(Source: H-Announce)
We learned of a call for
publications by the Journal of Contemporary History on the UN and the colonial
world. Here the call:
Description
Onek Adyanga and Giusi Russo,
guest editors, are seeking abstract submissions; a selection of papers
based on the abstracts will be considered by the Journal of
Contemporary History for potential publication in a special
issue on the United Nations, its agencies, and the colonial
world across the spectrum of colonialism, the era of decolonization, and
its legacy.
Historians are still debating
whether the UN promoted or discouraged imperialism. The guest editors contend
that the UN did both – condoned and condemned colonialism – and it is important
to trace the historical forces that allowed for an apparently contradictory
dynamic. The UN is expressive of both nationhood and transnational
organizing. It is an entity that includes its own personnel as well as official
representatives of member states and NGOs. Within these multiple roles, it
might be argued that the UN contested traditional imperial power in a sphere of
symbolic legitimacy. Simultaneously, the UN used the typical language of the
civilizing mission, made more complex then by the technocratic approach.
The UN sanitized the colonial
language, inserted tropes of human rights, sex equality, and other measurements
of progress along with theories of modernization and technocracy that dominated
internationalism in the postwar. The creation of the Trusteeship Council gave
voice to both traditional colonizer and colonized groups. Petitions, for
example, reveal a microcosm of everyday life that highlight the individual
experience within the larger dimension of internationalism. Moreover, the UN
inserted de facto colonies within international provisions by defining them
"non-self-governing territory" which challenged the national
sovereignty of colonial powers.
The guest editors aim to explore
whether the UN in itself, and more broadly internationalism, can represent an
unexplored way to look at the history of empires. The United Nations has been
the source of critique for its inefficiency and for having promoted a strict
geopolitical order that has remained somewhat unchallenged. Historians have
looked at measurements of success, signs of coherence, and the effectiveness of
international legal instruments. Few accounts encourage scholars to move beyond
the traditional understanding of success and failure in favor of an approach
that looks at the UN as a reflection of postwar narratives of internationalism,
new standards, and a new language. The guest editors are especially keen to
explore the extent to, and manner by which, traditional imperial tropes
and logics were changed.
Themes
- The encounters between the United Nations and
traditional imperial powers, and the manner by which these two negotiated
the contours of a new international system.
- The shaping influence of specialized UN agencies,
such as the WHO, ILO, UNICEF, and UNESCO, and the internal alignments and
conflict in matters of colonialism/decolonization and the UN.
- Race, gender, and sexuality as mediated by the
UN.
- Technocracy, colonialism, and the UN.
- Internationalism, empires, and pan-regional
organizations and the UN.
- Human rights, local dimensions, and international
standards in the colonial sphere.
- Petitions and the microcosm of the colonial world.
- The UN and imagining the post-colonial
nation.
- The UN and the representations of the colonial
world.
- Memory and the United Nations in the post-colonial
world.
- The UN Seminars and the production and legitimation
of various kinds of specialized legal, administrative, and cultural
practices.
- UN Advisory Projects, and the refiguration of
older colonial languages of control into newer, and contested, forms
of knowledge.
Submission Procedures
An abstract of 500 words should
be submitted by November 1st, 2019 to both guest editors, Dr. Onek
Adyanga at onek.adyanga@millersville.edu and Dr. Giusi Russo
at grusso@mc3.edu.
(Source: H-Announce)
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