Date: Tue, 08 May 2001 21:04:16 +0100
Subject: AUT: British Marxist Historians - please circulate
From: Sebastian Budgen <sebastian-AT-amadeobordiga.u-net.com>


APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING

First Call for Papers
Making Social Movements:
The British Marxist Historians and the study of social movements
June 26-28, 2002, Edge Hill College of Higher Education, England

Conference sponsors
Social Movements Research Group, London Socialist Historians Group,
Historical Materialism Journal
 
Confirmed Speakers 
Brian Manning, author The English People and the English Revolution; Bryan D
Palmer, author E.P. Thompson: Objections and Oppositions; Ellen Wood, author
Democracy Against Capitalism.
 
How might the extraordinary body of historical writing produced by the
ŒBritish Marxist historians¹ - Edward Thompson, Christopher Hill, Rodney
Hilton, Eric Hobsbawm, Victor Kiernan, Dona Torr, John Saville, Dorothy
Thompson, George Rudé  - enable scholars and activists to better understand
the making of social movements?  This is a timely moment to examine their
legacy. Many social movement scholars are pushing beyond the static Œmodels¹
drawn from rational-choice theory and the crude and reductive Œnew
movement¹/¹old movement¹ dichotomies developed by European social theory.
This can be seen as part of a wider Œhistoric turn in the humansciences¹.
 
What can social movement scholars and activists learn from a critical
engagement with the historiography of movementand protest in the writings of
the British Marxist historians? And from thetheoretical and conceptual
innovations developed through their history writing?What might be learnt
from 
the sensibility and style of the British Marxisthistorians, from their
Œcommitted¹ social and political relation to their subject, to their writing
of history Œfrom the bottom up¹? And what can social movement studies, now
in an exciting period of sustained growth, connected to the rebirth of
popular protest, and a locus for fruitful academic-activistdialogue, bring
to 
this exchange?  
            
We invite proposals for papers, which explore any aspect of the legacy of
the 
British Marxisthistorians for the study of popular protest and social
movements. Themesinclude theorising social movements, class, gender and
movement, the culturaland moral mediation of protest and movement, agency
and 
the individual-in-the-movement, ideology, discourse and the study of social
movements, the Œpeople¹ and protest, protest as ethic, revolutions and
social movements, the Œprimitive rebel¹, using sources to study social
movements, literature and protest. For further conference details, and to
send a proposal for a conference paper (400 words), e-mail the conference
organiser, AlanJohnson <johnsona-AT-edgehill.ac.uk> Edge Hill College of
HigherEducation, St Helens Road, Ormskirk, Lancashire, L394QP.
 
Conference OrganisingCommittee
Alan Johnson, Social Movements Research Group and Historical Materialism;
Matthew Beaumont, Research Fellow and Tutor, Keble College, Oxford
University, and Historical Materialism;Keith Flett, London Socialist
Historians Group. 




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