We invite you to submit a proposal for two sessions on anarchism at the "European Social Science History Conference", which will take place in Glasgow on April 2012.
1. Towards a national turn in anarchist studies?
The anarchist movement is not known for its submission to bourgeois institutions including that of the nation state. It saw itself as an international and transnational movement and its network structure interconnected the local, regional, national and international.
Recently the transnational character of the anarchist movement(s) has received particular attention, as has the history of anarchist movements in a particular neighbourhood or, say, ethnic anarchist movements. Nevertheless the bulk of history-writing has been devoted to particular anarchists and anarchist movements in cities or in countries. Even Max Nettlau, that great historian of anarchism, basically organised his Geschichte der Anarchie according to periods and countries.
How does the geographical basis we take affect our histories of the anarchist movement? What do we miss when we focus on anarchism within certain state borders and what do we gain?
The same questions go for international or transnational, regional and local studies. Do we fully capture the anarchist movement if we focus on transnational and national networks only? Should we start from the assumption of anarchism as a counter-cultural movement and follow its own rules, or does a particular geographical (or ethnic for that matter) scope add something to our understanding? Do colonies show remarkable differences when compared with ‘ordinary’ states we know from the European situation? How should we handle the changing character of the politico-geographical organisation of the world? One could think of the establishment of new states, like new states in Europe after 1918 or in former colonies, but also of the weakening of nation states in the recent era of regionalisation and globalisation.
2. Elites in an egalitarian movement: anarchist elites.
In a groundbreaking essay the late Georges Haupt proposed to pay special attention to leading groups within the international workers' movement. (Georges Haupt, 'Groupes dirigeants internationaux du mouvement ouvrier' in: Georges Haupt, l'Historien et le mouvement social (Paris 1980) 267-293. His elaboration of this proposal was directed at leading groups in the Second International. This meant that the effect of organisations was considerable, all the more with political organisations. The better structured these organisations were, the greater the role of organisational hierarchies. We know the implications of this all very well from the work of Robert Michels, who studied socialist movements and organisations (especially the German Social-Democratic Party) with much inventiveness for his Political Parties.
Anarchist movements consider themselves as strictly egalitarian (in theory if not in practice) and certainly were much more so than the average Social-Democratic party or labour union. Nevertheless in the anarchist movement too 'leaders' and key figures can be found. We know what Bakunin had to say about authority. Did these 'leaders' form an elite, and if so, how should their organisation be described? Should they be described as groups, circles, or, more topically and controversially, as network? Did they develop into 'communities of discourse', to adapt Bob Wuthnow’s wonderful concept, and on top of that create their own channels of communication? How did they relate to the other anarchists in the movement and how did these perceive these elites? Did Bakunin’s ideas on authority play a role? Was the lack of strict organisational structures a cause for a higher frequency of charisma in anarchist circles? Was the actual functioning of this elite in contradiction with anarchist non-hierarchical principles?
Please send your proposal (300 words minimum) before April 4, 2011 to:
Bert Altena: altena [at] eshcc.eur.nl
Constance Bantman: c.bantman [at] surrey.ac.uk