[Grad_history_students] CALL FOR PAPERS-Principles of Association in British History

[Judy Ossello]

The Nicholson Center for British Studies at the University of Chicago
announces:

CALL FOR PAPERS
Principles of Association in British History
This conference will be held Friday, April 8, 2005
Deadline for abstracts: January 1st, 2005
Please indicate tentative interest by December 10, 2004.

The aim of the conference is to bring together a group of faculty and
advanced graduate students whose work explores the links, contrasts, and similarities between the principles that are thought to guide human
association in different areas of social life. Specifically, we would like
to explore how these principles have been manifested, defended, and
contested throughout British history. 

Papers should address at least one of the following areas: 

1.	religious associations;
2.	political authority;
3.	economic institutions;
4.	marriage and the family. 

The topic of churches and religious associations could be addressed by
papers that focused on the transformation of the relationship between
spiritual and temporal authority during the English Reformation, the
challenge to ecclesiastical hierarchy presented by Presbyterian
congregationalism, and the more radical alternatives offered by
non-conformist religious groups, such as Puritans and Quakers. Under what principles have religious bodies in Britain conceived of their own social existence? Do they understand themselves as corporate entities, as voluntary associations, or as covenantal communities of believers? How have they envisioned their relationship to the British state? What proposals have they made to reform social organization?

The topic of political authority is also central to the debates of the
English Reformation, as the patriarchal doctrine of absolute monarchy was
forcefully defended, but soon displaced by the principle Parliamentary
sovereignty. How were these doctrines arrived at and what were its
implications for the relations of different social groups to the state?
These questions have persisted throughout modern British history. They
resurfaced in the writings of the British pluralists-figures like F.W.
Maitland, G.D.H. Cole, John Figgis and Harold Laski-at the end of the
nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, as well as those of fin de siècle guild socialism and the Fabian Society. Their quarrel was not with the sovereignty of Parliament, but of the state in general and its
authority to organize and dominate the rest of social life, especially of
civic, religious, and labor associations. 

The tie between politics and the organization of the economy is hard to
disentangle. Yet British economic history has witnessed the emergence of
distinct and important models of association. Conference attendees could
address the ways in which relations in the market are conceived and to
explore the relations between the market and civil society broadly
conceived. One example would be to inquire into the political significance
of the invention of the joint-stock company as a new form of commercial
organization. On what principle was this new entity founded? Was it an
individualistic or communitarian venture? And what did its corporate
structure recommend for the organization of other associations, and of
social life in general?

Finally, the organization of marriage and the family has been both a model
for social organization and a subject of reform. What principles are
proposed during the English Reformation and later in the Victorian period
for governing family relations? Do the principles that govern relations
between married partners differ from those that order relations between
parents and children? How is the political status of women impacted upon by such principles? From the time of Robert Filmer to the twentieth century theorists of the organic state, to what political use are family relations and metaphors put?

We seek to make this conference an inter-disciplinary event. It should be of interest to scholars of political science, philosophy, history, economics,
sociology, religion and related fields. The conference will provide graduate
students with an opportunity to present their work in a wide-ranging
scholarly context, and to draw connections between disciplines and areas of study that are often isolated from each other. 

The conference on Principles of Association in British History has been
generously co-sponsored by the Chicago Center for Democracy, the Committee on Social Thought, and the Department of Political Science at the University
of Chicago.

For more information please contact:

Mara G. Marin ( <mailto:mara at uchicago.edu> mara at uchicago.edu)

Víctor M. Muñiz-Fraticelli ( <mailto:vmuniz at uchicago.edu>
vmuniz at uchicago.edu)