Labour History in 'Emerging Countries'
In accordance with the future "North-South"-orientation
of ITH, this conference will discuss the most important and innovative concepts,
problems and results of Labour history in countries which we call,
for want of a better word, "emerging countries".
This category includes countries like India, China, South Korea, Indonesia,
Brasil, Mexico or South Africa which display two characteristics: rapid
development of the economy in the wake of economic globalization which induces
important changes in Labour relations; and the emergence of an indigenous
Labour history. This provisional category of emerging countries,
in the mentioned double sense, may serve to characterize countries with
economies closely entangled with the most advanced regions in the World
Economy, but with Worlds of Labour different from the European and North
American model.
The first part of the conference will
be devoted to the definition of concepts.
Labour history developed in Europe and North America is working with
concepts – wage labour, working class, industrial proletariat –
which are only partly useful for the analysis in emerging countries
of our time. Thus, their pertinence has to be questioned, as well as the
pertinence of the concepts used in Labour history in those countries.
More generally, the question is posed which concepts can serve as a basis
for a Labour history in a global perspective.
Another problem to be discussed in this first part is the question of sources
and archives. Historiography in emergent countries is confronted
with specific problems: lack of written sources, bad conservation, lack
of a public policy in archive matters, etc. The conference should offer
opportunities to provide an overview on sources and archives of Labour in
some of these countries. This part is especially suited to collaboration
with IALHI (International Association of Labour History Institutions).
The second part of the conference will be devoted
to problems of Labour history in and about emerging countries.
We are not only interested in the historiography produced in
these countries, but also in the historiography produced about
these countries – what are the novel problems (eg. commodity chains
and their implications for the workforce engaged in these chains), approaches
and methods, and are there exemplary works à la E.P.Thompson's The
Making of the English Working Class.
We are equally interested in the conditions that gave rise to a Labour
history in emerging countries. Are there specialized institutions,
a public policy fostering this type of historiography, networks, meetings,
journals? What is the degree of professionalisation of Labour history,
are there links with social and political movements, where are historians
working in this field educated, what are the main tendencies and the dominating
intellectual influences, how important are national and cultural bounds
and to which degree is language limiting the epistemological scope of this
historiography? Labour history has often been used as a means of
constructing identities and of political legitimation. How is this situation
now, what is at stake in emerging countries?
Final remarks
The precise topics and panels of the outlined conference are still to be defined, in function of what seems really new and original to us. These choices have to be made on the basis of a close collaboration with colleagues working in and on emerging countries. Thus, it seems convenient to ask for a synthesis of the most important recent publications and ongoing research in the field of Labour history in countries like India, Brasil and South Africa. Those texts which could be published eventually, should facilitate our orientation and the definition of topics to be treated at the conference. The conference should favour approaches in a comparative perspective. The contributions should point out where and how they distinguish themselves from Labour history in Europe and Northern America, or where and how they converge with currents of this historiography.
Planned venue and cooperation partners:
Johannesburg: In September 2008 the annual
IALHI-conference will take place at Johannesburg. We are in a planning process
to organize jointly with IALHI and History Workshop an ensuing
substantive 2-3 day conference at the University of Witwatersrand.
To this effect, a steering committee consisting of representatives of these
potential partners has been constituted in February 2007.