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

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