Appel à article: "Labor and the Military"

[Madeleine L.]

International Labor and Working-class History (ILWCH) is actively seeking
submissions from the Global South. We are hoping that we can get some
African submissions for this particular issue on 'Labor and the Military'.
Please distribute through your networks.


Call for Papers: ?Labor and the Military?

International Labor and Working-class History [ILWCH] is planning an issue
on ?Labor and the Military? and invites essay proposals from those doing
research in this large field.

The military and the working class have intersected in myriad ways,
especially in the era of mass conscription armies. Millions of workers
served in, fought in, and died in the armed services. They brought their
political and cultural values into armies and their military experiences
back into labor movements and working-class communities. Militaries have
been large employers of civilian employees, on bases in home countries and
abroad and, indirectly, in the vast armament industries. In some
countries, like China and Iran, they directly control large parts of the
economy, including major industrial establishments. Military employment
practices have reflected and shaped civilian sector labor relations, race
relations, and gender roles. Armies have been used to break strikes and
labor movements and have launched coups designed to defeat left-wing and
labor movements or occasionally (as in Portugal and more recently
Venezuela) to defeat conservative forces. Labor historians have not paid a
great deal of attention to the military, studying a few facets of its
relationship to the working class (such as the use of soldiers to break
strikes) but largely or completely ignoring others. Twenty years after
the end of the Cold War, war and militarism remain prominent features of
both advanced industrial societies and less developed ones.
Our goal is to publish a cluster of articles (possibly including a
historiographical essay) about different geographical areas or comparative
studies.

Possible themes and topics of interest include, but are not limited to: *
Class attitudes and class relations in armed forces and the
politicization of armies; labor activists in the armed forces
* The recruitment of working-class women into the armed forces and
auxiliaries; race and gender and the working-class military experience *
Working-class conscripts in colonial wars
* Demobilization and its impact on labor markets; veterans and veterans?
organizations (including union veterans? committees)
* The labor process in the armed services (including ?the work of
killing?); labor battalions (for example, of Ottoman Armenians during
World War I); armies as civilian employers and trends towards privatizing
labor (contractors) instead of utilizing the labor of the military
recruits
*Military service as a pathway to citizenship
*Child soldiers
* Military memoirs as a genre of working-class writing ? in conjunction
with these one might also examine personal photographs as another form of
self-representation
* The use of the military against strikes and organized labor
* Military dependents and their treatment
Those interested in participating should send in a brief synopsis of the
projected essay (1-3 pages), outlining its major themes and the major
archival or other sources to be used. To receive full consideration,
proposals must be received by May 1, 2010.
We are deliberately soliciting essays on a wide range of topics and themes
in order to gain a better sense of the variety of new research underway in
this important area. For accepted proposals the time frame is as follows:
first drafts Aug.-Sept 2010; final drafts Feb. 1, 2011; publication in the
fall issue 2011.
Please send proposals to ilwch@work.rutgers.edu.