From Wednesday 27 February up to and including Saturday 1 March 2008 the European Social Sciences History Conference will take place in Lisbon, Portugal at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon. We plan to organize a panel on new ways to research anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism and herewith invite researchers to participate.
Traditionally, the historiography of anarchism has focused on the history of ideas, individual protagonists, and organizations. The class composition of anarchism and syndicalism has occupied a central place, as has the geography of the movement. Some authors have paid attention togender and race, or to a cultural analysis of the movement. Much of the research has been sympathetic, many stressing the importance of movements in the past, and/or their relevance for the present. Nonetheless, methodological issues have received limited explicit attention. Of particular interest are the following issues: linking socio-economic, political, ideological, and cultural approaches; the role of local, regional and transnational factors; social andeconomic factors that facilitate or constrain anarchist and syndicalist movements; and, finally, the relevance of other literatures, such as social movement theory, network analysis and discourse analysis. The proposed panel will look at these issues, focusing less on accountsof anarchist and syndicalist movements, than on the means to study them.
Before February 27, 2007 synopses of papers should be sent to:
Bert Altena
Faculty of History, Arts and Media
Erasmus University Rotterdam
[mailto]altena@fhk.eur.nl[/mailto]
Lucien van der Walt
Department of Sociology
School of Social Sciences
Faculty of Humanities
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg
[mailto]vanderwaltl@social.wits.ac.za[/mailto]