Preliminary Programme

The proposed paper discusses the role of science and scientists in the West German protests against nuclear weapons from the mid-1950s into the 1980s. Rather than looking at processes of democratisation and democratic transition narrowly conceived, the proposed paper queries the problematic claim that knowledge leads to better policies. Instead, this paper highlights the strategic and symbolic use of science and scientists in the protests against nuclear weapons: it demonstrates how movements put ‘science on stage’ (Stephen Hilgartner) and thereby supported the strategic and prognostic framings of their movements. The paper will zoom in on key episodes in the history of the West German anti-nuclear weapons movements, beginning with the famous Göttingen Declaration of 1957, and highlight how science and scientists and movements interacted, and how this interaction changed over time. Rather than being solely about science and scientists this paper argues that we should see the role of science and scientists in the context of the (mass) medialisation of societies since the 1950s. While scientists claimed to be acting for the purpose of democracy, we will also see how they use the movements to pursue their own status politics. (Show less)

In the decades surrounding the mid –to-late 1970s Spanish transition to democracy, women mobilised around a number of wide-ranging issues, from living conditions to labour and reproductive rights. This paper will discuss the cross-cultural encounters that took place within this context between, on the one hand, women who were versed in left-wing and transnational feminist ideas and, on the other, those who were less knowledgeable of these wider debates, who instead engaged in local struggles affecting them directly.

This paper will explore examples of women in feminist collectives interacting with – sometimes infiltrating – housewife organisations and other locally-based groups in poorer Spanish neighbourhoods, often trying to impart ideas or share translated texts. It will also consider exchanges between individuals on these premises, depicted variously in primary source material and in oral history testimonies. The research for this paper shows that these interactions often provoked a rereading and reinterpretation of the original texts, suggesting the dialectical relationship between the transnational and the local.

As well as focusing on the transfer of ideas between nations and across language barriers, this paper will investigate the determined dissemination of often-imported texts and theories and their discussion among individuals who shared national and linguistic contexts but who may have had very different cultural currencies and experiences. It will articulate a series of questions about how the translation of views, values and (art)works, even within the same language, can prompt a sense of gendered or political solidarity.

Was a language of class employed and, if so, did women from poorer neighbourhoods see themselves as subjects of their more educated counterparts’ ideas? Did these encounters provoke the more politicised feminists to reread and reinterpret key texts and adapt their views and priorities? Further, if a language of class was not employed, were there other differences that people saw as more pronounced and important to their identities - for example, geographical origins, and whether they saw themselves as more country or city based? This paper will explore and interrogate the notion of solidarity itself, investigating the role of gender, class, place and religion in these encounters and considering the scripting and performing of power dynamics. (Show less)