The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (publishing: 2014)

A definitive project of 750,000 words – 250+ entries averaging 3,000 words – with contributions by leading academic specialists from around the world (see below for further details)

General Editors: Immanuel Ness and Saër Maty Bâ

3417 James Hall

Graduate Center for Worker Education

City University of New York

25 Broadway, 7th Floor

New York, NY 10004

With apologies for cross posting

Dear colleagues,

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-imperialism is currently seeking contributors for the following entries:

·         Capitalism (periodisation)

·         Commodities and Imperialism

·         Development, labor exploitation, and imperialism

·         Globalization: Trade Unions and Social Movements

·         Globalization as Imperialism: Labor responses to crises (Latin America)

·         Internationalism, and working class movements

·         Labor aristocracy and imperialism

·         Mercantilism and low-wage labor

·         Multilateral financial organizations (IMF, WB, WTO, and low-wage labor)

·         Neo-Liberalism and worker solidarity

·         NGOs, poverty, and soft imperialism (could also be on other lists)

·         Oil and mining workers and imperialism

·         Organized labor and US imperialism

·         Trafficking (human/organ)

·         World Social Forum and alternatives to capitalist globalization

With thanks and all best wishes,

Immanuel Ness, PhD

General Editor

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Saër Maty Bâ, PhD

General Editor

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ABOUT THE EDITORS

Immanuel Ness is a professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and the author of numerous works on immigration, social and political movements and worker organizations. He is author of Immigrants, Unions, and the New US Labor Market (2005) and Guest Workers and Resistance to US Corporate Despotism (2011) and Migration in a World of Inequality (forthcoming ). He is General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration with Alex Julca (2013), and editor of the peer-reviewed journal WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society. He is working on forthcoming books, including one on film, labour and migration with Saër Maty Bâ.

Saër Maty Bâ has taught film studies, and visual culture, at the universities of Bangor, East London, Portsmouth, Exeter, and St Andrews (UK). His research blurs boundaries between diaspora, film, media, and cultural studies. His articles and reviews have appeared in journals such as Transnational Cinemas, Studies in Documentary Film, Film International, Cultural Studies Review, Culture Machine, and Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies (forthcoming). He is co-editor of: Re-presenting Diasporas in Cinema and New (Digital) Media/Special issue of Journal of Media Practice (Vol. 11 Issue 1, 2010); Media(te) Migrations and Migrant(s’) Disciplines: Contrasting Approaches to Crossings/Special issue of Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture (Vol. 3 Issue 2, 2012); and the book De-Westernizing Film Studies (2012). He is associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration (2013) and editorial board member of the peer-reviewed journal WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society. He is working on forthcoming books, including one on film, labour and migration with Immanuel Ness.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF IMPERIALISM AND ANTI-IMPERIALISM

SYNOPSIS

Introduction

Across the globe, from the dawn of civilization, imperialism has been a defining and enduring feature of humanity. Almost all societies have been subjected to the forces of imperialism, disrupting customary political orders, socioeconomic activities, prohibiting old traditions, and imposing new customs, dislocating inhabitants from their communities and in some instances settling and occupying territories. Imperialism has been a primary force in driving people from their homelands by force, leading to the displacement of people, who wandered, or journeyed to new locations. At their most extreme, imperialists have engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide in order to settle new lands. 

Understanding imperialism leads to a better understanding of our own history. It has proved of exceptional importance in the social sciences and the humanities. With the end of formal Western colonization of the Global South in the 1970s and the 1980s, however, the absence of a primary academic scholarly reference on imperialism has been unmistakably evident. Since the 1990s, to make matters worse, the dismantling of the Soviet Union has diminished scholarly concern with imperialism. While post-colonial studies have dealt with persistent forms of cultural domination, the geopolitical and economic factors of imperialism have been generally downplayed. However, while formal imperialism has steadily declined, the rapid expansion of free-markets that has dramatically brought together global societies and stimulated a new era of imperialism within and across borders. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism is conceived and designed to fill this enormous gap for scholars and students across academic disciplines. In 2001, the publication of Empire, by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, and more recently Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema (2009), by James Chapman and Nicholas J. Cull, once again demonstrated the significance of imperialism. Other scholars like David Harvey, or Lee Grieveson and Colin McCabe in Film Studies, have offered fresh interpretations of the phenomenon. Nevertheless, there is still the profound need for a comprehensive, non-Euro-/American-centric collection on imperialism that will speak to the various and broad interests of scholars and students in the social sciences and the humanities across the globe.

Description and Rationale

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism will objectively present the prominent themes, epochal events, theoretical explanations, and historical accounts of imperialism from 1776 to the present. This scholarly endeavor will include discussion of the phenomenon in international, national, regional, ethic, and even religious terms. Our work will demonstrate how diverse interpretations of imperialism have shaped the way contemporary historians, social scientists, filmmakers, and scientists map the past. It analyzes the various methodologies, concepts, and pedagogies that have emerged. Imperialism has economic, geo-political, and cultural variants. The phenomenon has been generated by mercantilism, capitalism, and communism. Imperialism has been understood as a function of nationalism and militarism. Liberal, religious, and racist ideals have often justified the imperialist impulse. Our work treats all of this. It interprets imperialism from the standpoint of modernity and postmodernity and, thus, we take the eighteenth century as our starting point. 

Imperialism has transformed human civilization, economic activity, redefined borders, and transformed the lives of most human beings on the planet. In the process, imperialism has circumscribed racial, ethnic, gender, class, caste, and other differences in identity. Our work explores the means by which imperialism and changes in transportation, science, and the new technology have propelled forms of imperialism in humans, as well as the resulting transformations of cultures, architecture, visual art, fashion, and food.  We also analyze the negative impact of imperialism with respect to population transfers, forced migration, and the like. Millions upon millions of people have been displaced from their original communities and moved into inhospitable and intolerant localities. Refugees and victims of human and organ trafficking seeking political asylum constitute only the tip of the iceberg while slavery is only the most epochal and extreme example of what has been a general exploitation of the non-western world.  While the drive to colonize typically embraces a view of human freedom and opportunity for some, for the vast majority, imperial and colonial movements have resulted in new forms of economic subjugation by those with more advanced technology and military might.

But the story of imperialism would be incomplete without including the resistance and the demand for freedom that it brought about. Anti-imperialism has taken as various a set of forms as imperialism itself. Resistance has been carried out by simple uprisings against cruelty and external domination. It has been spurred by the desire for national self-determination, continental unity against the oppressor, religious visions, and even the longing for imaginary communities. Anti-imperialism has been carried on by communist guerrillas, religious fanatics, liberals of good faith, intellectuals, activists, and everyday people. Our work will deal with the theorists and activists, the spontaneous uprisings and the organized revolutionary strategies, some of which has been mediated through visual media, which have shaped the anti-imperialist enterprise. It will present the forces activating population movements, chronicle the manner in which they unfolded, trace their roots, routes, goals, tactics, and influence, and evaluate their successes and failures. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism will be the most historically and academically comprehensive examination of the subject to date.

LIST OF EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEMBERS

§ Mr John Akomfrah OBE, Filmmaker and Theorist (Smoking Dogs Films) London, UK

§ Dr Vian T. Bakir, School of Creative Studies and Media, Bangor University, Wales, UK

§ Prof. Walden Bello, Department of Sociology, Binghamton University, USA

§ Dr Yifen T. Beus, School of International Cultural Studies and Languages, Brigham Young University, HAWA‘I

§ Professor Patrick Bond, School of Population Studies and Development Studies, University of Kwazulu-Natal, SOUTH AFRICA

§ Dr Richard Bradbury, Writer/Lecturer/Activist, The Open University, UK

§ Prof. Stephen E. Bronner, Department of Political Science, Rutgers University, USA

§ Dr Claudio Canaparo, Department of Iberian and Latin American Studies, Birkbeck College (University of London); Professeur attaché à la recherche, Université catholique de Louvain, UK/BELGIUM

§ Dr Rajinder Dudrah, Department of Drama / Centre for Screen Studies, University of Manchester, UK

§ Dr Bill Fletcher, Jr., Institute for Policy Studies, USA

§ Dr Patti Gaal-Holmes, Artist/Filmmaker and Historian, Portsmouth, UK

§ Prof. Graeme Harper, Director, The Honors College, Oakland University, USA

§ Dr Winston Mano, Director, Africa Media Centre; Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster, UK

§ Prof. Florence Martin, School of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Goucher College, Baltimore, USA

§ Dr Martin Mhando, School of Media, Communication and Culture, Murdoch University, AUSTRALIA

§ Dr Sheila Petty, Dean of Fine Arts, University of Regina, CANADA

§ Dr Elena Pollacchi, Chinese Studies, Stockholm University, SWEDEN

§ Dr Gavin Schaffer, Department of History, University of Birmingham, UK

§ Dr Ousmane Sène, The West African Research Centre; and Cheikh Anta Diop University (English), SENEGAL

§ Dr Ashwani Sharma, School of Arts and Digital Industries, University of East London, UK

§ Dr Deborah Shaw, School of Creative Arts, Film and Media, University of Portsmouth, UK

§ Dr Marcel Stoetzler, School of Social Sciences, Bangor University, Wales, UK

§ Prof. Keyan Tomaselli, Director, Centre for Cultural and Media Studies, University of Kwazulu-Natal, SOUTH AFRICA

§ Dr Valentina Vitali, School of Arts and Digital Industries, University of East London, UK

§ Prof. Michael Wayne, Department of Film and TV Studies, Brunel University, UK

§ Prof. Cornel West, The Institute of Art, Religion and Social Justice, Union Theological Seminary, USA

§ Prof. Patrick Williams, College of Arts and Science, Nottingham Trent University, UK

§ Dr Gregory Zucker, Managing Editor: Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture, USA