Tagungsbericht

Social Movements after '68: Germany, Europe, and Beyond

| vom 07.11.2018 | bis zum 09.11.2018 | Rutgers University Center for European Studies
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Unter dem Titel "Social Movements after '68: Germany, Europe, and Beyond" veranstaltete das Center for European Studies der Rutgers University vom 07.11.2018 bis zum 09.11.2018 eine mehrtägige Konferenz. Die 68er-Bewegung war eine soziale Bewegung der Neuen Linken seit den 1960er-Jahren, die im Jahr 1968 ihren Höhepunkt erfuhr. Ihren Ursprung hatte die Bewegung in den USA und griff von dort aus auf zahlreiche Staaten weltweit über. Die 68er-Bewegung war vor allem eine Kritik an den damaligen Verhältnissen und übernahm Argumente und Denkmuster des Marxismus und der Kapitalismus- und Imperialismustheorie. Seit 1968 entwickelte sich eine wissenschaftliche Aktivismusforschung rund um die 68er-Bewegung, wobei sich diese auf unterschiedliche sozialwissenschaftliche Ansätze stützt. Auf diese Thematik ging die Konferenz näher ein.

With half a century passed since 1968 – a year widely regarded as a high-water mark of postwar social activism – we can now look back from a sufficient distance to warrant revisiting conventional wisdom that soon emerged in connection with that momentous year and its aftermath. Scholarly research on activism after 1968 developed under the influence of various social scientific approaches, such as the New Social Movement theory, which posited that 1968 represented a moment of political breakdown within developed capitalist societies, defined by conventional categories, such as class, and initiated a departure from a mode of politics rooted in material concerns in favor of one preoccupied with “quality of life” issues. These theories suggest that political mobilization after 1968 unfolded on a terrain which was de-centered, disorganized, and ineffective in comparison to what preceded it. In light of more recent approaches that have cast doubt on these conclusions – particularly within the field of history – this conference questioned prevailing assumptions about the nature of social movements after 1968, aiming to refine our understanding of popular politics and social change in Europe during the final decades of the twentieth century.

Den Tagungsbericht von Dustin Stalnaker für H-Soz-Kult können Sie hier weiterlesen.

Konferenzübersicht:

Keynote Address I
Geoff Eley (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor): Leaving the Borderlands… but for Where? 1968 and the New Registers of Political Feeling

Panel 1: Beyond the Single Issue

Craig Griffiths (Manchester Metropolitan University): The Gay Movement in 1970s West Germany: Liberation in Its Multi-Dimensional Context

Susan Colbourn (Yale University, New Haven): Evangelicals, Environmentalists, and the Euromissiles: Anti-Nuclear Activism in the Late Cold War

David Spreen (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor): No Retreat to ‘Single-Issue’ Politics: West German Maoists and the Zimbabwe African National Union

Comment: Temma Kaplan (Rutgers University, New Brunswick)

Panel 2: All Politics is Glocal

Adam Seipp (Texas A&M University, College Station): ‘One does not casually run over trees in Germany’: Social Movements and the U.S. Military, 1975-1989

Félix Jiménez Botta (Boston College): Between Solidarity and Human Rights: West German Activists and Latin America’s Cold War, 1973-1990

Pavla Veselá (University of Prague): From the Local to the Global and Back: Remarks on the Czechoslovak Radical Left after August 1968

Comment: Stephen Milder (University of Groningen)

Panel 3: Identities and the Self after 1968

Friederike Brühöfener (University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, McAllen): The Self, Emotions, and Gender in West German Social Movements

David Templin (University of Osnabrück): Initiative Groups and the Paradigms of Self-Organization and Grass-Roots Democracy in 1970s Germany

Freia Anders (University of Mainz): Between Protest and Belligerency: The West German Militant Left and the Vietnam War during the Early 1970s

Comment: Anna von der Goltz (Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.)

Keynote Address II
Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey (Bielefeld University): New Social Movements and the Role of the Intellectual, 1970s to 2000s

Panel 4: Hopes, Goals, and New Understandings of Change

Julia Ault (University of Utah): Environmental Activism in East Germany: A Local and Transnational Movement under Communism, 1975-1989

Bernhard Gotto (Institute for Contemporary History, Munich): The Best Thing that Remained of 1968? Experiences of Protest and Expectations of Change in the West German Women’s Movement during the 1970s and 1980s

Michael Hughes (Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem): Conceptions of Democracy and West German NSM Activism

Comment: Belinda Davis (Rutgers University, New Brunswick)

Roundtable Discussion
Belinda Davis (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) / Geoff Eley (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) / Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey (University of Bielefeld): Looking Back into the Future: Post-’68 and a Longer Historical View

 

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