Labnet: CFP: Local forms of production as resistance against global domination - An international workshop, Amsterdam, June 17-19 2010

[labnet at lists.labourhistory.net]

From: Ulbe Bosma ubo at iisg.nl 

Call for papers: Local forms of production as resistance against global
domination: anti-commodities - An international workshop, Amsterdam,
June 17-19 2010

Colonial commodity production for the world market has created and
reshaped peripheral economies, a process that continued after formal
decolonisation. There is a rich historiography on colonial and
post-colonial commodity production, most of which is related to
agricultural production. These studies almost invariably start from the
assumption that colonial (and post-colonial) commodity production
subordinates non-commercial local forms of production, exploiting local
people's labour. The peasantry is expelled from its land and local
creativity and indigenous knowledge are suppressed. [Adas, M., Machines
as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western
Dominance. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1989. Kloppenburg, J.R.,
First the seed: the political economy of plant biotechnology 1492-2000.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Scott, J., Seeing Like a
State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.] More recently, historians have
argued that studies of the technological transfers and coercive regimes
of colonizing nations too often result in asymmetrical accounts that
portray colonized peoples merely as victims and underrate their creative
potential and social resilience. They argue that the social-technical
arrangements of colonial production systems were a result of dynamic
local and regional interactions, as well as social conflicts. This would
imply that there is an immense variation in the ways in which local
production systems and colonial commodity production coexist. [Arnold,
D., "Europe, Technology and Colonialism" History and Technology 21
(2005): 85-106. Edgerton, David., "Creole technologies and global
histories: rethinking how things travel in space and time" History of
Science and Technology 1 (2007): 75-112. Roberts, R.L., Two Worlds of
Cotton. Colonialism and the Regional Economy in the French Soudan,
1800-1946. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Storey, W. K.,
Science and Power in Colonial Mauritius. Rochester: University of
Rochester Press, 1997.]

The aim of this workshop is to focus on responses to global commodity
production both in terms of resisting or adapting to changing social
(labour) relations as well as resisting or adapting to worsening
ecological conditions. These processes, termed 'anti-commodity',
resulted in local and regional reconfigurations of people and their
activities. These reconfigurations are considered as local forms of
resistance and/or adaptation against the extraction of surplus value by
colonial (plantation) agriculture or mining. 

The workshop, hosted and organised by the International Institute of
social History in Amsterdam (IISH, NL) in collaboration with the
Technology and Agrarian Development Group of Wageningen University (NL),
is the 4th international workshop of the Commodities of Empire
collaborative project
(http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/ferguson-centre/commodities-of-empire/index.
html) run by the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies, Open
University (UK) and the School of Advanced Study, University of London
(UK). The IISH has a long tradition in studying the global history of
labour relations and one of its current research projects is on
commodity production in Asia. The Technology and Agrarian Development
group has a strong focus on the interaction between material and social
change and currently runs a Dutch Science Foundation-funded research
programme on anticommodities in collaboration with the UK partners. The
Commodities of Empire Project seeks to explore the networks through
which such commodities circulated within, and in the spaces between,
empires. It encourages a comparative approach that explores the
experiences of peoples subjected to different imperial hegemonies.
Invited are papers that address resistance against the introduction of
commodity for the world market in the contexts of changing labour and/or
ecological change. 

The deadline for abstracts (about 800-1000 words) is January15, and
should be sent to Ulbe Bosma (ubo at iisg.nl) and Harro Maat
(Harro.Maat at wur.nl). The organizers will then invite participation in
the workshop based on a selection made of those papers that fit most
closely the workshop's aims. The organizers will offer local hospitality
during the workshop to those selected. There is very limited funding
available for travel, for which priority will be given to scholars from
outside Europe and the USA. 

Participants are expected to have full papers ready by May 31, for
precirculation to session discussants and other participants. 

If you have any questions or hesitate about how your work fits the
workshop theme, feel free to contact the organizers, preferably before
the abstract deadline.