Call for Papers
Issue #108: “Enclosures”
Issue Editors: Amy Chazkel and David Serlin

The Radical History Review seeks submissions for an issue dedicated
to the theme of “Enclosures”: a term that refers to the twin
phenomenon of proprietary demarcation and dispossession that has
accompanied the global transition to industrial capitalism in cities
and rural areas alike.  In a variety of geographical and
chronological contexts, this issue will explore both the symbolic and
the literal, material senses of the historical process of enclosure.

Contemporary thinkers have evoked the concept of enclosure in a vast
variety of settings and across the ideological spectrum, from Garrett
Hardin’s prescriptive discussion of the “tragedy of the commons” and
the neoliberal doctrine of the inherent instability of the commons,
to E. P. Thompson’s studies of the social and legal conflicts over
the peasantry’s use of the commons in early modern England.  The
concept of the commons has become a generic metaphor for public
property—academic disciplinary knowledge and access to the airwaves,
for example—and, by extension, the commonweal.  Likewise, the
enclosure of the commons has taken multiple meanings that extend the
idea of the fencing off of common property in the interest of private
gain and liberal (or neoliberal) individual property rights.  As
multifarious as it is, the concept of enclosure may provide a
historically coherent way of considering disparate instances of
conflicts over subsistence rights in the face of the division of
property.

This special issue offers an opportunity to take stock of the idea of
enclosure—to explore the connections between, for example, the type
of “primitive accumulation” for which the term was originally applied
and its more abstract, contemporary instances, and to historicize
rigorously its application.  To what degree was there ever really a
“commons”?  How did constructions of sacrosanct public space and its
privatization and dispossession become naturalized features of
cultural life?  By collectively publishing work on such diverse
phenomena as urban squatters throughout the world, intellectual
property, or social conflicts over indigenous collective property
rights in colonial and post-colonial settings, the journal editors
aim to explore the limits of the usefulness of the concept of
enclosure as a critical paradigm for understanding modern political
and social life, and to consider how to connect its manifold
manifestations.

While we would welcome submissions that revisit the early modern
European context to which the term enclosure has typically been
applied, we strongly encourage works from any time period, especially
those that critically examine the broad applicability of the term and
those that venture beyond the European and North American contexts.

The range of topics might include, but is not limited to, the following:

Enclosure of the commons and the genesis of informal economies
The historical roots of the privatized city
Enclosure and the politics of population control
The political and cultural uses of nostalgia for the “commons”
Visual culture and the process of enclosure
Environmental politics as part, or counterweight, to the process of
enclosure
Transnational historical perspectives on political and social
movements such as Brazil’s and India’s respective anti-dam movements,
or the struggle over the privatization of water in Bolivia
Successful assertions of communal rights, for example in urban
shantytowns and former runaway slave communities in the Americas:
have they challenged the process of enclosure?
Artistic, cinematic, or other cultural representations of enclosure
and creative responses to it—for instance, in Agnès Varda’s cinéma
verité classic, The Gleaners and I, or Britain’s punk and post-punk
movements as aesthetic responses to Thatcher’s sweeping politics of
privatization
Enclosure and imperialism: what is the relationship between the
domestic reapportioning of property rights and the possession of
overseas territories? How can we connect the enclosure of the commons
in the metropole to the fate of communally owned indigenous lands and
other resources under colonial rule?
The making of modern statecraft from the perspective of the
“enclosers”: the surveyors, judges, and notaries who carried out the
quotidian work of enclosure
The politics of public space and the exclusionary “public sphere”
Enclosure of the scientific commons and the commodification of knowledge
The human genome as private property and the ownership of self
The intellectual commons and radical approaches to intellectual and
academic life
Innovative uses of the cartographic and judicial records that
enclosure left behind
Critical reassessments of the classic works on enclosure,
particularly E. P. Thompson and his cohort of Warwick School
historians of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English agrarian
society.

The RHR seeks scholarly research articles as well as such non-
traditional contributions as photo essays, film and book review
essays, interviews, brief interventions, “conversations” between
scholars and/or activists, teaching notes and annotated course
syllabi, and research notes.

Procedures for submission of articles:

By February 1, 2009, please submit a 1-2 page abstract summarizing
the article you wish to include in this issue as an attachment to
[log in to unmask] with “Issue 108 abstract submission” in the subject line.
By March 1, 2009, authors will be notified whether they should submit
a full version of their article for peer review.  The due date for
completed drafts of articles is August 1, 2009. Those articles
selected for publication after the peer review process will be
included in issue 108 of the Radical History Review, scheduled to
appear in Fall 2010. Articles should be submitted electronically with
“Issue 108 submission” in the subject line.  For artwork, please send
images as high resolution digital files (each image as a separate file).
Abstract Deadline: February 1, 2009

Radical History Review
Tamiment Library, 10th Floor
New York University
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
Email: [log in to unmask]
Visit the website at http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/rhr.htm

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