Call for Submissions by Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict
INTRODUCTION
Over the past three decades, scholars and activists engaged in agriculture, food sys... more INTRODUCTION
Over the past three decades, scholars and activists engaged in agriculture, food systems, and consumerism have demonstrated food’s significance to the human experience, particularly during the modern epoch. The subject of food provides scholars with an attractive interpretive lens for examining the dynamics of globalization and transnationality by shedding light on a wide range of hitherto unexamined processes and diverse political, economic, and cultural relationships. Drawing upon insights from History, Anthropology, and Sociology, as well as food policy studies and urban planning, a number of interdisciplinary studies have demonstrated the central role of food in the formation and disintegration of ethnic and cultural identities, the industrialization and commercialization of food production and consumption, and the consequences of both for elite power and subaltern agency on both national and international scales of analysis. However, while such studies have often employed food as a proxy for examining the politics and economics of power relations in various places and regions, historians and scholars of other fields are only beginning to advance our understanding of the direct intersections between food and the global history of transnational power structures and instances of popular resistance.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
This volume of Zapruder World will focus on how the production, distribution, and consumption of food—as well as its scarcity—have assisted or resisted the spread of state and commercial power in an increasingly “globalized” marketplace. We call for studies which move beyond the utilization of food as a proxy for analyzing (inter)national political or economic relationships, focusing indstead on food’s contributions to the construction of global commercial or imperial systems and the ways in which global power dynamics have engendered forms of popular mobilization and resistance via food, food systems, and food cultures.
TOPICS AND THEMES
Thus, we invite contributions focusing on any area of the world since the eighteenth century which address one or more of the following themes:
Food, Power, and Capital
● Food and the State
● Food and Capitalism / Global Markets
● Food and Empire / Globalization
● The History of Famine, Food Deprivation, & Starvation
● The Politics of Food Abundance
● Welfare State Food Programs
Food, Conflicts, and Movements
● Food and War / Revolution
● Food Riots
● Food Security / Sovereignty
● Food and Identity / Community / Movement Building
● Food and Social / Political Activism
● Black Markets as Acts of Resistance
In addition to scholarly articles, we invite submissions of non-essay form original work, such as photo essays, videos, interviews, drawings, comics, songs, hyperlinks to online resources, multimedia, etc., both accompanying the articles themselves and as standalone contributions. We encourage authors to think about incorporating multimedia both into their pieces proposed for Zapruder World and in the sections we have created on the journal’s website (e.g. "Yesterday" and "Today"—see http://www.zapruderworld.org/past-volumes/ for more information).
VOLUME DEADLINES AND SCHEDULE
Abstracts in English (300-600 words) shall be sent to submissions@zapruderworld.org by January 15, 2018. All contributors will be informed about the status of their abstract submission by March 15, 2016. A Full articles (preferably 6,000-9,000 words) will be expected by May 30, 2018. The published volume will appear both on Zapruder World’s website and as a typesetted, downloadable PDF by June 30, 2018.
For information on Zapruder World’s peer review process or submission instructions, please see the following URLs:
● Peer Review Procedures: http://zapruderworld.org/peer-review-procedures/
● Submissions Instructions: http://zapruderworld.org/submissions-instructions/
Volume 3: "The Origins of the Welfare State" by Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict
Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare Sta... more Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"This volume of Zapruder World focuses on the global and comparative history of the welfare state. The articles in this third volume fit squarely into the philosophy of our action-oriented journal. They aim not only to interact with historiographical debates or to merely question aspects of mainstream literature on the topic, but they also seek to interrogate the welfare state in order to map the terrain with an eye to action and political alternatives.
We all face the dominance of neoliberal ideologies in our daily lives, seeing the consequences of attacks against public programs in areas such as health, education, income-transfers, housing, etc. Moreover, as scholars, we aim to consciously denaturalize "liberal thought," which consistently downplays the role of welfare legislation and institutions. At the same time, we have sought to avoid any celebratory language regarding the welfare state in itself. By advocating for a critical appraisal of history as a space for conflict, this volume of Zapruder World challenges liberal-conciliatory descriptions of the past. We believe that an open debate on the origins of the welfare state, as well as a greater awareness of the transformations of both the notion of the welfare state and its material organization, provide the necessary standpoint to critically reconsider its role for the future.
Finally, the articles in this volume challenge the dominant focus on the "crisis" of the welfare state, inviting scholars and activists to reflect on the many alternatives offered by the welfare state in responding to the needs of people in different geographical locations and at different historical periods."
Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare Sta... more Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Ever since the 1980s and the geometric social and economic changes wrought by the global and specifically European emergence of neoliberalism, a key ideological tenet of the state has been the mantra of the necessity for “welfare reform.”
Indeed, the origins of the term can be traced to the UK and the “Anglo-American Model” of capitalism which came to predominate as a “post-political” template for Continental Europe and much of the rest of the world in the subsequent decades. Implicit in that term there is and always was, the state’s longstanding attempt to make what was once universal, “conditional”, and to develop something approaching a “workfare state” far removed from the “welfare state” of the post-war Keynesian compromise—internal markets and “contracting out” or “subcontracting” of the “delivery” of formerly public services on hand to advance this ambitious and thoroughly class-based project."
Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare Sta... more Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Recent discussions about the ‘welfare state’ in South Korea (hereafter Korea) have been focused mainly on whether or not Korea can be classified as a welfare society, and, if so, on the nature of it. Many researchers tried to make it clear whether Korea fits in one of the Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare regimes in industrialized countries. Others were engaged in finding out some particularities of ‘East Asian Welfare regimes.’ This article, however, assumes that the Esping-Andersen’s typology or the stance to emphasize the particularities of ‘East Asian Welfare regimes’ are not able to adequately explain the reality of Korean society from the perspective of working people. To overcome the limitations of the preceding theories, we need to take a broader analytical perspective. That is, instead of a static, institutional and core-country-focused approach, we should have a dynamic, historically-focused, and global perspective to fully explain the welfare regime in Korea.
Three interrelated questions generally need to be examined in considering the Korean welfare state: First, can the Korean case be regarded as ‘welfare capitalism’ in which decommodification, social mobility, and the public sector play a significant role? Second, why and how could certain welfare programs be constructed in Korea, especially in the eras of economic crisis and neoliberal politics, while the welfare states in the more developed countries of Europe have gradually been eroded by the very same socio-political system? Lastly, when did the particularities of the Korean welfare system emerge and how can they be explained properly?
This paper proposes a concept of the semi-peripheral workfare state in order to define the nature of Korean welfare society. The workfare state is a form of social governing or crisis management - the crisis caused by capitalistic antagonism."
Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare Sta... more Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"In 1930, Enrique Linares wrote in to the Municipal Judge of Corocoro, a small copper mining town 90 km southwest of La Paz:
"You, sir, are aware of the events in the middle of the night last 26 June, in this city and in the house inhabited by high ranking employees of the mining company Corocoro United Copper Mines, Ltd. (CUCM), which to the public has been given the name "Attack of the Indian Miners on the Company." What a falsehood!"
The attack in question had nothing to do with the local Aymara communities who farmed and worked the mines, Linares insisted. Instead, he named several young white collar employees of the mine, both Bolivian and foreign, who were seen on that night by multiple witnesses dressed as Aymara peasants. These young men, he argued, armed with guns as well as homemade bombs made from jam jars and tea tins, attacked and set fire to their own living quarters, killing in the process a neighboring indigenous man named Mateo Chipana. Linares also suggested that this plan was premeditated, with high ranking officials spreading rumors of an attack prior to the 26th, and dismissing the guard who would normally patrol the grounds on the night in question."
Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare Sta... more Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"The aim of this article is to identify patterns of industrial conflict in China in recent years. In particular, I will focus on whether the global crisis, which began in 2007-2008, changed industrial conflict and how industrial conflict influenced the State. In doing so, the article attempts to blend together academic, journalistic, and militant source materials.
The first section of the paper briefly explains contemporary Chinese labour legislation. The second section examines the role of the official state-sponsored trade union, the All China Federations of Trade Unions, (ACFTU). The third and final section discusses changings in social composition of Chinese workers involved in industrial conflict as well as aims and methods of industrial conflict itself."
Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare St... more Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"This paper examines the role of apartheid in advancing Anglo-American interests in South Africa and Zimbabwe. It outlines how the Europeans who colonized South Africa created a government that promoted their own interests as opposed to the interests of Africans. Segregation was legal, and Europeans made available to themselves the best facilities and resources without compensating indigenous peoples. In addition, they built schools and universities for ‘whites only’ but these institutions were funded by public taxes. By 1992 there were eight universities for 7% of the population (Europeans), but only two universities for close to 80% of the population (Africans) in South Africa. But South African apartheid also extended to access to health and accommodation as well as the use of public amenities. In South Africa, legal apartheid was abolished in 1994 (Bock and Hunt, 2015; Mandela, 1995). In this article, I focus on the impacts of apartheid primarily through schools and institutions of learning because these were the primary tools for shaping and creating society."
Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare St... more Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Capitalism is an economic, political, social and ideological system based on value-commodities exchanges requiring the political formation of the State, whose first expressions dates back to the sixteenth century (WOOD, 1999; MÉSZÁROS, 2010; MASCARO, 2013). The State serves the interests of capital insofar as it seeks to ensure and promote its expansion and the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production itself. Classical liberal political theory shared with classic economic theory a sharp separation between State and economy, which constituted the fundamental assumption of capitalist society’s organization until the 1930s, when there begun to take shape theories about a strong mediating role of the State in the economic arena. In societies where the means of production are appropriate by a particular social class, the State turns out to be appropriated by this class too, in order to manage its economic interests, so that “the State, is revealed as a necessary apparatus to the capitalist reproduction, ensuring the exchange of commodities and the proper exploitation of labour power under a salaried system” (MASCARO, 2013, p. 18).
In a capitalist society divided into classes, the State assumes the function of boosting the economy with policies aimed at the consolidation and expansion of capital, favouring the interests of the bourgeois class. It is noteworthy that this function is not deterministic and ahistorical. On the contrary, the State is formed from the social relations of production, being a constituent element of society in the dynamics of class struggle and for this reason it transforms itself in the dynamics of this fight. It is by necessity that the capitalist system articulates and strengthens itself as a command structure, developing a correlation between economics and politics (MÉSZÁROS, 2010). Therefore, the social-political shape of the Welfare State, as well as that of the Neoliberal State in the late twentieth century, are expressions of class struggles for the social control of labour in bourgeois society."
Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare St... more Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"In focusing on the post-WWII Western Welfare in the U.S., it is useful to disaggregate this long-term period into two medium-term periods, or phases. Given the cardinal function of labour as the only value and surplus value producing factor (this is the crucial hypothesis that is supported empirically in Figure 3 below), employment, rather than GDP, has been chosen as the benchmark. The focus is on the productive sectors of the economy because they produce capital’s vital lymph: value and surplus value.1 In measuring, prices are deflated because they show the evolution of the value-generation in real terms.
As Figure 1 and Table 1 below show, the first, upward phase in employment goes from 1947 to 1979, the peak year for labour power; then there is a downward phase that goes from 1980 to 2010. In the upward phase, employment grows from 17.56 million laborers in 1947 to 24.97 million in 1979, a rise of 42.3%. Given the strength of labour, the wage share holds its ground and falls only moderately from 42% in 1947 to 40.8% in 1979, after two all-times peaks in 1956 (45.7%) and in 1973 (44.7%),
In the following downward phase, from 1979 to 2010, employment falls to 17.7 million in 2010, back approximately to the 1947 level, i.e. by -26.9%. The wage share plummets from 40.8% in 1979 to 24% in 2010, i.e. by -41.2%. This indicates the progressive weakening of the US working class."
Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare St... more Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"During the Second World War the concepts of welfare state and human rights were both developed to a significant extent – as part of a future ordering of the world. Although contested, the concept of the welfare state continues to be a predominant approach to ordering society in Western Europe. The concept of human rights also received new attention during the war. After 1948, when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in particular during the 1970s, it became increasingly common to refer to this framework.
Although there appear to be interesting entanglements in the history of these concepts the relationship between the two has hardly been investigated. To mention just two entanglements: a) both the welfare state and human rights seem to be part of a humanitarian narrative in which human dignity and equality play a leading role and (b) whereas the concept of the welfare state was generally quite popular until the 1970s and unpopular after this decade, for the concept of human rights it was the other way around.
In this paper I will first investigate such entanglements by combining elements of the historiographies of human rights and of the welfare state. After describing some main features from these historiographies I will focus in particular on the historiography of the social rights of migrants in the Netherlands.1 In the second place I will investigate the use of the social rights concept in Dutch political debates after the Second World War, because this concept has been used in the contexts of both human rights and the welfare state.2 Such analysis involves a historicization of the concept of social rights: instead of following the definitions of social rights in the literature, as I do in the case of the social rights of migrants, my investigation focuses on how historical actors have used social rights."
Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare St... more Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Internationally, there has been a lot of historical research reconstructing the active part women would play in the constitution of modern social work as a vital part of welfare regimes (i.e.. the development of methodical and systematic concepts for how to practise social work; the setting up of training institutions and schools for social work, and, no less important, the claim of social work being a 'female' profession). To some extent, and supported by historical findings, scholars have also acknolwedged the social policy and social research dimensions of these processes. Still, women's agency, in the political sense, deriving from specific fields of power relations and being as constrained as promoted by them, must be characterised more precisely."
Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare St... more Stefano Agnoletto, Brian J Griffith, and Cristina Palmieri, eds.
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Composite abstract notions are bound to inject confusion into any debate concerning what exactly they represent, what their limits are, what to focus on, etc. This is especially true with politically charged concepts such as the “welfare state,” and it is tempting to give up on the exercise altogether. However, for socially engaged scholars who are acutely aware of the fact that some of the recent places and times in which wellbeing became a matter of citizenship have been amongst the most civilized in the history of humanity, understanding the origins of the welfare state becomes a matter of its survival. Indeed, immersed as we are by the “cacophony” that Jacob Hacker describes, the notion that there ever even was a welfare state, beyond specific policies in specific places at specific times, becomes suspect, and so too does its defence.
As austerity forces generalize and as states unload social responsibilities onto less powerful actors, it is important to recall the context in which welfare states were wrought and the aspirations to which they gave an institutional form. This essay will contribute to such a program by attempting to locate the “welfare moment” in the history of the state’s formation. This moment occurred sometime between the onset of the Great Depression and the aftermath of the Second World War to varying degrees across the planet, though we will mainly focus on the North Atlantic. It was a time of great opportunity for social justice, in which political formations of all colours were forced to include social measures in their programs or risk becoming irrelevant. Where social forces were able to seize that opportunity, they helped implement institutions which, though they have been under attack in recent decades, still perpetuate a legacy inherited from that time."
Volume 2: "Transformations without Revolutions?" by Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict
Sabrina Marchetti, Vincenza Perilli, and Elena Petricola, eds.
"Transformations without Revolutio... more Sabrina Marchetti, Vincenza Perilli, and Elena Petricola, eds.
"Transformations without Revolutions?: How Feminist and LGBTQI Movements Have Changed the World"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 2 (2015).
ISSN: 2385-1171
VIEW VOLUME: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-2-introduction/
A tension between the notions of revolution and the one of transformation lies at the heart of each of the essays in this volume. By focusing on the cases of international feminist and LGBTQI movements, this volume investigates different modalities of social and political change, questions the fundamental definitions in this debate and, most importantly, emphasizes the importance of gender and sexuality as a terrain of negotiation for political alternatives. In so doing, it unsettles the common view of revolutions as radical subversions of the existing order, and on transformations as the results of moderate compromises. Thus it overcomes a simplistic view on the dialectic between normalization and change. In fact, focusing on gender and sexuality opens the way for an analysis of the changes that have taken place within the intimate dimensions of everyday life. Doing so also provides us with the opportunity to talk about the embodied dimension of people’s experiences, and to question the gender biases that exist in the predominant political languages and imaginaries. Finally, it invites us to go beyond factual analysis and to look at the role of collective imagination and shared knowledge, and thus to interrogate how not only actions but also transformative desires can serve as revolutionary tools.
Beginning in December 2010, the events that came to be known as the “Arab Spring” or “Arab Revolu... more Beginning in December 2010, the events that came to be known as the “Arab Spring” or “Arab Revolutions” began to sweep through the somewhat geographically indeterminate region that is considered to be the “Middle East”: Muslim-majority, Arabic-speaking countries in North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, and West Asia. Despite their varied local histories and contemporary conditions, all of these “Arab” states had been governed for decades by hidebound authoritarian regimes that had been considered to be immovable. Some governments were formal monarchies, with an institutionalized kinship-based line of succession. But many of the Arab states that claimed to be governed by elected governments were run by an apparent president-for-life, with a son in line to inherit. The regional “democratic deficit” was often ascribed to national cultural or religious characteristics rather than to the enduring political stalemate that was the continuing legacy of postcolonial nation-state territorial claims, Cold War strategic interventions and alliances, and orientalist glorifications of systemic nepotism and corruption. Neither of the two primarily Muslim non-Arabic speaking countries in the region, Turkey and Iran, experienced the same unexpected internal upheavals and sudden pressures for reform. But among Arabs, the early months of 2011 seemed to be ushering in a new possibility for civic participation and government accountability: the possibility of actual democracy.
A reflection on the relationship between the concept of revolution and feminist and LGBTQI politi... more A reflection on the relationship between the concept of revolution and feminist and LGBTQI politics raises a series of questions that provide a stimulating framework for tracing the trajectory of struggles and debates on sexual and reproductive rights in Latin America. In a previous moment of dialogue and exchange I sought to establish whether the concept of revolution might aid us in understanding the incisiveness of the trajectories taken by feminist struggles for sexual and reproductive health in Latin America. And I have concluded that, in this specific field and geo-political region, feminism is indeed a revolution that aims to bring about certain transformations. In this article I use specific examples (abortion and female sterilization) to argue that struggles for sexual and reproductive rights have represented or do represent a transformative force in women's material lives; furthermore, I show how these struggles can be understood as a permanent revolutionary project that is incomplete and contested and thus brings about a form of transformation that is subject to continual attack. Indeed, as I will demonstrate through several examples involving abortion, the contestation targeting these struggles often reduces their effectiveness. I thus propose to link up the two poles of the matrix provided by this issue, Transformations without Revolutions? How Feminist Movements and LGBTQI Changed the World; that is to say, I propose to assess the key role that continuous transformations play in keeping a revolutionary project alive.
For the political left, the Sandinista revolution in 1979 was once a worldwide symbol for social ... more For the political left, the Sandinista revolution in 1979 was once a worldwide symbol for social change, justice, and democracy (Molyneux 1985). Unlike other socialist regimes, the Sandinistas promoted a combined planned, state-led, and private-based economy, with free elections and parliamentary democracy. They adopted one of the most progressive constitutions in the world (Walker 1997 ; Williams 1994 ). The revolution became not only a symbol of democracy but also of gender equality (Molyneux 1985, 1988). The Sandinista guerrilla organization had more women fighters than any other guerrilla movement in Latin America at that time, and once in power, the Sandinistas involved women in the tasks of the revolution, opening important public spaces—of education, employment, and political participation—to women (Chinchilla 1994; Kampwirth 1998; Luciak 1998). Legal reforms included the gender parity in family law, recognition of de facto unions, as well as unilateral and no-fault divorce. Although abortion law was not liberalized, access to therapeutic abortion was expanded, by broadening the legal interpretation (Kampwirth 1998; McNaughton et al. 2004; Molyneux 1985). Even though the Sandinistas were not supportive of sexual diversity, they did not systematically persecute persons on the basis of their sexual orientation as other socialist regimes in Cuba or the Soviet Union did (Randall 1993). There were many reasons to believe that this revolution and political project would lead to enduring positive changes in terms of both social and gender justice.
In the Left and Marxism, the longstanding debate about the dichotomy Transformation/Revolution as... more In the Left and Marxism, the longstanding debate about the dichotomy Transformation/Revolution assumes a main relevance when analyzing the historical changes in LGBT politics in Western countries (and beyond) and, more generally, the deep improvements in LGBT everyday life. In fact, at a global level it is undeniable that the social conditions of LGBT people have terrifically shifted towards major visibility and inclusion, in many cases accessing new citizenship rights (although inequalities are still present). In this respect, “sexual citizenship” has become a widespread concept of debate within social sciences with some commentators focusing on rights per se (and the struggles in obtaining them) as a measure of citizenship, while others have reflected upon the wider implications of the recognition (or lack) of rights on the basis of sexuality.
Over the past forty years, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) movements over much of the wor... more Over the past forty years, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) movements over much of the world seem to have gone from victory to victory, to an extent that would have once seemed almost unimaginable. Given the furious opposition that the first anti-discrimination laws provoked only a few short decades ago, the fact that the UN Human Rights Council in 2011 by majority vote endorsed protection of sexual minorities is a milestone. The fact that same-sex marriage has not only been won in Denmark, South Africa and Argentina but is also being seriously considered in Nepal, Vietnam and even conservative parts of the United States surely exceeds almost anyone’s expectations. By comparison with the 1960s and 1970s, when gay liberation ‘touched very few’, John D’Emilio has observed, beginning in the 1990s ‘the world turned’ for millions of LGBT people (D’Emilio 2002, p. ix).
The present article contributes to the Zapruder World issue on “Transformations Without Revolutio... more The present article contributes to the Zapruder World issue on “Transformations Without Revolutions” by documenting the work of (pro)feminist activists in the building of an antiauthoritarian movement in the province of Quebec, Canada, during the first decade of the 21st century. This antiauthoritarian movement, which was consolidated in the wake of the Global justice movement, is guided by values that are based on a common ethical compass. The latter is grounded in a vision of anarchism as a process that prefigures, in the here and now, a society based on collective autonomy. Revolution is thus not perceived as a linear process ending with a final moment where State power is seized, but rather as a continuous, open-ended process where immediate changes in people’s ideas and practices contribute to the creation of a better society. We identify micro-cohorts of activists composed of radical feminists, radical queers, and feminists and (pro)feminists involved in struggles against racism and colonialism as being at the forefront of experiments with this process of self-determination and self-organization. These micro-cohorts contribute by engaging in a process of pollination that enables the dissemination of ideas and practices in different spaces within the antiauthoritarian movement and other social movements in Quebec. Our analysis is the result of research carried out within the Research Group on Collective Autonomy (CRAC), a (pro)feminist and antiauthoritarian affinity group that has been documenting its own movement using a participatory action research methodology.
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Call for Submissions by Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict
Over the past three decades, scholars and activists engaged in agriculture, food systems, and consumerism have demonstrated food’s significance to the human experience, particularly during the modern epoch. The subject of food provides scholars with an attractive interpretive lens for examining the dynamics of globalization and transnationality by shedding light on a wide range of hitherto unexamined processes and diverse political, economic, and cultural relationships. Drawing upon insights from History, Anthropology, and Sociology, as well as food policy studies and urban planning, a number of interdisciplinary studies have demonstrated the central role of food in the formation and disintegration of ethnic and cultural identities, the industrialization and commercialization of food production and consumption, and the consequences of both for elite power and subaltern agency on both national and international scales of analysis. However, while such studies have often employed food as a proxy for examining the politics and economics of power relations in various places and regions, historians and scholars of other fields are only beginning to advance our understanding of the direct intersections between food and the global history of transnational power structures and instances of popular resistance.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
This volume of Zapruder World will focus on how the production, distribution, and consumption of food—as well as its scarcity—have assisted or resisted the spread of state and commercial power in an increasingly “globalized” marketplace. We call for studies which move beyond the utilization of food as a proxy for analyzing (inter)national political or economic relationships, focusing indstead on food’s contributions to the construction of global commercial or imperial systems and the ways in which global power dynamics have engendered forms of popular mobilization and resistance via food, food systems, and food cultures.
TOPICS AND THEMES
Thus, we invite contributions focusing on any area of the world since the eighteenth century which address one or more of the following themes:
Food, Power, and Capital
● Food and the State
● Food and Capitalism / Global Markets
● Food and Empire / Globalization
● The History of Famine, Food Deprivation, & Starvation
● The Politics of Food Abundance
● Welfare State Food Programs
Food, Conflicts, and Movements
● Food and War / Revolution
● Food Riots
● Food Security / Sovereignty
● Food and Identity / Community / Movement Building
● Food and Social / Political Activism
● Black Markets as Acts of Resistance
In addition to scholarly articles, we invite submissions of non-essay form original work, such as photo essays, videos, interviews, drawings, comics, songs, hyperlinks to online resources, multimedia, etc., both accompanying the articles themselves and as standalone contributions. We encourage authors to think about incorporating multimedia both into their pieces proposed for Zapruder World and in the sections we have created on the journal’s website (e.g. "Yesterday" and "Today"—see http://www.zapruderworld.org/past-volumes/ for more information).
VOLUME DEADLINES AND SCHEDULE
Abstracts in English (300-600 words) shall be sent to submissions@zapruderworld.org by January 15, 2018. All contributors will be informed about the status of their abstract submission by March 15, 2016. A Full articles (preferably 6,000-9,000 words) will be expected by May 30, 2018. The published volume will appear both on Zapruder World’s website and as a typesetted, downloadable PDF by June 30, 2018.
For information on Zapruder World’s peer review process or submission instructions, please see the following URLs:
● Peer Review Procedures: http://zapruderworld.org/peer-review-procedures/
● Submissions Instructions: http://zapruderworld.org/submissions-instructions/
Volume 3: "The Origins of the Welfare State" by Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"This volume of Zapruder World focuses on the global and comparative history of the welfare state. The articles in this third volume fit squarely into the philosophy of our action-oriented journal. They aim not only to interact with historiographical debates or to merely question aspects of mainstream literature on the topic, but they also seek to interrogate the welfare state in order to map the terrain with an eye to action and political alternatives.
We all face the dominance of neoliberal ideologies in our daily lives, seeing the consequences of attacks against public programs in areas such as health, education, income-transfers, housing, etc. Moreover, as scholars, we aim to consciously denaturalize "liberal thought," which consistently downplays the role of welfare legislation and institutions. At the same time, we have sought to avoid any celebratory language regarding the welfare state in itself. By advocating for a critical appraisal of history as a space for conflict, this volume of Zapruder World challenges liberal-conciliatory descriptions of the past. We believe that an open debate on the origins of the welfare state, as well as a greater awareness of the transformations of both the notion of the welfare state and its material organization, provide the necessary standpoint to critically reconsider its role for the future.
Finally, the articles in this volume challenge the dominant focus on the "crisis" of the welfare state, inviting scholars and activists to reflect on the many alternatives offered by the welfare state in responding to the needs of people in different geographical locations and at different historical periods."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Ever since the 1980s and the geometric social and economic changes wrought by the global and specifically European emergence of neoliberalism, a key ideological tenet of the state has been the mantra of the necessity for “welfare reform.”
Indeed, the origins of the term can be traced to the UK and the “Anglo-American Model” of capitalism which came to predominate as a “post-political” template for Continental Europe and much of the rest of the world in the subsequent decades. Implicit in that term there is and always was, the state’s longstanding attempt to make what was once universal, “conditional”, and to develop something approaching a “workfare state” far removed from the “welfare state” of the post-war Keynesian compromise—internal markets and “contracting out” or “subcontracting” of the “delivery” of formerly public services on hand to advance this ambitious and thoroughly class-based project."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Recent discussions about the ‘welfare state’ in South Korea (hereafter Korea) have been focused mainly on whether or not Korea can be classified as a welfare society, and, if so, on the nature of it. Many researchers tried to make it clear whether Korea fits in one of the Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare regimes in industrialized countries. Others were engaged in finding out some particularities of ‘East Asian Welfare regimes.’ This article, however, assumes that the Esping-Andersen’s typology or the stance to emphasize the particularities of ‘East Asian Welfare regimes’ are not able to adequately explain the reality of Korean society from the perspective of working people. To overcome the limitations of the preceding theories, we need to take a broader analytical perspective. That is, instead of a static, institutional and core-country-focused approach, we should have a dynamic, historically-focused, and global perspective to fully explain the welfare regime in Korea.
Three interrelated questions generally need to be examined in considering the Korean welfare state: First, can the Korean case be regarded as ‘welfare capitalism’ in which decommodification, social mobility, and the public sector play a significant role? Second, why and how could certain welfare programs be constructed in Korea, especially in the eras of economic crisis and neoliberal politics, while the welfare states in the more developed countries of Europe have gradually been eroded by the very same socio-political system? Lastly, when did the particularities of the Korean welfare system emerge and how can they be explained properly?
This paper proposes a concept of the semi-peripheral workfare state in order to define the nature of Korean welfare society. The workfare state is a form of social governing or crisis management - the crisis caused by capitalistic antagonism."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"In 1930, Enrique Linares wrote in to the Municipal Judge of Corocoro, a small copper mining town 90 km southwest of La Paz:
"You, sir, are aware of the events in the middle of the night last 26 June, in this city and in the house inhabited by high ranking employees of the mining company Corocoro United Copper Mines, Ltd. (CUCM), which to the public has been given the name "Attack of the Indian Miners on the Company." What a falsehood!"
The attack in question had nothing to do with the local Aymara communities who farmed and worked the mines, Linares insisted. Instead, he named several young white collar employees of the mine, both Bolivian and foreign, who were seen on that night by multiple witnesses dressed as Aymara peasants. These young men, he argued, armed with guns as well as homemade bombs made from jam jars and tea tins, attacked and set fire to their own living quarters, killing in the process a neighboring indigenous man named Mateo Chipana. Linares also suggested that this plan was premeditated, with high ranking officials spreading rumors of an attack prior to the 26th, and dismissing the guard who would normally patrol the grounds on the night in question."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"The aim of this article is to identify patterns of industrial conflict in China in recent years. In particular, I will focus on whether the global crisis, which began in 2007-2008, changed industrial conflict and how industrial conflict influenced the State. In doing so, the article attempts to blend together academic, journalistic, and militant source materials.
The first section of the paper briefly explains contemporary Chinese labour legislation. The second section examines the role of the official state-sponsored trade union, the All China Federations of Trade Unions, (ACFTU). The third and final section discusses changings in social composition of Chinese workers involved in industrial conflict as well as aims and methods of industrial conflict itself."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"This paper examines the role of apartheid in advancing Anglo-American interests in South Africa and Zimbabwe. It outlines how the Europeans who colonized South Africa created a government that promoted their own interests as opposed to the interests of Africans. Segregation was legal, and Europeans made available to themselves the best facilities and resources without compensating indigenous peoples. In addition, they built schools and universities for ‘whites only’ but these institutions were funded by public taxes. By 1992 there were eight universities for 7% of the population (Europeans), but only two universities for close to 80% of the population (Africans) in South Africa. But South African apartheid also extended to access to health and accommodation as well as the use of public amenities. In South Africa, legal apartheid was abolished in 1994 (Bock and Hunt, 2015; Mandela, 1995). In this article, I focus on the impacts of apartheid primarily through schools and institutions of learning because these were the primary tools for shaping and creating society."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Capitalism is an economic, political, social and ideological system based on value-commodities exchanges requiring the political formation of the State, whose first expressions dates back to the sixteenth century (WOOD, 1999; MÉSZÁROS, 2010; MASCARO, 2013). The State serves the interests of capital insofar as it seeks to ensure and promote its expansion and the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production itself. Classical liberal political theory shared with classic economic theory a sharp separation between State and economy, which constituted the fundamental assumption of capitalist society’s organization until the 1930s, when there begun to take shape theories about a strong mediating role of the State in the economic arena. In societies where the means of production are appropriate by a particular social class, the State turns out to be appropriated by this class too, in order to manage its economic interests, so that “the State, is revealed as a necessary apparatus to the capitalist reproduction, ensuring the exchange of commodities and the proper exploitation of labour power under a salaried system” (MASCARO, 2013, p. 18).
In a capitalist society divided into classes, the State assumes the function of boosting the economy with policies aimed at the consolidation and expansion of capital, favouring the interests of the bourgeois class. It is noteworthy that this function is not deterministic and ahistorical. On the contrary, the State is formed from the social relations of production, being a constituent element of society in the dynamics of class struggle and for this reason it transforms itself in the dynamics of this fight. It is by necessity that the capitalist system articulates and strengthens itself as a command structure, developing a correlation between economics and politics (MÉSZÁROS, 2010). Therefore, the social-political shape of the Welfare State, as well as that of the Neoliberal State in the late twentieth century, are expressions of class struggles for the social control of labour in bourgeois society."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"In focusing on the post-WWII Western Welfare in the U.S., it is useful to disaggregate this long-term period into two medium-term periods, or phases. Given the cardinal function of labour as the only value and surplus value producing factor (this is the crucial hypothesis that is supported empirically in Figure 3 below), employment, rather than GDP, has been chosen as the benchmark. The focus is on the productive sectors of the economy because they produce capital’s vital lymph: value and surplus value.1 In measuring, prices are deflated because they show the evolution of the value-generation in real terms.
As Figure 1 and Table 1 below show, the first, upward phase in employment goes from 1947 to 1979, the peak year for labour power; then there is a downward phase that goes from 1980 to 2010. In the upward phase, employment grows from 17.56 million laborers in 1947 to 24.97 million in 1979, a rise of 42.3%. Given the strength of labour, the wage share holds its ground and falls only moderately from 42% in 1947 to 40.8% in 1979, after two all-times peaks in 1956 (45.7%) and in 1973 (44.7%),
In the following downward phase, from 1979 to 2010, employment falls to 17.7 million in 2010, back approximately to the 1947 level, i.e. by -26.9%. The wage share plummets from 40.8% in 1979 to 24% in 2010, i.e. by -41.2%. This indicates the progressive weakening of the US working class."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"During the Second World War the concepts of welfare state and human rights were both developed to a significant extent – as part of a future ordering of the world. Although contested, the concept of the welfare state continues to be a predominant approach to ordering society in Western Europe. The concept of human rights also received new attention during the war. After 1948, when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in particular during the 1970s, it became increasingly common to refer to this framework.
Although there appear to be interesting entanglements in the history of these concepts the relationship between the two has hardly been investigated. To mention just two entanglements: a) both the welfare state and human rights seem to be part of a humanitarian narrative in which human dignity and equality play a leading role and (b) whereas the concept of the welfare state was generally quite popular until the 1970s and unpopular after this decade, for the concept of human rights it was the other way around.
In this paper I will first investigate such entanglements by combining elements of the historiographies of human rights and of the welfare state. After describing some main features from these historiographies I will focus in particular on the historiography of the social rights of migrants in the Netherlands.1 In the second place I will investigate the use of the social rights concept in Dutch political debates after the Second World War, because this concept has been used in the contexts of both human rights and the welfare state.2 Such analysis involves a historicization of the concept of social rights: instead of following the definitions of social rights in the literature, as I do in the case of the social rights of migrants, my investigation focuses on how historical actors have used social rights."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Internationally, there has been a lot of historical research reconstructing the active part women would play in the constitution of modern social work as a vital part of welfare regimes (i.e.. the development of methodical and systematic concepts for how to practise social work; the setting up of training institutions and schools for social work, and, no less important, the claim of social work being a 'female' profession). To some extent, and supported by historical findings, scholars have also acknolwedged the social policy and social research dimensions of these processes. Still, women's agency, in the political sense, deriving from specific fields of power relations and being as constrained as promoted by them, must be characterised more precisely."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Composite abstract notions are bound to inject confusion into any debate concerning what exactly they represent, what their limits are, what to focus on, etc. This is especially true with politically charged concepts such as the “welfare state,” and it is tempting to give up on the exercise altogether. However, for socially engaged scholars who are acutely aware of the fact that some of the recent places and times in which wellbeing became a matter of citizenship have been amongst the most civilized in the history of humanity, understanding the origins of the welfare state becomes a matter of its survival. Indeed, immersed as we are by the “cacophony” that Jacob Hacker describes, the notion that there ever even was a welfare state, beyond specific policies in specific places at specific times, becomes suspect, and so too does its defence.
As austerity forces generalize and as states unload social responsibilities onto less powerful actors, it is important to recall the context in which welfare states were wrought and the aspirations to which they gave an institutional form. This essay will contribute to such a program by attempting to locate the “welfare moment” in the history of the state’s formation. This moment occurred sometime between the onset of the Great Depression and the aftermath of the Second World War to varying degrees across the planet, though we will mainly focus on the North Atlantic. It was a time of great opportunity for social justice, in which political formations of all colours were forced to include social measures in their programs or risk becoming irrelevant. Where social forces were able to seize that opportunity, they helped implement institutions which, though they have been under attack in recent decades, still perpetuate a legacy inherited from that time."
Volume 2: "Transformations without Revolutions?" by Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict
"Transformations without Revolutions?: How Feminist and LGBTQI Movements Have Changed the World"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 2 (2015).
ISSN: 2385-1171
VIEW VOLUME: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-2-introduction/
A tension between the notions of revolution and the one of transformation lies at the heart of each of the essays in this volume. By focusing on the cases of international feminist and LGBTQI movements, this volume investigates different modalities of social and political change, questions the fundamental definitions in this debate and, most importantly, emphasizes the importance of gender and sexuality as a terrain of negotiation for political alternatives. In so doing, it unsettles the common view of revolutions as radical subversions of the existing order, and on transformations as the results of moderate compromises. Thus it overcomes a simplistic view on the dialectic between normalization and change. In fact, focusing on gender and sexuality opens the way for an analysis of the changes that have taken place within the intimate dimensions of everyday life. Doing so also provides us with the opportunity to talk about the embodied dimension of people’s experiences, and to question the gender biases that exist in the predominant political languages and imaginaries. Finally, it invites us to go beyond factual analysis and to look at the role of collective imagination and shared knowledge, and thus to interrogate how not only actions but also transformative desires can serve as revolutionary tools.
Over the past three decades, scholars and activists engaged in agriculture, food systems, and consumerism have demonstrated food’s significance to the human experience, particularly during the modern epoch. The subject of food provides scholars with an attractive interpretive lens for examining the dynamics of globalization and transnationality by shedding light on a wide range of hitherto unexamined processes and diverse political, economic, and cultural relationships. Drawing upon insights from History, Anthropology, and Sociology, as well as food policy studies and urban planning, a number of interdisciplinary studies have demonstrated the central role of food in the formation and disintegration of ethnic and cultural identities, the industrialization and commercialization of food production and consumption, and the consequences of both for elite power and subaltern agency on both national and international scales of analysis. However, while such studies have often employed food as a proxy for examining the politics and economics of power relations in various places and regions, historians and scholars of other fields are only beginning to advance our understanding of the direct intersections between food and the global history of transnational power structures and instances of popular resistance.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
This volume of Zapruder World will focus on how the production, distribution, and consumption of food—as well as its scarcity—have assisted or resisted the spread of state and commercial power in an increasingly “globalized” marketplace. We call for studies which move beyond the utilization of food as a proxy for analyzing (inter)national political or economic relationships, focusing indstead on food’s contributions to the construction of global commercial or imperial systems and the ways in which global power dynamics have engendered forms of popular mobilization and resistance via food, food systems, and food cultures.
TOPICS AND THEMES
Thus, we invite contributions focusing on any area of the world since the eighteenth century which address one or more of the following themes:
Food, Power, and Capital
● Food and the State
● Food and Capitalism / Global Markets
● Food and Empire / Globalization
● The History of Famine, Food Deprivation, & Starvation
● The Politics of Food Abundance
● Welfare State Food Programs
Food, Conflicts, and Movements
● Food and War / Revolution
● Food Riots
● Food Security / Sovereignty
● Food and Identity / Community / Movement Building
● Food and Social / Political Activism
● Black Markets as Acts of Resistance
In addition to scholarly articles, we invite submissions of non-essay form original work, such as photo essays, videos, interviews, drawings, comics, songs, hyperlinks to online resources, multimedia, etc., both accompanying the articles themselves and as standalone contributions. We encourage authors to think about incorporating multimedia both into their pieces proposed for Zapruder World and in the sections we have created on the journal’s website (e.g. "Yesterday" and "Today"—see http://www.zapruderworld.org/past-volumes/ for more information).
VOLUME DEADLINES AND SCHEDULE
Abstracts in English (300-600 words) shall be sent to submissions@zapruderworld.org by January 15, 2018. All contributors will be informed about the status of their abstract submission by March 15, 2016. A Full articles (preferably 6,000-9,000 words) will be expected by May 30, 2018. The published volume will appear both on Zapruder World’s website and as a typesetted, downloadable PDF by June 30, 2018.
For information on Zapruder World’s peer review process or submission instructions, please see the following URLs:
● Peer Review Procedures: http://zapruderworld.org/peer-review-procedures/
● Submissions Instructions: http://zapruderworld.org/submissions-instructions/
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"This volume of Zapruder World focuses on the global and comparative history of the welfare state. The articles in this third volume fit squarely into the philosophy of our action-oriented journal. They aim not only to interact with historiographical debates or to merely question aspects of mainstream literature on the topic, but they also seek to interrogate the welfare state in order to map the terrain with an eye to action and political alternatives.
We all face the dominance of neoliberal ideologies in our daily lives, seeing the consequences of attacks against public programs in areas such as health, education, income-transfers, housing, etc. Moreover, as scholars, we aim to consciously denaturalize "liberal thought," which consistently downplays the role of welfare legislation and institutions. At the same time, we have sought to avoid any celebratory language regarding the welfare state in itself. By advocating for a critical appraisal of history as a space for conflict, this volume of Zapruder World challenges liberal-conciliatory descriptions of the past. We believe that an open debate on the origins of the welfare state, as well as a greater awareness of the transformations of both the notion of the welfare state and its material organization, provide the necessary standpoint to critically reconsider its role for the future.
Finally, the articles in this volume challenge the dominant focus on the "crisis" of the welfare state, inviting scholars and activists to reflect on the many alternatives offered by the welfare state in responding to the needs of people in different geographical locations and at different historical periods."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Ever since the 1980s and the geometric social and economic changes wrought by the global and specifically European emergence of neoliberalism, a key ideological tenet of the state has been the mantra of the necessity for “welfare reform.”
Indeed, the origins of the term can be traced to the UK and the “Anglo-American Model” of capitalism which came to predominate as a “post-political” template for Continental Europe and much of the rest of the world in the subsequent decades. Implicit in that term there is and always was, the state’s longstanding attempt to make what was once universal, “conditional”, and to develop something approaching a “workfare state” far removed from the “welfare state” of the post-war Keynesian compromise—internal markets and “contracting out” or “subcontracting” of the “delivery” of formerly public services on hand to advance this ambitious and thoroughly class-based project."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Recent discussions about the ‘welfare state’ in South Korea (hereafter Korea) have been focused mainly on whether or not Korea can be classified as a welfare society, and, if so, on the nature of it. Many researchers tried to make it clear whether Korea fits in one of the Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare regimes in industrialized countries. Others were engaged in finding out some particularities of ‘East Asian Welfare regimes.’ This article, however, assumes that the Esping-Andersen’s typology or the stance to emphasize the particularities of ‘East Asian Welfare regimes’ are not able to adequately explain the reality of Korean society from the perspective of working people. To overcome the limitations of the preceding theories, we need to take a broader analytical perspective. That is, instead of a static, institutional and core-country-focused approach, we should have a dynamic, historically-focused, and global perspective to fully explain the welfare regime in Korea.
Three interrelated questions generally need to be examined in considering the Korean welfare state: First, can the Korean case be regarded as ‘welfare capitalism’ in which decommodification, social mobility, and the public sector play a significant role? Second, why and how could certain welfare programs be constructed in Korea, especially in the eras of economic crisis and neoliberal politics, while the welfare states in the more developed countries of Europe have gradually been eroded by the very same socio-political system? Lastly, when did the particularities of the Korean welfare system emerge and how can they be explained properly?
This paper proposes a concept of the semi-peripheral workfare state in order to define the nature of Korean welfare society. The workfare state is a form of social governing or crisis management - the crisis caused by capitalistic antagonism."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"In 1930, Enrique Linares wrote in to the Municipal Judge of Corocoro, a small copper mining town 90 km southwest of La Paz:
"You, sir, are aware of the events in the middle of the night last 26 June, in this city and in the house inhabited by high ranking employees of the mining company Corocoro United Copper Mines, Ltd. (CUCM), which to the public has been given the name "Attack of the Indian Miners on the Company." What a falsehood!"
The attack in question had nothing to do with the local Aymara communities who farmed and worked the mines, Linares insisted. Instead, he named several young white collar employees of the mine, both Bolivian and foreign, who were seen on that night by multiple witnesses dressed as Aymara peasants. These young men, he argued, armed with guns as well as homemade bombs made from jam jars and tea tins, attacked and set fire to their own living quarters, killing in the process a neighboring indigenous man named Mateo Chipana. Linares also suggested that this plan was premeditated, with high ranking officials spreading rumors of an attack prior to the 26th, and dismissing the guard who would normally patrol the grounds on the night in question."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"The aim of this article is to identify patterns of industrial conflict in China in recent years. In particular, I will focus on whether the global crisis, which began in 2007-2008, changed industrial conflict and how industrial conflict influenced the State. In doing so, the article attempts to blend together academic, journalistic, and militant source materials.
The first section of the paper briefly explains contemporary Chinese labour legislation. The second section examines the role of the official state-sponsored trade union, the All China Federations of Trade Unions, (ACFTU). The third and final section discusses changings in social composition of Chinese workers involved in industrial conflict as well as aims and methods of industrial conflict itself."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"This paper examines the role of apartheid in advancing Anglo-American interests in South Africa and Zimbabwe. It outlines how the Europeans who colonized South Africa created a government that promoted their own interests as opposed to the interests of Africans. Segregation was legal, and Europeans made available to themselves the best facilities and resources without compensating indigenous peoples. In addition, they built schools and universities for ‘whites only’ but these institutions were funded by public taxes. By 1992 there were eight universities for 7% of the population (Europeans), but only two universities for close to 80% of the population (Africans) in South Africa. But South African apartheid also extended to access to health and accommodation as well as the use of public amenities. In South Africa, legal apartheid was abolished in 1994 (Bock and Hunt, 2015; Mandela, 1995). In this article, I focus on the impacts of apartheid primarily through schools and institutions of learning because these were the primary tools for shaping and creating society."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Capitalism is an economic, political, social and ideological system based on value-commodities exchanges requiring the political formation of the State, whose first expressions dates back to the sixteenth century (WOOD, 1999; MÉSZÁROS, 2010; MASCARO, 2013). The State serves the interests of capital insofar as it seeks to ensure and promote its expansion and the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production itself. Classical liberal political theory shared with classic economic theory a sharp separation between State and economy, which constituted the fundamental assumption of capitalist society’s organization until the 1930s, when there begun to take shape theories about a strong mediating role of the State in the economic arena. In societies where the means of production are appropriate by a particular social class, the State turns out to be appropriated by this class too, in order to manage its economic interests, so that “the State, is revealed as a necessary apparatus to the capitalist reproduction, ensuring the exchange of commodities and the proper exploitation of labour power under a salaried system” (MASCARO, 2013, p. 18).
In a capitalist society divided into classes, the State assumes the function of boosting the economy with policies aimed at the consolidation and expansion of capital, favouring the interests of the bourgeois class. It is noteworthy that this function is not deterministic and ahistorical. On the contrary, the State is formed from the social relations of production, being a constituent element of society in the dynamics of class struggle and for this reason it transforms itself in the dynamics of this fight. It is by necessity that the capitalist system articulates and strengthens itself as a command structure, developing a correlation between economics and politics (MÉSZÁROS, 2010). Therefore, the social-political shape of the Welfare State, as well as that of the Neoliberal State in the late twentieth century, are expressions of class struggles for the social control of labour in bourgeois society."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"In focusing on the post-WWII Western Welfare in the U.S., it is useful to disaggregate this long-term period into two medium-term periods, or phases. Given the cardinal function of labour as the only value and surplus value producing factor (this is the crucial hypothesis that is supported empirically in Figure 3 below), employment, rather than GDP, has been chosen as the benchmark. The focus is on the productive sectors of the economy because they produce capital’s vital lymph: value and surplus value.1 In measuring, prices are deflated because they show the evolution of the value-generation in real terms.
As Figure 1 and Table 1 below show, the first, upward phase in employment goes from 1947 to 1979, the peak year for labour power; then there is a downward phase that goes from 1980 to 2010. In the upward phase, employment grows from 17.56 million laborers in 1947 to 24.97 million in 1979, a rise of 42.3%. Given the strength of labour, the wage share holds its ground and falls only moderately from 42% in 1947 to 40.8% in 1979, after two all-times peaks in 1956 (45.7%) and in 1973 (44.7%),
In the following downward phase, from 1979 to 2010, employment falls to 17.7 million in 2010, back approximately to the 1947 level, i.e. by -26.9%. The wage share plummets from 40.8% in 1979 to 24% in 2010, i.e. by -41.2%. This indicates the progressive weakening of the US working class."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"During the Second World War the concepts of welfare state and human rights were both developed to a significant extent – as part of a future ordering of the world. Although contested, the concept of the welfare state continues to be a predominant approach to ordering society in Western Europe. The concept of human rights also received new attention during the war. After 1948, when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in particular during the 1970s, it became increasingly common to refer to this framework.
Although there appear to be interesting entanglements in the history of these concepts the relationship between the two has hardly been investigated. To mention just two entanglements: a) both the welfare state and human rights seem to be part of a humanitarian narrative in which human dignity and equality play a leading role and (b) whereas the concept of the welfare state was generally quite popular until the 1970s and unpopular after this decade, for the concept of human rights it was the other way around.
In this paper I will first investigate such entanglements by combining elements of the historiographies of human rights and of the welfare state. After describing some main features from these historiographies I will focus in particular on the historiography of the social rights of migrants in the Netherlands.1 In the second place I will investigate the use of the social rights concept in Dutch political debates after the Second World War, because this concept has been used in the contexts of both human rights and the welfare state.2 Such analysis involves a historicization of the concept of social rights: instead of following the definitions of social rights in the literature, as I do in the case of the social rights of migrants, my investigation focuses on how historical actors have used social rights."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Internationally, there has been a lot of historical research reconstructing the active part women would play in the constitution of modern social work as a vital part of welfare regimes (i.e.. the development of methodical and systematic concepts for how to practise social work; the setting up of training institutions and schools for social work, and, no less important, the claim of social work being a 'female' profession). To some extent, and supported by historical findings, scholars have also acknolwedged the social policy and social research dimensions of these processes. Still, women's agency, in the political sense, deriving from specific fields of power relations and being as constrained as promoted by them, must be characterised more precisely."
"The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 3 (2016)
ISSN: 2385-1171
View Volume: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-3/
"Composite abstract notions are bound to inject confusion into any debate concerning what exactly they represent, what their limits are, what to focus on, etc. This is especially true with politically charged concepts such as the “welfare state,” and it is tempting to give up on the exercise altogether. However, for socially engaged scholars who are acutely aware of the fact that some of the recent places and times in which wellbeing became a matter of citizenship have been amongst the most civilized in the history of humanity, understanding the origins of the welfare state becomes a matter of its survival. Indeed, immersed as we are by the “cacophony” that Jacob Hacker describes, the notion that there ever even was a welfare state, beyond specific policies in specific places at specific times, becomes suspect, and so too does its defence.
As austerity forces generalize and as states unload social responsibilities onto less powerful actors, it is important to recall the context in which welfare states were wrought and the aspirations to which they gave an institutional form. This essay will contribute to such a program by attempting to locate the “welfare moment” in the history of the state’s formation. This moment occurred sometime between the onset of the Great Depression and the aftermath of the Second World War to varying degrees across the planet, though we will mainly focus on the North Atlantic. It was a time of great opportunity for social justice, in which political formations of all colours were forced to include social measures in their programs or risk becoming irrelevant. Where social forces were able to seize that opportunity, they helped implement institutions which, though they have been under attack in recent decades, still perpetuate a legacy inherited from that time."
"Transformations without Revolutions?: How Feminist and LGBTQI Movements Have Changed the World"
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 2 (2015).
ISSN: 2385-1171
VIEW VOLUME: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-2-introduction/
A tension between the notions of revolution and the one of transformation lies at the heart of each of the essays in this volume. By focusing on the cases of international feminist and LGBTQI movements, this volume investigates different modalities of social and political change, questions the fundamental definitions in this debate and, most importantly, emphasizes the importance of gender and sexuality as a terrain of negotiation for political alternatives. In so doing, it unsettles the common view of revolutions as radical subversions of the existing order, and on transformations as the results of moderate compromises. Thus it overcomes a simplistic view on the dialectic between normalization and change. In fact, focusing on gender and sexuality opens the way for an analysis of the changes that have taken place within the intimate dimensions of everyday life. Doing so also provides us with the opportunity to talk about the embodied dimension of people’s experiences, and to question the gender biases that exist in the predominant political languages and imaginaries. Finally, it invites us to go beyond factual analysis and to look at the role of collective imagination and shared knowledge, and thus to interrogate how not only actions but also transformative desires can serve as revolutionary tools.
Since 2002 Zapruder is also a journal on the history of social conflict published in Italy and in Italian. Together with the association Storie in movimento (SIM – Histories in Movement), it was founded by historians and social activists who took part in the protest movement in Genoa (July 2001), and were rooted in the experience of local social forums which emerged from the international demonstrations and meetings of Seattle, Göteborg and Porto Alegre. Their social activism has fed their research curiosity, broadened their intellectual interests, and pushed them to explore new methodological and theoretical perspectives. History – they felt during those months of continuous and inspiring mass actions and debates – was no longer (just) a series of words on a page, nor a sequence of institutional meetings and events. It was acted by bodies and written in acts of protest, resistance, and rebellion of ordinary people against hegemonic and oppressive structures of power anywhere, anytime.
Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict 1 (2014).
ISSN: 2385-1171
VIEW VOLUME: http://www.zapruderworld.org/volume-1-introduction/
This inaugural issue of Zapruder World highlights one of the principal aims of the journal: to investigate and reflect upon methodological approaches that enable scholars to break off from the Western- and nation-centric cage, and the self-referential perspective that often accompanies the concept of "local". We see a relationship of continuity rather than polarization between "local", "national" and "global" scales, as well as between the "micro" and the "macro", and also between flows, exchanges, connections, and diasporas, on the one hand, and individual and collective identities, on the other. Yet, rather than addressing these methodological and theoretical issues in abstract terms, we do it through a series of empirical studies around a monographic theme: the Italian contribution to the transnational anarchist movement.
A similar claim could be made about the history of anarchism. Analogous to the revolutionary Atlantic, what remains hardly visible about anarchism is partly due to repression. This is indeed true in the immediate sense of “the violence of the stake, the chopping block, the gallows” etc., referred to by Linebaugh and Rediker. In addition, repression affected anarchism by making it opaque, in the same sense in which E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class called Luddites “the opaque society.” Much of Thompson’s discussion of the Luddites’ clouded sources equally applies to the anarchist movement of a century later. On the one hand, those who had direct knowledge of the movement—the anarchists themselves—were necessarily secretive about it. Anarchist sources tend to be reliable, but typically reticent. On the other hand, police and journalistic sources are more readily available, but they are unreliable and distorted. As for police spies and informers, they often tended to give authorities what these expected to hear. Linebaugh’s and Rediker’s second claim, about “the violence of abstraction in the writing of history,” straightforwardly applies to anarchism, too. The use of analytic frameworks of national scope prevented historians from grasping relevant aspects of anarchism. Questioning such frameworks in the case of Italian anarchism is the purpose of this article.
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