131202 RCHS Newsletter November 2013
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November 2013 Contents Editorial Editorial…………….………..……...…..... 1 This issue of the Newsletter is distributed RCHS Board 2010-14………………......… 2 not only to all RCHS members but also to all authors of papers that have been accepted President’s Introduction by Peter Baehr…...... 3 to our RCHS sessions at the upcoming Report: Network meeting in Toulouse by World Congress in Yokohama in July 2014. Alexandre Paulange-Mirovic................................ 5 The main section of this issue is also Member's recent publications………........... 6 concerned with the Yokohama Congress. You will find a first preliminary list of the Member news…………................................ 12 titles of all 123 accepted papers. You will * also find information about some practical SPECIAL SECTION ON THE YOKOHAMA guidelines and deadlines that are good to CONGRESS, 13-19 JULY 2014 know about at this stage. Preliminary list of accepted papers….…... 13 In conjunction with the World Congress, a new RCHS Board will be elected for the Guidelines and deadlines..................….…... 23 next four years. This means that it is time to Call for nominations for the RCHS Board start nominating candidates for the different 2014-18............................................................. 24 offices that need to be filled. You will find more information about the nomination and First announcement of the RCHS Junior election procedure in this issue. Scholar’s Prize................................................. 26 For those of you who are coming to * Yokohama and are in the early stages of Call for Papers to other conferences etc..... 26 your careers, it will be possible to submit How to become a member of the RCHS... 28 your papers to the Junior Scholar’s Prize List of members..………….....… Appendix I competition. More info about this on p. 26. Nomination form..……...…..… Appendix II Besides these Congress-related contents the Newsletter offers, as usual, an introductory President’s message, a conference report, ß information about member’s news and recent publications, and call for papers to Editor other conferences and activities related to Per Wisselgren our research area. Department of Sociology Two separate appendices are enclosed this Umeå University time (only distributed to members, though). SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden The first one is an updated membership list. E-mail: [email protected] Since we are approaching a new year, please 1 check and make sure that your membership much encouraged to contribute to the is not about to lapse by the end of this year. nomination process! And for those of you who are going to The next issue of the RCHS Newsletter in Yokohama and still have not joined the May 2014 will include the final list of all RCHS, please make sure to become RCHS sessions and all abstracts for the members before the Congress starts (more Yokohama Congress. Any other on this on p. 28). contributions, such as recent publications, The second appendix is a nomination form conference reports or other RCHS-related to be used for nominating your candidates news, are as always more than welcome! for the next RCHS Board. Please feel very Per Wisselgren ß RCHS Board 2010-14 President Rotterdam, the Netherlands: PETER BAEHR, Lingnan University, Hong [email protected] Kong: [email protected] * LAURENT JEANPIERRE, Université Paris 8 (Vincennes-St-Denis), France: Vice-Presidents [email protected] IRMELA GORGES, Free University Berlin, E. STINA LYON, London South Bank Germany: [email protected] * University, United Kingdom: MARCEL FOURNIER, Université de [email protected] * Montréal, Canada: HANS-PETER MÜLLER, Humboldt [email protected] * University, Berlin, Germany: [email protected], Secretary [email protected] PER WISSELGREN, Umeå University, CHERRY SCHRECKER, University of Sweden: [email protected] Nancy, France: [email protected] * Steering Committee ELEANOR TOWNSLEY, Mount Holyoke NILGÜN ÇELEBI, Mugla University, College, USA: [email protected] * Turkey: [email protected] STEPHEN P. TURNER, University of HEDVIG EKERWALD, Uppsala South Florida, USA: University, Sweden: [email protected] [email protected] * GINA ZABLUDOVSKY KUPER, JOHAN HEILBRON, Centre Européen de Universidad Nacional Autònoma de México, Sociologie et de Science Politique (CESSP), Mexico: [email protected] * Paris, France, and Erasmus University, For more detailed presentations of the individual members of the board, please see the November 2010 issue of the RCHS Newsletter. * = not eligible for re-election to the same office for the next term. For more information about the nomination of candidates for the RCHS Board 2014-18, see below in this Newsletter on p. 24-25. ß 2 President’s Introduction by Peter Baehr Dear Colleagues, Rebecca West considered herself to be a feminist, a socialist and, in differing The further one moves back in time as a incarnations, a liberal. She was also historian of sociology, the more it becomes adamantly opposed to Communism. From obvious that professionalization has given the beginning, Rebecca West questioned the the discipline rigor and identity at the cost of Bolsheviks’ vision of the good society and a narrowing definition of social enquiry. recoiled from the violent, autocratic Sociologists today are people credentialed to measures they employed to impose it. She be such. Or they are students of those so was equally averse to the cult of Lenin, a credentialed. Sociologists have a particular demigod to many British socialists in the training, write for particular journals, twenties and beyond. Characteristically, West develop a common discourse. Yet it is not gave succour to one of Lenin’s most hard for the historian to spot intellectuals perceptive critics, the anarchist Emma who were never sociologists but whose Goldman, whose recent visit to Russia had dedication to social enquiry was intense – allowed her to witness official cynicism and and, arguably, should be of potential interest internal repression at close quarters. West to us. shared a political platform with Goldman in London in 1924 and wrote the Introduction Recently, I have been reading the work of to her My Disillusionment in Russia (1924). one of those thinkers: Rebecca West. Almost twenty years later, in a two volume Though little studied today outside bio-ethnography of Yugoslavia entitled Black Departments of English and Journalism, Lamb and Grey Hawk, West (1941) warned of Rebecca West (1892-1983) was among the the country’s imminent amputation by most versatile British intellectuals of the fascist and communist regimes; when war twentieth century. Hugely prolific, she was a broke out, she became a determined novelist, a travel writer, a literary critic, and opponent of Marshal Tito, first in his Britain’s foremost student of treason and persona as a Partisan leader and, later, as a treason trials. She also wrote extensively on head of state. At war’s end, West wrote at politics and, in particular, on Communism. length about Communist espionage in the Indeed, I would advise historians of US and Britain. She filed reports for the sociology who are interested in political British press, during the late forties, on the extremism, and sociology’s own investigations of the House Committee on enchantment with Marxism, to read Rebecca Un-American Activities and, in the early West to get a sense of a shrewd and deep fifties, on the impact of Senator Joseph mind at work. Her studies of Communism McCarthy on American politics. She are a counterpoint to studies of the Radical discussed the trial and conviction of Alger Right, written around the same time, by Hiss - a high-ranking State Department Daniel Bell, Samuel A. Stouffer, David official and Soviet spy – and elucidated the Riesman, and Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner psychology of his errant Communist Thielens, Jr. As I say, she had no standing as accuser, Whittaker Chambers. West also a sociologist. But her interpretation of drew probing character portraits of the political extremism ranks equal to theirs in Cambridge Three (Kim Philby, Donald quality. It is also a social interpretation. Maclean, Guy Burgess; later, with the inclusion of Anthony Blunt, renamed the Here is some background to get you going: Cambridge Four) who, in Britain, were 3 active Soviet agents during the war and into tribal loyalties. Nor is it simply that the the early 1950s. Soviet Union showered visiting Western scientists with public accolades and honours. While Rebecca West was no sociologist by The elective affinity between natural contemporary standards, she did come up scientists and Communism was rooted in with a cogent sociological question: What, something deeper, a stubborn déformation she asked, were the origins and dynamics of professionnelle: the conviction that since political conversion, the sources of scientists are experts at solving technical Communism’s allure among the well problems, they are equally equipped to solve educated? Her explanation encompassed: political ones – or at least far better generational revolt (e.g. the desire, among a equipped than democratic politicians. The fragment of post-Fabian British socialists, to scientific ethos, with its norms of rationality, find a radical political niche unoccupied by parsimony and disinterestedness, chafes their parents); the anomic insecurity of the against the untidy, rickety compromises that downwardly mobile middle classes suffering any democratic state implores its citizens to the effects of the Great Depression;