Methodological nationalism – or the idea that “the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world” (Wimmer and Schiller, 2002) – remains a constant for historians, in spite of movements towards globalism, claims to decolonise and an increasing awareness of the role that social construction plays in the categories that are used for the writing of history. It functions as the calling card of Eurocentrism, projecting a Westphalian world of nation states into the distant past, and setting the course for an unavoidably ethnonationalist future. It restricts our collective imaginations, rendering alternative political entities – like caliphates, or federations or notions of ‘antinationalist anticolonialism’ – aberrations from the nation state model. It leads to the naturalising of borders, causing death and cruelty to be inflicted on refugees and migrant people as well as all those who sit outside of hegemonic racial-national constructions of identity within a nation state. Many have written that methodological nationalism is misleading or unhelpful – but it is still common to see history books take for granted the antiquity of much later ideas of nation. This conference brings historians from all periods and areas together to organise against it.
We invite you to propose either papers or panels (made up of three papers) that attempt to think beyond methodological nationalism. Papers should not limit themselves only to the critique of nationalism or the idea of the nation state, but should engage historiographically, imaginatively or otherwise with alternatives. Papers might theorise the historiographical possibilities of alternative nation state formations (including within the pedagogy of history), or detail historical moments where antinationalist political projects were a real possibility. They might use history to imagine a world beyond ethnonationalism or focus in on groups who have historically or actually rejected borders and boundaries. We encourage you to be creative, and to read through the Society for the Study of the Past’s information pages before submitting.
Panels should be made up of three presenters and a chair. We discourage panels that exclude those from marginalised groups (e.g. all male panels), and particularly welcome panels that take into account the contemporary politics of scholarship – including by being in solidarity with Palestine.
The Annual Meeting will take place in person at The Open University, UK on the 6th and 7th October. By agreement of the speakers, talks will be recorded and later disseminated. For more information please contact: [email protected].
To submit your paper or panel abstracts, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/rCcmgGHFdw3xWdkS6
Please make your submission before the end of the day on the 31st July.
