French and British Anti-Racists Since the 1960s: A rendez-vous manque?

While immigration situations in France and Britain are often contrasted to each other, they are not mutually closed systems. This article asks to what extent anti-racist movements in the two countries interacted with each other between the 1960s and 1990s. Although one could be forgiven for thinking that the two operate in parallel and mutually incomprehensible universes, it suggests that there has been more exchange than meets the eye, by examining case studies ranging from the Mouvement Contre le Racisme et Pour l’Amitié entre les Peuples to the magazine Race Today, and the trajectories of individuals from Mogniss Abdallah to John La Rose. Though less immediately apparent than those from across the Atlantic, influences occasionally, at times surreptitiously, crept across the Channel. Nevertheless it concludes that this specifically Anglo-French form of transnationalism became more developed after, rather than during, what is classically considered the heyday of transnational protest in the 1960s and 1970s. It also argues that despite the much-vaunted French resistance to the ‘Anglo-Saxons’, influences in anti-racism in fact flowed more readily southwards than northwards across the Channel. From ‘Rock Against Police’ to the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, there seems to have been an increasing willingness among some elements in anti-racism in France to allow a seepage of British ideas. By contrast, attempts to transplant French ideas, such as SOS Racisme, in the UK appear contrived, and only succeeded when the French influence was not made explicit.

Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/3/606?rss=1

‚Cuban Europe‘? Greek and Iberian tiersmondisme in the ‚Long 1960s‘

This article addresses the ways in which the Third World emerged as a new referent in Greece and Spain in the ‘long 1960s'. It shows how ‘Thirdworldism’ emerged out of growing dissatisfaction with the Old Left’s defeatism and the ways in which, by way of the Cuban and Vietnamese example, radicals started to conceive their countries as US colonies. It also compares the ways in which Greek and Iberian Jacobins – some of whom came together in Paris after May ‘68 – formed a radical student diaspora. Examining the impact of extra-European anti-imperialist violence on the discourse and action of the most radical organizations that espoused the ‘armed struggle’ in both countries, the article shows that whereas Greek militants used violence only symbolically, their counterparts in Spain went all the way. The article finishes with the espousal of thirdworldist rhetoric by a new student generation in Greece leading to the mass uprising of November 1973, and a brief look at the afterlives of ETA and PAK, two of the most vocal exponents of this tendency, after the demise of the respective authoritarian regimes.

Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/3/486?rss=1

Our Bodies, Ourselves: The Transnational Connections of 1970s Italian and Roman Feminism

This article presents an approach to studying processes of transnational exchange and reception between social movements. It does so by focusing on a locally situated case study: the movement for women’s reproductive and sexual health and rights in 1970s Rome. A focal point in ‘second-wave’ Italian feminism, these groups were profoundly shaped by feminist debates and practices in, notably, the USA and France. The analysis highlights the centrality of local actors in translating, appropriating and re-(and de-)contextualizing transnational sources, thus transforming their meanings. Questioning the often automatic status ascribed to the nation-state as analytical framework, the article illustrates that re-contextualization equally takes place on the local (as distinct from national) level, and that these layered transfer processes are central to understanding the complexity and effectiveness of postwar social movements such as feminism.

Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/3/560?rss=1

Progressive Participation and Transnational Activism in the Catholic Church after Vatican II: The Dutch and West German Examples

This article examines transnational connections, perceptions and imaginations of bottom-up contention in the Dutch and West German Catholic Church. It not only analyses how the Second Vatican Council fuelled participatory practises launched by the bishops of both countries in order to keep their institute viable, such as opinion polling, but also focuses on the ways in which the Dutch Pastoral Council influenced Church reform in West Germany. Furthermore, it highlights Latin American liberation theology as a powerful new intellectual and spiritual framework. Especially from 1968 onwards, figureheads of the priestly activist groups Septuagint and the Freckenhorster Kreis tapped into the neo-Marxist notions of institutionalised violence and oppression in their quest for participation. The transfer of these notions took place in both a north-south and south-north direction. Special attention goes to the 1970 international ‘Church in Our Society’ conference in Amsterdam.

Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/3/465?rss=1

A Shared Environment: German-German Relations along the Border, 1945-72

The division of Germany into two militarized blocs during the Cold War fundamentally shaped the lives of people living in both East and West. Yet, as recent scholarship has increasingly highlighted, there were also numerous areas of contact and interaction, whether in the cultural, political or social sphere. One largely overlooked aspect of these Cold War relations, which this article explores, is the environment. Focusing on the history of the shared German environment from the end of the Second World War through to the early 1970s, the article argues that on a local level, environmental problems helped to ensure the survival of cross-border relations. Despite their repeated efforts, the two states failed to divide the German landscape in half. Rivers, lakes and forests continually crossed the fortified border, while animals and plant life traversed from one side to the other too. In attempting to maintain this shared border landscape, East and West Germans were repeatedly forced into dialogue. Although relations gradually faded as the border regime was strengthened, it proved impossible for either side to escape fully the entangled German environment.

Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/3/660?rss=1

‚We Are with You, Vietnam‘: Transnational Solidarities in Socialist Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia

Global solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles – which state socialist regimes in eastern Europe sought to inculcate in their populations from the 1950s onwards – constitutes a little studied form of modern transnational political socialization. This article explores this theme by analysing how three socialist countries – Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia – attempted to build mass solidarity with the Vietnamese in the 1960s and 1970s. First, the article examines the political uses of transnationalism for socialist regimes in the 1960s, as the struggle for socialism in the so-called ‘Third World’, and support for such struggles in the West, allowed the socialist East to construct powerful images of a world turning towards its own political and moral values. Second, it explores how socialist citizens themselves re-interpreted transnational solidarity for their own ends, turning its language into a criticism of foreign policy, or state socialism at home; or using the opportunities it provided to challenge the state’s right to control the public sphere. In doing so, the article suggests that we cannot understand such solidarity movements simply as top-down impositions from Moscow or national capitals; rather, they also reveal important aspects of state-society relations.

Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/3/439?rss=1

The Transnational in the Local: The Larzac Plateau as a Site of Transnational Activism since 1970

This article explores the case of the Larzac plateau in southern France which was the site of protests against the extension of a military base in the 1970s. It analyses the development of the site as a focus of local, national and transnational protest, drawing in post-1968 gauchistes in France and West Germany. After the cancellation of the military base the Larzac protest became a model for protest from Latin America to the Pacific against the threats of globalization, which in turn transformed local protest. The limits of transnationalism were nevertheless demonstrated by contested understandings of the Larzac model of non-violent protest by activists from different contexts with their own agendas.

Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/3/581?rss=1

Bombs and Border Crossings: Peace Activist Networks and the Post-colonial State in Africa, 1959-62

This article explores the engagement between European, African and US peace activists as a case-study of the transnational dimensions of decolonization. Its focus is the protest against the first French nuclear weapons test in the Sahara, and European activists’ involvement in subsequent international conferences in Ghana that sought to contest ‘nuclear imperialism’. The article assesses the limits of transnationalism when addressing interconnected histories of European, African and US anti-nuclear weapons campaigns and argues that, rather than facilitating the formation of new transnational communities, anti-nuclear peace movements in Africa coalesced around pre-existing anti-colonial activist networks. Furthermore, this study of interactions between Western and African activists suggests that there is a need for greater reflection on the sometimes contradictory ways in which campaign groups have interacted with the nation-state and negotiated transnational connections in ‘global’ political spaces.

Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/3/418?rss=1

Beyond Western European Idealism: A Comparative Perspective on the Transnational Scope of Belgian Solidarity Movements with Nicaragua, Poland and South Africa in the 1980s

This article compares the mobilization of Belgian society for campaigns professing solidarity with three different issues in the 1980s: the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, the independent trade union Solidarność in the Polish People’s Republic, and the long struggle against apartheid in South Africa. It inquires into the ideological, social, and strategic similarities and differences between these movements, and does so in a broader context by connecting the 1980s with previous forms of transnational solidarity. First and foremost, it compares the differences in the forms of transnational collaboration between these three cases, regarding the actors, the different ideological frameworks in which they operated, and the relative importance of each. It highlights the active role of the political movements themselves – Sandinistas, visiting Solidarność members, and the South African ANC – who played a key role in the mobilization of activists in Western Europe – a fact which has so far largely been ignored.

Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/3/632?rss=1

Between Decolonization and the Cold War: Transnational Activism and its Limits in Europe, 1950s-90s

Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/50/3/403?rss=1