Journal of West African History (Web)

Founding Editor-in-chief: Nwando Achebe; Editors: Trevor Getz, Saheed Aderinto, Harry Odamtten, and Vincent Hiribarren; Book Review Editors: Mark Deets and Ndubueze Mbah

The Journal of West African History (JWAH) is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed research journal that publishes the highest quality articles on West African history. Located at the cutting edge of new scholarship on the social, cultural, economic, and political history of West Africa, JWAH fills a representational gap by providing a forum for serious scholarship and debate on women and gender, sexuality, slavery, oral history, popular and public culture, and religion. The editorial board encourages authors to explore a wide range of topical, theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives in new and exciting ways. The journal is committed to rigorous thinking and analysis; is international in scope; and offers a critical intervention about knowledge production. Scholarly reviews of current books in the field appear in every issue. And the publication is in both English and French; an abstract in both languages is provided. Michigan State University Press publishes JWAH.

The editorial board invites scholars to submit original article-length manuscripts (not exceeding 10,000 words including endnotes, 35 pages in length) accompanied by an abstract that summarizes the argument and significance of the work (not exceeding 150 words). Please see submission guidelines for detailed expectations. Review essays (not exceeding 1,000 words) should engage the interpretation, meaning, or importance of an author’s argument for a wider scholarly audience. See what we have available for review on our Book Reviews page. Please contact our Book Review editors Mark Deets mark.deets@aucegypt.edu and Ndubueze Mbah ndubueze@buffalo.edu for more information.

Manuscripts submitted to the Journal of West African History should be submitted online here.

Source: H-Net Notifications

Division for Agrarian History at the Swedish Univ. of Agricultural Sciences (Uppsala) and the Department of Economic History at Uppsala University

Time: 23.–26.08.2021
Venue: Uppsala University and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Proposals by: 15.09.2020

The aim of the Rural History 2021 conference is to promote a scientific discussion on new research on rural history in a broad sense by bringing together researchers dealing with different regions, different time periods and from different theoretical and methodological traditions.

In accordance with this, the conference is open for research on all aspects on the history of the countryside in Europe and its interaction with other parts of the world throughout time. The organisers welcome participation from different academic subjects (e.g. history, archaeology, geography, economic history, economics, sociology, anthropology, development studies, gender studies, environmental history, historical demography) presenting and discussing new research and thereby contributing to expanding our knowledge on the rural history of Europe and beyond.

In order to ensure a broad participation and high scientific value each session should focus on a specific topic and include presenters from at least two different countries. The topic could be both related to a specific theme, to methods, or to theories and concepts.

Each session will last two hours and include four papers. Sessions will be led by a chair and a discussant. Double sessions on a particular topic are possible. Participants are asked to limit themselves to a maximum of two presentations at the conference. Read more and source … (Web)

Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw (Web) & Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development, Polish Academy of Science (Web)

Time: 19.–20.11.2020
Venue: Warsaw, Poland
Proposals by: 31.07.2020

Cooperation – Economically Organized Democracy
The establishment of the first cooperative organizations was an attempt to realize the ideal of the common good not through top-down state programs or philanthropy of great capital, but the cooperation of those who were exposed to exploitation. The logic of cooperation was inclusive – membership in a cooperative was determined not by some special property that distinguished its members, but by a need that they shared with others. This is expressed by the words of Romuald Mielczarski – one of the fathers of the Polish cooperative movement: “Cooperation is an economically organized democracy.” Instead, it signified a conscious (in the ethical sense) and independent (in the political sense) mind, one that satisfies its (economic) needs through cooperative work: co-governing consumption and production. The two figures of participation in the social process that are split apart by liberalism, namely the member of the political community and the consumer, or subject of the market game, become one once more.

The Common between Two Crises
However, the concepts of cooperativists do not belong solely to the history of a certain stage of development of (peripheral) capitalism. The creators of the Polish cooperative movement from the interwar period believed that, in a sense, the best moment for social activities was precisely a time of crisis. It is then that the social mechanisms of mutual aid and democratic management are revealed. Since the global economic crisis evolved into a deep crisis of the very foundations of the socioeconomic order, deepening inequalities have undermined the fundamental principle of democracy: civic participation in the governance process. The “economization” of politics based on fetishizing private property and … read more and source (Web).