Call for Conference Papers: “Strikes and Social Conflicts in Hostile Environments”, September 5-6, 2025
Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: March 1, 2025
Seventh Conference of the International Association of Strikes and Social Conflicts
Co-Organized by
The Arrighi Center for Global Studies, Johns Hopkins University and the
International Association of Strikes and Social Conflicts (IASSC)
Conference Venue: The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC (USA)
Conference Theme: Strikes and Social Conflicts in Hostile Environments
While workers and other subordinate groups are always operating under conditions that limit their range of action—that is, circumscribing the kinds of protest demands or action repertoires that are considered normative or acceptable—there are historical periods and geographical spaces in which the environment is especially hostile to collective action from below.
Our premise is that we have entered one of these especially hostile periods on a global scale. As such, there is an urgent need to examine and draw lessons from instances (both contemporary and historical) in which subordinated groups navigated through, organized in, protested against, and at times, successfully transformed the “hostile environments” in which they were embedded.
Historically, many would point to the labor repressive colonial regimes and the spread of fascist movements in the first half of the twentieth century as one example of a period of widening/deepening “hostility” on a global scale. Likewise, the early-twenty-first century, with the current global resurgence of fascist and far right regimes and movements in new forms, can be understood as another period of widening/deepening hostility.
At the same time, spatial unevenness of hostile environments has been central to the functioning of historical capitalism in any given period. For example, in the decades after the Second World War, the apartheid regime in South Africa and military dictatorships in Latin America and East Asia existed at the same time that the right of workers to strike and form independent trade unions were at their height in many core countries. Equally important, workers in the same location (e.g., within the same country, city, workplace) are regularly divided between those who are ruled through consent and those who feel the brunt of the hostility—with distinctions drawn along the lines of gender, migration/citizenship, race/ethnicity, urban/rural, etc.
Finally, even in the darkest periods in world history, there have been local pockets of hope in which successful mobilizations around (and advances of) labor rights and social justice have prevailed. Here we might think of the settlements established by enslaved people who had escaped from bondage (marronage); or Rojava, the autonomous polyethnic socialist regime established in northeast Syria in the midst of the Syrian Civil War; or the experiences of other liberated areas in the midst of wars and revolutions.
Call for Abstracts:
In line with the above discussion, we welcome abstracts for papers focused on:
- case studies of strikes and social conflicts under colonial, fascist, neofascist, far-right, and other hostile regimes, both past and present;
- workers organizing to break down internal class divides (within countries or between countries) and their lessons for working class solidarity and labor internationalism today;
- the experiences—past and present—of the “rays of hope” that shined through (even for a short time) in deeply hostile environments, and their lessons for today.
We also encourage the submission of abstracts that focus on the following specific aspects of the overall conference theme:
- the contemporary university as hostile environment (for faculty, students and workers—not assuming these are mutually exclusive categories);
- strikes and social conflicts in wars and hostile geopolitical environments, past and present;
- the role of ecology and climate crisis in contemporary hostile environments.
We welcome papers that are contemporary or historical as well as papers that are single case, comparative or global in perspective. We encourage all paper presenters to grapple with and make explicit the lessons of their analysis for our present-day hostile environment(s).
Finally, we welcome abstracts for papers on strikes & social conflicts beyond the conference theme.
Procedures for Abstract Submission
Paper abstracts of 250-500 words should be submitted via this google form. The deadline for submissions is March 1, 2025. Decisions will be announced by April 1, 2025.
There are no conference fees for attendees. Buffet meals will be provided at the conference itself; however, participants should plan to cover their own travel/accommodation expenses. Information on hotel options and other conference updates will be posted on the conference webpage.
Papers presented at the conference will be considered for a special issue of the IASSC’s journal, Workers of the World.
Conference Organizing Committee (Contact email for conference queries: arrighi@jhu.edu).
Committee Chair: Beverly J. Silver (Johns Hopkins University); Arrighi Center Committee Members: Zophia Edwards (Johns Hopkins), Ricardo Jacobs (UC Santa Barbara), Mateus Alves de Mendonca (Johns Hopkins), Corey Payne (University of Richmond), Christy Thornton (New York University); IASSC Committee Members: Ralph Darlington (University of Salford) and Alice Pate (Kennesaw State University).