Con-IH 2020
Labor and Discipline from a Global Perspective
Introduction
This year marks Con-IH’s 20th anniversary. Each year participants have convened at Harvard from all over the world to present trailblazing research in the fields of International and Transnational History. This year we were scheduled to meet in-person at Harvard in early April. Like so many other conferences, we put our plans on hold once campuses, cities, and countries went on lock-down to address COVID-19. While we are disappointed not to meet in person, we feel grateful for the opportunity to showcase the incredible work of participants virtually, and to continue to uphold the original mission of Con-IH: we are a conference by grad students, for grad students. This year, we are lifting up graduate student projects centering histories of labor and discipline, a topic which merits particular attention for the ways in which it has directly impacted so many in this plague year.
The themes from our previous conferences included law, religion, nature, gender, and empire. After last year’s conference on militarization, the organizing committee met to decide on the theme for our conference in 2020. Many members of the organizing committee felt that the theme of labor was long overdue. However, other members of the committee were excited about the recent wave of cutting-edge research related to policing. We felt that labor and discipline were not necessarily separate topics, but rather interconnected themes which deserved more attention from an international perspective.
The papers that we have included in this year’s virtual publication show that studying both labor and discipline can provide us with a better understanding of international and global history. A number of these papers highlight the transnational and international nature of this year’s theme. Some examples of this perspective include a comparative study of slavery in Brazil and the United States during the 19th century, the transnational aspect of truth commission labor, and farmworkers in São Paulo and “Nuevo South” Florida. Another strength of this year’s conference papers is that they demonstrate how the interrelated themes of discipline and labor overlap with a number of other important themes, including capitalism, empire, gender, and carceral studies.
COVID-19 as a virus may not discriminate, but systems of labor and discipline certainly have, for centuries. This global pandemic has compounded issues of income inequality, healthcare access, precarious labor, policing, surveillance, incarceration, and structural racism. It is also a reminder of the importance of organizing, activism, and mutual aid in and among laboring communities. Graduate student workers from UC-Santa Cruz to Harvard organized labor strikes this past year in order to secure a living wage and stronger legal protections from racial discrimination and sexual harassment. Custodial and clerical employees successfully pressured Harvard, a university with a roughly $40 billion endowment, to suspend a recently planned furlough of over half of their staff. Beyond universities, essential workers have walked out of their jobs to protest for adequate PPE and hazard pay. Many federal and state prisons in the US, among the epicenters of COVID, have slowly begun to release elders, immunocompromised folks, and those eligible for parole after decades of decarceration organizing. While these present-day challenges and successes are monumental, we are still faced with the violently policing of those whose jobs are considered most essential in a pandemic, but whose lives are not treated as such. Global protesting against anti-Black racism and police brutality is rooted in the historical formation of modern-day policing itself, from colonial police forces targeting indigenous communities with the pretext of punishing vagrancy, to slave patrols and police enlisted to protect private property in the United States. We are in the midst of a mighty outcry over the continued surveillance and policing of laboring, racialized, and gendered bodies. In this vein, the Con-IH committee is honored to be presenting fresh perspectives on the global history of labor and discipline.
We would like to thank our faculty sponsors, Prof. Erez Manela, Prof. Mary Lewis, and Prof. Sven Beckert, for their support and guidance throughout this turbulent year of organizing. Thank you to Cory Paulsen, Dan Bertwell, Kimberly Richards O'Hagan, and Joshua Mejia for their assistance with finances as well as digital and moral support whether in person, by email, or on Zoom. We would like to thank our participants for their flexibility in sharing their work virtually and in advancing the field of labor and carceral history. A big thank you to commentator and Keynote Prof. Avi Chomsky, for her commitment and engagement with the transition to a digital publication. Last but not least, love and gratitude to the 2020 Con IH Committee: Jesús Solís, Catey Boyle, Kenneth Alyass, Mitchell Bacci, Natalie Behrends, Brandon Mancilla, Ifeosa Nkem-Onyekpe, Hannah Pinkham, Catherine Tsai, and Bohao Wu.
Jesús Solís and Catey Boyle
Ph.D Candidates in History
2020 Con IH Committee