This international workshop is the second part of a project initiated in September 2023 at the Center for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge on new perspectives and current challenges in social history. This first event helped to bring to the fore an issue that is now central to much social history work: the study of “belonging”. Rogers Brubaker's and Frederick Cooper's proposal (Beyond Identity, 2000) to disentangle the notion of “identity”, by distinguishing the logic of identification and forms of belonging, or categories of analysis and categories of practice, is still relevant today. But it has to be said that identification practices - particularly those of states - have been more widely studied than forms of belonging. Returning to this notion seems to us to be all the more relevant from a scientific point of view, given that political debates remain saturated with questions of identity.

Argument

This international workshop is the second part of a project initiated in September 2023 at the Center for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge on new perspectives and current challenges in social history. This first event helped to bring to the fore an issue that is now central to much social history work: the study of 'belonging.' Rogers Brubaker's and Frederick Cooper's proposal ('Beyond Identity', 2000) to disentangle the notion of 'identity,' by distinguishing the logic of identification and forms of belonging, or categories of analysis and categories of practice, is still relevant today. But it has to be said that identification practices - particularly those of states - have been more widely studied than forms of belonging. Returning to this notion seems to us to be all the more relevant from a scientific point of view, given that political debates remain saturated with questions of identity.

Promoting dialogue between national historiographies, this meeting aims to bring together contributions that propose to reflect on the tools, approaches, and methods used by historians to study the question of belonging in local, national, colonial, or imperial contexts, as diverse as Peru under Spanish domination, Franco's Spain, French prisons in the 20th century, the persecution of Jews in Poland, apprentices in the 19th century, or informal towns in Brazil. What did it mean to 'belong' to a place, a neighborhood, a people, a family, a religion, or a 'race?' How did individuals prove, display, demonstrate, experience, and sometimes conceal or dissimulate their 'belongings' or 'memberships?' How should we observe, measure, interpret, and address these aspects as historians? What theoretical frameworks can historians usefully apply to these issues? What are the contributions and limits of the various methodologies used by social historians (quantitative methods, biographical studies, family history, oral history, etc.)? And what contributions can social historians bring to these debates on identities?

Organization

This event is supported by the Joint Centre for History and Economics at Paris, Harvard and Cambridge, and the ERC Lubartworld (IHMC-CNRS/EHESS) and organized by Elsa Génard (Harvard University), Renaud Morieux (University of Cambridge), and Claire Zalc (CNRS-EHESS)

Inscription

S'inscrire

Programm

Wednesday, September 18

• 9:30am: Welcome/Coffee
• 9:45am: Opening remarks (David Todd, Sciences Po Paris)
• 10:00am: Introduction (Elsa Génard, USPN ; Renaud Morieux, University of Cambridge ; Claire Zalc, CNRS/EHSS)

10:30 am - 12:30 am.  Panel I. Rethinking the Notions of 'Belonging', 'Membership,' 'Affiliation.'

Discussant : Paul-André Rosental (Sciences Po Paris)

• Simona Cerutti (EHESS): The Attribution of Citizenship Rights in Early Modern Europe: Beyond Principles of Membership
• Jean-Paul Zuñiga (EHESS): Subjects of a Distant Monarch: Colour, Extraction and Quality in Hispanic America in the Early Modern Period
• Quentin Deluermoz (Université Paris Cité): Temporalities, Revolution and Social Logics of Belonging: The example of the Paris Commune

12:30 pm - 2:00 pm.Lunch

2:00 pm - 4:00 pm.    Panel II. Places and Belonging

Discussant: Charlotte Vorms (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) 

• Anne Irfan (UCL): Connecting Time and Space: The Palestinian Refugee Camps Daniel Widener (UCSD): Corner Stories: Place and Time in South Central Los Angeles
• Brodwyn Fischer (University of Chicago): Vernacular Urbanity and the Genesis of Informality in Post-Abolition Brazil: Recife, 1890-1940

Dinner at a local restaurant (time and place TBD)

Thursday, September 19

9:30 am: Welcome/Coffee

10:00 am - 12:00 pm.    Panel III. To Say or Not To Say: Revealing or Concealing Individual and Collective Allegiances.

Discussant: Nicolas Delalande (Sciences Po Paris)

• Claire Zalc (CNRS/EHESS) & Anton Perdoncin (CNRS): Hiding One's Faith, Escaping Identification: A Longitudinal and Relational Approach to Silences in Historical Material
• Elsa Génard (USPN) & Corentin Durand (CNRS): Prisoners' Letters to the Warden. Prison Community, Sense of Belonging, and Writing Practices (France, 20th-21st centuries)
• Renaud Morieux (University of Cambridge): Stateless People and the Politics of Belonging in Twentieth-Century France

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm: Lunch

1:00 pm - 3:00 pm.    Panel IV. Social Belonging, Between Work, Households, and Generations

Discussant : Lola Zappi (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

• Claire Lemercier (CNRS): Apprentice, Pupil, Lad, Maid, etc.: Learning a Trade, Learning One's Place in Social Structure in Nineteenth-Century France
• Stéphanie Soubrier (Université de Genève): "I remained a stranger, as if I were someone else": Working as a Boy in Colonial Households (French West Africa, 19th and 20th Centuries)
• Roseanna Webster (University of Cambridge): Belonging to a Mother, to the 1960s, and to an Olive Community in Andalusia

3:00 pm: Coffee Break

3:00 pm - 4:30 pm.    Closing discussion