CFP:
Supplement 1999
Complicating the Categories: Gender, Class, Race, and Ethnicity in Western and Non-Western Societies
Introduction
The International Review of Social History long has focused on the issue
of labour. For the 1999 Supplement the International Review has planned a
special issue on the interrelationships between class, gender, race, and
ethnicity. We invite authors to submit proposals for articles that address
any of the related issues mentioned below in the description of the content,
or any other aspect they believe is of relevance to the main theme. Articles
should consider gender, race and/or ethnicity as integrated analytical and
explanatory categories. We explicitly invite proposals on non-Western societies
and countries. This special issue favours long-term perspectives and, in
terms of Western Europe, the early modern period. Finally, we will give special
preference to articles of a comparative nature and to those that consider
together the workings of class, gender, race and/or ethnicity. The Theme
The 1999 Review Supplement focuses on the interrelationships between central
concepts in the analysis of economic and social history: social class, gender,
race and/or ethnicity. Until recently, labour and working-class history tended
to ignore the influence of gender and gender relations; certainly the field
studied gender apart from race and ethnicity. However, feminist scholarship
has demonstrated the analytical power of gendered categories in the study
of a wide range of topics. This has served as one of the influences to undermine
seriously the class paradigm in the study of labour and working-class history.
Questions of explanatory primacy between class and gender no longer are the
dominant theme. More recently, scholarship on 'race' and ethnicity as sometimes
related and sometimes distinct categories of analysis (depending on time
and place) has complicated our understanding of class and gender formation.
These developments have led scholars and activists to question the precise
relationship between all of these analytical concepts and the possibilities
or impossibilities to unite and/or integrate them. What would this process
of integration look like? What kinds of historical insights and histories
would emerge from such a process of integration? This supplement aims to
show how class, gender, race and/or ethnicity intersect across a wide range
of economic and social historical questions and problems. In addition, this
call for papers indicates a few specific issues connected to class, gender,
race and/or ethnicity for which we invite elaboration. In particular
we call for proposals on the following issues. For each of the issues indicated
below papersmay focus either on empirical research or on more theoretical
expositions.
1) What are the theoretical and analytical consequences of feminist research
and the new research on race and ethnicity in the past two decades for the
history of labour and the working classes in general, and the class paradigm
in particular? In what ways can class, gender, and race and/or ethnicity
be usefully integrated in historical research of some analytical scope and
depth? To what extent are class, gender, race, and ethnicity similar or different
concepts? Is it at all possible to distinguish empirically and analytically
between the effects of class, gender, race and/or ethnicity? Or does this
depend on a redefinition of the concept of social class? Is it possible that
class is a more central concept for some problems, while for other problems
gender or race or ethnicity (or some combination) provide the central explanatory
concept? And if that is so, what are the ramifications of this conclusion
for mainstream history?
2) What are the interactions between class, gender, race and/or ethnicity
as analytical categories? Is interaction the most useful way to conceive
of these relations? To some extent class, gender, race and/or ethnicity are
distinct and autonomous categories, but they also can be and often are
interdependent. One obvious aspect of the interdependency between class and
gender is the way in which gender functions as an allocation mechanism of
class. Typically, the unequal division of labour within the household seriously
impedes the social mobility of women in their own right. Does this pattern
hold for all racial and/or ethnic groups in a society? Some forms of social
inequality, however, cannot exist without prior gender inequalities, such
as the areas of domestic and maid service and childcare-areas in some societies
that are racialized as well. In addition, gender rules concerning property
ownership and rules of inheritance may determine the subsequent development
of specific! gendered patterns of wage labour. Does race and/or ethnicity
function similar in conjunction with gender or apart in some societies?
3) Class, gender, race, and ethnicity are socially constructed categories,
the content of which varies by time and by place. The ways in which they
interrelate also varies according to time and place. Where should we locate
the major discontinuities and what are the determinants behind this variation?
What happens to the explanatory or organizing power of concepts such as class,
gender, race and/or ethnicity when applied to historiography besides Europe,
the United States, and other Western formations? To colonial and post-colonial
societies? Are the concepts of class and gender overruled by ethnicity or
race? What are the implications of this for 'Western' historiography?
4) Historians often view women as not having a social class status in their
own right but rather one derived from their husbands or fathers. That is,
women do not appear to have their own direct link to structures of social
inequality or to social relations of production. To what extent does empirical
research show this derivative status? For which women? What are the consequences
for female class related interests and behaviour? Does history offer us examples
where the separate social class status of women gave rise to different
behavioural or normative patterns? If marriage is the prime class allocation
mechanism for women, to what extent did women succeed in exploiting this
mechanism to their own benefit? In other words, what did intergenerational
mobility patterns of women look like compared to those of males, and what
were their major determinants? How does race and/or ethnicity complicate
these patterns and processes?
5) Location in a specific social class also contributes to the formation
of gender relations, gender identities, race /ethnic relations and racial/ethnic
identities. Sometimes it is assumed that social class affects gendered patterns
of labour within the home. Stereotypes include the egalitarian middle-class
husband helping out in the kitchen as opposed to working-class inegalitarianism
based on male toughness and collective drinking in bars. To what extent does
social class contribute to the construction of diverging male-female relations
and identities, and what implications does this have for the balance of power
between the sexes? How does race and/or ethnicity shape these constructions
of divergence?
6) In some societies, the family (in others, the lineage) may be one of the
most important mediators of social class, gender, race, and ethnicity. In
modern Western societies, for example, the family unit acts as an active
agent transmitting gender inequalities by affording unequal access for boys
and girls to the labour market and to the supply of welfare that arises from
labour market involvement. To what extent did for instance gendered family
decision making contribute to unequal access to training and education schemes
resulting in different job careers and wage prospects for young men and women?
Other gendered inequalities within the family, such as unequal access to
consumption or health care, also may have contributed to diverging class
experiences for boys and girls that come from the same family. How does the
family function in transmitting race, ethnic, and class identity? Are there
specific differences in these transmissions to girls and boys? Does family
constru! ctions of race and ethnicity occur more between families than within
the family?
7) Racial or ethnic identity brings people of different social classes together
in a common struggle, often with elites benefiting more than lower class
members of the racial or ethnic group. How does racial or ethnic solidarity
function compared to and along with class solidarity? What difference does
gender make to these processes?
8) Sexuality is a closely related category to gender that historians also
have discovered as constructed rather than natural. To what extent does class,
ethnicity, race, and gender itself shape sexuality and its symbolic as well
as material presence in various social formations in non-Western as well
as Western societies?
Submission of abstracts and articles Abstracts for proposed articles should be submitted at the latest
Abstracts should be around 800 words, stating clearly, amongst other things, the questions that will be examined, the type of empirical material that will be used, and an outline of the main argument that will be developed in the paper. Please state explicitly in what way the paper is related to any of the issues listed above.
A first version of the article should be ready for the editorial committee of the Review by 1 October 1998; the final version should be completed by 1 December 1998. Please state clearly name, address, fax number, and email address when submitting your proposal.
Proposals should be sent to both:
Dr. Angelique Janssens, University of Nijmegen, Department of History, P.O.
Box 9103, 6500 HD Nijmegen, The Netherlands, fax: * 31-24-361 2807, email:
and Dr. Eileen Boris, Department of History, Howard University, Washington, D.C. 20059, USA, fax * 202-806-4471, email: .
Social and Economic History
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