When the nation is not enough. Democratic rights on the global stage, 1870-1970

When the nation is not enough. Democratic rights on the global stage, 1870-1970

Veranstalter
Leiden University, Institute for History, Research group Political Culture and National Identities, Anne-Isabelle Richard
Veranstaltungsort
Ort
Leiden
Land
Netherlands
Vom - Bis
14.01.2016 - 16.01.2016
Deadline
01.09.2015
Website
Von
Anne-Isabelle Richard

Democratic rights are often conceived of, and have developed, in national frameworks. However, not all groups within the nation state have always felt they could stake their claims sufficiently on the national stage. In order to make their claims heard and increase their legitimacy they appealed to the international stage, a phenomenon that Keck and Sikkink call the boomerang effect. This workshop aims to contribute to this literature by investigating the connections between scales of mobilisation.

The groups involved tended to be those marginalised in society, such as workers, women, immigrants or groups that were not even perceived to be part of society such as colonial subjects. They were not the only ones to connect these scales of mobilisation however. Other, often more privileged, activists conceived of national democracy as part of international democracy and thus lobbied to connect the two. In taking an inclusive approach and including papers on all these groups, this workshop aims to examine how claims to democracy on the international as well as the national level involved processes of in- and exclusion.

The international fora targeted included both more formal venues such as international organisations, but also more informal platforms such as diasporic groups and transnational (social) movements. By bringing together papers covering a range of platforms this workshop aims to start a conversation on the connections between these trans- and international platforms.

This workshop invites papers that explore the use of the international sphere as an alternative and/or additional venue to the national level to claim democratic rights between 1870 and 1970. We are particularly interested in contributions that examine the connections between different scales of mobilisation (local, national, colonial, trans- and international) and between different regions across the globe.

This workshop is part of the conference Reconsidering Democracy and Nation State in a Global Perspective, organized by the research group Political Culture and National Identities. The conference will take place in Leiden 14-16 January 2016. Prof. Glenda Sluga of the University of Sydney is one of two keynote speakers. The second keynote speaker will be announced soon.

Coordinator of this workshop is Anne-Isabelle Richard (a.i.richard at hum.leidenuniv.nl).

We plan to pre-circulate the papers and to submit a collection of revised papers for publication.

Please send an abstract (max 500 words) and a brief CV by 1 September 2015 to conference.democracy.nation.state@leiden.edu.

More information, including the Call for Papers, can be found here:
http://hum.leiden.edu/history/conference-democracy-nation-state/

Programm

Kontakt

Anne-Isabelle Richard

Institute for History, Leiden University
P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands

conference.democracy.nation.state@leiden.edu