city

• Intersectional perspectives on anti-fascist urban spaces

• Anti-fascist geographies of internationalism

• The emotions and experiences of the anti-fascist city

• Imaginaries, visions and myths of the anti-fascist city (past, present and future)

• The materiality of anti-fascist urbanism

• The gendering of anti-fascist city spaces

• Desire and sexuality in the anti-fascist city

• Cultural expressions of the anti-fascist city: street theatre, urban spectacle, music, art, murals, etc.

• Anti-fascism in literary urban studies

• Interplay between global and local anti-fascism

 

Keynote Speaker: David Featherstone, Professor of Political Geography, University of Glasgow.

 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Paper proposals must include:

• Name of author(s)

• Paper Title + Abstract (300 words)

• Short academic bio (150 words)

• Statement on the need for financial assistance

• Please submit your proposal to < lgp.helsinki@gmail.com >

 

Important deadlines and dates

• Submission deadline: 1 February 2025

• Notification of acceptance: 15 February 2025

• Paper submission: 22 May 2025

• Conference dates: 5–6 June 2025

 

Location / Venue

University of Helsinki, Finland

 

Funding

We encourage researchers to seek funding through their respective institutions. We are currently applying for funds to offer partial financial support for travel costs.

 

Paper publication

Selected papers from the conference will be considered for publication in a peer reviewed journal special issue on the anti-fascist city. Further details regarding the publication process will be announced later.

 

Conference Organizing Committee

Kasper Braskén, Moshumee T. Dewoo, Shane Little

 

This conference is organised by the research project “Locating Global Protest against the Extreme Right: Anti-Fascism, Anti-Racism and Internationalism in Multiethnic Metropoles” (LGP), funded by the Research Council of Finland (project No. 355478), University of Helsinki, Finland: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/projects/anti-fascism-anti-racism-and-internationalism-multiethnic-metropoles

 

Subject Fields / Keywords

Urban history, left-wing politics, anti-fascism, political geography, solidarity, resistance

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