Conference Program
Thursday, April 25
4-6:30 PM
Session I: International Impulses and Agrarian Change:
1. Paul Adams, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania: Labor Force Demographics in Commercializing Agriculture - France and the Philippines, 1800-1940
2. Eric Vanhaute, University of Ghent, Belgium: Into Their Labors: Peasant Frontiers in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Towards a Comparative and Global Perspective
3. Rafael de Bivar Marquese, University of São Paolo, Brazil: From Veneto to São Paulo: The Global Crisis of Slavery and the Reconfiguration of the Coffee World Market, c.1860-1900
4. Meltem Toksöz, Boğaziçi University, Turkey: Nomadism, Migration and Seasonal Labor: Ottoman Anatolian Cotton Production in the Age of Industrialization
Commentator: Gerald Steiner, Harvard University
Friday, April 26
9:30-11:30
Session II: Slavery, Tenancy, Resistance:
1. Steven Serels, CMES, Harvard University: Famine and the Transition from Slave Labor to Free Labor in Northern Nilotic Sudan, 1898-1930
2. Christopher Craig, Columbia University: Hunger Games: Landlords, Tenants, and the Evolution of Agricultural Policy in Japan, 1897-1910
3. Adrian Smith, Carleton University, Canada: Law, Resistance and Pathways of Exit from Agrarian Labor Regimes
Commentator: Alison Frank Johnson, Harvard University
11:30-11:45 Coffee break
11:45-1:00
Session III: Colonial Labor; Comparative Regimes
1. Omar Gueye, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, Senegal: Unfree Labor, Unpaid Work, Low-paid Salaries and Poorest Citizens: Agrarian Labor World throughout French West Africa
2. Remijius Friday Obinta, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Land Tenure Practices, Cash-Crops Cultivation and Transformations in Agrarian Labor Regimes in the Countryside: A Case-Study of Rural South-Western Nigeria 1880-1990
Commentator: Cyrus Veeser, Bentley University
1:00-2:00 Lunch for registered participants
2-4 PM
Session IV: Contract Labor across Borders
1. Luis Plascencia, Arizona State University: Continental Contract Labor Regimes: The Formation and Indispensability of Agricultural Contract Labor Across Canada, Mexico, and the United States, 1909 to 2000
2. Amit K. Mishra, University of Hyderabad, India: Subtexts of Servitude: Indentured Indian Labor Regime in British Plantation Colonies
3. Amitava Chowdhury, Queens University, Ontario: The “Coolie” and the “Creole”: Post-emancipation Labor Regimes and Identarian Invocations in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean
Commentator: TBA
4:15-4:30 Coffee Break
4:30-6PM
Session V: Gendered Labor
1. Susie Jacobs, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK: Gendered Labor and Agrarian Reforms: An Overview
2. Keith Griffler, SUNY Buffalo: The Gendered Serfdom of African Women: The Colonial Agricultural Labor Regime and the Rise of Capitalism
Commentator: TBA
Saturday, April 27
9:30-10:45
Session VI: Commodity Production Compared
1. Willem van Schendel, University of Amsterdam: Agrarian Labor? Contrasting Indigo Production in Colonial India and Indonesia
2. Andrew Liu, Columbia University: The Two Tea Countries: Agrarian Labor in Coastal China and Eastern India in the Nineteenth Century
Commentator: Sugata Bose, Harvard University
Coffee break 10:45-11:00
11:00-1:00
Session VII: Constructing Regions, Integrating Nations
1. Iván Sandoval-Cervantes, University of Oregon: Shaping Subsistence Agriculture: Politics, Religion, and the Rural/Urban Divide in an Indigenous village in Oaxaca, Mexico, 1940-2000.
2. Julio Djenderedjian and Gustavo Paz, University of Buenos Aires/Conicet: A National Market in Progress. Traditional and Modern Agrarian Labor Regimes in Argentina, 1860s-1930s
3. Eric Hooglund, Lund University, Sweden: Iran’s Changing Agricultural Labor and Production Regimes
Commentator: TBA
1:00-1:30
Wrap-up summaries
Sven Beckert and Charles Maier, Co-chairs of WIGH, Harvard University