CFP: SSHA Labor Network Panels on Labor and the Environment
Social Science History Association
Toronto, Ontario, CA, November 6-9, 2014
Dear Colleagues,
Under the auspices of the SSHA Labor Network, I am looking for papers for three proposed panels on labor and environmental history for the 2014 SSHA Conference in Toronto, Canada.
The deadline for abstracts is February 13, 2014.
The (tentative) proposed panel titles are:
1) Labor and Environmental Inequality: Exploitation, Discrimination, and the Working-Class Experience of Environmental Hazards
2) Labor and the Commons: Subsistence, Recreation, and Workers’ Access to Nature
3) Blue-Green Histories: Exploring Conflict, Collaboration, and Coalition-Building Between the Labor and Environmental Movements
If you wish to participate in one of these panels, your paper should engage with one or more of the following themes: labor and environmental inequality/injustice; workers’ access to nature (broadly conceived); or relations between the labor and environmental movements.
In line with the larger theme of inequality framing this year’s SSHA conference, the first two panels will consider how patterns of environmental inequality have shaped the experience of workers and working-class communities. Papers explicitly engaging with the themes of environmental justice, environmental racism, or political ecology in relation to labor would be welcome. Panelists might address some of the following questions: How have workers experienced environmental hazards and resources/amenities differentially along ethnic, racial, gender, and class lines? How have they challenged disproportionate exposure to hazards, and demanded access to natural spaces for subsistence, recreation, and other purposes?
The third panel will address the history of interactions between the labor and environmental movements in different times and places. Papers should explore how workers and labor organizations have historically engaged with environmental politics. Some of the following questions might be addressed: how can the history of such engagements help us clarify and contextualize current debates about green jobs, climate mitigation and adaptation, and a “just transition” to a sustainable economy? How does the history of blue-green coalitions problematize simple oppositions between “jobs and the environment” in media and political discourse?
If you are interested in contributing to any of these panels, please send me an e-mail at ei9679@wayne.edu.
Josiah Rector
[Cross-posted, with thanks, from H-Labor]