Social and Labour History News

CfP: The Contradictions of Liberalism From the 18th Century to the Present: Leftist Critiques”

1 month 1 week ago

Day Symposium

 

Organized and Hosted by the Institute of Working-Class History/ Chicago, Socialist History journal/ UK, with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation/ Berlin 

 

Symposium Time & Location: Friday July 21st 2023, at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Berlin Headquarters, Strasse der Pariser Kommune 8a

 

Symposium Languages: German & English

 

Symposium Format: In-person with possibility of online presentations in exceptional circumstances. Presenters are asked to submit a draft of their papers in advance for circulation to participants, and to present a summary of the main arguments at the symposium. We intend to publish some of the papers in a special themed issue of Socialist History.

 

Symposium Theme: Liberalism grew from often contradictory ideas of individual liberty, representative government, and economic freedom that challenged feudal and hereditary power. It facilitated the development of capitalism and the rise of a new capitalist ruling class. While proclaiming universal human and civil rights, most liberals historically excluded large swaths of the population as unworthy or incapable of exercising them. To extents varying with time and place, designated ethnicities, women, people of color, indigenous peoples, as well as impoverished and working people were excluded.    

Liberalism became the main legitimizing ideology of capitalism.  It has allowed for some adjustments within the larger framework; however, it promotes and defends capitalism, and opposes all efforts that call the system itself into question. Capitalism not only exploits labor with the extraction of surplus value but required the dispossession of European peasants as well as Indigenous peoples in the Americas and throughout Africa as well as Asia. This makes liberalism complicit in racism, colonialism, and genocide.  Since liberalism is not a monolithic tradition, it can accommodate variations, from laissez-faire economics to social libertarianism.   

Through the twentieth century, liberalism’s once hegemonic status was severely discredited and contested, as liberalism, much like capitalism itself, became associated with imperialist warfare and the global division and redivision of the world. Anticolonial revolts and the persistence of revolutionary Marxism have offered hopes for a different world, one based on solidarity, participatory political, and economic democracy, as well as substantive equality.  The concerns of institutional liberalism to save and stabilize capitalism has aligned it with militant nationalism and Fascism. All three shared the policies of austerity and “pure economics” – what today would be summarized as the neo-liberal paradigm. This meant the breaking of working-class organizations and the privatizations and corporatizations of ever larger spheres of society, in the name of efficiency and rationality.    

 

 

 

We would particularly welcome proposals for papers on the following general areas:

 

·         What specific contributions have leftist and Marxist scholars made to understanding the contradictions of Liberalism more fully? 

·         ‘Big tent’ liberalism’s fragmentation and its relations with socialist movements  

·          Classical Liberalism and its relationships to both right-wing laissez-faire Liberalism and left-wing civil-liberties Liberalism (human rights, civil liberties, political pluralism) 

·         Classical Liberalism, social reformism, Keynesian economics, and the rise of Neo-Liberalism  

·         The impact and legacies of the Great War and Russian, German, and Austrian/Hungarian Revolutions  

  • Liberalism’s role in the rise of right-wing authoritarianism & Fascism 
  • Liberalism and capitalism, racism, colonialism, and settler states 
  • Liberalism, Illiberalism, and Fascism 
  • Capitalism and Fascism
  • 1923: the final defeat of the German Revolution and the first major Conservative-Nazi alliance in Germany

We are looking for papers of between 5000 to 7000 words. Selected papers will be published in a special issue of Socialist History. Attendance at the symposium is free of charge, but donations are highly appreciated. We ask that anyone attending the symposium register in advance.

 

Tour of Revolutionary Berlin: For those interested, there will be the option to participate in a tour of sites related to working-class and labor-movement history, as well as the histories of strikes, uprisings, revolutions, and counterrevolutions. More detailed information forthcoming.  

 

Instructions for Proposals:

          Length of Abstract: 1-2 paragraphs

          Application Deadline for presenters: June 15th, 2023

          Submission of Paper Deadline: July 10th, 2023

 

 How to Apply: Submit paper title, abstract, and brief c.v. Proposals for papers and any enquires should be directed to Axel Fair-Schulz. Email: fairsca@potsdam.edu

                        There will also be space for a limited number of non-presenters at the event, and details of how to register will be circulated later.

 

For further details and updates: http://liberal-contradictions.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/

CfP: Genealogies of Memory 2023. Pandemics, famines and industrial disasters of the 20th and 21st centuries

1 month 1 week ago
 

How individuals cope with the memory of traumatic large-scale events (such as wars, famines, pandemics, natural or industrial disasters) is of great interest to social sciences such as psychology, psychotraumatology or sociology. Since the Great War and what was then described as ’shell shock’, i.e. an individual’s bodily response to trauma – better known today as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – the study of trauma has developed significantly. But how are the memory and reality of dramatic past events experienced and worked through at a collective level, including those that are direct consequences of armed conflicts or violent revolutions? 

The repression, silencing and forgetting of unpredictable yet present threats was part of the phenomenon of tabooisation in pre-industrial societies, as the anthropologist Mary Douglas pointed out years ago. It is aimed at protecting communities and societies from excessive fear and chaos (disorder) resulting from the unpredictability of the world. In the 21st century, societies with highly specialised medical and technological knowledge ceded responsibility for managing the safety (and health) of the population to the state (biopolitics) in situations of large-scale disasters and pandemic phenomena – as we have seen in 2020 – and have repeatedly proved almost completely helpless at the level of social practice. 

Yet epidemics and pandemics such as the medieval plague, eighteenth-century smallpox, twentieth-century polio, tuberculosis or AIDS are experiences embedded in the collective memory of many generations worldwide. Similarly, famines, whether caused by armed conflicts (as after the Great War), natural disasters or by oppressive state policy (e.g. Holodomor) – have been, at the level of everyday life, particular generational and collective experiences.

Do protective (security) strategies generated by the experience or, on the contrary, the defence mechanisms created (such as denial, forgetting or tabooisation) also influence our contemporary memory of these events and historical phenomena? Might they also be the main explanation why in Central Europe – in contrast to Western Europe and North America – it is so difficult to find memorials to the victims of the Great Influenza pandemic or polio?   

Why do the societies of most post-communist countries, which in the second half of the 20th century were an area of regular regional – though concealed in public discourse (censorship) – industrial catastrophes resulting in ecological degradation perceive today the problems of contemporary environmental threats and global warming in such an ambivalent way?  

Why do many narratives concerning these past phenomena still divide European societies (an excellent example of which is the Chernobyl disaster, which in popular memory, if only due to film productions, is still identified with a massive biological calamity, while in expert discourses, years later, the threat was assessed as minimal)? 

The aim of the conference – carried out as part of the 13th edition of the Genealogies of Memory project – will be an attempt at drawing attention to the discourses of memory and non-remembrance of large-scale natural and human induced disasters in 20th-century Europe. We want to bring to the fore the perspective of diverse social actors – both individual and collective, thus thematising the presence of such events in both individual (family), regional and collective memory, for which an important area of expression were changing public narratives (of both authoritarian and communist, as well as democratic governments of 20th-century Europe) as well as popular ones, present particularly in cultural texts (film, literature, etc.). We are also interested in reflecting on the presence of this issue in the contemporary public space – material and artistic (monuments, memorials, exhibitions, etc.) as well as discursive. 

To what extent is/has been the memory of these population-threatening phenomena influenced by the political and social transformations of the 20th century in East-Central Europe? And how does this region differ from Western European countries? – this is also one of the important questions we will try to answer. 
In the discussions, we would like to focus on four main areas of selected aspects of 20th-century natural and man-made disasters: 

1.    Epidemics: Spanish flu in East-Central Europe and other inter-war and post-war epidemics of infectious diseases (polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis and other ‘social diseases’, AIDS) and contemporary discourses of memory and their visual and textual representations. 
2.    Famines – crop failures – food rationing – memory/commemoration of victims and humanitarian aid, food distribution and class/social inequalities, nationalisms/imperialism – how does the memory of famines and food crises in East-Central and Western Europe function – in grassroots (private, family) and public memory. 
3.    Human-induced industrial disasters – ecology – fear versus ideology of progress – modernity (industrialisation) – communist censorship vs. discourses of memory – industrial disasters in people’s democracies vs. practices of tabooing (and censorship); environmental activism in EastCentral Europe (especially in anti-communist opposition circles vs. contemporary memory and public discussions of environmental threats). 
4.    Practices of constructing memory of man-made/natural disasters – changing memories, shifting agencies, human and non-human aspects of memory (as objects, industrial landscapes, etc.), 20th century memory patterns vs. the discourse of the Anthropocene, the discourse of the apocalypse and the future of memory. 
 
However, we are also open to other approaches to the above-described issues, going beyond the framework outlined here. 
The conference language is English. The organisers provide accommodation for the participants. There is no conference fee. 
 

Organisational information

The conference will take place in Warsaw on 22-24 Novemver 2023 in a hybrid format with possible online participation. 

Call for Papers

To apply please send the following documents to: genealogies@enrs.eu by 26 May 2023:

    • Abstract (maximum 300 words)
    • Brief biographical note (up to 200 words)
    • Scan/photo of the signed Consent Clause 

Applicants will be notified of the results by 30 June 2023. Written draft papers (2,000–2,500 words) should be submitted by 15 October 2023.
Selected authors will be invited to submit their paper to an edited volume to be published with a leading academic publisher, most likely in the European Remembrance and Solidarity book series developed by ENRS and Routledge.

Download and sign the Consent Clause
 

  Scientific Council of the Conference:

•    Dr. Konrad Bielecki (ENRS) 
•    Dr. Ian Miller (Society for the Social History of Medicine) 
•    Dr. Martin Moore (Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health University of Exeter)  
•    Prof. Małgorzata Praczyk (European Society for Environmental History) 
•    Dr. Marcin Stasiak (Institute of History, Jagiellonian University, Krakow) 
•    Prof. Ewelina Szpak (ENRS / The Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences) 
•    Prof. Joanna Wawrzyniak (Faculty of Sociology Warsaw University) 

Partners
    • European Society for Environmental History
    • Faculty of Sociology Warsaw University
    • Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, Marburg 
    • Institute of History, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
    • Society for the Social History of Medicine
    • The Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences
    • Welcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health University of Exeter

CfP: ANTI imperialism fascism  war

1 month 1 week ago
ANTI imperialism fascism  war

The 21st century is marked by a series of wars, military conflicts, neocolonial and imperialist advancements. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the transformation of Syria into a military landing site for hegemonic forces in the past twelve years and Erdogan’s military incursions into Rojava; the unrests against the reactionaries in Brazil and indigenous peoples’ struggles against neocolonial economic engines; the Bulgarian sabotage of North Macedonia on its path to joining the EU, betraying a desire for colonial domination and many more processes inevitably raise questions about the state of imperialism, colonialism, reaction and militarization nowadays. Although the past decades have been ripe with various military conflicts, the Russian invasion of Ukraine drew leftist movements in Central and Eastern Europe out of their thirty-year-long hiatus and posed with a renewed force questions regarding the history, legacy, and future of the anti-war, anti-colonial, anti-fascist, and anti-imperialist resistances.

Simultaneously, in 2023 we mark the 100th anniversary of the September Uprising in Bulgaria. The intention to deal with the anti-fascist roots of the uprising, its complex legacy, as well as the necessity to engage anew with the concept of ‘anti-fascism’ in the contemporary context are among the motivations for dVERSIA journal’s forthcoming issue. The confrontation between the peasantry, leftists and communists on the one side, and reactionary and conservative forces on the other, is of course not a local phenomenon. These conflicts were fundamental for the interwar history of Europe but also had lasting consequences for the subsequent years during the so-called ‘Cold War’ and our own contemporaneity. It appears that the Russian invasion of Ukraine challenges with utmost urgency the left forces in Central and Eastern Europe and globally to rethink the meaning of anti-fascism and anti-imperialism today. Who are carriers of anti-fascism and anti-imperialism today? Are there social, historical and epistemological contexts that are capable of facilitating a reversal of the meaning of fascism and anti-fascism today? How have the forms, strategies and tactics of  anti-fascism and anti-imperialism changed in the past century?

Anti-fascism, anti-imperialism and anti-war struggles in the past and today: these are the three axes around which we see the need for an urgent ideological discussion. Recent events on the left in the Balkans and around the world concerning the divisions over the war in Ukraine and Russian imperialism make this discussion particularly urgent. These processes highlight not simply the lack of spaces to hold such conversations, or diverging understandings of basic concepts on the left, but also often reveal deep contradictions within the theoretical knowledge-production of actors on the left.

For us, there is no question that every ‘anti’-movement includes the path to more just and solidary societies. We see ‘anti’ as the simultaneity of destruction and creation. Tracing the conceptual boundaries, knowledge developments, and historical legacies of anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, and anti-war struggles and ideas, our forthcoming ‘Anti’ issue aims not just to delve into the destructive power of empires, wars, and rising neo-fascist waves, but also to seek their urgent alternatives.

dВЕРСИЯ’s 6th collection of texts would like to engage with the following questions:

  • Anti-fascism: What is the role and meaning of anti-fascism today, in particular in the context of the war in Ukraine? Is it necessary – and, if so, then how –  to draw from the historical experience of organised anti-fascist movements for present-day struggles in the Balkans and across the world – and if so, then how? What strategic and conceptual continuities and ruptures can we chart out through 20th century anti-fascist struggles on the Balkans and in Europe? What is the role of anti-fascism for the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles of the past and where can we today find their conceptual intersections?
  • Anti-imperialism: How should we regard the Russian aggression against Ukraine and the opposition between the West and Russia through an anti-imperialist lens in today’s highly charged context? What meaning does the “right to self-determination” acquire in the context of contemporary military conflicts? What can we learn from the experience of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles of the 20th century across the globe, as well as from the theoretical engagements with these topics by communist, national liberation, workers’ and progressive movements of the past?
  • Anti-war struggles: How should we construct an anti-war position and build a movement in the current militarised context, which polarises positions and obliterates the spaces for dialogue – even amongst comrades, who have until recently shared common goals and struggles? How is such a movement possible when everyone is against the war, but wars keep being waged? What can we draw from the experience of anti-war movements in Bulgaria and across the world from the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century – in particular such movements that intersect with anti-fascist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles? How can we keep maintaining an anti-fascist and an anti-imperialist line, which is at the same time also against the war? And where can we find the sites of conflict on the left – in terms of ideas, positions and strategy? What does ‘peace’ mean today?

We are looking forward to receiving your abstracts (ca. 400-800 words) by May 21st 2023 at info@dversia.net. Articles will be published online (Bulgarian and English) and in print (only Bulgarian) by the end of 2023. In case you want to submit a text, which is already published elsewhere, please get in touch with the editors at the above address. Their volume should not exceed 8,000 words. 

CfP Precarious Labour - Fifth ELHN Conference - Open Call for Proposals

1 month 1 week ago
CfP Precarious Labour
Fifth ELHN Conference
Uppsala, 11-13 June 2024

The Precarious Labour Working Group will participate in the Fifth ELHN Conference with thematic sessions. We invite members of the Working Group, and all other interested colleagues, to come up with paper and session proposals under the following open call:

Open Call for Proposals – Deadline: September 1, 2023

We hope to receive session and paper proposals on the history of precarious labour from all over the world. We encourage the participation of researchers at all stages of their work life as well as researchers without institutional affiliation, and we welcome researchers anchored in various disciplines and investigating different historical periods.

The Working Group Precarious Labour explores a broad range of themes and concepts on precarity. Guiding research questions might address but are not limited to some of the following problems:

  • First, the working group is interested in conceptual debates on precarity. How can the concept of precarious labour prove useful as a historical category? What has been perceived as precarious labour in different regions around the world and how have perceptions of precarity changed over time? What has been, in the Global South and the Global North, the normative employment standard against which precarious labour falls back? Can we benefit from understanding precarity as processes and social relations rather than a categorization?
  • Second, the working group is interested in examining social groups that work under precarious conditions. In which economic sectors has precarious labour been most prevalent? How do different social factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, migration, age, education, and language, relate to precarity?
  • Third, the working group is interested in studying the workers’ manifold responses within and outside workplaces to precarious labour and precarious conditions. What kind of collective responses from workers, both within and beyond traditional trade union frameworks, have emerged in order to fight precarious labour? What is the relationship between precarity and organized or non-organized labour? How do formal and informal collective actions interact?

Information on the Working Group Precarious Labour can be found here.

Meeting of the Working Group Precarious Labour

All scholars with an interest in precarious labour history around the world are invited to join a discussion that will be held during the ELHC 2024 about ideas and themes for future research and collaboration within and beyond the Working Group.

How to submit proposals

Please send an abstract (max 300 words) and a short bio (max 100 words, including contact details and an indication of whether you plan to participate onsite or online) to the WG coordinators, by September 1, 2023.

If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact the coordinators:

We will try to respond to these proposals before the end of October 2023. If accepted, the deadline for the conference paper is May 17, 2024.

Time and Location

The Fifth Conference of the European Labour History Network (ELHN) will take place from 11 to 13 June 2024 at Uppsala University and in a hybrid setting. Local organizer: Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek | Swedish Labour Movement’s Archives and Library

More info on the upcoming conference can be found here.

CfP: Governing the Lives of Others: Global Histories of Empires, Theories and Practices

1 month 1 week ago

2023 PhD Global History of Empires Conference

 

Overview

The revitalisation of colonial and imperial studies has arguably been one of the most interesting outcomes of the rise of global and transnational historical frameworks. From new discussions about European empires in the Americas to Afro-Asian anti-colonial collaboration, it seems that scholars are more interested than ever in imperial formations, their infrastructures, and the lives of the people ruled by them (as well as the lives of those who ruled). The breadth of such topics calls for an ongoing engagement, as comparisons and discussion among experts of different geographical areas and time-frames help strengthen a more global understanding of each individual case.

The need to create more varied platforms for engagement and discussion is the main drive behind this conference organised by the participants in the Global History of Empires PhD program at the University of Turin. We want to bring together doctoral students and early career scholars from a very diverse range of geographical areas, historical periods and methodologies. Diversity is not just an academic whim, it is a necessary step to ensure that our discussions show the complexity of theory and practices of empire without recurring to the usual worn-out tropes. A more varied base will also enable us to make better use of comparisons and highlight lesser-known case studies.

Themes

This hybrid conference aims at bringing together diverse contributions to jointly reflect on empires from theoretical and empirical perspectives. First, we are interested in addressing questions regarding what qualifies a political entity into an empire, trying to approximate a wider working definition of it. A central matter is the real or perceived “otherness” between rulers and ruled, and this constitutive difference might enter into working definitions of empire. What does government mean in different spatio-temporal frameworks? How does the constitutive difference of imperial settings play a role in supporting or resisting governmental practices?

Second, we want to integrate theoretical contributions with empirical ones. Therefore, we welcome proposals dealing with concrete case studies of practices of governance of the political, economic and social lives of empires. In this way, it will be possible to unpack theory with empirical case studies. Indeed, the role of individuals in the construction and governance of empires is central. In which ways individuals did contribute to the functioning of empires? Are they mere objects of governance or can individuals be considered as the main “agents of empire”, being the subjects which create empires with their everyday actions?

Since this is a student-led initiative 'we recommend you apply for travel funding to your respective departments.* For those who will be able to travel to Turin, accommodation in student residences and meals will be provided. We also offer the chance to present your papers and to participate online.

Some recommended topics:

- Imperial legacies and compensations.
- Empires, environment and capitalism.
- Empires and nation-states: the revival of supranational polities and the crisis of national sovereignty.
- Empires and human taxonomy: migration and population control.
- Gendering Empires: tracing the evolution of masculinity and femininity across imperial borders.
- Imperial formations and trans-imperial comparison: recuperate the histories of other empires beyond the West.

To apply, please email a 300 words abstract and an academic CV to ghempires.conf@gmail.com. Participants would be expected to submit a working paper (max. 5000 words) around August in order to facilitate discussion. Each participant will have 20 min. for their presentation followed by a comment and a general discussion. Since this is a student-led initiative we recommend you apply for travel funding to your respective departments. For those who will be able to travel to Turin, accommodation in student residences and meals will be provided. We also offer the chance to present your papers and to participate online.

Contact (announcement)

ghempires.conf@gmail.com

CfP: Buddhists, Marxists, and Nationalists: Buryat-Mongol Intellectuals in History

1 month 1 week ago

Proposals for essays in English and Russian (c. 8000-10000 words) are welcome on the topic of Buryat national intelligentsia in the Russian imperial and early Soviet periods (mid-19th century to the late 1930s).

This edited volume, Buddhists, Marxists, and Nationalists: Buryat-Mongol Intellectuals in History, will examine the role of Buryat leading intellectuals. In particular, the editors are seeking studies of individual Buryats who were political, cultural, and/or religious leaders in the late Russian Empire and early Soviet Union. This period was unique as Buryat intellectuals offered diverse, and sometimes competing, visions for the future of their society and lands. By intellectuals, we understand not only those Buryats who were educated in Russian and later Soviet schools, but also those educated in religious institutions, as well as self-educated individuals. We are not necessarily seeking biographic papers. The essays may be focused on specific cases centered around moments/events/work/ideas in the lives of Buryat intellectuals that give insights into the nature of relationships within certain communities and/or with the Russian or Qing imperial states, Soviet Union, theocratic Tibet, and/or Mongolia.

The book aims to touch upon the following topics:

- Buryat intellectuals in the exchange of knowledge between Europe and Asia;
- Buryats’ contribution to the critique of Russian imperialism and colonialism;
- Belonging to intersecting networks of imperial scholars and indigenous literati
- Buryat anti-colonial and national narratives
- National political activism of the Buryat intelligentsia
- Buryat versions of Buddhist modernism
- Buryat contributions to Soviet nationalities policies

Accepted chapters will be due on December 15, 2023.

Interested contributors should send a 300-500 word abstract and a short bio by May 15, 2023 to Melissa Chakars mchakars@sju.edu

The Still Family Saga: Seeking Freedom, by Mark Priest

1 month 1 week ago

 

 

The American Labor Museum/Botto House National Landmark proudly exhibits The Still Family Saga:  Seeking Freedom by Mark Priest from Monday, May 1st through Saturday, August 19th, 2023.  The general public is cordially invited to attend the Museum’s Annual May Day Festival, also on May 1st, 2023 and beginning at 7PM.

      Mark Priest's exhibition focuses on the Underground Railroad. William Still, well-known abolitionist and writer of firsthand narratives of freedom seekers, was in his office writing the account of a man named Peter.  This man purchased his freedom after enduring 49 years as a slave.  As he told his story, William Still realized, to his amazement, that they were brothers. This body of work contains drawings and paintings that depict the arduous journey to freedom for Peter Still and his family.

In one exhibited painting entitled Sydney's Choice, an enslaved woman named Sydney Still is depicted.  She was forced by the owner of Edmonson's Reserve to escape to freedom.  She had to choose between saving from enslavement either her two young sons or her two little daughters.

Mark Priest is a narrative painter and draughtsman who has developed multiple series of bold, vivid, and dramatic works of art. He has exhibited widely and currently teaches fine art at the University of Louisville.  Learn more about Mark Priest’s art work by visiting:  https://markapriest.org.   

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

      The Botto House National Landmark, headquarters of the American Labor Museum, is located at 83 Norwood Street in Haledon, NJ.  It was the meeting place for over 20,000 silk mill workers during the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike.  The Museum offers a free lending library, restored period rooms, changing exhibits, museum store, Old World Gardens, educational programs and special events.  The Museum's hours of operation are Monday through Friday, 9AM-5PM.  Visitors are welcome Wednesday through Saturday from 1PM-4PM and at other times by appointment.  For further information about the Museum, visit www.labormuseum.net.

CfP: The Light Comes from the West! The Politics of East-European Migration during the Cold War

1 month 1 week ago
 

The lives of the citizens of the Soviet bloc countries were largely determined by imposed isolation from the rapidly modernising democratic Western world and radical restrictions on the free circulation of cultural goods and other commodities, as well as foreign travel. This was motivated, above all, by the ideological, economic and cultural divide symbolised by the Iron Curtain and the fear on the part of the communist authorities that the escalation of differences between their countries could compromise the unity of the entire Soviet empire.

No wonder that in contrast to the title of a lecture given by the Romanian writer Mihail Sadoveanu in 1945 – The Light Comes from the East – which predicted Soviet political dominance in Eastern Europe, in the decades of the Cold War many citizens felt that the light came rather from the West. One way of fulfilling this desire was migration, motivated first of all by the repressive nature of communist dictatorships, political or religious discrimination and economic hardship. In addition to the very many individual cases of migration, the Cold War was also marked by several major migration waves, such as the ones following the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the Prague Spring of 1968 or the Polish migration in the 1980s in the aftermath of martial law.

The actors and institutions of Western diasporas and émigré milieus played a major role in reducing the isolation of the Soviet bloc, to some extent ensuring the cross-border flow of information, knowledge and some cultural products between East and West, while also representing citizens who suffered discrimination in their home countries, amplifying the voices of dissidents behind the Iron Curtain and keeping Eastern regimes under political pressure. At the same time, the communist authorities sought to extend their control and influence beyond the Iron Curtain, with the intention of weakening the role of émigré actors and institutions.

The aim of the planned conference is to revisit the broadly defined politics of migration in the light of new archival materials and considering recent research approaches, with a particular focus on the following issues:

• foreign travel and passport policies of the communist regimes (social conditioning of outward mobility [mobility of elite groups and intellectuals vs. immobility of the masses]; legal migration and the criminalisation of migration; migration as a political weapon, etc.);
• influencing and diversifying diaspora and émigré actors and institutions by socialist countries (undercover agents, state security operations, diplomacy, etc.);
• politicisation and political power of Western diasporas and émigré circles (émigré political actors and institutions and their role; the impact of new migrants on Western diasporas; tensions and cooperation between East-European diasporas in the West; networks between dissidents and Western émigré milieus; human rights discourses, actions and their impact on various political levels);
• the problem of migration in Eastern-Western relations (tensions, ideological wars, common interests; interstate relations and treaties; policy on migration of specific nationalities; political aspects of economic migration and unofficial commercial exchange in the Soviet bloc, etc.);
• comparative and transnational approaches (comparative analysis of the diasporas, émigré groups or policies of socialist countries; transnational case studies on cross-border political cooperation and exchanges).

Date: 10–12 October 2023
Venue: Romanian Academy Library, Bucharest, Romania
Deadline for sending proposals: 31 May 2023

The title and abstract of your paper of maximum 300 words accompanied by a short bio (also of maximum 300 words, including your current affiliation), should be sent to secretariat@totalitarism.ro by 31 May 2023.

There is no conference fee.
The organisers are planning to publish the papers delivered at the conference.

Organisers:
• European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS, Warsaw)
• National Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism (NIST, Bucharest)
• National University of Political Studies and Public Administration/College of Communication and Public Relations (NUPSPA, Bucharest)

 

Coordinator: Konrad Bielecki
E-mail: secretariat@totalitarism.rokonrad.bielecki@enrs.eu

CfP: Marxism in the Age of Total Crisis

1 month 1 week ago

Marxism & Sciences: A Symposium of Nature, Culture, Human and Society

September 14-17

2023

MARXISM IN THE AGE OF THE TOTAL CRISIS

BİLİMLER KÖYÜ (Village of Sciences) Foça, İzmir, Turkey

Announcement: 24 February 2023
Deadline: 15 June 2023 

It is said that we live in an era of total crisis. Not only on a cultural, but social, economic, ecological level the term  seems ubiquitously used with ever more urgency and on a global scale. In this respect the term crisis today seems to replace the concept of history as a concrete generality in a generic singular form of multi-temporalities. The anamnesis of crisis also pertains to the sciences and the ideal of science in exactly the general sense of a plural unity which encompasses all kinds of organized attempts of knowledge making. If the institutions of knowledge production and mediation are in a crisis the consequences of the deep ruptures in collective praxis become graspable. A Marxist approach cannot remain just negative as a mere critique in face of the commodification of knowledge and manipulation of feelings and consciousness. Rather, the task is to seize the means of production even on the level of mental labour and iconic engineering. In this way the possibilities of a common use and a social orientation of the sciences, technology and all kinds of collective praxis can be opened up beyond extractivist exploitation and for the common good.

In a wider sense, the term “crisis” signifies a situation that is simultaneously indeterminate as much as it is over determinate. Looked at negatively, and in the light of the not-yet-over pandemic, local conflicts and confrontations, from the proxy war in Syria to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which carries the potential of transmuting into a full-scale global confrontation, food crisis, global economic stagnation, and environmental catastrophes, that crisis appears as a threat that may completely wipe out civilization and (human) life of the planet. However, true to the etymological roots of the term, a crisis also signifies possibilities of anticipating and building a radically different future from within the existing uncertainties.

That ongoing crisis seems to be a multifaceted totality; the  multitude of crises humanity experiences are forms of existence of the crisisridden essence of capitalism. Capitalism seems to be a factor of the crisis on different levels.

The global economic stagnation, “negative economic growth”, the rise of poverty and the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor on worldwide scale and high inflation, which allegedly has been caused by the pandemic evidence the fragility of the capitalist economy that follows its contradictory inner structure.

At the political sphere, we  witness the erosion of the state and political institutions, which is manifest in the rise of ultra-rightwing movements, the undermining of the law and constitution by those in power, and the subordination of the will of the state to that of the so-called “leading elites” and “charismatic leaders”. Hence, the transubstantiation of the state from the instrument of maintaining the order and suppressing the class struggle to a means of destabilizing the order and creating and deepening the perception of crisis.

At the social level, the rise of authoritarianism is accompanied by suspension and repression of the rights of citizens, particularly those of minorities and marginalized groups, and the attack on social securities and the gains of, the working people, and the rise of racism, nationalism, ethnicism, sexism and patriarchy, and xenophobia. Furthermore, the prevalence of conspiracy theories as new forms of superstition and the distrust toward knowledge producing institutes and institutionally produced knowledge point toward a “spiritual” crisis on a social scale.

At the ecological level, the insatiable urge of capital for valorization, the plunder of natural resources, and land grabbing, sea grabbing and forest grabbing for the sake of profit making and rent acquisition have amounted to an environmental crisis, the forms of manifestation of which are global warming, extreme weather conditions, loss of agricultural resources and the consequent food crisis. The response of the bourgeois technocratic institutions to the imminent total ecological catastrophe does not transcend the boundaries of a managerial approach and suggesting “fixes” to these problems taken in isolation from the totality of crisis while the capitalist state and bourgeois politicians refrain from taking serious action or even agreeing on the measures to be taken.

The aforementioned poses significant theoretical and political challenges and urgently calls for a Marxist response putting forth an encompassing view and methods to guide both theoretical analysis and political action. As stated above, the crisis does not only point to mere negativity, but it also signifies a positive ambivalence that bears the potential for realizing radical change. In order to forge a robust answer we need to critically revise as well as affirm of Marxist categories of analysis and methodological tools. Actualizing this positive potentiality requires a dialectical approach which takes different interrelations and perspectives seriously to cope with complexity and change on a global level. One important aspect of such an approach would be to consider the subject matter of analysis not as a finalized, static entity but as a developing process and seek for the dynamics of its radical change within the system itself through identifying the future in the present in the form of potentialities.

To that end we have to explicate the role of knowledge and the sciences as expression of the present societal context as well as tools for change. Not only do we have to analyze the mechanisms of how we reached the above-mentioned crises, but even more important is to try and define ways to break out of the current hegemony of capitalism. A Marxist  approach to the sciences is the understanding how conscious collective human activity can foster a better future.

We invite contributions that facilitate approaching the crises holistically and analyzing them as forms of manifestation of the total capitalist crisis. Such an approach transcends the limitations of conventional, symptomatic representations and enhances the dialectical grasp of the crisis pointing toward prospects of its overcoming and building a better world.

The themes to be addressed are, but not limited to:

• The crisis and the capitalist state; the capitalist state in/as crisis
• The crisis in academia and its relation to capitalization of sciences and commodification of knowledge
• Environmental crisis and climate change
• Forms of class struggle in the face of total crisis
• The self-organization of people, including the decline of tradeunions and traditional political parties
• Gender-based oppression in late capitalism
• The straight jacked of formal logic and its final destination in binary digitalization leading to algorithmic approaches such as the so-called Artificial Intelligence. The need for exploring dialectics as a counter tool for human progress.
• The crisis of value
• The refugee crisis
• The crisis of radical left and the rise/fall of identity politics
• Alternative conceptions of the crisis and their critique, e.g., anthropocene, capitalocene, etc.
• (a critique of) non-Marxist responses to the crisis, e.g., new materialism, post-humanism, etc.
•The role of music, film, theater, and literature as expression of resistance.
• The rise of ultra-right-wing movements and its expression of fear, poverty, and ‘the other’

Please submit your extended abstracts (400 to 500 words long with 5 to 7 bibliographic entries), prepared for blind reading, and a separate title page that includes the title of your submission, affiliation, and contact information to marxismandsciences@gmail.com (subject of the email should be 1st symposium of the M&S). Selected papers from the symposium will be invited for evaluation to be published in Marxism & Sciences Volume 3 Issue 1, Summer 2024.

For more information on the symposium organisation, venue, registration and accomodation please see here!

CfP: Mining Mobilities across the Globe. Labour, Science, and Knowledge Circulation in Mining (15th-21st century)

1 month 2 weeks ago

Mining mobility and knowledge circulation have played a pivotal role in extractive industries worldwide. The movement of workers, technologies, and knowledge has been mediated by state authorities, corporations, and subcontractors through alluring and forced forms of recruitment. Alongside these trajectories, men and women from neighbouring and distant territories moved to newly reopened mines to search for new deposits and improve their social and economic conditions.

When following mediated and non-mediated trajectories, workers produced new techniques and used various systems of knowledge about nature and the environment which were often adopted and/or expropriated from local and Indigenous experts. This renewed attention on mobility and circulation has shed new light on the importance of global history in the study of mining activities. At the same time, a micro-historical approach -which focuses on moving actors and the techniques employed in multiple places - provides new and cross-disciplinary avenues of research on the complex world of mining.

In recent decades, the growing demand for renewable energy has renewed attention to the study of mobility and knowledge circulation in contemporary and past societies across the world. By situating present issues in longer historical trajectories, the history of mining mobilities is a promising field for interdisciplinary inquiry that seeks to offer new analytical tools to deal with our present. This panel aims to start this conversation by bringing together ECRs and scholars from various disciplines such as history, anthropology, archeology, sociology, geography and science and technology studies with a particular focus on the period spanning from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to): the forced and non-mediated recruitment of labourers across mining regions; the relationship between labour networks and subcontracting; the gendered dimension of knowledge production in mining activities; the role of Indigenous knowledge in the development of mining capitalism. In general, priority will be given to submissions that intertwine analysis of mobility and knowledge circulation with examinations of the socio-economic impacts on communities and labour conditions. 

We invite colleagues working on mining mobilities from various regions in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas and different time periods to submit abstracts that addresses one or more of the following themes:

● Forced/voluntary im/mobilities
● Technology and knowledge circulation
● Mobility networks
● Anthropology of mobility
● Labour and community buildings
● Indigenous and local knowledge
● Skilled artisans, technicians, and engineers

The Labour in Mining (LiM) Working Group is a cross-disciplinary network of ECRs and scholars that aims to explore the historical understanding of extractive activities from a long-term perspective. This panel will provide an opportunity to colleagues to discuss their research in an engaging, inclusive, and respectful environment. Interested scholars are invited to submit a 400-words abstract and a brief biography (max 250 words) before May 31st 2023. Please send the abstract to labourinmining@gmail.com with the title “Mining Mobility_ELHN2024_Proposal”. Abstracts will be reviewed by the panel organisers and successful applicants will be notified by the end of June 2023.

If you need any further information, please write to labourinmining@gmail.com.

Location
The 5th Conference of the European Labour History Network (ELHN) will take place in Uppsala (11-13 June
2024).

Coordinators
Francesca Sanna (University of Reims)
Gabriele Marcon (Durham University)
José Joaquin Garcia Gomez (University of Almeria)

CfP: Global tax chains: Actors and practices of global capitalism in the second of the half of the 20th century

1 month 3 weeks ago

As chains of wealth became global in the world economy (Seabroke&Wigan, 2022), so did tax strategies. These topics have gained increasing attention over the past fifteen years as the crisis of 2007/2008 renewed the discussion on inequalities and (fiscal) justice. Humanities and social sciences have played an important role in framing debates on this topic. Over the past twenty to thirty years, wealth has come to be produced less by manufacturing cars or building houses than by moving capital across jurisdictions, creating multi-jurisdictional spaces where national states, global companies, local financial “plumbers” and international organisations developed, maintained and governed global tax chains.

This workshop has a dual purpose. First, it intends to take stock of these ongoing international and interdisciplinary debates. Second, it aims to deepen the historical dimensions of phenomena that are beginning to be well documented for today's world but still sometimes lack temporal depth. Not only have notions of fiscal justice and legitimate tax engineering changed over the decades; there has also been a significant reshaping of legal and technical infrastructures at national and international level. As long-established fiscal experts such as lawyers have reinvented themselves as “coders of capital” (Pistor 2019), new professions have arisen around tax practices, especially in the large audit companies. It has only been possible for tax chains to become global in the last 50 years because there has been no real globalisation of tax regulations. Specific national characteristics have created a differentiated world of legal markets that has paved the way for the development of a complex network of competing tax chains. As the political world order changed during and after the Cold War, complex international tax arrangements added an important but rarely publicly discussed dimension to global capitalism. And as the increasing technification of tax law and its framing as expert knowledge intrinsically only open to a small minority of initiated professions and their clients worked as a powerful anaesthetic for public debates, recurrent financial scandals (Mazbouri et al., 2020) have not only offered glimpses of hidden practices, actors and structures but also created recurrent publicity and therefore politicisation of tax regulations at global level.

Submission guidelines

Please submit your abstract (max. 200 words) and a short bio to Benoît Majerus (benoit.majerus@uni.lu) and Jakob Vogel (jakob.vogel@cmb.hu-berlin.de)

by the 31st May 2023.

All abstract should include a paper title, author name(s) and affiliation(s), professional status, and contact details. Notification of paper acceptance will be given by end-June.

Selection Committee
  • Jakob Vogel, Centre Marc Bloch
  • Benoît Majerus, Université du Luxembourg

L'Etat contre les syndicalistes? - Michel Pigenet

1 month 3 weeks ago

L’usage de gaz lacrymogènes, les tirs de LBD, pour ne rien dire des charges et des nassages, témoignent de l’actualité des violences policières, que prolonge parfois la répression judiciaire. Le constat interroge dans un pays démocratique, où la violence n’est légitime que dans un cadre strictement réglementé. À plus forte raison quand le droit de défendre ses intérêts par l’action syndicale est inscrit dans la Constitution.

Michel Pigenet étudie, sous cet angle, l’évolution des rapports complexes entre l’État et le syndicalisme depuis un siècle et demi. Il confronte l’État, tel qu’il s’affiche ou se perçoit – protecteur, démocratique et social – à la réalité de ses pratiques comme instrument de domination sur le temps long. Chemin faisant, il interroge les racines, les constantes et les variantes d’un antisyndicalisme d’État.     

122 pages – Prix : 9 €

ISBN 979-10-90129-63-4

Arbre bleu éditions – 3 rue des Blondlot – 54000 Nancy

Commande par mail : contact@arbre-bleu-editions.com   ou ihs@cgt.fr

CfP: Prix 2023 de Thèse et de Master sur l'Histoire de la protection sociale (CHSS)

1 month 3 weeks ago

Le Comité d'histoire de la Sécurité sociale (CHSS) attribue chaque année des prix de Thèse et de Master à travaux traitant de l'histoire de la protection sociale, sans restriction de période ni d'aire géographique. 7000€ de prix sont répartis entre les lauréat(e)s. Les lauréat(e)s seront invités à publier un article dans la Revue d'histoire de la protection sociale (https://www.cairn.info/revue-d-histoire-de-la-protection-sociale.htm).

Le règlement complet et la composition du dossier sont consultables sur : https://ihd.cnrs.fr/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Reglement-prix-CHSS-2023.pdf

Vous êtes invité(e)s à candidater en envoyant un dossier dématérialisé à elisabeth.desmet@sante.gouv.fr.

CfP: The Role of Women in Workers’ Struggles and Social Protests:  Historical and Contemporary Explorations

1 month 3 weeks ago
  Call for Papers for a special themed section of the next issue of Workers of the World journal

One of the most notable features of the significant revival of workers’ strikes that has been occurring recently in different countries, albeit often ignored by commentators, has been the participation, activism and driving energy demonstrated by women workers. Of course, a similar manifestation has been discernible over a number of years with diverse forms of street-based social movements across the globe, not only the #MeToo demonstrations, but also those around Black Lives Matter, climate crisis, anti-austerity, authoritarianism and war, and solidarity with Palestine, to mention just a few. Sometimes women involved in such social movement protests have carried over their activism into workplace-based forms of collective action, including strikes and demonstrations, and with increased levels of trade union membership, participation and representation. 

In the light of such developments, it becomes important to revisit the nature of women’s position in the capitalist labour market, the complex relationship between women’s oppression and class exploitation, and the limits and potential of women’s role in workers’ struggles and social protests across the world. 

We invite contributions to a special themed section of the next issue of Workers of the World journal that explore such issues. As well as both empirical studies and analytical interpretations, we would also invite papers not merely on contemporary developments, but also historical studies and reflections on women workers’ struggles over the past 150 years. Comparative studies of different struggles, countries and/or time periods would also be welcome

Potential (but not exclusive) related topics are:

  • The Marxist analysis of women’s oppression and its strategy for liberation based on the working-class movement for socialism 
  • The contribution of intersectionality analysis in the field of work and employment, and explorations of the interaction between gender and ethnicity with class
  • The growth of female labour and changing composition of the labour force (including industrial variation, concentration of women’s labour force participation, and spread of precarious forms of employment) and its broader implications 
  • Features of gender discrimination in work and its implications, including sexual harassment
  • Nature of female migrant labour and attendant issues of racism and discrimination
  • The attitude of trade unions to women workers
  • Women workers’ relationship to often male-dominated and male-led trade union organisations 
  • New specific initiatives taken to attempt to recruit women workers into trade unions, including union organising approaches
  • Trade union attempts to retain and integrate women workers, including propaganda and organisational machinery and practices 
  • The experience of gender equality policies in trade unions
  • Nature of female workers involvement, participation and activism in trade unions, including the difficulties for women trade union activism in the light of the dual burden of combining domestic work in the home and paid work outside it
  • Specific challenges for black and ethnic minority workers and their representation in trade unions
  • The energy, initiative and power of women workers involved in strike activity
  • Solidarity for workers’ strikes and social protests expressed across gender lines
  • Limits of female union representation
  • Nature and dynamics of female trade union leadership, including workplace and local branch reps as well as paid union officers
  • Experiences of trans women workers and the battle for rights in work
  • Experience of sex worker collectives, such as the UK-based Sex Workers United branch of the United Voices of the World
  • The limits and potential of legislative measures related to equal pay and other features of gender discrimination in employment
  • Role of women in social protest movements
  • Role of women in revolutionary social protest movements
  • Attempts to fuse the struggles against women’s oppression and class exploitation 

Contact executive-director

António Simões do Paço

workersoftheworld2012@yahoo.co.uk

CfP: Ethnic Identities and Industrial Memory

1 month 4 weeks ago

Workshop, Vác, Hungary

29-30 August 2023

The industrial past has been a source of national pride and local nostalgia. Since the emergence of industrial archaeology after the Second World War, spatial and social entities subject to industrial boom and decline have enjoyed very different kinds of historical representations as often informed by ideological motifs. Since constructions of industrial heritage and memory have been strongly connected to identity politics, including nationalism, the industrial past will also remain a contested domain in our uncertain future.

In the current political climate, a historical link is often drawn between the emergence of the populist right, post-fascism and xenophobia and the long-term consequences of deindustrialisation, that is, the disappearance of worlds of labour that have been constitutive to the cultural identity of millions in industrial regions around the world. As social inequality has been growing and traditional working-class organisations have lost on appeal, populism might be a new kind of “socialism of fools”, to borrow the contested expression of observers discussing antisemitism during the second industrial revolution of the late 19th century. Especially since Donald Trump’s promise to re-industrialise the Rust Belt to make his nation “great again”, historians, sociologists and political scientists have applied various angles to understanding the problematic relations between the (mis)management of economic change and the radicalisation of the electorate. This includes the “shock therapy” of post-communist transformation in East- and Central Europe (Ther 2019), the precarisation of work both in the East and the West as well as the longing for an “imaginary Fordism”, when national economies did not seem dominated by global markets, old gender roles favoured a male breadwinner, and it was possible for working-class people to be part of consumer society (Steinmetz 1994). Nationalist forms of nostalgia celebrating economic achievements and social security of the cold war era can now be mobilised to promise the return to a flourishing homeland that perhaps never existed.

Building on such interpretations, this workshop shall bring together scholars from across Europe to take a closer look into historical representations of ethnic and national identities under conditions of deindustrialisation from a comparative perspective.

The workshop will focus on the following leading questions:

1) How did long-term attitudes towards “race” and xenophobia play out in the process of deindustrialisation and its aftermath? If industrial societies have often been spaces of inward migration, they seem to have differed in their capacity to overcome ethnic divisions. In which ways has deindustrialisation aggravated such divisions or did the transformation process also contain possibilities to overcome older racialized identity patterns?

2) How has industrial memory/heritage been constitutive to or excluded from representations of national identities? Are there regional variations between (imagined) communities within nations when it comes to industrial memory politics, which might be at odds with broader national identity constructions?

3) How have ethnic minorities been (mis)represented in dominant historical cultures of labour under conditions of deindustrialisation? What are the blind spots in post-industrial memory practices and how can we open these up? Has working-class memory sufficiently accounted for the diversity of the work forces that have made post-war economic miracles possible?

4) How have minority ethnic groups coped with processes of deindustrialisation, also in terms of their own agency in collective memory, public history, and cultural heritage of the industrial age? How can we account for antagonistic industrial memories, when groups are excluded from or are competing over their place in history?
We hope to discuss these questions in a wide comparative perspective including conceptual approaches and empirical case studies from Europe, both in the former Communist societies and “the West”.

The workshop will take place at Apor Vilmos Catholic College, Vác, Hungary near Budapest. It is organised in collaboration with the working groups “Memory and Deindustrialisation” and “Central-East Europe” of the European Labour History Network. Main organisers: Melinda Harlov-Csortán (Apor Vilmos Catholic College, Vác); Stefan Moitra (Deutsches Bergbau-Museum, Bochum), Tibor Valuch (Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, Eger) and Christian Wicke (Utrecht University).

Basic accommodation (between 28 to 31 August) and some catering will be provided by the organisers, while transportation costs will have to be covered by the speakers themselves. Please email a summary of maximum 500 words as well as a short biographical note to memorydeindustrialization2023@gmail.com before 1 May, 2023. Accepted participants will be required to provide an extended draft of their presentation in advance of the workshop.

CfP: Feminist Labour History - Fifth ELHN Conference

2 months ago

CFP: Feminist Labour History
Fifth ELHN Conference
Uppsala, 11 – 13 June 2024

The Feminist Labour History Working Group (WG) participates in the Fifth ELHN Conference with a number of events, including thematic sessions. For the latter, we invite members of the Working Group, and all other interested colleagues, to come up with paper and session proposals under the following open call:

Open Call for Proposals – Deadline: July 1, 2023

We are keen to receive session and paper proposals which present innovative, new research, and ongoing research in projects in the broad field of the history of gender and labour in Europe and around the world. We encourage the participation of young PhD and post-doctoral researchers as well as senior scholars.

The Feminist Labour History WG is interested in a broad range of themes and concepts in feminist labour history, including but not limited to the following:

  • the intersection of class, race, gender, global inequality, etc. in all thematic areas of labour history
  • the global gendered division of labour
  • the historical engendering of various types and forms of labour
  • the historical evolvement of the relationship between paid and unpaid or subsistence-oriented work
  • commodification and decommodification of domestic and care work
  • the role gender has played in shaping labour law and practice of regulating labour and the impact of labour law and labour practices on gender and gender relations
  • trade unions and gender locally, nationally and internationally
  • the politics of “women’s work” and “men’s work”

Information on the Feminist Labour History WG can be found here.

We also plan a book launch and a meeting of the Feminist Labour History Working Group.

Book Launch

One of the results of the activities of the Feminist Labour History WG is the publication of the volume Women, Work, and Activism: Chapters of an Inclusive History of Labor in the Long Twentieth Century, edited by Eloisa Betti, Leda Papastefanaki, Marica Tolomelli and Susan Zimmermann (CEU Press, 2022). The authors and editors invite all those interested to join the presentation of their volume, details of the event will be figured out later.

Meeting of the Feminist Labour History WG

All scholars with an interest in gendered labour history in Europe and around the world are invited to join a discussion about ideas and themes for future research and collaboration within and beyond the Working Group.

How to submit paper proposals (Open Call for Proposals)

Please send a 500-word abstract and a short academic CV (max 500 word) to WG coordinator, Eszter Varsa (varsae@ceu.edu) by July 1, 2023. The proposal should include name, surname, current affiliation and contact details of the proponent. The subject of the email needs to be: “Feminist labour history ELHN 2024”.

If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact the coordination committee:

Eloisa Betti: eloisa.betti@unipd.it
Françoise F. Laot: francoise.laot@univ-paris8.fr
Eszter Varsa: varsae@ceu.edu
Susan Zimmermann: zimmerma@ceu.edu

Time and Location

The Fifth Conference of the European Labour History Network (ELHN) will take place from 11 to 13 June 2024 at Uppsala University and in a hybrid setting. Local organizer: Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek | Swedish Labour Movement’s Archives and Library.

CfP: Police Intelligence, from Local to Global. From 1750 to the Present Day

2 months ago

Police and intelligence are two concepts that are intimately and invariably linked. From the police utopia of François-Jacques Guillotte (Mémoire sur la réformation de la police de France, soumis au roi en 1749, ed. by J. Seznec, Paris, Hermann, 1974) to the ‘Clearview AI’ affair or the use of facial recognition software based on illegal data by the Belgian police, police work has often been confused with the collection and processing of information. Compared to the latter, intelligence is defined by Sébastien Laurent as ‘an element of information theoretically enriched by verification and analysis’ (Laurent, 2004, p. 175) and it contributes to the decision-making process. Despite its decisive role in the functioning of the state, the economy or international relations, intelligence has only been addressed within the framework of questions on surveillance, centralisation, bureaucratisation, the identification or use of information and communication technologies, the control of political radicalisation or even espionage. As a corollary of the inexorable growth of the state, and barely transcending the image, intelligence in the field of policing is often fantasised and has hence often been restricted to the practices of political police forces, willingly cultivating a culture of secrecy. Flies, snitches and spies have been the focus of the researchers’ preoccupations, with no real questioning of their role in the construction of administrative knowledge. Within this very fragmented historiography, intelligence in the context of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes has attracted most of the attention (Dandeker, 1990. Droit, 2019).

For the past twenty years, however, researchers have begun to explore the history of information, surveillance and control technologies (About and Denis, 2010), particularly in the wake of Michel Foucault’s work on the disciplinary society and security measures. It is only recently, however, that intelligence has emerged as the subject of a specific field of study, more focused on a historical anthropology approach (Rios-Bordes, 2018), as evidenced by the work carried out in the field of ‘Intelligence Studies’ (Gill and Phythian, 2016. Van Puyvelde and Curtis, 2016). In this emerging historiography, the specific policing aspect of intelligence generally only appears as an aside to its military, diplomatic or economic functions. The aim of this conference is therefore to take a look at police intelligence, to highlight its specific characteristics and its role in the work of law enforcement agencies. It will thus aim to present new developments and consider new approaches in the history of the administrative management of information and, above all, in the history of the police.

The conference will not, however, focus solely on this, it will also aim to address the questions, as yet little explored by historians, of the production and use of police intelligence, of the parties and tools involved in its development, and of the content that feeds it. These questions may be considered with regard to the transition from testimony to traces (Ginzburg) and to the transformation from the search for the individual criminal to the surveillance of suspect groups. To highlight these changes in the contexts and uses of intelligence, the conference will consider a lengthy timeline, from the middle of the eighteenth century, a period that saw the proliferation of modern police systems and the development of a transregional security culture geared to political surveillance (Härter, 2013), to the present day, a time of unprecedented use of information and communication technologies to the benefit of the police. Finally, it will take a resolutely comparative and transnational approach. The papers will attempt to show the dynamics at work on a global scale, to analyse the methods of information exchange and the circulation of knowledge and intelligence techniques. The perspective envisaged is definitely a global one, but it will also emphasise the grounding in specific territorial or even local contexts. Ultimately, the aim is to observe the shifts and continuities, the interrelationships between police information-gathering operations, their structuring, their circulation between the different levels of power, as well as the transnational dynamics at work. In this respect, intelligence will be considered in the context of both high-level police practises (political police and criminality) and ‘low-level policing’, i.e. day-to-day policing outside the strictly political and judicial sphere, in both exceptional and ordinary contexts. The sources of ‘ground level’ intelligence – citizens but also the procedures at the origin of this intelligence, such as complaints, testimonies, neighbourhood enquiries – could also be addressed in the context of local surveillance practises.

Contributions will be divided into three areas: the parties and tools involved in police intelligence, its content and its use (or, indeed, its non-use).

The parties and tools involved in police intelligence

The first aspect of the conference will focus on the parties and tools involved in police intelligence. These are understood in a broad sense. The parties involved in producing intelligence may be law enforcement professionals themselves, the specialist units, but also their auxiliaries. Uniformed police officers, police spies and ‘informers’, the military, neighbours, members of the clergy, private police forces, private intelligence bureaus, thinkers and theorists, police hierarchies, documentalists and administrative employees, the population at large, and targeted individuals can all be involved in the construction of police intelligence.

Then, turning to the history of techniques and material resources, the papers may also address the tools such as record-keeping technologies, passports, registers, databases and communication devices, which are also used in the process of gathering and using intelligence. The tools and methods used to process and store information can also be analysed (use of written documents, photography, film or video images, and image technologies, creation of registers or files, archiving procedures, geographical mapping, classifications, conversion into statistics, technical resources used for dissemination, etc.) (Becker and Clark, 2001. Williams, 2014).

The content of police intelligence

Papers may focus on groups, individuals, areas or behaviours that are supposed to be the subject of police intelligence. This requires identifying the nature, mapping and temporality of the perceived and actual risks and their relationship to criminal, political, linguistic, economic or moral considerations. More specifically, the analyses presented will seek to understand the concerns of States and their public order agencies and how they evolve, according to whether societies are moving towards greater democracy and pacification or whether they are experiencing episodes of increasing authoritarianism.

Uses and non-uses of police intelligence

There are multiple aspects to the question of the use and non-use of police intelligence. For example, the conference will examine the destination of the intelligence gathered by police institutions. By its very accumulation, this intelligence forms a basis for the construction of risk, which itself characterises a social and political danger that must be addressed. Police intelligence therefore feeds into political action, which underlines the extent to which police and politics are naturally interconnected realities. The papers will attempt to trace the presence of intelligence in the priorities set for the transformation of the police system and – subsequently – its role in local policing practices. The papers will also seek to explore how this intelligence is mobilised as a means of understanding the dynamics and particular interests of the different institutions involved in policing. This examination of the use of intelligence could, for example, focus on its influence on the teaching of policing and crime control, and its use in police training. The processes involved in perpetuating intelligence techniques and knowledge in the specific contexts of training are very much part of the conference’s theme.

Furthermore, the questions raised should not ignore the context within which this sometimes abundant, sometimes scare information is managed, with situations ranging from the anomic to the hypernomic, and the quantitative effects this has on its use or non-use. The normalisation of practices put in place during such exceptional periods, which may subsequently be maintained or abandoned, is a further aspect of the use of police intelligence that the conference hopes to examine.

To submit proposals

Proposals for papers (max. 3000 characters) should be sent by 21 April 2023, together with a brief curriculum vitae, to the conference organisers (policeintelligence.conference@gmail.com). The conference will be held in English and will be followed by the publication of a collective work. To allow time for discussion, each presentation will last 20 minutes. Texts will be requested from participants by 15 November 2023 to give session chairs and participants time to prepare for the discussions and to ensure rapid publication after the conference. Accommodation costs will be covered by the conference organisers. Subject to available budgets, travel costs may also be covered.

Bibliography

About I. and Denis V. (eds.), Histoire de l’identification des personnes, Paris, La Découverte, 2010.

Becker P. and Clark W. (eds.), Little Tools of Knowledge. Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 2001.

Combe C., Une société sous surveillance. Les intellectuels et la Stasi, Paris, Albin Michel, 1999.

Dandeker C., Surveillance, Power and Modernity: Bureaucracy and Discipline from 1700 to the Present Day, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1990.

Droit E., Les polices politiques du Bloc de l’Est: à la recherche de l’International tchékiste, 1955-1989, Paris, Gallimard, 2019.

Gill Pr. and Phythian M. “What is intelligence studies?”, The International Journal of Intelligence, Security, and Public Affairs, 2016/18, p. 5-19.

Härter K., “Security and Cross-Border Political Crime: The Formation of Transnational Security Regimes in 18th and 19th Century Europe”, Historical Social Research, vol. 38, 2013, p. 96-106.

Rios-Brodes A., Les savoirs de l’ombre. La surveillance militaire des populations aux Etats-Unis (1900-1941), Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS, 2018.

Van Puyvelde D. and Curtis S., “‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’: diversity and scholarship in Intelligence Studies”, Intelligence and National Security, 2016/31, p. 1040-1054.

Williams C., Police control systems in Britain, 1775-1975, Manchester-New York, Manchester University Press, 2014.

CfP Workshop Ethnic Identities and Industrial Memory

2 months ago

Call for Papers

Ethnic Identities and Industrial Memory
Workshop, Vác, Hungary, 29-30 August 2023

The industrial past has been a source of national pride and local nostalgia. Since the emergence of industrial archaeology after the Second World War, spatial and social entities subject to industrial boom and decline have enjoyed very different kinds of historical representations as often informed by ideological motifs.Since constructions of industrial heritage and memory have been strongly connected to identity politics, including nationalism, the industrial past will also remain a contested domain in our uncertain future.

In the current political climate, a historical link is often drawn between the emergence of the populist right, post-fascism and xenophobia and the long-term consequences of deindustrialisation, that is, the disappearance of worlds of labour that have been constitutive to the cultural identity of millions in industrial regions around the world. As social inequality has been growing and traditional working-class organisations have lost on appeal, populism might be a new kind of “socialism of fools”, to borrow the contested expression of observers discussing antisemitism during the second industrial revolution of the late 19th century. Especially since Donald Trump’s promise to re-industrialise the Rust Belt to make his nation “great again”, historians, sociologists and political scientists have applied various angles to understanding the problematic relations between the (mis)management of economic change and the radicalisation of the electorate. This includes the “shock therapy” of post-communist transformation in East-and Central Europe (Ther 2019), the precarisation of work both in the East and the West as well as the longing for an “imaginary Fordism”, when national economies did not seem dominated by global markets, old gender roles favoured a male breadwinner, and it was possible for working-class people to be part of consumer society (Steinmetz 1994). Nationalist forms of nostalgia celebrating economic achievements and social security of the cold war era can now be mobilised to promise the return to a flourishing homeland that perhaps never existed.

Building on such interpretations, this workshop shall bring together scholars from across Europe to take a closer look into historical representations of ethnic and national identities under conditions of deindustrialisation from a comparative perspective.

The workshop will focus on the following leading questions:

1) How did long-term attitudes towards “race” and xenophobia play out in the process of deindustrialisation and its aftermath? If industrial societies have often been spaces of inward migration, they seem to have differed in their capacity to overcome ethnic divisions. In which ways has deindustrialisation aggravated such divisions or did the transformation process also contain possibilities to overcome older racialized identity patterns?

2) How has industrial memory/heritage been constitutive to or excluded from representations of national identities? Are there regional variations between (imagined) communities within nations when it comes to industrial memory politics, which might be at odds with broader national identity constructions?

3) How have ethnic minorities been (mis)represented in dominant historical cultures of labour under conditions of deindustrialisation? What are the blind spots in post-industrial memory practices and how can we open these up? Has working-class memory sufficiently accounted for the diversity of the work forces that have made post-war economic miracles possible?

4) How have minority ethnic groups coped with processes of deindustrialisation, also in terms of their own agency in collective memory, public history, and cultural heritage of the industrial age? How can we account for antagonistic industrial memories, when groups are excluded from or are competing over their place in history?

We hope to discuss these questions in a wide comparative perspective including conceptual approaches and empirical case studies from Europe, both in the former Communist societies and “the West”.

The workshop will take place at Apor Vilmos Catholic College, Vác, Hungary near Budapest. It is organised in collaboration with the working groups “Memory and Deindustrialisation” and “Central-East Europe” of the European Labour History Network. Main organisers: Melinda Harlov-Csortán (Apor Vilmos Catholic College, Vác); Stefan Moitra (Deutsches Bergbau-Museum, Bochum), Tibor Valuch (Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, Eger) and Christian Wicke (Utrecht University).

Basic accommodation (between 28 to 31 August) and some catering will be provided by the organisers, while transportation costs will have to be covered by the speakers themselves. Please email a summary of maximum 500 words as well as a short biographical note to memorydeindustrialization2023@gmail.com before 1 May, 2023. Accepted participants will be required to provide an extended draft of their presentation in advance of the workshop.

CfA The neoliberal turn and the history of everyday life in Central and Eastern Europe

2 months ago

Call for papers

The neoliberal turn and the history of everyday life in Central and Eastern Europe
in the decades following the regime changes of 1989-1990

Special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe
to be published in Spring 2024

The political regime changes of 1989/90 and the rapid restructuring of the planned economies, also referred to as “shock therapy” in the 1990s radically transformed not only the political, economic and social relations in Central and Eastern Europe, but also the structure and functioning of everyday life. While the state socialist countries were ruled by political dictatorships, the Communist regimes maintained not only universal employment but also a welfare state, which covered free education and health care, the generous support of high culture and community building and a wide range of state-run childcare institutions. These achievements were, of course, used to legitimize the rule of political dictatorships and were even regarded as a “compensation” for the loss of political freedom.

The system change fundamentally transformed the great structures of social life such as the political and economic spheres, the electoral systems and the distribution of wealth and property. The population became divided to the groups of “losers” and “winners”, and the 1990s also produced rapidly rising social inequalities alongside the dismantling of the “prematurely born” welfare state. The appearance of new industries driven by multinational capital and the creation of new capitalist classes were accompanied by processes of de-industrialization, the decline of traditional industries such as mining and metallurgy, the establishment of new social ghettos in the place of former factory towns and the experience of unemployment and new poverty.

This thematic issue focuses on the everyday life experience of system change and the past three decades and the question of how the radical transformation of the big structures were reflected in the lives of ordinary people. How did they adapt to the changing social and economic conditions? How did they attempt to interpret the system change from the perspective of the “little man”? How did consumption patterns, housing and nutrition change during the past decades? How did the system change impact on the situation of women and the old and new gender struggles? In what ways did privatization, and the redistribution of income and wealth cause new social inequalities? How did these changes manifest themselves in the everyday life of different social groups?

Studies on postsocialism have shown that the new conditions triggered new strategies of adaptation. Life situations and life strategies have also been completely re-differentiated. The emergence of market relations created a temporary anarchy in everyday life in the early 1990s. The economic restructuring or “shock therapy” and the dismantling of the “premature” welfare state caused lasting traumas for millions of people, who were not accustomed to the conditions created by “wild” capitalism. All these had a formative impact on the everyday life, the memories of state socialism and the way of thinking of the new generations, who were born after the regime changes.

The thematic issue seeks to bring together contributions from the field of sociology, anthropology, historical anthropology, gender studies and political science, which address the issues of the radical transformation of the material and non-material life worlds after the collapse of state socialism. Papers can focus on various aspects of everyday life: consumption, housing, fashion, nutrition and eating habits, leisure time, and changes in values, public thinking social roles and attitudes, gender and family roles and ideologies in a historical, sociological and cultural anthropological context. Papers addressing different aspects of collective memory are also welcome.

Please submit your papers by 31 August 2023.
Maximum length: 30,000-60,000 characters
.

Contacts

For more information on the journal, visit:
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cdeb20

CfP: First Annual Graduate Student Conference on Economic and Social History

2 months ago

Qualitative and quantitative research alike is invited, and the organisers encourage students in any stage of their studies from all disciplines related to economic and social history to apply.

The conference will be organised by students for students, but with the experience and organisational expertise of the Edinburgh’s Economic and Social History Research Group. It is an excellent opportunity to present papers and receive critical feedback from peers and renowned experts in the field, as well as build a network with others in the economic and social history community.

The conference aims to bring together graduate students (PGT or PGR) from across the UK to a one- day event on Edinburgh’s historic campus. There will be three broad panels to showcase the breadth of economic and social history research undertaken by postgraduate research students. Each panel (below) consists of four 20-minute presentations followed by 10 minutes of discussion and questions from the audience. There will also be icebreaking activities for a lively atmosphere among young scholars who attend, and to encourage friendly work relationships that could continue after the event.

The conference will take place on 7 July 2023, from 10 am to 6 pm in Edinburgh. No conference fee is charged. Lunch and refreshments are provided through the courtesy of the School of History, Classics & Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh University Students’ Association.

Interested graduate students can apply by sending an abstract of their project (500 words maximum) and their CV to eshgrad@gmail.com by 5 PM BST on 30 April 2023. Please indicate your preferred panel in the email subject line. Successful applicants will be notified by 31 May 2023.

Please do not hesitate to contact the organisers if you have any questions.

Organisers:

Siân DaviesMoritz KaiserQingrou ZhaoGino Magnini

Panels Panel 1 - Labour & Production

The boundaries and definitions of labour history have experienced many mutations since the 1960s. Fundamentally, this panel welcomes papers from those who see labour history, histories of work and production, as central to their practise of social history. By including labour histories that encompass free and unfree labour, paid as well as unpaid work, this panel hopes to further problematise definitions of the working class as well as the fictional boundary between the public and private. We welcome approaches that consider labouring relations, processes, struggles, strategies of survival and co-operation, as well as the political and psychological lives of those who labour. Histories of production and reproduction can offer a useful lens to consider connections and dis-connections in the global context. To that end, we encourage papers from all time periods and all regions. Labour histories can also provide fruitful insights into contemporary considerations such as the reach and limits solidarity, social inequalities and precariousness in the global context.

Panel 2 - Leisure & Consumption

This panel addresses leisure and consumption across time and space: from the early-modern period and from across the globe. We encourage researchers to consider leisure and consumption in and of themselves, as well linking them to the other workshop strands such as labour, and poverty and inequality. The stand can be approached variously from economic, cultural, or social standpoints and from the multiple perspectives from government policy to the experiences of women, workers, and the poor. We welcome papers examining household consumption patterns, the relationship between leisure, culture, and the economy, the transformation of wages into a consumable living, and workplace culture.

Panel 3 - Poverty & Inequality

This panel covers the overarching theme of inequality, with a particular focus on economic and income inequalities. We encourage both quantitative and qualitative approaches in investigating this topic, as well as researchers examining the secular trends and changes from the early-modern period onward. We welcome papers that discuss the potential causes and consequences of income inequality and the reporting of insightful case studies with relevant policy implications. Possible research avenues can include, but are not limited to, the importance of the level of economic and technological development, social and political unrest, existing institutions and the imperfection of credit markets in creating, exacerbating and perpetrating income inequalities across groups of people and throughout time.

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