The organisers of this conference are very open to participation from trade unionists, other activists and research students:
‘Bread, Freedom and Social Justice’: Organised Workers and Mass Mobilizations in the Arab World, Europe and Latin America
10 July 2014 - 11 July 2014
CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT - SG1&2
Convenors: Sian Lazar and Anne Alexander (University of Cambridge)
The wave of protest against neo-liberalism which
swept through Latin America in the early years of the 21st Century, the
Arab Revolutions of 2011, the anti-austerity and Occupy movements in
Europe and North America are connected by a common
thread: the demand for economic justice. This international conference
will provide the first opportunity for scholars, journalists and
activists from Argentina, the UK, the US, Greece, Spain, Egypt, Tunisia
and beyond to compare the challenges faced by the
Latin American movements with the experience of mobilizations for
similar demands in the Arab world and Europe since 2011. We will focus
especially on the interactions between organised workers and the
unemployed, youth and students who have played a key role
in many of the street mobilizations of the past two years as they build
alliances, make demands of the state, and attempt to define political
and social alternatives to neo-liberalism and austerity.
Workers' strikes and protests played a critical
role in propelling the mass movements in Latin America into state power,
destabilised dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, and continue to
challenge austerity governments across Europe. Yet
the role of workers as a collective social actor is significantly
underestimated in narratives of the Latin American 'Turn to the Left'
and the 'Arab Spring' alike. In an age which commentators have branded
an era of social media revolutions, this conference
will also provide a space for critical perspectives on the relationship
between digital communication and organisational praxis.
We invite papers on the following themes:
I. Structural changes in the
composition of the working class; and the impact of these on
labour-based mobilization and other kinds of mobilizations for economic
justice.
II. Organisational praxis of the
struggle for economic justice; potential for cross-fertilization between
labour-based movements and those of other social actors, the role of
the trade union bureaucracy, also the
contributions that trade unionists may make towards sustainability of
oppositional protest; the use of social media as a tool for activism;
the experience of the Occupy movements
III. Economic justice and the question of state power;
Can mass mobilizations win the redistribution of wealth
by propelling more progressive regimes into power? Are these
mobilizations capable of generating alternative institutions of state
power? Can the current struggles for economic
justice win their demands without confronting the state directly?
We hope to promote significant comparative and
interdisciplinary discussions on the above themes, and invite abstracts
of no more than 300 words, to be submitted by 14 March 2014 by email to
breadandfreedom2014@gmail.com. Successful applicants will be informed by 24 April 2014.
Supported by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge and
the Institute for the Study of the Americas.
