Social and Labour History News

The purpose of this workshop is to promote the study of temporary transatlantic migrations in a global historical perspective. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a large number of people crossed the Atlantic, in search of better working conditions, economic opportunities, or as a stage in their professional careers. Labour migration encompassed a multitude of actors and trajectories: Seasonal workers from Bukovina working in Argentinian fields, Afro-Caribbean colonial officials assigned to French West Africa, or Levantine traders moving within transcontinental trade networks, to name just a few. 

Although the Atlantic is one of the best researched places for large-distance mobility, less attention has been paid to forms and structures of temporary labour migration in the period addressed by this workshop: When global markets became increasingly interlocked, telegraphs condensed the Atlantic space, and steamships enabled repeated crossings. Instead of understanding transatlantic movements as unilinear and permanent replacements, we aim to explore the migratory experience in the  Atlantic as an unstable and temporary one. 

This workshop puts migrants, both women and men, as highly mobile actors at the centre stage, asking for the social and economic dimensions of their mobilities. It calls on researchers to focus on the multiple transatlantic movements and temporary stays of migrants in the Americas around 1900. We aim to highlight temporalities of labour migration across (post-)imperial spaces, national borders, and linguistic barriers – within the Atlantic world.

Bringing together scholars, including early career researchers, we intend to establish a dialogue between historians from different fields and backgrounds. Opening the debate on temporary labour migration across the Atlantic, we re-address the claims of the Age of Mass Migration, by focusing on various forms of transatlantic movement and actors from different sites. We call for contributions dealing with different types of sources, and we particularly welcome papers that adopt an interdisciplinary approach in studying transatlantic migration.

Possible contributions include:

• Patterns of temporary labour migration from and to the Americas

• Transit stages en route and migratory infrastructure in Atlantic societies or port cities

• Trajectories, biographies, and experiences of transatlantic migrants who decided to return

• Diasporic connections across the Atlantic

• Conceptual history of Atlantic migration

Discussions at the workshop will be based on pre-circulated papers, therefore, we kindly ask to send us your paper scripts / draft versions of max. 2.000 words by September 30, 2023.

Please submit a summary of no more than 200 words and a brief CV in English in one PDF via e-mail by May 15, 2023, to one of the three organisers of the workshop:

Agnes Gehbald (agnes.gehbald@unibe.ch),

Philipp Horn (philipp.horn@unibe.ch),

Rea Vogt (rea.vogt@unibe.ch).

All travel and accommodation expenses will be covered.

 

14th-17th September 2023

The Irish Labour History Society (ILHS) has partnered with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and its Northern Ireland Committee to organise its third international conference, in Dublin between 14th and 17th September 2023.

The four-day event will feature national and international expert speakers and labour movement practitioners in over 30 events in four venues: the Trinity College Long Room, Liberty Hall, the Fórsa head office and the Teachers’ Club.

It will encompass ten plenary sessions, at least 20 ordinary sessions, an oral history presentation and a voice of experience engagement with expert input from Irish, British and European academics, trade unionists, employer representatives, worker educationalists, migrant workers’ representatives, lay activists, and representatives of trades councils from both traditions on the island of Ireland.

Highlights will include the 47tth Countess Markievicz Lecture (courtesy of the Irish Association of Industrial Relations) and discursive studies reviewing social partnership, the peace process, Good Friday Agreement and Brexit, and social dialogue. Edited by John Cunningham, Francis Devine and Sonja Tiernan of Otago University, the ILHS’s 50th Anniversary book, Labour History in Irish History, will be launched as part of the conference. There will be labour history tours of Dublin as well as various social events.

You can get more information on our website: www.irishlabourhistorysociety.com. You can also register to attend the conference on the site; early bird delegate rates apply for those who register by 31st May.

We hope that your organisation will add to the success of the event by giving financial support to the conference and the publication of our 50th anniversary book. In addition, by joining our collective effort through sending delegates, you’ll have the opportunity to meet some of the pioneers who founded the ILHS in 1973, while taking part in up to four days of discussion and celebration of labour history. 

Supporting this unique event may include one or more of the following:
¨ Registering Delegates by 31st May 2023
¨ Branding one of the ten plenary sessions
¨ Taking an Advertisement in the Conference Brochure
¨ Contributing to a fund to sponsor 2th and 3th level students to attend
 

Making a financial donation to the Irish Labour History Society Conference fund (details below)

ILHS Bank Account Details
Account Name: Irish Labour History Society,

Current Account Branch Address: Bank of Ireland, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4

Acc No. 19954058

Branch Code: 90-09-73

BIC: BOFIIE2D

IBAN: IE85 BOFI 9009 7319 9540 58

See the attached draft programme!

 

newsletter from Sydney Trades Hall home to the largest collections of trade union historical memorabilia in Australia

 

This Month we look at the AIDS crisis and the union response; same sex superannuation entitlements; International Women's Day in the 1920s; and the South Australian Working Women's Centre

Fifty Years of Fighting

Part of the exhibition was of course the AIDS crisis and the massive response to it. Unionists were in the frontlines then, as now with COVID.

AIDS was described by religious groups as the gay plague. It was a worldwide calamity that took many lives and made many very ill. Unions acted around the word to make workplaces safe AND sought to counter the false information on how it was spread. Collective action to protect all.

For union responses through history to epidemics and threats to public health check out this article from Trades Hall

Geraldine Fela in ‘Blood Politics: Australian Nurses, HIV and the Battle for
Rights on the Wards.’ Labour History, no. 115 (2018): 87-104 said:

Nurses and their unions in NSW and Victoria played a progressive, sometimes radical, role in the AIDS crisis. Stories of AIDS patients left untended and untouched by fearful and prejudiced nurses are not uncommon, nor are they untrue. But on hospital wards and in clinics, fear and prejudice were not ubiquitous: these ideas were contested by the politics of solidarity and collaboration. Both union officials and rank-and-file members acted in solidarity with HIV/AIDS patients and fought for their rights in medical institutions and the outside world. In these moments, there are echoes of the “social movement unionism” exemplified by the radical New South Wales Builders Labourers’ Federation (NSW BLF) in the 1970s. This reflected the emerging industrial radicalism of nurses in this period and their growing confidence to challenge their traditionally subordinate role in the hospital hierarchy, a role shaped by the fact that nursing was and remains a highly feminised profession.

See also

https://www.afao.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/HIV-Australia_-Geraldine-Fela.pdf

Geraldine won the ALGA Prize for her honours thesis in this area and the 2017 Eric Fry Labour History Research Grant and in 2021 the Joan Hardy Scholarship for Post Graduate Nursing Research.

AIDS brought urgency to the push for decriminalisation – this had to happen to make it safe for gay men to get tested. It also brought a stronger push for anti discrimination protection as the LGBTIQ community faced significant hostility and fear in areas like housing, medical treatment, employment.

Almost as soon as AIDS arrived in Australia, nurses unions began working on policies and procedures for their members that recognised the rights of workers & their patients.

The Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC) negotiated a health and safety agreement for health workers that was the basis for work-related AIDS policies adopted around the country.

Gay union activists led several trade unions to adopt policies on HIV with regards to pensions and discrimination. Several unions also developed prevention education materials and resources for their members.

Australian unions stepped up quickly with education programs around AIDS, and information campaigns to stem the hysteria and discrimination.

Equal Rights to Superannuation and death benefits were also pushed to the front of mind with the AIDS crisis.

1998-99 Superannuation Rights for Same Sex Couples

Discrimination for Same Sex Relationships in 1998 following changes to definition of marriage meant that same sex couples were excluded. Funds could refuse to pay a joint pension or a lump sum on retirement; On death of a contributor they could refuse death benefits, and refuse payments for children of same sex couples. Also tax treatment was different as heterosexual couples saw benefits taxed at the concessionary rate but with same sex couples if funds are part of the estate of the deceased then they would be taxed at the higher rate.

The issue was raised with the federal LNP Government in 1998.

A private members Bill was moved in federal Parliament by Anthony Albanese, then in Opposition, calling for changes. The Bill was the Superannuation (Entitlement of Same Sex Couples) Amendment Bill. Albanese pushed repeatedly for these changes over the next few years.

This was unsuccessful until the ALP was elected to Government in 2007. The Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws – Superannuation) Bill 2008 was introduced in 2008 and the Human Rights Commission made a submission based on the many submission to their own inquiry of 2007.

The Human Rights Commission examined the discrimination against same sex partners in their report in 2007

The found that 58 federal laws denied same-sex couples and their children basic financial and work-related entitlements available to opposite-sex couples and their children.

Commissioner Graham Innes said “As one man told us during our Inquiry - same-sex couples are first class tax-payers but second class citizens - and we have certainly found this to be true,”

“This discrimination is completely unfair. There are 58 federal laws breaching the most fundamental of human rights principles – non-discrimination, equality before the law and the best interests of the child.”

The Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby (NSW) told the Inquiry that:

Despite a commitment from the Government, public sector funds have not incorporated the category of ‘interdependency’, meaning that public sector and military employees who are in a same-sex relationship cannot nominate their same-sex partner of their beneficiary for any super death benefits. Instead they must distribute their benefit to their partner through their estate, which attracts a higher rate of tax.

As Tony Whelan said very clearly in a submission to the inquiry:

Given the age of my partner and myself, the possibility of one of us dying in the next ten years is not insignificant. If that happens, the surviving partner will not receive any death benefit payments from the deceased partner’s superannuation. I could accept that if other members of those schemes faced the same dilemma, but of course they do not. Former military or public service members who have a partner of the opposite sex automatically receive death benefit entitlements... Granting me and my partner superannuation death benefits will not bring about the collapse of my neighbours’ marriages, nor lower their income, nor make their roses wilt. There is no logical reason to maintain this discrimination; it is being maintained out of ideological spite... We are all citizens and there should not be one superannuation law for my brother and a different superannuation law for me.

The Government's same-sex law reform package passed through Parliament in November 2008.

The reform removed discrimination against same-sex de facto couples and their families in areas such as taxation, superannuation, social security and family assistance, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme Safety Net and the Medicare Safety Net, aged care, veterans' entitlements, immigration, citizenship and child support and family law.

Banner demanding equal super rights for same sex couples, made in 2002 with artwork and design by Karen Askew, with assistance from Robyn Fortescue and Michelle Rosicki.

International Women’s Day 1928 saw women having the first marches in Australia.

The Militant Women’s group was established by Communist Party women in 1927.

 

Joyce Stevens says the first Australian IWD rally took place in the Sydney Domain on March 25, 1928. It was organised by the Militant Women's Movement and called for equal pay for equal work; an 8-hour day for shop girls; no piece work; the basic wage for the unemployed and annual holidays on full pay. The driving factor was the Bruce Federal Governments anti Trade Union legislation.

 

 

Workers Weekly 23 March 1928

The reports from Workers Weekly following the rally were a little muted!

 

 

However women were organising in the workplace, as the paper reported:

A Militant Women’s Group formed in Melbourne on the 23rd:

Workers Weekly 23 March 1928

The Weekly Times (31 March 1928) reported that the Melbourne Eight Hours March had a contingent from the Militant Women’s Group:

The Workers Weekly also reported:

Workers Weekly 6th April 1928

and from Labour Call 12 April 1928

Later in 1928 the first issue of The Woman Worker was issued.

First issue of The Woman Worker 7 November 1928 at Reason in Revolt

1929 saw Militant Women organise on International Women’s Day and support the timber workers strike that was a large scale attack on all workers rights.

Workers Weekly 8th March 1929.

“On 8 March 1929, the Militant’s Women’s Group organised a second International Women’s Day rally at Belmore Park to support the wives and children of the striking timber workers. They also stormed the offices of the Timber Merchants Association, leaving its Secretary, Mr F H Corke ‘pale and trembling’. See Trades Hall Press from January 2022

The groups kept going through the harsh times

Workers Weekly 10 January 1930

Workers Weekly 13 March 1931

The Noel Butlin Archive holds some great material on the Militant Women’s Movement. See their online exhibit on 100 years of the CPA

For an excellent history of International Women’s Day (very Sydney based as the author says) go to Joyce Stevens book online

There is a good article on Red Flag

South Australian Working Women’s Centre

We were Adelaide recently and coincidentally we were staying very close to the South Australian Working Women’s Centre. The Centre was set in motion in a meeting at Adelaide Trades Hall in December 1978. Their T Shirt honours the caravan they worked out of in their early years. Here is the initial Chair Deborah McCulloch and some man with the van.

And the T Shirt

“In 1979 the Working Women’s Centre SA Inc was born. Our first home was a 1976 HJ Holden. Shortly after we upgraded and our headquarters became the now iconic caravan. In 2019 the Working Women’s Centre reached our 40th birthday and in celebration of this achievement we released a special limited edition of merchandise to commemorate 40 years of empowering working women in South Australia.

We collaborated with local artist, unionist & feminist Catherine Story, who created this design featuring a screenprinted illustration of the iconic caravan, honouring our unique grassroots beginning.

You can view more of Cath’s work on her Instagram account @Cathstorydraws “

Billy Bragg was in Adelaide for WOMAD and spent a bit of time with unionists, especially the Working Women’s Centre. I found out about the WWC socks via photo of him wearing them! He gave them an excellent boost on stage. A bit of the clip here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=5941765025907152

You can get all their swag here via their website https://wwcsa.org.au/shop/

Support a great cause and help them stay open.

Penny Sharpe, part of the incoming ALP government in NSW, says they will re-establish a Working Women’s Centre in NSW. Let’s see.

All newsletters on line.

Virtual tours here

Real life tours can be organised with Neale via ntowart@unionsnsw.org.au

The 24th International Conference on the History of Concepts, organized by Bartłomiej Błesznowski, Piotr Kuligowski and Wiktor Marzec on behalf of the History of Concepts Group (HCG), brings together scholars from all disciplines interested in conceptual history. It offers a platform for interdisciplinary exchange on the problems and practice of the history of concepts and fosters the international network of conceptual historians.

 

Although the conference gathers a broad community of conceptual historians regardless of their topic and region of interest, this year we would like to encourage reflecting on concepts in a localized and/or spatialized manner. The point of departure is for us the very locality where the conference takes place, Eastern Europe. However, its spatialized condition has a much broader, global, and perhaps universal reach, characterizing various tensions and differentials of the global space of conceptual transfers and their impact on historical processes.

 

In colonial and post-colonial settings, in dependent regions of continental empires, in the multicultural metropoles and especially in the shatter zones and interfaces of larger political and cultural entities, concepts are forged, uttered and used in context of ethnic diversity and language plurality. These contexts are marked by patterned inequality, where certain language resources maintain privileges, draw on extensive global networks and enjoy access to economic resources or political power. Many of these contexts are also characterized by shifting geopolitical frameworks and multiple gravities of political and cultural influence; for instance, when particular places change state affiliations or competing ideologies orient themselves at various political centers (imperial capital, national homeland abroad or contested benchmarks of progress).

 

Discontinuous history of empires (broadly understood) epitomizes such a situation exceptionally well. Social and political languages were created in such a multi-scalar network of tensions and adapted to geopolitical shifts. For instance, “Western” or “Eastern” orientation continue to shape the map of ideological divisions in Eastern Europe, and the competition between “domestic” and “global” elite hierarchies tend to split the local public spheres. At the same time, discontinuous history of the state resulted in a weak institutionalization of social conflict. Historical shifts were often dependent on larger political frameworks, when, for instance, clashes of empires opened opportunity windows for nationalist groups on their borderlands, which caused unprecedented reversals in political possibilities and ethnic hierarchies. In such situations, regimes of agency often mutated and unexpected opportunities emerged. Concepts, themselves carrying multiple legacies and differentials of power with them, gained uneven, situated impact on the historical process.

 

We invite participants to address this nexus of historical situatedness, geopolitical inequality and agency of concepts. This condition emerges as a global average rather than a local particularity. After all, what had been regionalized as a burden before was later turned into the problematic privilege of the margins and now appears to be a global typicality. Meanwhile, the apparent fit between concepts and things, and their language-based relative stability in the “standard” Western statehood, has been decentered and rendered as an exception at best, if not just an ideological illusion possible in centers of power.

 

The organizers welcome proposals for papers or panels focusing on the conference theme, not excluding proposals on any other aspect of conceptual history. Proposals can address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

 

- Historical agency of concepts and conceptual change

- Imperial and state-related Eastern European legacies of concepts

- Rethinking concepts and conceptual history from the global South and global East

- The spatialized legacy of concepts and geopolitical aspects of their history

- Multiple temporalities of concepts and their embeddedness in social realities

- Concepts of modernity and their various benchmarks and reference points in time and space

 

Proposals for panels (preferably 3 speakers and 1 commentator; in justified cases, 4 speakers) should not exceed 800 words; proposals for individual papers should not be longer than 250 words. The speaker’s name, institutional affiliation, major publications (no more than 5) should be added. Panels will last two hours. The language of the conference is English.

 

Please send your proposals to hcg2023@gmail.com as a Word Document. The deadline for sending in proposals is March 30. 2023. Accepted participants will be notified by the end of April.

 

The conference is free of charge. However, participation requires an active membership in the History of Concepts Group. The membership fee includes a one-year subscription to our journal, Contributions to the History of Concepts. There will be also a limited possibility to use free accommodation for PhD students and people without institutional support. If you want to use this option, please add this information along with a short justification to your submission.

El Departamento de Historia de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile invita al III Workshop de la Red Iberoamericana de Estudios sobre Comunismo: El comunismo como cultura política. Aproximaciones desde la historia intelectual y sociocultural

Fecha y lugar: Santiago de Chile, 24-25 de mayo de 2023

Organiza: Departamento de Historia de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile

+info y envío de resúmenes ampliados: hasta el 16 de abril de 2023 escribiendo a redriecom@gmail.com.

Comité académico: Rolando Álvarez (Chile), Hernán Camarero (Argentina), Elvira Concheiro (México); Francisco Erice (España), Luciano Nicolás García (Argentina), Carlos Illades (México), Gerardo Leibner (Uruguay), Ana Amelia Mello (Brasil), Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta (Brasil), Adriana Petra (Argentina), Marcelo Ridenti (Brasil) y Mercedes Saborido (Argentina).

El comunismo en Iberoamérica durante el siglo XX fue una experiencia política que adquirió distintos niveles de importancia según el caso de cada país. Participó en la organización del movimiento obrero, en alianzas políticas que corrieron diversas suertes, fue objeto de la represión en distintas etapas y sufrió desgajamientos que dieron origen a disidencias que tuvieron variados grados de protagonismo. Estos acontecimientos han sido materias preferentes en las que se ha centrado la historiografía de los comunismos en Iberoamericana. Pero esta experiencia no se remitió solo a estos aspectos. Se desarrolló en todo tipo de organizaciones sociales populares con expresiones en el mundo de la cultura, juvenil, mujeres y étnico. También lo hizo en sectores intelectuales, ya sea a través de militantes o de “compañeros de viaje”, quienes jugaron un papel relevante en la difusión del comunismo. De esta forma, los comunismos dieron vida a una cultura política en la que se combinaron las características transnacionales del proyecto comunista, con las modalidades de recepción política, social y cultural de cada país. Universalidad y particularidad fueron partes no contradictorias de la experiencia comunista iberoamericana.
 

El tercer encuentro de la Riecom. Red Iberoamericana de Estudios sobre Comunismo invita a especialistas a reunirse en torno a la temática de la construcción de las culturas políticas de los comunismos en América Latina y la península ibérica. En este sentido, la convocatoria invita a explorar la experiencia comunista desde un punto de vista que no se limite a sus aspectos institucionales y político-partidarios, sino que atienda a la dimensión de sus prácticas, lenguajes, simbologías, activismos sociales, intelectuales y culturales, las formas múltiples y complejas en que se articularon lo local y lo transnacional, los centros y periferias y los momentos de intersección entre las agendas de clase, género y raza.

El III Workshop de la Riecom. Red Iberoamericana de Estudios sobre Comunismo busca profundizar los debates de los encuentros anteriores, ampliando las temáticas y enfoques sobre la historia de los comunismos iberoamericanos. Para ello invitamos a historiadores e investigadores sociales, a reunirnos de manera presencial los días 24 y 25 de mayo de 2023 en la Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Los interesados deben hacer llegar una resumen ampliado de sus respectivas ponencias al Comité.
 

La actividad se realizará bajo el formato taller, ponderando la discusión exhaustiva de los trabajos presentados, por esta razón se realizará una selección que atienda a la pertinencia de las propuestas recibidas con un cupo máximo de 20.

Las líneas de propuestas son las siguientes:
- El comunismo como cultura política: lenguajes, representaciones, simbología,
sociabilidades, identidades
- Intelectuales y cultura: trayectorias, figuras mediadoras, mundo impreso,
organizaciones culturales
- Raza, género y clase: el comunismo como espacio de intersección

Entrega de resúmenes:
El resumen deberá tener un máximo de dos páginas en formato A4, Times New Roman, tamaño 12, interlineado 1,5
-Título de la ponencia (centrado).
-Nombre autor/a, afiliación institucional, correo electrónico.
-Cuatro palabras claves

Las propuestas serán evaluadas por el comité organizador y la aceptación de las mismas será comunicada el 28 de abril.

How does one apprehend the lives of Eastern Mediterranean minorities who managed, or were allowed to stay where they resided despite the upheavals brought by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire? On the face of it the task might appear easier than the one facing scholars of actively persecuted populations. Traumatic events like the massacres and expulsions of Muslim and Christian populations from the Balkans and Anatolia that have marked the abolition of the Sultanate never say their name -often given to them subsequently by historians or activists- in the written record. The latter’s destruction was often indeed planned, an integral part of the nationalistic demographic engineering at work in these events. By contrast “minorities,” as were sometimes designated after the Great War ethnically distinct groups allowed to remain in the successor-states of the Ottoman empire, are much more visible in the archive. Indeed, official concerns regarding their size, wealth, activities and indeed loyalty, meant that they were constantly surveilled. In this sense, the written record contributed very much to fabricating minorities, namely discrete, legible and ultimately controllable groups. This was not a uniquely top-down process however. Minority groups themselves, using the official channels of communication available to them, and performing -sometimes tactically- the social function they had been ascribed as a strategy of survival in their interactions with state authorities or official and unofficial third parties, participated in the entrenchment of their identity. How does one apprehend the lives of Eastern Mediterranean minorities who managed, or were allowed to stay where they resided despite the upheavals brought by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire? On the face of it the task might appear easier than the one facing scholars of actively persecuted populations. Traumatic events like the massacres and expulsions of Muslim and Christian populations from the Balkans and Anatolia that have marked the abolition of the Sultanate never say their name -often given to them subsequently by historians or activists- in the written record. The latter’s destruction was often indeed planned, an integral part of the nationalistic demographic engineering at work in these events. By contrast “minorities,” as were sometimes designated after the Great War ethnically distinct groups allowed to remain in the successor-states of the Ottoman empire, are much more visible in the archive. Indeed, official concerns regarding their size, wealth, activities and indeed loyalty, meant that they were constantly surveilled. In this sense, the written record contributed very much to fabricating minorities, namely discrete, legible and ultimately controllable groups. This was not a uniquely top-down process however. Minority groups themselves, using the official channels of communication available to them, and performing -sometimes tactically- the social function they had been ascribed as a strategy of survival in their interactions with state authorities or official and unofficial third parties, participated in the entrenchment of their identity.

This one-day workshop invites contributions from scholars and archivists interested in exploring the archival lives of Eastern Mediterranean minorities who became entrenched in the successor-states of the Ottoman Empire, from Southeast Europe to North Africa, through Anatolia and the Near East. Its focus is not so much on the minorities as such. Rather it seeks to engage an epistemological discussion on the records, official and unofficial, public and private, written, oral and built, that can be used to document state methods of surveillance of minority groups, but also the strategies of entrenchment devised by minorities themselves. We are therefore interested in “archives,” in the broadest sense of the word, produced by post-Ottoman successor states, minority groups themselves and their institutions -secular, religious, economic- or even third-party observers. Our goal is two-fold. Empirical first, as we seek to map out archival repositories relevant to the trajectories of post-Ottoman, Eastern Mediterranean minorities. Epistemological, second, as we aim to tackle the linguistic, but also conceptual and methodological challenges raised by a study of these groups through the existing records.

Themes of interest for this workshop include, but are not limited to:

- The transformation of the archival identity of Eastern Mediterranean minorities at the time of imperial transitions
- Accessibility and archival policy of private and public institutions of archives
- Reading strategies -ethnographic/extractive- in apprehending the lives of minorities in written records: against or along the archival grain
- The role of state records in fabricating minorities
- The congruence and incongruence between the written records and oral testimonies emanating from minorities and minority institutions
- Apprehending minorities in third-party repositories (League of Nations, Red Cross, Red Crescent, Permanent Mandates Commission, etc.), namely outside of the dual relationship between states and minorities
- Linguistic challenges in the exploitation of minority-related archives

This workshop, with its driving theme, is the second major event of a five-year project entitled 1922: In the Wake of the Death of an Empire: Political Transitions and Minority Strategies of Entrenchment in the Eastern Mediterranean which is funded by the Ecole française d’Athènes, the CNRS-IHMC and Koç University and run by Angelos Dalachanis (CNRS-IHMC) and Alexis Rappas (Koç University).

Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered by the organizers.

Deadline for sending abstract: 30 March 2023 to angelos.dalachanis@cnrs.fr or arappas@ku.edu.tr

Response to participants: by end of April 2023

Supporting institutions: Ecole française d’Athènes (EfA), Koç University, Institut d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine (IHMC), Swedish Research Institute-Istanbul (SRII), Institut français d’études anatoliennes (IFEA).

Conference at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto | Conveners: James Retallack (University of Toronto), Simone Lässig (GHI Washington) and Swen Steinberg (GHI Washington) | Partners: Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Bonn); Institute for Social Movements (Bochum)

Register for all sessions

Register for keynote address

All events on the program are free of charge and open to the public.

The 1960s and 1970s were the heyday of labour history, and not only for historians of Germany. There was a marked turning-away from both labour history and workers' history after 1980, due in part to new interest in the German and European bourgeoisies, in part to the "cultural turn" and other scholarly trends. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union after 1991 and the decline of Marxist historiographies. In 2010, a forum of scholars acknowledged that "class," as an analytical category, had largely lost its appeal. But now we are more than ten years further on, and scholars have recently been telling us that histories of work, of labour movements, and of capitalism are all back "in." Are they really?

Certainly, the COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that work and the concept of work are central to our existence and self-worth. And scholarship has not stood still since 1980. Histories of work have embraced the history of capitalism, class, race, ethnicity, religion, language, migration, and locality; of gender construction, the body, and emotions; of education, life-cycles, and generations. The study of labour movements has also revealed important connections between cultures of commemoration, memory studies, and the role of "citizen workers" in civil society. The time seems ripe for another stocktaking on these interrelated themes, bringing history into conversation with other disciplines.

Including the iconic figure of August Bebel provides focus in another way. Was the leader of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) a worker, a craftsman, a manufacturer, a merchant, an entrepreneur, even perhaps a Bürger? Was he the embodiment of Social Democracy, as Lenin once claimed? Either way, the collapse of capitalist society that Bebel foresaw as early as the 1880s never occurred, and within a year of his death his legions were marching faithfully to the front for Kaiser and Fatherland. Karl Kautsky's assessment of Social Democracy was closer to the mark: the SPD was a revolutionary but not a revolution-making party.

While the focus of this conference falls on the pre-1914 period and on Central Europe, this conference presents contributions that consider transnational or global comparisons and suggest how historians of nineteenth-century social movements can speak to those studying or participating in more modern ones.

 Program (pdf)

The Young Mining Historians Corner is a blog post series edited by the Labour In Mining WG dedicated to early career researchers in mining history broadly constructed.

The Issue 11 has been just published:

Working-Class Ecopolitics in French Northern Mining District (Late 19th-Early 20th Century)   – by Bastien Cabot (Associate Researcher at CESPRA / EHESS))
(https://lim.hypotheses.org/2716)

Find all the previous issues here: https://lim.hypotheses.org/category/ymhc
Contact LiM WG for more information at labourinmining@gmail.com

YMHC editors: Francesca Sanna, Gabriele Marcon, Nikolaos Olma

Proyecto Territorios de la Memoria- Otras culturas, otros espacios en Iberoamérica, Siglos XX y XXI (Referencia: PID2020-113492RB-I00) /

Máster universitario La España contemporánea en el contexto internacional (UNED)

 

El encuentro será abierto y gratuito y tendrá una modalidad híbrida, con dinámica presencial en el Salón de Actos de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología de la UNED (calle Obispo Trejo nº 2, Madrid, España), con posibilidad de conexión virtual previa inscripción.

Más información en: https://losterritoriosdelamemoria.es/actividad/jornadas-internacionales-museo-trauma-y-transmision-de-la-memoria/

 

El desarrollo y la universalización de ese dispositivo visual que es el museo data de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, pero desde fines del siglo XX y entrado el siglo XXI ha conocido una expansión extraordinaria. Casi todo es museable hoy desde el patrimonio arqueológico a las muñecas, desde el arte a los coches. Por eso parece pertinente hacerse una pregunta por este éxito sin precedentes. ¿Qué convierte al museo en ese espacio emblemático hoy? Para ello es necesario apelar a estudios de caso, analizar qué dicen y qué hacen los museos al decir, cuál es la estructura narrativa de los diferentes tipos de museo: los coloniales en Europa, pero también los de historia nacional o de antropología, los museos étnicos en América Latina o esos nuevos espacios que son testigos de acontecimientos históricos traumáticos y que también llevan el rótulo de museo.
Los museos investigan, coleccionan, conservan, interpretan y exhiben el patrimonio de una cultura ¿No hubo a lo largo de la historia formas diferentes de investigar, conservar,interpretar y exhibir el patrimonio material e inmaterial? ¿Conocemos o podemos dar cuenta de esas otras maneras? Y en esta fricción entre mundos diferentes, ¿imaginar otras formas de conservar y transmitir ese legado por fuera de las paredes del museo?
Estas Jornadas Internacionales, Museos, Trauma y Transmisión de Memoria, intentan abrir espacios tanto en lo geográfico, en lo temporal, en lo cultural, como también en los diferentes tipos de museos u otros dispositivos, pensados y por venir.

FLACSO
Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, sede Argentina
Tucumán 1966, CABA,
Martes 28 de marzo de 2023 de 9 a 17.30 hs.

El encuentro será abierto y gratuito y tendrá una modalidad híbrida, con dinámica presencial en el aula 3 de FLACSO y posibilidad de conexión virtual inscribiéndose en: https://forms.gle/RkKXNadbUgD17PUu5

 

Programa

9 a 9.15 hs.: Bienvenida y apertura

9.15 a 12.30 hs.

Mesa 1: América Latina, OIT y sindicatos: libertad sindical, medición sindical, delegaciones, vinculaciones y experiencias.

Coordinan: Laura Caruso y Norberto Ferreras

Patricio Herrera González (Universidad de Valparaíso, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas), “La IV Conferencia Americana del Trabajo (1949). El debate social y laboral en un contexto de atomización obrera”

Andrés Stagnaro (IdIHCS- CONICET-UNLP), “Globalizando el modelo de relaciones laborales: la justicia del trabajo en la IV Conferencia de los estados de América miembros de la OIT (1949)”.

Victoria Basualdo (CONICET - AEyT de FLACSO), “Las relaciones sindicales internacionales en América Latina durante la Guerra Fría y el papel de la OIT: reflexiones preliminares a partir de investigaciones sobre el caso argentino”

Gabriela Scodeller (INCIHUSA-Conicet; FCPyS-UNCuyo), “La difusión del modelo yugoslavo de autogestión por parte de la OIT en los largos sesenta mirada desde un caso argentino”.

Álvaro Orsatti (RELATS), “Desarrollos latinoamericanos sobre indicadores de densidad sindical”.

12.30 a 14.00 hs: Almuerzo (Cervantes, Juan D. Perón 1883)

14.00 a 17.00 hs.

Mesa 2: Ampliando el debate sobre las definiciones de trabajo

Coordinan: Andrés Stagnaro y Victoria Basualdo

Fabián Herrera León (Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo), “El estudio en México del trabajo informal de menores y sus condiciones de vida: la incursión problemática de Marguerite Thibert (1939-1942)”.

Norberto O. Ferreras (UFF- Brasil), “¿Cuántos “Trabajos Forzados” existen? Un diálogo sobre el contexto de las Convenciones 29 (1930) y 105 (1957)”.

Paula Lucía Aguilar (CONICET/UBA/IIGG), “Hogar, saberes expertos y trabajo: La OIT y el estudio de la “actividad económica doméstica””.

Óscar Gallo (Departamento de Historia Universidad de Antioquia (Medellín-Colombia), “La OIT y la salud de los trabajadores campesinos en América Latina”.

Patricia Lepratti Souza (Conicet-UNSAM), “Las normas internacionales de trabajo y su aplicación en América Latina. El caso del Convenio sobre el Trabajo Marítimo en Argentina (2015-2021)”.

Laura Caruso (CONICET- Escuela IDAES-UNSAM), “Navegando el mundo: el trabajo marítimo, sindicatos y representaciones argentinas en la OIT en el corto siglo XX”

17.00 a 17.30 hs. - Comentarios finales y cierre del encuentro

Presentación RIOITAL (2020)
http://www.relats.org/documentos/HIST.NORM.OIT.RED.Presentacion.abr.pdf

WORKSHOP 

The University of Liverpool, 1-2 June 2023

 

 

This interdisciplinary workshop investigates how the gig economy has transformed labour relations in the Middle East and North Africa. It focuses on the challenges and opportunities that digital platforms offer to labour markets in the region while precarity and informality jeopardise workers. 

 

The workshop calls for papers that broaden the analysis of the so-called “gig economy” beyond a mere economic lens, by bringing together multi-disciplinary insights and approaches from politics, sociology, political economy, digital anthropology, and development studies.

 

Topics of interest may include:

 

1. Governing digital markets: laws and regulations on “gig labour”

2. Artificial intelligence and surveillance over gig workers

3. Gig workers’ struggles and trade unions 

4. Feminist perspectives on platform labour 

5. Migrant workers and the gig economy

 

 

Proposals from PhD candidates and Early Career Researchers are especially encouraged. 

 

In order to foster inclusivity and allow access to scholars from the MENA region and local academic institutions, the workshop will be hybrid.

 

 Limited financial support is available for PhDs and ECRs travelling from the UK.

 

Please submit an abstracts (300 words) and a short bio (50 words) by March 30, 2023

 

The workshop is organised by dr. Stella Morgana, British Academy Post-doctoral Fellow

Email contact for submissions and inquiries: s.morgana@liverpool.ac.uk

Workshop  - University College London
Friday 22 September 2023

Thinkers in what is now ‘the Global South’ – and what was then the ‘colonial and semi-colonial world’ – began a sustained and transformative engagement with the Marxist
intellectual tradition during the first half of the twentieth century. Especially after the Russian Revolution of 1917, Marxism was appropriated, reinvented, and popularised in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The tradition was at once globalised geographically and transformed theoretically. The agents of this process were, then, among the most important intellectual actors of modern history (albeit still little-known in the English-speaking world). Many, such as the Peruvian, José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930), and the Indian revolutionary M.N. Roy (1887-1954), engaged Marxism in a mutually transformative encounter. Subsequent efforts to ‘translate’ Marxist thought and practice into new national and continental settings in the wider world have been key to the global intellectual history of the past hundred years. Moreover, these Global South thinkers were not only synthesisers of ‘European’ Marxism  and a given national culture. While many were enthused precisely by the internationalism which they found in the Marxist tradition, it was not without its limitations. It was in grappling with the tradition’s potential- and its contradictions- that they comprehended, transformed, and ‘stretched’ it.

This workshop aims to provide a forum in which postgraduate and early career scholars working on the intellectual history of Marxism in the Global South during  approximately) the first half of the twentieth century can share and discuss their work. We also hope that it will be the beginning of a more lasting academic network in this area of historical research. The workshop will primarily be in-person in London but virtual attendance from elsewhere will be facilitated if needs must.

 

Suggested topics

● Intellectual histories or biographies
● Organisational histories
● ‘Vernacularization’ of Marxism
● The encounters between Marxism and religion
● Marxism and the ‘National Question’
● Migration, diaspora, exile
● Revolutionary temporality and stages of ‘development
● Tradition and ‘modernity’

Application

Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words. Please send them by email to t.sandhu@qmul.ac.uk. The deadline for applications is Friday 24 March.

CfP for an edited collection

Editors
Luca Mocarelli (University of Milan – Bicocca)
Giulio Ongaro (University of Milan – Bicocca)
Judy Stephenson (UCL)

We welcome paper proposals for above edited collection to be (provisionally) published by Palgrave in late 2024.

The analysis of wages and wages’ series has been at the basis of economic and social history debates at least since the late nineteenth century. Recent literature (Mocarelli 2018; Stephenson 2018; Hatcher and Stephenson 2019; Humphries & Weisdorf 2019; Drelichman and González Agudo 2020); etc.) has revived an established interest in the economic history of wage formation (See Scholliers & Schwarz 2003)

After organizing a successful session at WEHC Paris 2022 (https://www.wehc2022.org/program-details/wages-formation-and-determinat…) the editors seek to put the important cases of historical wage formation presented there into a scholarly format, edited into a collection which will be of interest and support to students of pre industrial labour markets and labour history. We call for papers to augment this collection which will examine historical cases of the determination of wages in early modern wage systems and bargains. We are particularly interested to include cases form the South American continent, east Asia and Africa, and in all locations beyond large institutional employers.

We expect and seek that submissions will include cases where the following are features or can be analyzed.

The role of in-kind and monetary payments, bonuses and supplements in the formation of remuneration.

The relationship between work contracts (annual, piece work, time work or task work) and the determination of wage rates.

The determinants of differentials between skilled and unskilled workers. The variety of wages in pre-industrial societies in relation with the characteristics of the workers.

Wages in a diachronic and comparative perspective: how wages’ structure and composition changes across times and spaces (both in terms of geographical areas and urban-rural environments).

Please send your proposal as an abstract of 200 words and a short CV (1 page) to the editors (luca.mocarelli@unimib.it; giulio.ongaro@unimib.it; j.stephenson@ucl.ac.uk) by April 17th 2023.

Latin America and Central Europe are regions that share the experience of dictatorships, authoritarianism, strong modernizing states, rebellious civil societies and transitions to and from democracy. Both regions were also part of the so-called third wave of democratization, which represented a time of hope for democracy and constitutionalism as a means of overcoming dictatorship and difficult history.

 

Mission Statement

Yet this period of democratizing constitutionalism, often through transplantations and adaptions from other constitutional models found elsewhere in the world, took place during the global rise of neoliberal economics and the Washington consensus with new political orders designed to increase the role of the market in the economy. The constitutional orders in these regions have undergone many upheavals in recent years, and the mob attack on the seats of the central constitutional institutions in Brazil in January this year is just one striking example.

In both regions, the promises regarding economic, social, and cultural rights as well as participative and deliberative democratic models collided with economic models and political agendas placing their bets on the market as the key driver of growth and redistribution. Both regions have also experienced the return of right-wing politics in the last decade or more, accompanied in many cases by the rise of illiberal constitutionalism. But there are also crucial differences: the role and ambition of the so-called “social constitutionalism” thriving in Latin America whereas almost non-existent in Central Europe.

The conference seeks to explore these histories, while rejecting a black-and-white dichotomous perspective that portrays countries simply divided between liberal democrats and illiberal anti-democrats. In contrast we encourage papers that examine how the rise of illiberal concepts and practices emerged from the ambiguities of liberal orders including the interlinkages of liberal economic reform programs with illiberal political practices and the non-democratic features inherent in liberal constitutional systems.

We very strongly encourage contributions from scholars focusing on Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe exploring the following questions, including:

- How have democratic historical narratives regarding the authoritarian and dictatorial pasts been put to use towards illiberal ends?
- What are the legacies of authoritarian and illiberal constitutionalist projects of the 20th century?
- What has been the role of the legal professions in authoritarian, transitional, and post-authoritarian orders? What can this tell us about the role of legal professions in illiberal projects of the present?
- What role has secularism, religion and clericalism in liberal and post-liberal orders?
- How have certain actors associated with “Third Wave” civil rights and democratization become part of illiberal movements after transition?
- How have illiberal movements transnationalized to link Eastern Europe and Latin America? Has this process been informed by earlier transnational human rights movements?

We encourage actor-oriented enquiry and welcome contributions combining systemic analysis with perspectives from below.

We welcome comparative papers, but are not concerned primarily with a detailed and elaborated comparative analysis of Latin America and Central Europe. Nor do we wish to merely point out the many analogies and similarities, which, on closer examination, usually reveal more differences than commonalities. Rather, we are concerned with parallel evolutions, narratives, and observations of the complicated developments in both regions, comparing the main research problems and questions as well as the ways of solving them. We are interested in using the parallel narrative of "the other region" to open ourselves up to themes, problems and perspectives that have remained hidden or obscured in our own research field of vision. As such, papers focusing on one region or the other are very welcome with the goal of using the event as an opportunity to compare and collaborate across geographical and cultural specializations.

The conference is a part of the Volkswagen-Stiftung funded project “Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Frame/Perspective”. The project aims to enhance historical, interdisciplinary, and comparative perspectives in scholarly engagement with illiberal and authoritarian challenges to constitutional democracy in ECE situating the present-day conflicts in the longer history of the ebb and flow of constitutionalism, democracy, legality and pluralism in the region. Focusing primarily on the era of late state socialism, the post-communist liberal transformation, and into the current illiberal challenge to constitutional democracy, the project situates these regional developments within broader European and global transnational perspectives.

Date: October 12–13, 2023
Location: Villa Lanna, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

Conference Committee:

- Michal Kopeček (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)
- Marta Bucholc (University of Warsaw)
- Joachim von Puttkamer (University of Jena)
- Ned Richardson-Little (University of Erfurt)
- Renáta Uitz (Central European University, Vienna-Budapest)

Sponsor: Volkswagen-Stiftung funded project “Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East Central Europe: Historical Analysis in Comparative and Transnational Frame/Perspective”

Hosted by the Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Centre for Ibero-American Studies (SIAS), Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague

Deadline: the deadline to submit abstracts is 20 March, 2023, to Matěj Slavík (slavik@usd.cas.cz).

Questions regarding the conference are to be sent to the email contact above and/or to Michal Kopeček (kopecek@usd.cas.cz).

Contact (announcement)

Matěj Slavík
E-Mail: slavik@usd.cas.cz

Michal Kopeček
E-Mail: kopecek@usd.cas.cz

https://il-liberal.uni-jena.de/

 

 

General Theme of the Annual Conference: “How to Understand Contemporary Price Fluctuations: Their Structure, Reality, and Impact”

 

Date: November 4-5, 2023

Venue: Tohoku Gakuin University, 1-3-1 Tsuchitoi, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8511, Japan

 

The Japan Society of Political Economy celebrated its 60th anniversary four years ago. Over the six decades, the JSPE has endeavored to expand the scope of explorations, from the basic theory of capitalism to the analysis of contemporary capitalism. The JSPE has committed to a critical standpoint against capitalism and mainstream economics and directed its theoretical investigations toward elucidating various issues of capitalism. Nowadays, Marxian economics and the other schools in the heterodox political economy attempt to exert ever more influence in building analytical frameworks to address real-world issues of contemporary capitalism, such as the financial crisis, globalization, and the analysis of class and inequality. 

 

  After the outbreaking of the pandemic COVID-19 and in particular, since 2021, a general increase in prices has been observed around the world: the revival of a high inflation problem after a long period of progressed economic globalization and the low inflation prevailed in the advanced countries since the 1990s. Even Japan cannot be exceptional, though it has been recognized as being suffered from long stagnation and deflation during the recent 30 years. Indeed, the consumer price index grew by 4.0% in December 2022, which is the highest growth since the 2nd oil crisis. As these trends in prices are significant and had never been observed before in nearly half a century, they have attracted great attention from both mainstream and heterodox economists.

  It was also over the half-century that the great transformation of the capitalist economy has been observed, such as the regime shift from Keynesianism to neoliberalism; globalization; and informatization and financialization of capitalism. Nowadays, the worldwide supply chain conducted and operated by multinational corporations becomes dominant in major sectors of production, which has been supported by the significant development of information and communication technologies, including the Internet. Moreover, the economic transactions in financial sectors are much more significant and expand faster than those in the real economy, which leads to economic crises frequently occurring due to financial shocks. Correspondingly, new idiosyncratic policy schemes, such as Quantitative Easing and expansionary physical policy, have been regularly applied to rescue such crises and even the recent shocks of the global pandemic of COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

 

  Given this recent transformation of the capitalist economy, one of our goals in the 71st Annual Conference of JSPE is to promote the analysis of the present worldwide high inflation from the perspective of political economy, which would encourage a comprehensive understanding of the present regime of the capitalist economy. We aim to deepen discussions about the price fluctuations in the contemporary capitalist economy, in particular, regarding the real features as well as the structural mechanism of these price movements, and theirimpacts on citizens' lives, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.

 

Proposals  

JSPE invites proposals for its international sessions -- topics relating to the general theme for the plenary session and reflecting the tradition and analytical perspective of JSPE which includes: 

 

(a) Critical accounts of the current situations of “deadlocks” of capitalism:  neoliberal globalization, the global financial crisis, economic development, inequality, socialism, gender, environment, and global climate change; 

 

(b) The future of the capitalist system and alternatives to capitalism: major conceptual challenges for critical political economy 

 

(c) Critical analysis of current political-economic problems and policy challenges,  

 

(d) Basic theories of political economy 

 

*Proposals of other topics are also welcome 

 

 

The international session(s) will be held in a hybrid of face-to-face and online.  

 

Language  

International sessions will be held mainly in English.  

 

* If you hope other languages, please let us know for advice. 

 

Submission Procedures and the Deadline 

Proposals should reach the JSPE International Committee at the latest by May 8, 2023, by e-mail to: jspeintl(at)googlegroups.com 

 

 

When submitting your proposal, please include: 

 

(a) The title of the proposed paper; 

 

(b) Your name and academic affiliation; 

 

(c) Your e-mail and postal address; 

 

(d) An abstract (up to 500 words). 

 

(e) Desired language other than English, if any.  

 

(f) Desired style of participation: online or face-to-face. 

 

* Notification of acceptance will be sent by 30 June.  

 

Deadline for the full paper  

The full paper and the extended abstract (A4, 1 page) must be submitted by September 19, 2023 via e-mail to: jspeintl(at)googlegroups.com 

 

Participation Fee 

The way to pay a fee for participation will be announced later on our website: 

https://en.jspe.gr.jp/annual-conference 

5./6. Oktober 2023, University of Kassel, Germany

In recent years, racial capitalism has become a much-debated concept. The Black Lives Matter movement has provided a context to discuss the relationship between racism and capitalism anew. Racial capitalism now shapes discussions in numerous social fields and disciplines of critical social science. However, the frequent reference to the term is often overshadowed by unclear to contradictory argumentation: Is the entanglement of racism and capitalism contingent or logically necessary? How are racism and capitalism respectively defined and historically classified? How does the relationship between racism and capitalism differ in different world regions and time periods? And how can the relationship of domination between racism and capitalism be overcome?

These questions are not new, of course, and connect to intense debates of the 1980s as well as earlier debates within and between anti-colonial movements. Against this background, it is hardly surprising that classic works of the so-called Black Radical Tradition (WEB Du Bois, CLR James, Claudia Jones, Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, Angela Davis, and others) are being re-read and re-interpreted to understand, critique, and overcome contemporary forms of domination. Starting from Marxist categories and as a critique of a Eurocentric Marxism, these authors have elaborated the relevance of racism and (post-)colonialism for capitalist development. Moreover, beyond the concept of racial capitalism, these debates are of utmost relevance for a critical social theory and practice.

At least since the 1990s, the tension between Marxism and Postcolonial Studies has overshadowed corresponding discussions in academia and social movements. At times, the fronts have hardened to such an extent that the two critical perspectives see the other as an antagonist. In such a context, theoretical, methodological, and political differences appear insurmountable. Most recently, this has been evident in the heated debate that Vivek Chibber's Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital has provoked. In contrast, current discussions on racial capitalism provide promising starting points for research that does justice to both perspectives.

Against this background, the Department of Development Policy and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kassel would like to offer a space to intensify these debates together with (activist) scholars from different contexts. In addition to keynote speeches by Gargi Bhattarchayya (University of East London) and Kolja Lindner (Université Paris 8, Vincennes-Saint-Denis), a panel discussion and the presentation of contributions, there will be opportunities for peer-discussions in smaller groups, in which, for example, conceptual controversies, methodological challenges, or strategic questions can be debated in depth.

We welcome theoretical and empirical contributions that examine the relationship between racism, (post-)colonialism, and capitalism. Ideally, these should attempt to fill current research gaps and present innovative syntheses of different research programs. PhD scholars are especially asked to present their research projects.

Contributions can be submitted on the following topics and questions:

•    Marxism and Postcolonialism
o    Is a Marxist postcolonialism or a postcolonial Marxism possible and necessary?
o    How do postcolonial and Marxist approaches explain the entanglement of racism and capitalism?
o    What ontological, epistemological, and politico-strategic tensions arise from historical materialist and poststructuralist explanatory approaches and how can these be overcome?
•    Racism and Capital Accumulation
o    How is the relationship between racism and capitalism articulated in contemporary societal relations?
o    What role do state apparatuses (e.g. the police, border and migration regimes, authoritarian-racist governments) play in securing the racist-capitalist modes of (re)production?
o    What role does racist oppression play in processes of capital accumulation and vice versa (using historically and geographically specific analyses)?
o    How do trends of financialization and digitalization change patterns of racist oppression and exploitation?
•    Neo-Colonialism and Imperialism in International Relations
o    To what extent are geopolitics, imperialism and neo-colonialism shaped by and through racism today?
o    How does this interconnectedness manifest itself in international cooperation/development policy?
o    What is the significance of counter-hegemonic forums of international political economy (e.g. in the tradition of Bandung, Tricontinental, New International Economic Order)?
•    Global Value Chains and International Divsion of Labour
o    What is the significance of racism in global value chains?
o    How does the international division of labor reproduce both economic (super-)exploitation and racist oppression?
o    What contradictions arise from this for the organizing labour and how do class struggles become anti-racist?
•    Race, Class and Gender
o    To what extent are regimes and crises of social reproduction as well as gendered division of labor and patriarchal domination permeated by racism?
o    How is racism experienced in everyday life and what role do class and gender play in this experience?
o    What perspectives do feminist political economy approaches offer for thinking Marxist and postcolonial research perspectives together intersectionally?
•    Climate Justice
o    How are the escalating climate crisis, fossil infrastructures, strategies of a green economy, and struggles for climate justice shaped by and through (anti-)racism and (anti-)capitalism, respectively?
•    Political Strategies of Social Movements
o    Which questions and insights does political practice/organizing of emancipatory social forces have for the questions above?
o    What practical consequences results from a synthesis of historical-materialist and postcolonial research?
o    Which contradictions and possibilities result from this for international solidarity, labor struggles and strategies of social movements (identity politics, inclusive class politics, etc.)?

Abstracts (max. 400 words) can be submitted to racialcapitalism@uni-kassel.de until May 21, 2023. Feedback on submissions will be sent in mid-June.

https://www.uni-kassel.de/fb05/en/1000000/divisions-and-institutes/politikwissenschaft/fachgebiete/department-for-development-and-postcolonial-studies/startpage

 

15 – 16 September 2023

Teleborg Castle, Växjö, Sweden (and online)

 

This conference aims to bring together scholars working on early modern (local) histories of colonialism, slavery, and slave trade, including related forms of forced labour and relocation in Asia and the wider Indian Ocean region, from Cape Town to Tokyo. We invite contributions that address these themes from a (structured) data perspective, or as new and starting research projects, or from a broader theoretical and connective angle.

The conference is partitioned in three sessions that centre around these perspectives:

(Historical) Data:

This session focuses on new data initiatives that aim to generate and / or link historical data relating to (local) histories of colonialism and / or slavery, and slave trade in early modern Asia. We invite contributions that address, for example:

- Data extraction methods for historical documents

- Structuring, modelling and / or linking historical data

- Entity linking in historical data

New research:

This session aims to stimulate discussion and connections between new research (projects) in the field of early modern colonialism, slavery and slave trade in Asia. We invite starting research projects to present their research approach, preliminary results, as well as a key issue for feedback, to foster dialogue and draw upon the expertise of other specialists. Contributions to this session could address, for example:

- Historical source criticisms and dealing with bias, selection and gaps.

- New analyses of historical data and / or sources.

- New micro, meso- or macrolevel histories of slavery and slave trade in Asia.

New connections & perspectives:

This session aims to forge new connections and perspectives on early modern colonial interactions, forced labour, and forced relocations in Asia from a broader, theoretical angle. We invite contributions that address these points through, for example:

- New theoretical or conceptual embeddings.

- New approaches to research and writing about colonial-local histories.

- New connections between historical processes or academic disciplines. 2

 

Deadline for paper abstracts: 3 April 2023

The conference is organized by Hans Hägerdal (Linnaeus University) in collaboration with Merve Tosun (International Institute of Social History), Ulbe Bosma (International Institute of Social History), Matthias van Rossum (International Institute of Social History), and Claude Chevaleyre (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon). Attendance to the conference is free of charge. We can provide (limited) lodging at the conference venue for three nights and aim to reimburse travel costs as much as possible. In case of overspill, priority will be given to participants with no or limited institutional support.

Abstracts (±300 words) should describe the proposed paper and can be sent to Hans Hägerdal (hans.hagerdal@lnu.se). Please include a short biographical note and your current institutional affiliation in your submission. The deadline for paper abstracts is Monday 3 April 2023. Accepted contributors will be notified by 24 April 2023. Full papers (6.000 - 8.000 words) are due on 3 July 2023.

European Labour History Network (ELHN)
Working Group Precarious Labour

A new ELHN Working Group has been launched: The Working Group Precarious Labour brings together scholars that are interested in the history of precarious labour all over the world. The Working Group’s objective is to study precarity in all its manifestations and effects as well as to animate discussions about conceptual issues, workers’ responses and making global comparisons and connections. More information can be found on the webpage of the working group.

If you are interested in joining, i.e. be included in our mailing list and receive information about our planned activities, please write to one of the coordinators: Nina Trige Andersen, María Fernanda Arellanes, Rosa Kösters or Sibylle Marti. Find contact information on the working group's webpage.

The Young Mining Historians Corner is a blog post series edited by the Labour In Mining WG dedicated to early career researchers in mining history broadly constructed.

The Issue 10 has been just published:
Labour in the Antique Mines of Laurion – by Eleonore Favier (Teaching Assistant at Université Paris 8 – Associate researcher at the laboratory HiSoMA)
(https://lim.hypotheses.org/2686)

Find all the previous issues here: https://lim.hypotheses.org/category/ymhc
Contact LiM WG for more information at labourinmining@gmail.com

YMHC editors: Francesca Sanna, Gabriele Marcon, Nikolaos Olma