Winter School: In-between - Intermediaries and Intermediate Places in Global Labour - Past & Present

Labour history has experienced a profound change in the last twenty years, moving away from a Eurocentric model spotlighting the male, Western industrial worker to a global labour history that seeks to explore labourers, labour regimes and labour relations in different places and different time periods. Importantly, this has led to a questioning of any straightforward free-unfree divide which posits a shift from unfree to free labour that followed a scheme(s) of “modernisation”. In the last decades, labour historians have highlighted the need to move beyond the ‘free’/‘unfree’ divide (van der Linden and Brass, 1997; van der Linden 2008), expanding the range of labour relations under study, and insisting on the relevance of a processual perspective. Especially the latter approach highlights the complex making of labour coercion, and offers the possibility to rethink key concepts, e.g. the ‘working class’, and periodisations in labour history, questioning also the binary approach of ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ labour (De Vito, Schiel and van Rossum, 2020; Schiel and Heinsen, forthcoming).

This new approach has emphasised how ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ and in-between forms of labour co-exist and even reinforce each other.

Furthermore, actors and spaces have been at the forefront of global history, and we propose to probe a particular type of actor: intermediaries, and a particular type of space: intermediate places. This helps us investigate what lies in-between, the transitions and transformations people experienced in the past and experience in the present. In this Winter School, we aim to benefit from such insights in order to explore intermediaries and intermediate places.

Intermediate places include a wide variety of spaces where people have been forced to stay for a limited or transitional period of time, for example the ships which brought enslaved and indentured people to their owners or work sites, or convicts to penal colonies. Other examples include prisons and jails, penal settlements, concentration or prisoner of war camps, gulags, market places, work and living sites of indentured labourers, holding pens, depots where indentured and enslaved people were held, ports, private households, farmers, rural and other workers, who were evicted and had to take refuge in temporary settlements, which could include roadside settlements, school grounds, or public land. For some, time spent in such places were limited, for others it could span years, even decades, and for yet others it might have been a place where they died.

Intermediaries are understood here as people in intermediary positions and contexts. Intermediaries can and could be people who were coerced to inhabit such roles, such as enslaved or indentured overseers, indentured people, convicts, working as overseers, warders, or night-watchmen, or watchwomen, inmates of gulags or concentration camps, i.e. people in coerced contexts, holding a position of power, who, even though they were subjected to a coerced environment, held positions of power, as well as everyone in-between or who moved from one role to another (Arnold, 2015; Dimmers, 2023; Walker, 2007; Wiethoff, 2006). At the same time we want to explore intermediate roles for free or freer intermediaries, who worked and work in same or similar roles as coerced intermediaries and additionally for example as brokers, moneylenders, protectors of immigrants, or recruiters and traders (Bates, Carter, 2017; Delbourgo, 2009; Schaffer, Roberts, Raj, 2009; Schwecke 2021a, 2021b).

We welcome paper proposals that explore these topics in the past and present.

PhD students are invited to submit a paper proposal (approx. 500 words), abstract, a short summary of their argument, current affiliation, and short bio-note latest by 1 August, 2024 to: Michaela Dimmers, Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, New Delhi: dimmers@mwsindia.org

Subject: Winter school: In-between: Intermediaries and Intermediate Places

Candidates with PhD funding are expected to fund their trips. However, candidates without funding can apply in their application for support of their travel expenses.

You will be informed about the outcome of your application by 30 September, 2024.

Successful applicants will be expected to pre-circulate their papers among the participants by 1 December, 2024.

For further information and queries, please contact:

Michaela Dimmers, Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, New Delhi:
dimmers@mwsindia.org.