Labour History beyond Borders: Concepts and
Explorations
45. Linz Conference: September 10–13, 2009
CONCEPTUAL OUTLINE
This forum will conclude the ITH's series of conferences focusing on the
perspectives and problems of a labour history 'beyond borders' – on
historiographical perspectives questioning the assumption that labour history's
spaces of relevance can be confined to the boundaries of national or other
territorial states. The task of the 2009 Linz conference is, therefore,
twofold.
Taking stock of the results of preceding discussions and of the rapidly
expanding corpus of writings on the subject, we will, first of all, identify
crucial theoretical and methodological problems of writing global labour
history. How can we write 'global labour history' without ahistorically
projecting a triumphalist 'globalisation' discourse back into the past?
How useful and relevant are non-territorial spatial frames of analysis at
all and where are their limits? How can methodologies of systematic interregional
comparison be reconciled with those aiming at the historical analysis of
global entanglements? What is the utility of network concepts for the writing
of global labour history – and where are the pitfalls? Keynotes delivered
by historians of the 'global South' will open a debate between historians
representing several regional traditions of writing labour history on these
and other conceptual issues.
In a second move, we will proceed from the assumption that the potential
of a 'labour history beyond borders' needs to be gauged by identifying and
exploring concrete problematiques that are relevant to more than one world
region. On this conference, we wish to focus on three of such problematiques
and encourage scholars at all career levels to submit proposals for relevant
papers:
(a) Global Entanglements of Textile Industries and
their Implications for Labour Relations and Struggles. Historians
are increasingly looking into the labour histories of specific industrial
sectors from a global perspective – both for purposes of comparison
and also in order to identify global connections. Chains of production,
the communication of technologies and skills, labour migration, labour and
commodity market regulation as well as industrial conflict are all relevant
aspects covered by such approaches. We dedicate one session to an industrial
sector that has been involved in various types of global transactions for
centuries.
(b) Labour, Migration and the Transformation of Rural
Regions. The study of industrial wage labour has often been focused
on the city and the 'point of production', while repercussions of industrial
working class formation for rural regions have received much less attention
even though the ensuing transformation have been an elementary process affecting
most parts of the world, where the reproduction of industrial labour is
unthinkable without the contribution of rural society. The neglect of the
countryside has been even more extreme in recent years when an enormous
concentration of transnational capital flows on 'global cities' has been
accompanied by a decreasing academic interest in rural society. Dramatic
consequences of uneven urban/rural development are becoming increasingly
visible, however. Labour historians are thus well advised to put rural social
relations high up on their agendas.
(c) Religion and Class Formation in Global Perspective.
Recent advances in labour history have been, in many regions of the
world, particularly noticeable with regard to culture and the structures
of everyday life. The question of religion and its contributions to processes
of class formation has been one of the main issues in this context. However,
the attempt to compare such contributions across religious boundaries still
remains to be undertaken. We dedicate this final session of the conference
to papers investigating issues like religious conflicts within the working
classes or the contribution of religious rituals and festivals to the formation
of class identities.
Preparatory Committee:
Coordinator: Marcel van der Linden (IISH Amsterdam)
Ravi Ahuja (School of Oriental and African Studies, London)
Bruno Groppo (Centre d'Histoire Sociale, Université de Paris
I)
Eva Himmelstoss (ITH)
Dirk Hoerder (North American Center for Transborder Studies, Arizona
State University)
David Mayer (Institute for Social and Economic History, Vienna
University)
Jürgen Mittag (Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr University
of Bochum)
Silke Neunsinger (Labour Movement Archives and Library, Stockholm)
Berthold Unfried (ITH & Institute for Social and Economic History,
Vienna University)
Contact information:
Eva Himmelstoss
International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH)
Altes Rathaus, Wipplingerstr. 8, A-1010 Vienna, Austria
E-Mail: ith@doew.at