The roots of global civil society. From the rise of the press to the fall of the wall

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The roots of global civil society. From the rise of the press to the fall of the wall

Organizer
Cambridge University World History Graduate Workshop
Venue
Winstanley Lecture Hall
Location
Cambridge
Country
United Kingdom
From - Until
01.10.2009 - 03.10.2009
Website
http://www.worldhist.group.cam.ac.uk/conferences.html
By
Richard-Picchi, Anne-Isabelle

The concept of global civil society has gained currency in recent years among social scientists and public policy practitioners. However, it is often seen as a contemporary phenomenon -- a by-product of the wellspring of popular sentiment leading to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, or of the increasingly integrated global system emerging in its wake.

Yet, the roots of global civil society -- like those of globalisation itself -- may be traced far further back. Ordinary citizens and subjects have long pursued social and political aims through organisations which spanned states and empires and crossed borders, and were often explicitly ecumenical in purpose. From Buenos Aires to Beirut, Paris to Penang, growing numbers of civil society institutions -- cultural clubs, philosophical and learned societies, charitable organisations and reformist leagues -- emerged throughout the nineteenth century. Their members increasingly thought globally, using the printing press and the telegraph to exchange ideas, and to put their claims before the world. By the early 1900s, women's rights activists and socialists, anarchists and Marxists, radical nationalists and religious revivalists had all created movements which ran across, and sometimes undercut, borders. Indeed, the twentieth century witnessed not only successive reforms to international society, but also the growing prominence of organisations which sought to mobilise citizens for a global purpose -- from the peace leagues of the 1920s and 1930s to the anti-globalisation movements of the 1990s.

Can we locate the roots of 'global civil society' in such events? How did historical actors understand the ecumenical dimensions of their activities at various locations and points in time? How were these notions articulated in their writings and pronouncements? And how were they embodied in the associations they created, and the friendships and alliances they contracted? How might we, in turn, define and use the concept of 'global civil society'?

This two and a half day conference, organised by the World History graduate workshop, brings together both senior and junior scholars working across a broad range of time periods and geographical areas to explore the idea of 'global society' from a variety of perspectives in an attempt to find common ground. By examining historical lineages of global civil society, the conference seeks a critical understanding of the ideals of a deeply entangled global community and the possibilities of a cosmopolitan world. There will be a keynote address from Akira Iriye from Harvard University, former president of the American Historical Association and author of Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (2002). Senior scholars responding to panels include, from Cambridge: C.A. Bayly, Megan Vaughan, Tim Harper, Shruti Kapila, Amira Bennison, and George Joffe, as well as J.P. Daughton from Stanford University. The delegate rate for the two-and-a-half day conference is £20 for non-students and £15 for students (this includes lunch on days 2 and 3 and a drinks reception).

To register, please email: camworldhistory@gmail.com and indicate your status as a student or non-student. To ensure your place in the conference please send a cheque by September 20th made payable to the University of Cambridge with a payment slip indicating "Global Civil Society Conference" and the name of the delegate to: Laura Cousens, Faculty of History, West Road, Cambridge CB3 9EF.
Kindly let Laura know if you require an invoice or receipt. To attend the conference dinner at Magdalene College on Friday 2 October, please add an additional £20 to the delegate rate and state any dietary preferences.

The full programme of the event is available here.
The conference poster is available here

Organising Committee:
Su Lin Lewis
Anne-Isabelle Richard
Andrew Arsan

We are grateful for the generous support of the Faculty of History, the Trevelyan Fund, the Centre for History and Economics, the World History Seminar, Gonville and Caius College, St. Catherine's College, and Trinity College.

Programm

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME

Thursday 1 October 2009
13:00-14:00 Registration
14:00-14:15 Opening
14:15-15:30 Roundtable: Towards a definition of global civil society

Chair: Tim Harper – University of Cambridge
Andrew Arsan, Su Lin Lewis, Anne-Isabelle Richard – University of Cambridge

Discussion paper: the Roots of Global Civil Society

Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene – University of Oxford/Leuven University
Religious Internationals in the Modern World
Respondent: J.P. Daughton - Stanford University

15:30-15:45 Tea Break

15:45-17:30 Panel 1: ‘Global Movements, Universal Claims’

Chair/respondent: Amira Bennison – University of Cambridge

This panel showcases the continuities of ‘global civil society’ across time, from the early modern period to the 1970s. Picking up the threads of the preceding conceptual discussion, it examines the ecumenical movements centred upon the promotion of universal ideals of civil society.

Maarten van Dijck - University of Antwerp
From local to global associations: European Expansion and the religious origins of the global civil society

Jana Tschurenev – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)
Women’s Liberation, Anti-colonial Struggles and Social Hygiene: The global anti-alcohol movement (1870s to 1930s)

Daniel Laqua - Northumbria University, Newcastle
How Global Was the Freethinkers' International?

Stephen Macekura - University of Virginia
The Limits of Community: Environmentalism, Civil Society, and the 1972 Stockholm Conference

Friday 2 October 2009

9:30-10:15 Keynote address by Akira Iriye – Harvard University
10:15-10:30 Tea break
10:30-12:15 Panel 2: ‘Broadening the boundaries of morality’

Chair/respondent: Chris Bayly – University of Cambridge
This panel explores the search by local actors for legitimacy within universal moral frameworks from economic liberalism to religious solidarity and social welfare. In this panel we are particularly interested in the way global idioms of civility are mobilised across disparate localities for reasons of pragmatism and idealism.

Simon Layton - University of Cambridge
‘The truly honourable of the earth’: a Merchants’ Civil Society in the Indian Ocean World, c. 1784-1836

Ann Marie Wilson - Harvard University
Friends of Russian Freedom: Literary Networks and the Making of an International Cause Célèbre, 1881-1894.

Charlie Laderman - University of Cambridge
Waking up to moral responsibility – Missionaries, Media and America’s response to the Armenian Question 1894-1920

Caroline Reeves - Emmanuel College, Boston
The Chinese Red Cross Society and the Roots of Global Civil Society

12:15-13:15 Lunch

13:15-15:00 Panel 3: ‘Ecumenical expertise and global networks of knowledge’

Chair/respondent: Shruti Kapila – University of Cambridge

This panel examines the circulation of ideas along networks of knowledge spanning the globe from the eighteenth century onwards. It traces the creation of a global intellectual elite and the relations between local practices and understandings with broader bodies of learning.

Stefanie Gänger - University of Cambridge
Inequality in Global Civil Society: Cosmopolitan Elites and the Circulation of Indigenous Artefacts, Cuzco,
c. 1830s-1900

Matthew Butler - University of Cambridge
Envisioning a Purebred World: Elite Livestock Breeders and Global Animal Improvement during the Interwar Years

Aria Laskin - University of Cambridge
India’s Early Psychologists and the Politics of Scientific Synthesis, 1905-1947

15:00-15:15 Tea break

15:15-17:00 Panel 4: ‘National spaces and global civil society’

Chair/respondent: George Joffe – University of Cambridge

This panel will examine the manner in which reformers and activists sought to grapple with issues of scale, moving between different levels of mobilisation and representation in conciliating diverging local, national, and global agendas.

Maartje Janse – Leiden University
Cosmopolites of all countries, unite! Humanitarian reformers’ conception of global civil society, 1830-1860

Andrew MacDonald – University of Cambridge
Migrant Associations, the State and Civilised Societies in Southern Africa, c.1910-1948

Andrew Arsan – University of Cambridge
Lebanese reform campaigns in the diaspora, 1908-1919

Sara Sanders – UCLA
The National Union of Mexican Women and Global Feminist Practice

18:45 Pre-Dinner Drinks, Master’s Lodge, Magdalene College

19:30 Conference Dinner, Magdalene College

Saturday 3 October 2009

10:30-12:15 Panel 5: ‘Recasting Interwar Internationalism’

Chair/Respondent: Akira Iriye - Harvard University

This panel seeks to examine the activities of civil society activists in the 1920s and 1930s in the context of longstanding aspirations for world government. It will address the tensions between national and global communities of belonging.

Martin Albers – University of Cambridge
Approaching international governance through interparliamentary cooperation

Thomas Davies – City University London
Private international associations, the League of Nations and the pursuit of peace between the two World Wars

Stephen Wertheim – Columbia University
The League of Nations as the decline of a league of states. Global civil society in the recasting of the international system, 1914-1920

Helen McCarthy – University of Cambridge
The Lifeblood of the League? Voluntary Associations and League of Nations Activism in Britain

12:15-13:15 Lunch

13:15-15:00 Panel 6: ‘Globalism in the non-European Public Sphere’

Chair/respondent: Megan Vaughan – University of Cambridge
This panel looks at the manner in which civil society activists in the non-European world debated new ideas of internationalism and harnessed powerful new media, transforming the colonial public sphere.

Emma Hunter – University of Cambridge
The limits of global civil society: debating civilization in interwar Tanganyika

Su Lin Lewis – University of Cambridge
Breaking the Colour Bar: The Rotary Movement and the ‘International Mind’ in 1930s Southeast Asia

Jake Norris – University of Cambridge
Contesting imperial development in Palestine: the emergence of press activism

Nasreen Rehman – University of Cambridge
Cinema in Lahore c. 1910-1931: individuals, groups and local, national and global networks

15:00-15:15 Tea break

15:15-17:00 Panel 7: ‘Regional Alignments of Civil Society’

Chair/respondent: Tim Harper - University of Cambridge

This panel will look at the manner in which intellectuals and activists transcended imperial and national boundaries and situated their activities in broader regional frameworks, defined anew according to shared identities and common interests.

Anne-Isabelle Richard – University of Cambridge
Europe as a global continent. European union movements and their attempts at ordering the world, 1925-1936

Carolien Stolte – Leiden University
Interwar Internationalism in India: the case of the Trade Union Movement(s)

Wil James – University of Cambridge
The struggle for interdependence: the role of transatlantic civil society in transforming the German question, 1958-1972

Gerard McCann – University of Oxford
The development of civil society and new cosmopolitianisms in the post-colonial Western Indian Ocean

17:00-17:45 Closing remarks: Tim Harper/ Chris Bayly - University of Cambridge

18:00-19:00 Drinks Reception, Rushmore Room, St. Catherine’s College

Contact (announcement)

camworldhistory@gmail.com

http://www.worldhist.group.cam.ac.uk/conferences.html
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Published on
18.09.2009
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