Transnational Struggles for Recognition: New Perspectives on Civil Society since the 20th Century 9781785333125

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Transnational Struggles for Recognition

STUDIES ON CIVIL SOCIETY Editors: Dieter Gosewinkel and Holger Nehring Civil Society stands for one of the most ambitious projects and influential concepts relating to the study of modern societies. Scholars working in this field aim to secure greater equality of opportunity, democratic participation, individual freedom, and societal self-organization in the face of social deficits caused by globalizing neo-liberalism. This series deals with the multiple languages, different layers, and diverse practices of existing and emerging civil societies in Europe and elsewhere, and asks how far the renewed interest in the concept can contribute to the gradual evolution of civil society in the wider world. Volume 1 The Languages of Civil Society Edited by Peter Wagner Volume 2 Civil Society: Berlin Perspectives Edited by John Keane Volume 3 State and Civil Society in Northern Europe: The Swedish Model Reconsidered Edited by Lars Trägårdh Volume 4 Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives Edited by Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel and Gunilla Budde Volume 5 Markets and Civil Society: The European Experience in Comparative Perspective Edited by Victor Pérez-Díaz Volume 6 The Golden Chain: Family, Civil Society and the State Edited by Jürgen Nautz, Paul Ginsborg, and Ton Nijhuis Volume 7 Civil Society in the Age of Monitory Democracy Edited by Lars Trägårdh, Nina Witoszek, and Bron Taylor Volume 8 Transnational Struggles for Recognition: New Perspectives on Civil Society since the Twentieth Century Edited by Dieter Gosewinkel and Dieter Rucht

Transnational Struggles for Recognition New Perspectives on Civil Society since the Twentieth Century

Edited by Dieter Gosewinkel and Dieter Rucht

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2017 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2017 Dieter Gosewinkel and Dieter Rucht All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

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ISBN 978-1-78533-311-8 hardback ISBN 978-1-78533-312-5 ebook

Contents

Acknowledgementsvii



The Transnationalization of Struggles for 1 Recognition. An Introduction into a multidisciplinary field of research Dieter Gosewinkel

Part I: Concepts Chapter 1. S  truggles for Recognition: Bridging Three Separated Spheres of Discourse Dieter Rucht

51

Chapter 2. Understanding Transnational Social Movements: Potentials and Limits of Recognition Theory Volker M. Heins

85

Part II: The Cases for Jews and Women Chapter 3. ‘By the sacred ties of humanity and common decent’.103 The Transnationalization of Modern Jewish History and its Discontents Tobias Metzler Chapter 4. Institution Building and Policy Making at the133 Transnational Level: Challenges in the Early History of the World Jewish Congress Emmanuel Deonna Chapter 5. Jewish, Socialist, Anti-Zionist: The Bund and its161 Transnational Relations

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Gertrud Pickhan Chapter 6. Struggles for Recognition and the Concept of184 Gender in Twentieth-Century Poland Claudia Kraft Chapter 7. The Emergence of an Impossible Movement: 205 Domestic Workers Organize Globally Helen Schwenken Part III: Enlarging the Scope Chapter 8. Peace Movements and the Politics of Recognition in231 the Cold War Holger Nehring Chapter 9. Recognition across Difference: Conceptual252 Considerations against an Indian Background Martin Fuchs Chapter 10. Injustice Symbols and Global Solidarity277 Thomas Olesen Index293

Acknowledgements

This volume owes much to several institutions which contributed essentially to its genesis: the VolkswagenStiftung which financed a big international research project bridging Western and Central Europe; the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) which provided for ideal conditions while working on a multidisciplinary longterm research project; the Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Recht als Kultur’ (Bonn) which gave a fellowship in the last phase of publication.

The Transnationalization of Struggles for Recognition An Introduction to a multidisciplinary field of research

Dieter Gosewinkel

Prelude: Historical Context and Issues The twentieth century was a century of extremes.1 This is true in global terms, but it is particularly so of Europe, the starting point for two world wars and the main theatre of the Cold War that followed. There are sound reasons for describing Europe in the twentieth century as a ‘black continent’ (Mazower 1998). The radical polarization of political camps and the intensification of ideological conflicts, including new, thoroughly organized forms of mass violence, bear witness to this. The particularly radical form that confrontation took was the product of dictatorships and the political movements that backed them, which provoked a ‘European civil war’ (Nolte 1989). Characteristic was an insistence on existential differences between key political currents; the rejection of the elementary equality of human beings as a mistaken universalistic principle in the face of demands for civil, political and social equality; the consistent rejection of the principle of reciprocity in elementary social relations based on equality; and ultimately, the forced homogenization of social communities or even the destruction of the Other. This intensified confrontation of demands for inequality or equality is not only a hallmark of the sharp antinomies prevailing in an extremely violent century. It also marks the key political positions from which and against which the struggles for recognition were fought out on the national and transnational levels.

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The rejection on principle of the universality of equality also affirmed difference as an expression of ‘natural’ hierarchy. The fundamental insistence on differences, such as race, class and gender, served to justify hierarchical value gradations and the associated differences in the way the various groups were treated. The double coding of equality in the sense of forced homogeneity and of difference in the sense of value gradation was based on the fixed ascription of properties regarded as essential, such as race, nation or class. Classification, for example as ‘Jew’, as ‘non-proletarian’, and as ‘woman’, led to considerable political, social and cultural discrimination – including extermination as enemies of the nation or class – precisely because such classification was seen as evident, and its consequences as ‘natural’ and hence legitimate. These ideas proved enormously attractive. Under authoritarian and dictatorial regimes, they developed a material force that was to shape European history far beyond the end of the ‘short twentieth century’. For certain periods and in certain regions of Europe, the use of force gave them hegemony. But this hegemony was challenged by a counter-model of social order that it could never completely displace or eradicate. The counter-model had developed before the democracies and dictatorships of the twentieth century; it had resisted dictatorial approaches and allied itself in the course of the twentieth century – albeit it not systematically – with democracy in Europe. The social model stood for the elementary equality of human beings as individuals, and for the development of their freedom on the basis of a moral order of human dignity (Margalit 1996), which took the social norms of equal respect as its core. The political point of departure was the struggle for self-determination. It was chiefly concerned with individual and collective protection against violation of equal respect. In this political struggle for equal respect lay the basis for what was later to be expressed analytically by the theoretical concept of the struggle for recognition. Discrimination, that is to say the failure to respect elementary precepts of equality – whether codified or merely aspired to – sparked off protest by individuals and associations against discrimination and the underlying legitimation system. Basically, this sort of fundamental protest against the violation of equal respect is the archetypical resistance, timeless in its elementary motivation, against societal conditions perceived as unjust (Moore 1978). From a historical point of view, however, rebellion against injurious discrimination in the double Atlantic revolution in North America and France at the turn of the nineteenth century displayed a new political quality and weight. The achievement of equal respect by the American colonists against the British colonial regime and by the Third Estate against the Ancien Régime realized a demand for equality that shattered politicosocial

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 3

systems based on hierarchy, providing a future point of reference for farther-reaching demands for equality and equal respect. The struggle of the bourgeoisie for emancipation from the hierarchical bounds of the feudal order signalled the beginning of a political movement that also wished to entrench its achievements in a universally binding constitutional order. There are many examples from the broad spectrum of political movements that unfolded in the nineteenth century: the struggles of the early workers’ organizations and the labour movement against the disrespectful treatment of their labour as a commodity and the political discrimination of workers; the striving of religious groups and minorities for tolerance and equal respect; the struggles of women against exclusion from public political and cultural life and for equal rights that at the same time did not ignore the cultural and biological distinctions between the sexes; and finally, the early movements that protested against the elementary, essential rejection of equality in the system of European colonialism (Osterhammel 2009: 113f., 196f., 584f., 722f.). It was above all in the form of associations that these movements constituted crystallization points for the up-and-coming bourgeois society.2 They represent an excerpt from a range of societal movements that, on the threshold of the twentieth century, found their political impetus and pathos in the lack of equal respect and the resulting violation of a fundamental norm for a just social order. Whereas the organizational form of this rebellion was often the association or party, its medium was the law. The legitimacy and importance in setting standards of justice of the law as a means for demarcating and distributing spheres of freedom, satisfying elementary needs, and regulating political participation was greatly enhanced. The major codifications of civil law gave emerging bourgeois society a basis on which to develop standards for solving practical conflicts about justice. The amount and density of legal regulation in all areas of social life, especially in working and economic life, and the provision of social and public services at all levels of the community including private and family life,3 increased rapidly towards the end of the nineteenth century. The constitutionalization of political life, that is to say the increasing submission of the political authorities to superordinate legal rules, led increasingly to struggles for justice conducted in the forms and procedures of the law. This ‘juridification’4 of social life and social conflict did not mean that the existing legal order was felt – in itself and overall – to be just. Many struggles were directed rather towards changing the existing legal system and asserting new rights. Not infrequently, therefore, the law, too, was used not as a value in itself but as a tool for enforcing sectional interests, not excluding revolutionary objectives (Böckenförde

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1967; Schultz 1972; Wesel 2010: 552). Nevertheless, the law established itself as a major mode5 of articulating and enforcing demands for equal respect and the protection of autonomous spheres of freedom. The extension of constitutionally guaranteed basic rights in the European constitutions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the system of minority protection grounded in international law after the First World War, amply demonstrate this. While law played an essential role in establishing and formalizing fundamental standards of freedom and equality, mass media came to be another major mode of articulating and instigating protest and rebellion. Protest groups need the mass media to win as big an audience as possible for the diffusion of their claims. As for the media, they profit from reporting on protest events, thus contributing to their legitimation. Although it would be simplistic to see a symbiotic relationship between mass media and protest groups, while most cases are characterized by a deep asymmetry of power, the media and social movements have a considerable common interest in performing and publicizing social protest (Fahlenbrach, Sivertsen and Werenskjold 2014; Rucht 2014; for an example, see Clifford 2005). Protest and social movements’ struggles for recognition have gained much of their relevance and credibility from resonance in newspapers, journals, radio, television and, finally, the internet. A lengthy and dominant current of protest against the violation of elementary standards of equal respect was concerned with social conditions and the sometimes extremely hierarchically structured living and working conditions among the lower classes. The European labour movement, strongly organized and politically effective in comparison to other movements, championed demands arising from the experience of social injustice for the fundamental redistribution of goods and property. The outcomes of these struggles were social rights, the granting of legally binding claims for the abolition or at least reduction of the socially unequal distribution of opportunities for employment and property ownership (Marshall 2009), and the introduction of minimum standards of social security. The attainment and codification of social rights, as well as the institutional transformation of European countries into welfare states, are hallmarks of the twentieth century. The call for solidarity as a tool for diminishing blatant disparities and discrimination under unbridled capitalist working conditions was to become an integral element in the political programmes of socioeconomically motivated movements – in so far as they did not aspire to the revolutionary overthrow of bourgeoiscapitalist society itself to give hegemonic power to the oppressed classes in a classless society.

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 5

The historical processes described here, which extended from the nineteenth into the twentieth century, have in common that they were borne by actors who joined forces in groups and movements, often fixed organizations, in order to express their protest against existing societal conditions and criticize the disregard of legitimate demands for equality. Often – but by no means invariably – they based their demands on moral principles, general or generalizable, going beyond the concrete occasion and immediate personal interests to call for the change, restoration or establishment of a just social order as a whole.6 These demands did not presuppose basic agreement and understanding with the addressees but accepted conflicts and struggles, which not infrequently proved to be violent.7 Characteristic of developments from the end of the nineteenth century onwards was that these demands and movements were organized across the borders of single countries. In a first wave of globalization, set off by worldwide European colonization, not only the exchange of goods and commercial contacts proliferated (Hoerder 2002; Torp 2005; Osterhammel 2008, 2009). Broad migration flows and intellectual contacts across national borders, facilitated by new modes of transport and means of communication, meant that experience gained in social struggles for equality and against discrimination crossed territorial boundaries in communication spaces – that is to say, they became transnational. This binary sketch of developments from the nineteenth to the twentieth century contains certain simplifications. It confronts political systems and movements that are authoritarian and liberal, that seek homogenization or plurality. But social movements struggling for equal respect were not limited to liberal-democratic systems; they were often particularly effective where they addressed the transformation of the political system in order to attain their goals. Vice versa, twentieth-century democracies, too, revealed an authoritarian aspect of forced homogenization to suppress the free association of opposing plural interests – for example, the organization of national minority interests (Mann 2007).8 What is more, the struggle for equal respect did not necessarily arise from a minority position; especially under democracy, it could also be propagated from the position of the majority. Finally, struggles for equal respect could also be substantively ambivalent, and not systematically espouse inclusive and universalistic principles. The struggles of national movements, for example, could, from a liberal position, serve to secure national minority rights; but from the position of the majority they could display an excluding and aggressive side that seeks equal respect for their own national entity to promote its superiority.9 The studies presented in this volume argue historically on the basis of the extreme political opposites of the twentieth century in Europe,

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with the aim to understand the movements for self-determination, equal respect, and emancipation against authoritarian oppression and forced homogenization in terms of their historical conditions, success and degeneration; and, on this basis, with the further aim to analyse current development trends. The studies have emerged from a research project entitled ‘The Transnationalization of Struggles for Recognition – Women and Jews in France, Germany and Poland in the 20th Century’. Since 2007, historians and social scientists have been addressing the categorization, development and impact of struggles for equal respect on the basis of empirical investigations. The underlying project ran from 2007 to 2012 and involved Polish, French and German scholars, focusing on the empirical analysis of Jewish and women’s groups and movements during the twentieth century.10 The point of departure in European history is examined in comparative studies on Poland, Germany and France. They are supplemented by studies that add a comparative perspective by including other objectives in the struggles for recognition (e.g. the peace movement) and non-European as well as global struggles for recognition. The empirical studies share two fundamental theoretical assumptions: first, that the societal conflicts described here as struggles for equal respect can be precisely captured historically and analytically by the theory of the ‘struggle for recognition’. Second, that transnationalization of the struggles for recognition is an essential factor determining the development of struggles for recognition, their reach, and their effectiveness. This volume thus poses the following core question: Why and how did struggles for recognition by women and Jews in the twentieth century go beyond the national context, and how did this transnationalization affect both the national and the transnational level? With regard to transnationalization, this means: What specific conditions of development favoured or hampered transnationalization processes? When and why were there phases of and trends towards (re-) nationalization? Did, as is often assumed, transnationalization weaken national conflicts? Is there a secular trend towards transnationalization? On questions of comparison: What does national comparison have to say about the conditions for the transnationalization of struggles for recognition? Do differences in the institutional preconditions for struggles for recognition mean differences in opportunities for transnational mobilization – or, conversely, that transnational mobilization balances out national deficits? Finally, does the comparative perspective confirm the existence of a gap between West and East with regard to institutional opportunities and the effectiveness of national and transnational struggles for recognition?

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 7

Research Topic and Concepts On the basis of these questions, we now take a closer look at the topics and concepts of the research presented.

Women and Jews The choice of the two groups – women and Jews – as the main topics of investigation is based on a number of assumptions and objectives that provide, firstly, clear common ground, and secondly, the greatest possible diversity. In the first place, groups and associations were to be examined that were nationally and geographically widespread and thus comparable across national borders. Secondly, the groups and associations to be investigated were to have the highest possible degree of transnational ‘organizedness’; in comparison between countries this was the case for women’s and for Jewish organizations (Geyer and Paulmann 2001). Thirdly, the two groups share historically a long struggle against discrimination and marginalization in public life, and in exclusion from fundamental rights (e.g. access to certain occupations; full participation in political life), which obliged them to particularly urgently turn to the law as a medium of dispute. On the other hand, women, who almost everywhere in the societies under study constituted more than half the population, were, unlike Jews, not a minority group. Their struggles for equal respect range thematically from social struggles for equal access to employment and political participation to recognition of a specific female identity. Jewish groups all living in the diaspora define themselves, in contrast to the social (biological) group ‘women’, as a cultural entity and determine their cohesion primarily via the cultural spheres of religion, Jewish history, and tradition. Finally, the type and degree of discrimination and violation of equal respect vary. Whereas women were continuously excluded from the full exercise of fundamental rights, albeit it to a decreasing degree, Jews experienced the extremes and extreme violence of the twentieth century – on the one hand complete legal equality, and on the other physical extermination.

Transnationalization This volume aims to compare societal struggles for equal treatment, not as confined to national, isolated public spheres. The research focuses rather

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on territorial and cultural border-crossing. In this sense, transnationality is understood as a status or quality of an action, a social movement, or an institution that consciously or unconsciously goes beyond the territorial or institutional framework of a nation-state. We set out from a number of assumptions, which will be looked at in detail. First, in the course of the twentieth century, struggles for equal treatment were only exceptionally limited to the national context. Second, regardless of considerable fluctuations over time, processes of transnationalization decidedly enhanced the effectiveness of struggles. Third, no historical continuum of purposeful development from national to transnational struggles can be assumed. Differences in the historical development of these struggles between the poles of ‘national’ and ‘transnational’ have to be taken into consideration without assuming a clear and irreversible trend from national to transnational.

Struggles for Recognition The struggles that we present as a major current of the twentieth century address many motives, political objectives, forms of organization, and groupings that can only provisionally be covered by the term ‘equal respect’. Keeping in mind the conflictual situation, the bipolarity of goals between equality and diversity, and the range of motives from socioeconomic to cultural, what these struggles have in common is the political endeavour to assert the value of the protagonists’ articulations of their lives and needs in the demand for ‘equal respect’. The demand for ‘respect’, which directly addresses intersubjective relationships, can be summed up by a category developed by social theory: ‘recognition’. This is an analytical category, not a concept that plays a role in the historical sources or statements of actors. It involves two key assumptions, which we shall be considering in detail. First, the ‘struggle for recognition’ seeks not only to attain respect and the right to one’s own cultural practices and the like, but also includes genuinely socioeconomically motivated struggles for redistribution.11 Second, the analytical category ‘recognition’ is not understood ahistorically, but rather in its development into and assertion as a lead category in current societal theory.

Comparison The studies in this volume focus on France, Germany and Poland. The three countries are compared and the history of their relations reconstructed.

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 9

From a historical point of view, particularly in the twentieth century, the three countries were enmeshed in conflictual, singularly violent relations, so that we can speak of the entanglement of their national histories, leaving no room for any notion of separate national paths in struggles for recognition. Secondly, the three countries stand for various models of nation-state formation and structures of government:12 the centralist French state with its long historical tradition and, since the nineteenth century, a vibrant republican tradition; the so-called ‘belated nationstate’ Germany with markedly federal structures and at times strong emphasis on ethnic and cultural homogeneity; and a Poland marked particularly in the twentieth century by territorial and governmental fragility, which experienced not only the birth of new states but also long phases of foreign rule and dictatorship. This mixture of entanglement and similarity on the one hand, and autonomy and difference on the other, justifies assuming that a comparison of the three countries could prove particularly instructive. Women and Jews are groups chosen not for reasons of comparison but because they have essential features in common concerning both the aspects of struggles for recognition and the transnationalization of these struggles. Both groups were systematically deprived of their rights over a long period of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury European history: women were the group most discriminated against in quantitative terms in view of their size, Jews in qualitative terms in view of violent anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Finally, both women and Jews have been particularly active in transnational networking and thus in the transnationalization of their struggles for recognition. The categories ‘struggles for recognition’ and ‘transnationalization’ are concepts that have come to play a greater role in international research in the humanities and social sciences since the 1990s. When using the concept of transnationalization ‘we refer to the growing role played by diverse forms of interactions between domestic and external actors in defining the direction and the content of the evolution of domestic institutions and policies’ (Bruszt and Holzacker 2009: 3). We contrast transnationalization in this sense with ‘internationalization’, which, by our definition, denotes transboundary processes and networks promoted by state agencies, and not civil society actors.13 Regardless of differences in analytical explanatory level, consideration of the origins and reception of the two concepts ‘struggles for recognition’ and ‘transnationalization’ is necessary for understanding their specific force in the present discussion. To avoid succumbing to the plausibility of current developments, we historicize the two categories ‘struggles for recognition’ and ‘transnationalization’, that is to say, with regard to their intellectual genesis and certain key representatives and positions in the

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course of their interpretative history. This is in keeping with a double aim of this volume: firstly, the key categories are to serve as analytical categories in explaining societal change; secondly, they are to be examined themselves in the course of the study as to their analytical viability and explanatory power. Such an attempt to reflect critically on theoretical categories while applying them in research means that the categories in question are not taken as absolute from either an analytical or a temporal point of view. There are therefore contributions that take a critical look at the adequacy of the categories as such, and at how they are traditionally interpreted. Furthermore, we adopt a historically critical approach in two regards. First, struggles for recognition and the forms taken by transnationalization are traced as historically determined processes through the history of the twentieth century. Second, we take a step back and assume that not only the empirical phenomena under study but also the categories under study are subject to time, and can change. A historically critical study therefore begins by considering the historicity of the categories used ‘(struggles for) recognition’ and ‘transnationalization’: What do they mean in present-day scientific parlance? Where do they come from; that is, when and why were they formulated? And how has their meaning changed?

Struggles for Recognition At the turn of the twenty-first century, ‘recognition’ had become a central category of (Western)14 international societal theory and moral philosophy. It addresses the normative basis of political demands for difference and identity in the awareness that ‘only a category that makes individual autonomy dependent on intersubjective consent can capture the moral interests of many current conflicts’ (Fraser and Honneth 2003: 7). Recognition is accordingly a philosophical category applicable (to begin with) in everyday practice, which focuses on modernity’s promise of autonomy – the aspiration to happiness and freedom – to provide a normative measure for the widely ranging violations of autonomy. In essence, the theory of recognition is concerned with the theoretical assessment of experience with social injustice. In the broad version represented by critical theorist Axel Honneth, recognition theory addresses ‘the withdrawal of social respect …, phenomena … of humiliation and disrespect that constitute the core of all experience of injustice’ (ibid.: 158; Brink and Owen 2007). The theory of recognition tackles the categorical assessment of many forms of the rape, deprivation of rights, and debasement of human beings, violating their positive

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 11

understanding of themselves. The underlying assumption is that there is an ‘indissoluble link between the inviolability and integrity of the human being and the consent of Others’. The focal point of a theory of recognition is therefore its reference to the fundamental intersubjectivity and reciprocity of successful social relations, ‘the embracement of individualization and recognition from which that special violability of the human being arises’ (Honneth 1992: 12). If we take as our basis the Axel Honneth (1992) and Charles Taylor (1993a) version of recognition theory, which has the greatest influence in German (and West European) social theory, there are three ‘basic patterns’, ‘love, law, solidarity’, that constitute intersubjective recognition. These basic forms of recognition are graduated, with the ‘degree of positive relationship of the person to himself increasing step by step’ (Honneth 1992: 150).15 Love is understood as the ‘primary relationship’, ‘consisting of strong emotional ties between few persons on the pattern of erotic couple relationships, friendships, and parent–child relationships’. ‘Law’ or ‘legal recognition’ assumes that ‘every human subject can be considered the subject of some rights or others if he is societally recognized as a member of a community’ (ibid.: 153, 176). The effect of law as a mode of recognition is based on the key principle of equality, which represents legitimation and a driving force for every demand for the steady ‘extension of both the material content and the social reach of the status of legal person’ (ibid.: 191). Finally, social recognition or ‘solidarity’, the third pattern of recognition, refers to relations of intersubjective esteem that lie beyond intimate emotional relationships and social relations regulated by the law. What is described in everyday speech as the ‘social prestige’ and ‘self-esteem’ of the individual goes back to the process of individualization in the transition to modernity. It was only when notions of estatebased collective honour were replaced by a form of esteem grounded in individual achievement that the conditions for ‘solidarity’ – and the need for solidarity – developed, in general terms: ‘social relations of symmetrical esteem between individualized (and autonomous) subjects [...] to esteem one another symmetrically means to view one another in light of values that allow the abilities and traits of the other to appear significant for shared praxis’. By ‘symmetrical’ is meant that ‘every subject obtains the opportunity without collective gradation to experience himself in his own achievements and abilities as valuable for society’ (Honneth 1992: 201, 209f). The violation of this claim to social recognition or solidarity, disrespect, covers – in a broad version of the recognition theory (Fraser and Honneth 2003a)16 – not only matters of social and cultural degradation but also ‘economic

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disputes’. Under this interpretation, the sociocultural and economic aspects of degradation have to do with recognition theory and have the same origins in an asymmetrical denial of esteem, in violation of reciprocity, for the individual particularity of a human being (Honneth 1992: 206, 210). We draw on the current theory of recognition in its broadest and most strongly differentiated form because it makes the most comprehensive interpretative claim. It addresses non-verbalized everyday experience as well as elaborated discourses of social disrespect; it covers the sufferings of isolated individuals and highly organized social movements; struggles for equality and for the recognition of difference; the violation of culturally grounded demands for identity and socioeconomic redistribution. In view of the wide interpretative scope of recognition theory as a critical social theory, there is a certain internal logic that two of its internationally most influential proponents, Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth, have drawn on the social theory of G.W.F. Hegel.17 At his time, Hegel experienced the very phenomena of fundamental societal upheaval that provide the point of departure for current recognition theory. Hegel’s theory is an astute and forceful diagnosis of the threshold period at the turn of the nineteenth century: the disintegration of estatebased hierarchical social relations; the advance of a bourgeois value system and work ethic; the individualization of thought and of labour relations; the breakthrough to a bourgeois-capitalist social and economic order with new, intense social tensions and struggles. In Hegel’s early work, the Jenaer Schriften zur Realphilosophie (1805– 1806), which is to be seen in the context of his treatment of the late Enlightenment and which historically coincides with the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, the old European estate-based feudal order, he developed the outlines of a social theory of the emerging bourgeois society. Amidst abundant, complex, conceptual abstraction, three elements in particular of this social theory appear to have favoured their continued reception and development over two centuries. The first concerns the temporal context, the historical turning point in the light of which Hegel was arguing. With the French Revolution18 in mind, and the popular movements that found political expression therein, Hegel outlined an intersubjectivist theory of recognition that addressed not only the struggle of bourgeois society against the persistent inequalities of estate-based society, but also the struggles for recognition against new inequalities within bourgeois society. Secondly, Hegel captured in the concept of ‘Kampf/struggle’ (Honneth 1992: 68, 74) the profoundly conflictual nature of the disputes, which

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 13

were far from unpremeditated, being the work of rebellious subjects brought to awareness by their dignity and injuries. On the other hand, unlike Hobbes in his premise of a state of nature as ‘war of all against all’, he understands ‘struggle’ not as a struggle for physical ‘self-assertion’ but as a struggle for ‘recognition’. This recognition is, however, not directed at counter-destruction as a reaction to destruction but at ‘regaining the attention of the Other’ (ibid.: 75), who understands the intersubjective dimension of his action through the resistance of the injured party, and thus his dependence on the party denied recognition. An initially individual educational process develops not from rendering the Other harmless but from realization of mutual dependence on recognition, a process that can also have a positive impact on the constitution of life in society (ibid.: 83). Thirdly, such a process that relies on the stabilization of the social order through conflict requires underpinning and consolidation by a normative order. For Hegel it is the law, the relationship of ‘law per se’, which he equates with the ‘recognizing relationship’ (Hegel 1969: 206). Hegel thus returns to the point of departure, the unfolding process of bourgeois society that was taking place in his time. The normatively consolidated recognition of the Other contained in the law is immanent not only in bourgeois society; it produces it as an institutional structure.19 The theory of recognition establishes a social model that understands profound conflicts even within bourgeois-capitalist society as soluble – without the extermination of the Other or the abolition of his freedom – that is to say, it is the functional model of a liberal society.20 These solutions are based on legally formulated norms that understand the individual as universally worthy of recognition and protection, and as agent in an educational process. The social theory model of the ‘struggle for recognition’ that Hegel outlined at that decisive historical turning point in European societal order has never been lost and has left its mark throughout the history of social philosophy. However, reception was long, selective, modified, and failed to affirm the entire theory. Marx limited ‘recognition’ to self-realization in work, and ‘struggle’ to the socially insoluble conflict between classes as collective actors that uphold fundamentally irreconcilable values. The adversaries in such an agonal struggle cannot find common ground even in Hegel’s powerful notion of a universalizing law.21 George Sorel, turning to Marx at the end of the nineteenth century, takes recourse to Hegel’s conflict model by ascribing model function to the affective experience of the oppressed classes in their struggles for recognition. At the same time, however, his concept of law remains particular, so marked by classspecific needs as to be completely relativized, thus reducing it to a power

14 • Dieter Gosewinkel

technique without moral substance (Honneth 1992: 246f). Finally, more than half a century after Marx and Sorel, one of the chief representatives of existential philosophy, Jean-Paul Sartre, saw social conflict as the consequence of a disturbed recognition relationship – as did Hegel – that in a historicizing approach related increasingly to social groups. Taking the example of the ‘Jewish question’ (‘Réflections sur la question juive’, 1945) in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and in light of colonialism, Sartre diagnosed ‘asymmetrical interaction patterns’ between social groups, which, however, he considered in principle to be surmountable. Like Marx and Sorel, Sartre saw in the formal demand for equality of the bourgeois legal order no clear moral gain that would stabilize struggles for recognition and produce a solution.22 Sartre’s social philosophy brings us to the second half of the twentieth century, when various developments, historicopolitical and immanent to science, come together to prepare the ground for a new reception and the further development of the theory of recognition. Major impetus was given by George H. Mead’s theory of American Pragmatism, which in the 1930s took Hegel’s intersubjectivity theory a step further with the means of empirical social psychology, placing strong emphasis on the law for the individual education process (Honneth 1992: 114–47). Changes in global political conditions also played a role. The age of totalitarianism and dictatorship in Europe gave impetus to countermovements intent on liberation from disrespect and oppression. The worldwide anti-colonial movement, which came to a climax after 1945, turned under the influence of Sartre’s existentialist approach to Hegel, taking him in the writings of Frantz Fanon as a political beacon against the centuries of racist disrespect and discrimination of the colonized. In his chapter ‘Le Nègre et la Reconnaissance. B. Le nègre et Hegel’, Fanon takes Hegel up directly: ‘C’est de cet autre, c’est de la reconnaissance par cet autre, que dépendent sa valeur et sa réalité humaines. C’est dans cet autre que se condense le sens de sa vie … en tant que je lutte pour la naissance d’un monde humain, c’est-à-dire d’un monde de reconnaissances réciproques’. At the same time he gives Hegel an existentialist twist23 when he radically stresses the difference, the ‘breach’, between ‘negroes’ and ‘whites’, and calls for the inescapable life-and-death struggle in which the ‘negro’ raises himself to mastership over the ‘whites’, thus establishing the precondition for recognition in reciprocity (Fanon 1952: 176–80). Similar in thrust to the struggles of the colonized for recognition, three other intellectual currents, feeding on (new) political and social movements, gave momentum to the recognition paradigm: the renaissance of human rights after the Second World War and their global

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 15

triumph, particularly from the beginning of the 1970s, symbolized by the growing influence of ‘transnational advocacy networks’ (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Madsen 2013: 89–91; Risse, Ropp and Sikking 2014; Eckel 2014: 207–59); feminism, which calls into question male-dominated, gender-specific disrespect as opposed to indifferent social models; and social theories of multiculturalism and multiethnicity, which seek to take account of the increasing friction and tensions in modern, complex and highly mobile societies.24 The political ground for a new wave of now worldwide reception of the theory of recognition was prepared by the political turn of 1989 in Europe. The end of ideological confrontation between the blocs largely removed the power-political and conceptual basis for the agonal struggle described by Marxist societal theory to overcome the Other, the class enemy. The model of liberal democracy under the rule of law had been introduced into the new constitutional states of Central and Eastern Europe, partly in theory only, partly in practice. The constitutional protection of the bourgeois rule of law imposed itself for the first time since its breakthrough as principle during the period of the French Revolution throughout Europe.25 The role of the law as the medium of recognition of the Other, on which Hegel had placed the focus at the beginning of the nineteenth century, found in the liberal constitutional orders of European states at the turn of the twenty-first century a new institutional basis. Rights of citizenship, the core of individual rights in constitutional orders, became effective points of departure for social struggles aimed, often successfully, at eliminating legal and social inequality. The assertion and constitutional protection of citizenship rights covered in a broad spectrum of civil, political and social rights the spheres of recognition, family, civil society, and the state, with which theoreticians since Hegel have been concerned. Even if citizenship rights as legal guarantees do not over and beyond the sphere of the law guarantee love and solidarity, and thus all stages of recognition, they do establish an essential precondition for achieving them. The rights of citizenship that emerged in the course of the twentieth century from social struggles were the institutional expression of successful struggles for recognition. The theory of citizenship rights elaborated by the English sociologist T.H. Marshall (2009; Gosewinkel 2016) therefore describes – without mentioning ‘recognition’ – the historical practice of societal change through social struggles and their legal specification. For Marshall as for Hegel, however, ‘struggles’ are not agonal conflicts. They have to do with progress in development that finds expression in a willingness for mutual recognition and legal specification. This approach, based on the amenability of social conflicts to resolution under the principle of reciprocity – consequently a socially harmonious approach – is the key

16 • Dieter Gosewinkel

to the current success of a comprehensive theory of recognition that understands itself as a ‘critical theory’, but explicitly leaves any elements of Marxist theory behind (Honneth 2003: 137). One of two interpretation disputes currently preoccupying the societal theory of recognition is based on this dissociation from socioeconomic strictures. Nancy Fraser objects that Axel Honneth’s broad concept of recognition, which she describes as distorted beyond recognition, requires supplementation by a category ‘redistribution’. She argues in favour of a separate category of ‘redistribution’ in keeping with the postulate of social justice, whereas ‘recognition’ refers to cultural identity conflicts; the two categories should then be integrated under the superordinate goal of justice. Honneth, by contrast, pleads for a comprehensive ‘normative monism of recognition’ whose pattern of love, law and solidarity incorporates the problem of redistribution (Fraser and Honneth 2003b: 9, 135).26 Secondly, one variant of the dispute is concerned with whether the demand for the recognition of difference and different ‘identity’ constitutes a separate category of recognition (Fraser) or is systematically covered by the guiding principle of equality in recognition (Honneth) (Honneth 2003: 180–82). Fraser’s moral philosophical interpretation of recognition theory, explicitly addressing the ‘socialist vision’ (Fraser 2003: 128) and the force for change of old and new social movements, comes up against an approach that takes up the early Hegel before his reception and critique by Marx, making it into a comprehensive conceptual basis for capturing all sorts of experience of injustice as humiliation and disrespect – whether involving individuals or groups, or whether concerned with the recognition of equality or of difference (Honneth 2003: 157–58). This volume sets out from a comprehensive concept of recognition such as that elaborated by Axel Honneth in more recent critical theory. No distinction is drawn between socioeconomic and cultural experiences of disrespect or between the establishment of equality and difference as the objective of struggles for recognition. Experiences of disrespect – rape, deprivation of rights, degradation – are examined rather as the starting point of struggles for recognition. In investigating the empirical subject matter itself, associations of women and Jews, the distinction between socioeconomic and identity motives, and between the goals of equality and difference, comes to bear. Whether recognition struggles are involved is not an initial criterion.27 A final reason for the renaissance of the recognition theorem in current societal theory is the global interlinkage of struggles for recognition. Redistribution struggles, for example, are increasingly taking place on a global scale. They are being measured more and more strongly against

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 17

a universal legal benchmark – human rights (Moyn 2010; Hoffmann 2010, 2011; Iriye, Goedde and Hitchcock 2012). This finding is seen in transcultural terms, even though processed at the level of the specific culture. At the same time, worldwide migration flows contribute to the frequent coincidence of socioeconomic and identity discrimination. This, too, suggests that a comprehensive concept of struggles for recognition should be taken, and closely associated with transnationalization.28

Transnationalization Transnationality and transnationalization are as old as nations and nationstates. There never was a closed nation-state. There have always been flows of communication, migration, commerce, industry and culture across national borders; such openness was necessary, for it was in the interest of the given nation-states, their striving for information, innovation, and population control. Less trivial is the question of when and why these transnational links gained factual importance and the attention of scholars. In brief, the following can be said on the subject. If we take the nineteenth century as the age in which the European nation-state attained its strongest form, political force, and legitimacy, this (nevertheless) coincides with the first wave of globalization. It began shortly after mid-century and lasted until the First World War. It consisted above all in an explosive increase in cross-border transfers of goods and capital (Torp 2005), which produced innovative institutions designed to ensure legal security and provide the protection of international law (Peterson 2009). What is more, a particularly mobile sort of commodity was added, intellectual property, which soon gained worldwide importance and legal protection (Löhr 2010). Nation-states and national economies that permitted and often promoted these transnational exchanges did not hermetically seal their populations off from one another. On the contrary, continental and transcontinental migration flows developed on a scale that was not reached again, even in the twentieth century.29 The result was that ideas, ways of pursuing economic affairs, and linguistic peculiarities were abundantly transferred from country to country. Countries that permitted, caused, or even promoted these population movements could not stop transnational political communication in the form of the circulation of political publications and ideas. Open borders for goods in a nation-state, which was often a liberal trading nation, also meant open borders for mobile individuals and groupings, who often crossed the borders of their country of origin with a critical attitude and an intent to establish political links and initiate political activities abroad,

18 • Dieter Gosewinkel

which they expected would give them additional support from outside in their struggle against political conditions at home. The supposedly closed nation-state in Europe was thus at the apogee of its political and economic power, open enough to enable transnational mobility with political and critical intent. The high mobility of intellectual property (Löhr 2010: 14, 25f.) and its international protection helped to transport critical thought, even across the borders of authoritarian states such as Tsarist Russia (Siegrist 2006: 65f.). Scholars were late in addressing this radical process of material globalization and transnationalization. Concerned contemporaries and commentators reflected on these epochmaking developments,30 but historians and social scientists provided no analyses of the processes (Osterhammel 2001: 283). Possibly under the impression of the reaction, renationalization, and insulation of economic and migration areas that set in with the First World War, signalling a worldwide crisis of liberal regimes, the scholarly treatment of these processes remained inadequate. The continuing ideological confrontation between the blocs in Europe after 1945, with massive efforts to prevent and control the mobility of goods, people and ideas, also contributed, directing scholarly attention to earlier perforations of national borders and territories. And even if, due especially to worldwide means of communication, the politically desired insulation of communication spaces did not succeed, it was not by chance that the breakthrough to a drastic change in perspective in historiography and the social sciences did not take place until after 1989. Amidst a second wave of globalization, at the end of the confrontation between blocs and European colonial rule, analysts almost necessarily cast a more attentive eye on the historical precursors of this development.31 Since the beginning of the 1990s, theoretical and empirical attention has increasingly concentrated, in history and in the systematic social sciences, on the theory and practice of transnationality and transnationalization.32 The rise of global history (Mazlish and Iriye 2005; Osterhammel 2008; Osterhammel and Petersson 2012) at the beginning of the twenty-first century is closely associated with the growth in the number of empirical studies on transnational history (Pernau 2011).33 Scholars have demanded that the twentieth century and, indeed, the whole age of globalization should be researched from a transnational perspective (Maier 2000). Political, social and cultural history can no longer be explained solely within a national framework. Rather, the focus should be on transfer, the hybrid-like character of modern culture, and the international aspects of politics. Transnational history, defined as processes, structures and events that transcend national borders, must then be studied in close international cooperation. It has been shown that

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 19

a transnational perspective can contribute fruitfully to an established field of research (e.g. Conrad and Osterhammel 2004). Recent comparative work and the new paradigm of histoire croisée investigating the cultural transfers and the interdependencies between national communities have further underlined the importance of a transnational approach to the history of Western and Central Europe (Espagne 1999).34 Research on the Communist period has also become more transnational, producing a number of studies which involve comparisons of the GDR and Communist Poland (Ther 1998; Connelly 2000; Rittersporn, Rolf and Behrends 2003; Behrends 2004; Mazurek 2005.) In the methodological debate on the choice between a comparative and a transnational approach to historiography,35 we, like some comparative contributions in this volume, take a middle position (Kocka 2003; Kocka and Haupt 2009). Comparative history is not rendered obsolete by the transnational perspective: it is to be seen as a precondition and complement. Only this methodological point of departure allows us in this volume to raise the key question of a comparison between differing national conditions of transnationalization. The systematic social sciences have developed various models on the theory and workings of transnationalization processes. Ludger Pries understands by this a ‘dynamic of societalization as something processual’; that is to say, ‘a spreading and intensifying process in the context of increasing international movements of goods, people, and information of forming relatively lasting and dense pluri-local and cross-border relations of social practices, symbolic systems, and artefacts’ (Pries 2008: 44).36 Among the multitude of conditions and factors influencing processes of transnationalization,37 we concentrate in this volume on specific actors: groups and associations that form political networks (NGOs, protest campaigns, social movements, etc.) across national borders, thus opening up a new transnational arena over and beyond the national theatre for their political struggles. Studies on this category of transnational political struggles can be roughly divided into three types. The first category of publication consists of general writings on transnational structures, the activities of political actors, and the alleged emergence of a ‘global civil society’. Much of this literature was motivated by political hopes that benign non-governmental actors would contribute to the creation of ‘another world’ (e.g. Falk 1994; Chatterjee and Finger 1994; Willetts 1996; O’Brien 2000). Usually, the transnational and morally sound character of such initiatives is taken for granted, so that the main question is how to influence international policy making (Anand 1999; Evans 2000). Even if it contains a great deal of material on transnationalization processes, this literature is not very useful for research purposes.

20 • Dieter Gosewinkel

The second category of publication embodies comprehensive or comparative studies with a more analytical perspective on transnationalization. Some of these studies focus on the historical evolution of transnational activities (Boli and Thomas 1999, Bauerkämper 2004; Keck and Sikkink 1998. Others concentrate more on recent and contemporary activities, often with a focus on what has come to be called ‘global justice movements’ (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Khagram, Riker and Sikkink 2002; Rucht 2014; Andretta et al. 2003; Della Porta and Tarrow 2005).38 These studies provide us with some theoretical tools, and basic information on the structures, preconditions, problems and impacts of transnational mobilization. Some of this work makes explicit comparison across time and across countries. The work in this volume is based on these studies, while at the same time putting the explanatory models to the test. It is important to ask, for example, to what extent the ‘boomerang model’ developed by Keck and Sikkink (1998: 12ff.) is applicable to earlier historical phases. This probably most prominent explanatory model for the effect of transnational networks claims that, ‘when channels between the state and its domestic actors are blocked, the boomerang pattern of influence characteristic of transnational networks may occur: domestic NGOs bypass their state and directly search out international allies to try to bring pressure on their states from outside’. The third category of publication contains a host of empirical, mostly descriptive studies which focus on a particular political problem (e.g. debt relief), policy domain (e.g. human rights), campaign (e.g. banning of landmines), or organization/network (e.g. People’s Global Action; Amnesty International). These studies provide us with valuable insights into the mechanisms and processes of transnational mobilization. The studies in this volume are based partly on this research, but contextualize it strongly in two regards. The focus is on transnational networks of women and Jews (see below). To some extent they are compared with their historical precursors. Then there are contributions that address the recognition of other groups, also active outside Europe.

Status of Research and Contributions to this Volume In terms of the number and density of studies available, the groups of women and Jews serve almost as a model of transnationalization in the broad research literature, some of whose findings we outline in what follows. It must be taken into account that the asymmetry of the research situation between Western and Eastern Europe has begun to decrease. After initially concentrating almost exclusively on Western Europe,

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 21

scholars have, after the turn of 1989 but to some extent even earlier, turned increasingly to Eastern Europe. The quantity of literature on the transnationalization of women’s struggles, our first domain of research, has increased significantly since the 1980s.39 One reason for this was the International Women’s Decade (1975–1985) declared by the United Nations, and the many subsequent UN conferences on women, which have contributed to the formation of a concentrated network among women’s civil society groups in several countries (Keck and Sikkink 1998, chapter 5). In Europe, the transnationalizing of women’s struggles has even accelerated in recent years. These international and intra-European processes have also resulted in a considerable number of studies on that topic. Although there is much less literature for the period before the Second World War, organizations like the International Council of Women, created in 1888, have continued to stimulate and influence literature on the transnationalization of women’s struggles right up to the present.40 There is an abundance of documentation and activists’ reports whose aim it is to further the processes of transnationalization in women’s struggles.41 Some literature on transnational women’s struggles focuses on special topics such as historical biographies of feminist activists whose activities were cross-national (Drenth and de Haan 1999; Schüler 2004; Kinnebrock 2005), or studies on women’s issues which have led to transnational discourses and actions.42 Yet, these studies hardly take the processes of transnationalization of women’s struggles into account. Finally, there is an ever-growing body of literature which explicitly analyses transnational women’s movements and organizations.43 There are studies on present transnational networks (such as the European Women’s Lobby on current transnational activities in women’s movements – Offen 2000: 341–78; Helfferich and Kolb 2001; Ruppert 2004; Offen 2010) as well as on major historical international organizations, namely: the International Council of Women, founded in 1888; the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance, founded in 1899; and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, founded in 1915 (Vellacott 1993; Anderson 2000; Zimmermann 2002; Ruppert 2004). There is historical research44 that points out that women who had no or only restricted access to the public sphere in the nineteenth century used the transnationalization of women’s clubs to substitute for this public access deficit (boomerang model, cf. above). From this point of view, the development of the transnational movement was of crucial importance for the development of national movements and vice versa.45 Finally, there is also work that compares women’s mobilization around specific issues – for example, prostitution in a given country in different

22 • Dieter Gosewinkel

time periods or in different countries, including transnational aspects.46 Another controversial issue that has been widely investigated, partly in a comparative and/or transnational perspective, is abortion (Ferree et al. 2002). In the three countries that are the focus of our research – Poland, Germany and France – relatively little is known about the processes of transnationalization of women’s struggles within the periods under investigation (1900–1930 and 1980–2005). For the Polish case, especially, literature is scant.47 For Germany, a particularly interesting work for our research is a study on Jewish women’s associations as a part of the European women’s movement (Grandner and Saurer 2005). There are, however, no comparative, historically informed case studies on the three countries. The Jewish struggle for recognition – even more than the case of women – appears as a kind of prototype for transnational mobilization (Diner 2003: 249). First of all, most of the literature on the history and contemporary problems of the Jewish communities refers to the national or sub-national level.48 Special emphasis is given to the history of discrimination and annihilation of the Jewish minorities in the middle third of the twentieth century – the phase of dictatorship in several countries and the two encompassing wars.49 Hence we already have a sizeable body of knowledge on the structure, organization, and programmatic tendencies (for a good example, see Pickhan 2001)50 of Jews as a group and as part of the respective national societies in each of three countries under scrutiny. Literature is scant51 on Jewish struggles for social and cultural rights. Analyses of these actions and reactions as struggles for recognition are completely lacking. Most studies interpret struggles for equal rights as predominantly negative battles against discrimination as defined by given legal standards. These studies tend to ignore the positive aspect of struggles for the recognition of difference.52 While available studies deal with the domestic framework of French, German and Polish Jewry, there is little comparative work on Jewish minorities in France, Germany or Poland.53 Studies on the historical processing of and compensation for the Shoah address the question of transnationalization.54 The present studies do not close the sometimes considerable gaps in research on the struggles for recognition by women and Jews. But they do address the struggles for social rights seldom treated as problems of recognition, comparing, among other things, Jewish resistance to increasing discrimination in the interwar years.

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 23

Theoretical Approaches, History and Concepts Dieter Rucht’s chapter opens this collection of articles on the transnationalization of struggles for recognition. He reflects on struggles for recognition in three different and thus far largely disconnected arenas of discourse: (a) that of the collective activists engaged in protest groups and social movements, making demands for recognition and justice; (b) that of social movement scholars studying these phenomena; and (c) that of social and moral philosophers who engage in theoretical debate about the dimensions and value bases of recognition, and the procedures for ensuring justice. Rucht presents examples of struggles for and debates around recognition in these three areas; he exposes the limits and blind spots of the discourses in each respective arena, underscoring the need to institutionalize rights of recognition and the importance of fostering public deliberation on demands for recognition. Rucht argues that the actors in all three arenas should make an effort to widen their horizons and learn from one another. In so doing, they could considerably reduce the blind spots in the respective sphere of discourse. Two groups in particular are in a relatively advantageous position for stimulating debate across the three fields of discourse: namely, the so-called ‘organic intellectuals’ and the social movement scholars researching demands and calls for recognition and justice. Whereas this kind of crossover approach may not necessarily result in consensus, it can nevertheless contribute to a better and more comprehensive understanding of why people engage in struggles for recognition and how they justify their claims. How much does Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition contribute to the explanation of transnational movements? Volker Heins takes critical stock of Honneth’s model, pointing to its potential as well as to its limitations. Heins emphasizes the advantages to be gained from Honneth’s theory of recognition over other theories that explain protest and opposition to political institutions primarily as a consequence of rational decisions or deviant behaviour; he calls Honneth’s theory ‘arguably the most elaborate and sophisticated version of a critical theory of recognition’. Honneth focuses on the causal connection between public debate, deeply ingrained social behaviour, and the suffering of entire groups, which ultimately drives them to protest against systems of injustice. Heins sees a parallel between Fanon and Honneth, in that neither of them perceived the road from disregard to liberation without ‘struggle’. Heins’ criticism of Honneth is twofold. First, he claims that Honneth’s model fails to explain under what conditions those marginalized through

24 • Dieter Gosewinkel

disregard or contempt would engage at all in the battle for recognition, and it fails to tell us what social factors are in play that lead to moral sentiment becoming political power. Second, Heins argues that Honneth relies too greatly on an overly harmonious notion of struggle. However, contrary to Honneth’s ideals, struggles are directed not only at recognition within existing value and norm systems, but they are also aimed at overcoming these systems altogether. Two examples of this are given in the revolutionary struggle of Malcolm X and in today’s transnational movements that seek to overcome national normative systems and gain recognition not from their own respective national communities but from the international community.

The Cases of Women and Jews Part II of this volume is devoted to empirical studies of the transnational struggles of Jews and women in the course of the twentieth century. Tobias Metzler opens this section with reflections on the transnationalization of modern Jewish history and its discontents. Post-emancipation Jews faced the challenge of reconciling strains of ethnic solidarity with the idea of national citizenship, which resulted in complex and contesting reconceptualizations of Jewishness. The activities of European Jewish organizations emerging in the final decades of the nineteenth century offer unique insights into the intricate relationship between nationalizing and transnationalizing tendencies in modern Jewish history. The aid work coordinated and conducted by the French Alliance Israélite Universelle and its British partner organization, the Anglo-Jewish Association, on behalf of their coreligionists in Eastern Europe and around the Mediterranean reveals the intrinsic ambiguities of their transnational agendas. Their entanglement in the colonial project and the yearning to demonstrate their allegiance to their respective home countries repeatedly clashed with the idea of ethnic solidarity, and underscores the arduous path towards conceptualizations of Jewish identities beyond the framework of the nation-state. Originally established on the basis of universalist principles rooted in the tradition of republicanism, the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) was increasingly drawn into the maelstrom of European colonial policy and competing nationalisms. The secession of its British branches, coinciding with the Franco-Prussian War which plunged the AIU into a major organizational crisis, was an early indicator of this development. Although officially perpetuating the same universalist principals, the

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 25

creation of the Anglo-Jewish Association (AJA) paved the way towards two intertwined strains of development: the stronger association of transnational Jewish activities with the national framework, and the subsequent introduction of aspects of national competition into the joint endeavours to pursue a policy directed at promoting the status of Jews on the European periphery. The ambivalent ‘making’ of the Oriental Jew, serving as core foundation for their transnational agenda, placed European Jewish organizations within the context of European colonialism. The creation of their eastern brethren as ‘Other’ and the call for their ‘regeneration’ through Western education, not only underscored the close affinity between European Jewish transnational activities and colonial ideology, but also undermined the idea of ethnic solidarity propagated by both organizations. The colonial infrastructure of their respective home countries, moreover, served as an essential precondition for setting up a transnational network of Jewish schools, with curricula mirroring those utilized in French and British institutions of learning. Over time, transnational Jewish organizations were increasingly dragged into the national competitions characterizing colonial policy. This tendency found expression in the disputes over the languages of instruction and in competing national outlooks on ‘Western values’ to be disseminated through educational institutions. While the line between Jewish and French/British interests became increasingly blurred, the demarcations between Anglo-Jewish, Franco-Jewish and later German-Jewish perspectives were drawn up with growing vigour. The fact that representatives of indigenous Jewish populations came to see their Western brethren more and more as advocates of French or British interests, and less as fellow Jews, is yet another indication of the trend towards the renationalization of European Jewish organizations at the onset of the twentieth century. Drawing primarily on the organizations’ records and publications, this chapter reconstructs these complex entanglements and the ambivalent shifts underpinning the attempts of Jewish NGOs to reconcile national with transnational stipulations. Emmanuel Deonna’s contribution also concentrates in the interwar period. He investigates the transnationalization of struggles for recognition from the perspective of the diplomatic fight for minority rights for Jews. Deonna deals with institution building, in particular the development and impact of the main transnational organization for Jewish recognition struggles in the interwar period, namely, the World Jewish Congress (WJC). He assumes a basic paradox underlying any transnational organization serving national and ethnic interests, which he takes the

26 • Dieter Gosewinkel

WJC, in conjunction with the ideology of the Zionist movement, to represent. He focuses on the barriers that constrained the efforts to organize the Jewish struggle for rights transnationally. In addition to the political downfall of the minority system in the League of Nations, such barriers included, above all, internal resistance, particularly among the already endangered German Jewry. Jewish organizations in Germany felt that the boycott of German goods called for by the WJC left them under pressure from the Nazi regime, whereas German Zionists emphasized that consideration should be given to interest convergence between them and the Nazis. Although the WJC in France was initially successful in founding its first national subsidiary organization there, the French delegates came under the increasing pressure of anti-Semitism, and began to distance themselves from impecunious, political leftist Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. In the United States, focus was on the integrationist–Zionist split among American Jews, which hindered the activities of the WJC; at the same time, support for the German and Polish Jewish minorities was gradually becoming the primary concern of the WJC over the course of the 1930s. Thus the transnational organizational form of the WJC contributed to minimizing ideological splits between national Jewish communities, to exercising political pressure on national governments, and to easing economic misery. The WJC was also the platform for debate among increasingly forceful integrationist currents within the Jewish rights movement. Whereas the assumption may be generally valid for transnationally engaged civil society networks that they alleviate integration in a nation-state context, clearly ethonational diasporal groups are an exception in this regard. The development of the World Jewish Congress in the interwar period was characterized by growing ethnic particularism. In accordance with Nancy Fraser’s theory, this demonstrates the extent to which struggles for equality and difference go hand-in-hand in the battle for recognition, and it shows the importance of that connection as a powerful impetus propelling the process of transnationalization. Gertrud Pickhan continues with a study of the ‘Bund’ (the General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia), the largest Jewish socialist party in Poland during the interwar period. The Bund fought its battle for recognition on three fronts: first, recognition as a party for the general Jewish population, not just the genuinely Jewish socialist milieu; second, recognition as a party within the Polish national spectrum, which meant the integration of a Jewish socialist group into Poland’s socialist movement; and third, recognition as a member of the Socialist International. This three-dimensional aspect – with an

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 27

ethnic, a national, and an international component – is what sets the struggles for recognition apart in Poland, in the field of tension created by multiethnicity and transnationalism. As a Jewish group, the Bund fought for the Jewish community (the meshpokhedikeyt family) and against Polish anti-Semitism on a national scale; as a socialist party and an association for Polish citizens, it fought for a rightful position in Poland’s socialist movement; as a part of the Socialist International, it fought for transnational solidarity in the workers’ movement, especially as regards the international anti-fascist struggles going on in Austria and in Spain during the Civil War. The Bund’s solidarity with the Socialist International went so far that a right-wing Zionist-nationalist group within the Bund’s socialist camp actually refused to participate in a public rally and demonstration together with that organization. The ‘otherness’ of the Bund and its struggle for recognition in a multiethnic environment in the interwar period serve as a preindication of the complex battles for recognition in our own times today, which defy the duality of national and transnational concerns. Claudia Kraft examines the struggles for recognition of women and the processes of transnationalization from the perspective of the women’s movement in Poland in the twentieth century. Her underlying assumption is that there is a relationship of tension between women’s struggles and transnational processes. This derives from the fact that the nation-state is the essential guarantor of rights for its citizens, on the one hand; but that the transnationalization of struggles for recognition exerts pressure on nation-states to increase or expand those rights, on the other. In her three-part chronological march through twentieth-century Polish history, Kraft considers, first, the period leading up to and then following the First World War, when Poland gained its independence; this is a good example of a period when national and transnational struggles for recognition took place in parallel arenas. Polish women fought for women’s rights in transnationally organized associations, but as citizens of Germany, Russia or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before Polish independence. With the drafting of the constitution and the establishment of the Second Polish Republic, the political equality of women was codified; but in the area of civil rights, the traditional ‘motherhood’ role model continued to dominate. The second phase of Polish history that Kraft examines is that of the socialist republic after 1945. In this period, the year 1968 had a key role as the pivotal point in the debates on recognition. Before 1968, the debates on gender justice in Eastern and Western Europe had many points of convergence; on both sides of the Iron Curtain, in a myriad of similar ways, reform measures were designed to demonstrate the

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achievement of modernity and social progress. After 1968, the demand for universal human rights and national sovereignty began to dominate the reform discourse of dissident circles in Eastern Europe. Only a few individual Polish feminists recognized the relationship of tension between distribution and recognition in the social struggles of women. In the West, the new feminist movement conceptualized injustice not just in terms of the class struggle but also as a gender problem. The difference between struggles for recognition and the fight for more equal distribution, stressed by Nancy Fraser, gradually began to receive stronger political emphasis. The third period of history Kraft discusses begins with the run-up to the Wende and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. At this time and subsequently, women’s struggles for the recognition of their rights were subsumed under a broader movement to establish and expand civil society. The concept of civil society, like that of gender justice, is an example of a travelling concept that does not halt at the borders of political systems or nations. In Eastern Europe, ‘civil society’ as a concept of struggle remained deeply gendered, although it had been redefined in the 1980s. The notion was also genuinely transnational in the sense that it was a crucial part and shaping element of transnationalism. And, precisely for that reason, the notion is attacked by Polish actors today, who want to defend the traditional national gender order against transnational influences. This shows the asynchronic and interrupted development of women’s rights in struggles for recognition. As the political rights of women gradually increased, the basic principle of gender equality began to slip more and more into the background. Helen Schwenken spans the arch to present-day women’s struggles for recognition in her study devoted to the transnational organization of domestic workers, a highly ‘feminized’ occupational group. Her starting point is the adoption of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers in 2011. Domestic workers often belong to groups like immigrant workers or other historically disadvantaged, socially marginalized peoples like the Dalits in India; they often fight against discrimination without having identity documents or citizenship rights in their respective countries of residency. Schwenken raises the question of how, in just three short years, despite the large geographic scope and national/ethnic heterogeneity of this occupational group, they were able to organize and achieve adoption of the ILO Convention. Using a context-oriented method based on the notion of political opportunity structures (POS), Schwenken hypothesizes that transnational organization and the building of strategic coalitions are

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 29

the basis of the rapid success of the domestic workers. In contrast to assumptions in the literature, the movement also gained strength in a region of relatively little political integration – South America. At work, here, were experienced activists from the international labour movement who functioned as ‘bridge builders’. The more the stronger domestic workers were organized nationally and regionally, the more they became engaged in the global campaign. In view of the low level of organization and the high level of regional disparity within the movement, achieving institutional power was essential for their success. This meant forming a strategic coalition with internationally organized labour unions within the ILO, and the creation on their own of legal opportunity structures in the form of an ILO convention. What they managed to do was to overcome centuries-old discriminatory structures; this is illustrated, for instance, in the abolishing of the term ‘servant’ in favour of the term ‘worker’. This achievement in the struggle for recognition joins the economic dimension to the cultural one; the recognition and codification of rights for domestic workers is, at the same time, an act of retribution for historically suffered injustice that began with the epoch of slavery and colonialism. According to Schwenken, this once again illustrates the close connection emphasized by Nancy Fraser between struggles for material (re)distribution and struggles for cultural recognition. Through the declaration of their rights, domestic workers went from being ‘impossible’ subjects to ‘possible’ ones who gradually achieved access to overall rights as workers. According to Schwenken, through the connection to other movements struggling as transnationally engaged unions for workers’ rights, or as feminist associations for gender justice, the domestic workers’ movement achieved the opportunity to codetermine and have a say in the codification of their rights over the negotiation table in Geneva.

Enlarging the Scope Part III of this volume comprises a set of studies that expand the empirical framework beyond the struggles for recognition of European women and Jews. We want to enlarge both the thematic and spatial scope so as to strengthen the aspects of cultural diversity, global extension and symbolic representation of struggles for recognition. Holger Nehring shifts the thematic focus with his examination of the struggles for recognition of the West European peace movement during the Cold War period. The activities of the peace movement seem to represent a paradigm case of the recognition struggle. The aim of the movement

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was peace, that is, non-violence, civility, and mutual respect among states. Unlike other timeless studies, Nehring’s empirical examination does not rely on the assumptions of rational discourse (Habermas) or natural values theories of recognition. Instead he calls for a consequent, systematic historicization of the concept of recognition; he underscores this position, using the example of the peace movement, by attempting to show us the extent to which the concept of recognition itself is historically constructed and controversial, and therefore in no way a fixed notion. What becomes clear is that the peace activists themselves understood their primary political aim as a temporary one; at the same time, they had humanistic and idealistic aims. The transnational global community imagined by the peace activists mirrored itself in the metaphysics of a world-embracing family. On closer inspection, however, this rhetoric served a multitude of particular as well as national aims in the United Kingdom, just as it did in the Federal Republic of Germany – for example, the defence of the peace mission of an enlightened British Empire, or the national sovereignty of occupied Germany. The self-victimization of the peace activists went so far as to reverse the role of the victim: the perpetrators of former Nazi Germany became the victims of a potential nuclear war. Within the peace movement women were fighting their own battle for recognition; they protested not only against the nuclear threat, but also against a ‘masculine’ form of politics seething with ‘technocratic necessity’ and ‘rationality’. At that time, this struggle for the recognition of feminine diversity and self-determination led to a clear delineation by women activists against men and their non-recognition. According to Nehring, this is precisely the reason why it is necessary, beyond any essentializing, to temporalize and historicize struggles for recognition The peace movement in the Cold War period (like the writings of Hegel at the time of the French Revolution) was shaped by the massive physical violence of the preceding epoch, and therefore more strongly influenced by these events than the mere metaphorical use of violence on Honneth’s reading of struggles for recognition permits. The peace movement fought not only entirely for recognition of its own definition of the nuclear threat; within the movement, it also fought over the correct definition of recognition. Finally, the peace movement’s struggles for recognition cannot be easily ordered in accordance with national–transnational duality. The motives and actions of the peace activists were shaped by their specific national contexts more strongly than they were aware; at the same time, however, their motives and actions were directed towards the global problem of peace for humankind. In this way, the peace movement simply dissolved the borders between the categories, local, national, and global, rather than struggled to overcome them.

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 31

Martin Fuchs attempts a twofold expansion of the perspective on recognition struggles in his contribution. First, he shifts from recognition of equality to recognition of difference. Second, he switches from Europe as the focal point to a non-European context, namely, the struggles of the Dalits in India. His main contention is that it is not sufficient to think about social recognition in terms of formally autonomous social actors; instead, the ‘reciprocal’ character of recognition must be acknowledged more seriously than is often done. For example, the right to be different is of paramount importance to the Dalits. Formerly, Dalits belonged to the so-called ‘untouchable’ caste of India, whose shared experiences have comprised over two thousand years of economic, political, social, cultural and religious discrimination. Regardless of political measures taken to counter these practices, the social discrimination, stigmatization and humiliation of Dalits continue today. This uniform and concerted ill-treatment makes it appear as though the Dalits were a uniform group; in reality, however, the group is socially highly differentiated and diverse. Fuchs finds that Honneth’s theory of recognition can be basically applied to cases of systematic group-related disregard, like that experienced by the Dalits. However, unlike Honneth’s assumption of a connected community of values, Fuchs stresses the inescapability of the tension between a necessarily particularist common good and the universality of moral principles. According to Fuchs, Honneth arrives at a dual-level universalism in which social recognition defines the universal premise of human existence, while humankind requires the achievements of specifically Western social philosophy, including nationalism and liberalism, to establish a universalistic pattern of full-fledged recognition. But what conditions of reciprocity are the prerequisites of recognition and for recognition in a social environment characterized by the greatest possible diversity of cultural reference and values, as is the case in India? Martin Fuchs emphasizes the fact that mutual respect will not be guaranteed through mere formal legal recognition; mutual respect requires, instead, social recognition, in Nancy Fraser’s sense, and it is granted according to context by very different ‘others’. Recognition, as an essentially intersubjective relationship, is characterized by a high degree of diversity in its various forms. Highly different forms of idiomatic articulation and language of recognition stand side-by-side – for example, Christian, Islamic and Buddhist. These different idioms can compete or conflict with one another without a uniform system of values ever being established. The different value systems are also not equivalent in view of the power relationships and contexts that underlie them. According to Fuchs, the struggle of the Dalits for recognition is an example of a specific concept of universalization, which, in turn, shows the necessity

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for permitting the validity of a plurality of universal concepts. This kind of plurality accepts difference in terms of different notions of selfrealization, different normative orders, and different cultural contexts; it requires us to abandon any ideas we may have had of some predefined sequence of steps taking us from universalisms to increasing abstraction. Rather, on this view, universalisms grow out of particularist value communities, tending to transcend those communities but without being able to completely shed the contextual links to them. To recognize each other’s ethical universalisms requires intersubjective and intercultural recognition and reciprocity. In the final chapter of this volume, Thomas Olesen opens up a global perspective on solidarity movements engaged worldwide. He poses the following key questions. Does the demonstrable similarity between global struggles for recognition and global solidarity movements imply that standing for global solidarity is an indication that some global civil sphere exists? To what extent are global solidarity activists both users and creators of a global society? Olesen builds his thesis on Gregory Alexander’s concept of a global civil sphere. In accordance with Durkheim, Olesen assumes that our social lives are based decidedly on symbols beyond the spatiotemporal carriers of cultural values and norms. Accordingly, he takes symbols of global injustice to signify the emergence of a global civil sphere. Olesen analyses symbols that are relevant for the development of universal values, human rights, and democracy. This corresponds to the visions of solidarity activists, who universalize such symbols in order to obtain the greatest possible resonance for their particular problems. Solidarity activism can thus be defined as collective moral-political activities aimed at publicizing and ultimately ameliorating the unjust suffering of others collectively. Solidarity activists are not considered to be driven by interests, but rather by indignation at the unjust suffering of others. These ‘others’, measured on a scale of global solidarity, are, physically speaking, ‘distant others’; moral-politically speaking, however, they are close. Global solidarity activists are the carriers and the beneficiaries of an emerging global civil society; that is, global solidarity activism is enabled by the presence of a global civil sphere, but this sphere, conversely, is also maintained and further developed through such action. For Olesen, the symbols of global injustice, on which global solidarity movements draw, are connected to events or situations, prominent individuals, and visual media. These symbols are characterized by four features. First, their substantive content tends to be universalized and devoid of any concrete historical background, so that they can be

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 33

applied to new situations. Second, the creation and establishment of global symbols is a function of targeted agency and conducive, external conditions. Global symbols are not only the result of global solidarity activism, they are also the starting point or reference point for it, as the universal symbolizing of Nelson Mandela so exemplarily illustrates. Global symbols are social constructs which are often politically controversial and which can have different impacts in different regions of the world. In general, however, symbols of global injustice are directed towards a global public beyond specific national settings. Such symbols of injustice are a sign and a constituent element of an emerging global society. The concept of global society therefore arises from civil society and public sphere research constructed on a global dimension. In contrast to existing research, which focuses especially on the institutions and organizations of global society, here – in accordance with Durkheim’s theory – Olesen focuses on the cultural dimension of an emerging global society, framing it in terms of global symbols of injustice. By concentrating his attention on solidarity as one of the values captured in global symbols, Olesen can explain more precisely the relationship between global activists and the symbols they use: ‘Activists “produce” global symbols of injustice, and global symbols of injustice “produce” [or enable] action’. Nevertheless, concrete engagement for reasons of solidarity, as an especially politicized – and therefore also particular – form of struggle for recognition, is only partially consistent with the universal logic of a global society.

Notes   1. The concept owes a great deal to Eric Hobsbawm (1994).   2. On conceptual shift: Wehler 2000; Hoffmann 2003.  3. Osterhammel (2009: 1180): on the importance of law as the most important medium of transcultural processes of civilization even before religion; Wesel 2010: 475.   4. On current processes of juridification: Wolf 1993; Teubner 1997; Zürn and Zangl 2004; Kreide and Niederberger 2008; Schulze 2010; Pfeil 2011.  5. Action (also violent); strike, demonstration, journalistic protest – see Moore (1978) and Thompson (1978).   6. On this ‘idealistic’ element, with which ‘moral impulses’ and the ‘moral process of educating the human mind’ (Hegel) are stressed, see Honneth (1992: 12).  7. Up to the ‘life and death struggle’ in Hegel (1969: 212); see Kojève (1975: 284–86).   8. Referring to this, see Ther (2012).   9. E.g., in nationalistic associations and militaristic veterans’ associations, which in ‘uncivil’ fashion often pursued violent goals and applied strict exclusion criteria; see in general: Trentmann 2000; Berman 2006.

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10. The project, carried out by Bo˙zena Choluj (Warsaw), Zdzislaw Mach (Cracow), Jacques Ehrenfreund (Lausanne), Dieter Rucht (Berlin) and Dieter Gosewinkel (Berlin), and headed by the latter two at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), in the framework of which seven doctoral projects have been supported in Poland, Germany and Switzerland, was sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation (Hanover). Participants in the project express their heartfelt thanks for this support. The author also wants to express his gratitude to the Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Recht als Kultur’, Bonn, for inviting me as a fellow in 2016. 11. For greater detail see below under Struggles for Recognition. 12. Summing up this traditional comparison: Münch 2001. 13. By contrasting transnationalization and internationalization according to different kinds of actors we prefer – for reasons of analytical clarity – a social science perspective to a historiographical understanding of the terms; see Patel (2008: 72–74), which emphasizes the historical meaning of international/ internationalization in the nineteenth century not differentiating between state and non-state actors. 14. On application to the Indian context, see Martin Fuchs, ‘Recognition across Difference: Conceptual Considerations against an Indian Background’, in this volume. 15. With reference to G.H. Mead. 16. In this I agree with Axel Honneth in the debate with Nancy Fraser. 17. Taylor 1977; idem 1993: 13–78 (25). Critical of Taylor’s theory: McNay (2008); with a plea for a ‘politics of acknowledgement’ instead of a ‘politics of recognition’, see Markell (2003). 18. On Hegel’s affirmation of the French Revolution, see Avineri (1976: 190). 19. Interpretation Honneth (1992: 84), with reference to Hegel (1969: 213–42). 20. On the aspect of the liberal model of society as the reason for the actuality of Hegel’s recognition theory, see Anderson (2009: 7, 191). 21. I take over this critique from Honneth (1992: 235, 237, 241). 22. See Honneth (1992: 250–54); for a positive view of the ‘juridical reality’ that emerges in Hegel from the reality established in the struggle for recognition, see Kojève (1975: 286, 288). 23. On a different existential philosophy reception of Hegel, see Kojève (1975); on the history-of-ideas context, see Markell (2003). 24. See the brief overview: Zurn 2009; O’Neill and Smith 2012; an influential example: Taylor 1992. 25. Particularly since in the interwar period from 1917 there was a transition of a Bolshevist dictatorship. 26. On Fraser’s theory of justice, see Lovell (2007). 27. On cultural rights as demands for freedom and equality, see Britz (2000). 28. On the necessary link between the struggle for ‘unfulfilled claims to freedom’ and a ‘transnationally committed public’, see Honneth (2011: 622, 624). 29. See, e.g., Torp (2005: 43). 30. See, e.g., Torp (2005: 27) with reference to Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto. 31. For a discussion on the many reasons for the rise of global history, see Sachsenmaier (2011: 11–58, for Germany 126ff.) 32. For an introductory overview of the variants of transnational history (connected history, Transfergeschichte, histoire croisée, Verflechtungsgeschichte,

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 35

Translokalität und Globalgeschichte), see Budde, Conrad and Janz (2006) and Pernau (2011). 33. For overviews: Wendt (2007); Sachsenmaier (2011); single studies: e.g. Tilse (2011). 34. See the editions by Michael Werner, Michel Espagne, Matthias Middell and others in 1993 and the following years. 35. See also the series of articles at the ‘Humanities: Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte’ (H-Soz-u-Kult) website, (accessed 15th August 2016). 36. On the varieties of the ‘internationalization of societies’, of which transnationalization is a special form, see Pires (2008: 119–69). See also Vertovec (2009). 37. For example, recent studies on the conditions of transformation for formerly authoritarian regimes after 1990 and the importance of social, economic and technological ties with the West (Levitsky 2010). 38. Guidry, Kennedy and Zald 2000; a collection of important texts: Lipschutz 2006; Olesen 2011. 39. See, e.g.: Berkovitch 1999; Hesford and Kozol 2005; Ferree and Tripp 2006; Bose and Kim 2009; Dufour, Masson and Caouette 2010; Román-Odio and Sierra 2011. 40. Several threads of research will serve as backdrops but will not be discussed in detail here: comparative studies on women’s movements (e.g. Rucht 1994; Banaszak, Beckwith and Rucht 2003; Miethe and Roth 2003); literature on the impacts of globalization on women, such as ‘gender discrimination in a globalizing world’ (e.g. Ruppert 2001) or ‘globalization from a feminist point of view’ (e.g. Appelt and Sauer 2001); general literature on the history of the women’s movement in West Germany (e.g. Frevert 1986), France (e.g. Perrot 1998; Perrot and Duby 1991, 1992) and Poland, as well as general literature on the history of women in Europe (e.g. Bock 2000; Wischermann 2003), and comparisons between the old and the new women’s movements (Holland-Cunz 2003), literature on women’s movements and international relations (e.g. Braig and Wölte 2002), and studies on the institutionalization of gender politics in international and European politics (e.g. Wobbe 2001). 41. E.g., Ruf 1996; Scheub 2004. See also the Heinrich Böll Foundation conference on ‘Women’s Politics from a Global Perspective – International Policy Processes and Women’s Activism’, November 1999. 42. E.g., foot binding in China or genital mutilation in Africa; see Keck and Sikkink (1998). 43. Works in this third category include, for example, Rupp’s work on the making of an international women’s movement (Rupp 1997). See also: Boxer and Quataert 2000; Gubin, van Molle and Beyers 2005, Anderson 2009. 44. Zimmermann (2002), for example. 45. A similar branch of literature discusses problems that are also pressing in today’s transnational movements; for instance, tensions resulting from multicultural feminism (Grewal 1998) or the question of identity in transnational feminist movements (Rupp and Taylor 1999). 46. E.g., Schmackpfeffer (1999), Outshoorn (2004).

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47. In Poland, gender issues are among the newer fields of research – see: Choluj 1997; Kemlein and Walczewska 2001; Bues 2003; Augustynowicz 2003; and Kalwa 2003; for France, see Perrot and Duby 1992; Smith 1996; and McMillan 2001. While some historical volumes on East and Central European countries are available (e.g. Einhorn 1993; Lemke, Penrose and Ruppert 1996; Kemlein 2000; Kemlein and Walczewska 2001; Gehmacher, Harvey and Kemlein 2004; Lorence-Kot and Winiarz 2004, these publications do not deal with the history of transnational women’s groups; transnational connections of Polish women’s groups are mentioned only briefly (Urbaniak 1997; Fuchs 1999, 2003; Stycos, Wejnert and Tyszka 2002). 48. The national history of Jews in Germany (Erb 1993; Volkov 1994; Zimmermann 1997; Brenner and Myers 2002), France (Birnbaum and Abitbol 1990; Winock 2004) and Poland (Boyarin 1991; Tollet 1992; Mendelsohn 1981; Ury 2000; Tomaszewski 2002) throughout the twentieth century is well researched. Since 1986, the London-based journal, Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, has devoted its attention exclusively to the Jewish community in Poland. 49. For France, see Winock (2004); for Poland, see Engel (1996) and Gross (2001); on the debate, see Kowitz (2004), and on the Holocaust see Levy and Sznaider (2007). Recent studies also deal with the Jewish history and the discrimination of Jews after the Second World War (Kersten 1992; Szajnok 1992; AmbrosewiczJacobs and Orla-Bukowska 1998; Michlic-Coren 2000; Stola 2000; Kenney 2000; for France, see Taguieff 1987; Bergmann and Erb 1990). 50. Cf. also Melzer (1997). 51. Whereas some studies in legal history analyse the structures and aims behind the discrimination of Jews vis-à-vis their civil and political rights (see, for example, Pulzer 1992, Birnbaum and Katznelson 1995; Fink 2004 in international politics). 52. Some exception to this can be found in the works of Kaplan (1979), Gotzmann, Liedtke and van Rahden (2001), Judd (2003) and Steffen (2004). 53. Among the rare studies on the history of Jewry at the European level are: Battenberg 1990; Vital 1999; Gruber 2002; Slezkine 2004; Karády (2004). An even greater deficit is the lack of systematic research on transnational organization and mobilization. Calling for an analysis of both national and transnational processes in history, cf. Brenner 2004. Only some specific aspects are covered, such as Zionism (see, for example, Mendelsohn 1981; Nicault 1992; Birnbaum 2002; and Weinbaum 2003), images of Jews as an allegedly transnationally organized enemy (Weiss 1997), migration and Jewish migrants’ networks (for France, see Bauer 1974; Caron 1999; and Gastaut 2000), and struggles for recognition in the historical processing of and compensation for the Shoah. 54. See, e.g., Kroh 2006; Levy and Sznaider 2007; Sznaider 2008; Berg and Schaefer 2009; Sznaider and Levy 2010; and Platt 2012.

Introduction and Summary of Contributions • 37

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Sachsenmaier, Dominic. 2011. Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scheub, Ute. 2004. Friedenstreiberinnen. Elf Mutmachergeschichten aus einer weltweiten Bewegung. Gießen: Haland & Wirth. Schmackpfeffer, Petra. 1999. Frauenbewegung und Prostitution: über das Verhältnis der alten und neuen deutschen Frauenbewegung zur Prostitution. Oldenburg: BIS Verlag. Schüler, Anja. 2004. Frauenbewegung und soziale Reform: Jane Addams und Alice Salomon im transatlantischen Dialog, 1889–1933. Stuttgart: F. Steiner. Schultz, Lothar. 1972. ‘Rechtsgeschichte’, in C.D. Kernig (ed.), Sowjetsystem und Demokratische Gesellschaft. Eine vergleichende Enzyklopädie, Band V Personenkult bis Sozialpsychologie. Freiburg, Basle and Vienna: Herder, pp. 516–32. Schulze, Detlef Georgia (ed.). 2010. Rechtsstaat statt Revolution, Verrechtlichung statt Demokratie? Teil 1. Die historischen Voraussetzungen, Teil 2. Die juristischen Konsequenzen. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Siegrist, Hannes. 2006. ‘Geschichte des geistigen Eigentums und der Urheberrechte. Kulturelle Handlungsrechte in der Moderne’, in Jeanette Hofmann (ed.), Wissen und Eigentum – Geschichte, Recht und Ökonomie stoffloser Güter. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, pp. 64–80. ———. 2011. ‘Globalisierung des geistigen Eigentums in historischer Perspektive’, in Corinne Michaela Flick (ed.), Wem gehört das Wissen der Welt. Frankfurt am Main: Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, pp. 235–88. Slezkine, Yuri. 2004. The Jewish Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Smith, Paul. 1996. Feminism and the Third Republic: Women’s Political and Civil Rights in France 1918–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steffen, Katrin. 2004. Jüdische Polonität: Ethnizität und Nation im Spiegel der polnischsprachigen jüdischen Presse, 1918–1939. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Stola, Dariusz. 2000. Kampania antysyonistyczna w Polsce 1967–1968. Warschau: Inst. Studiów Politycznych. Stycos, J. Mayone, Barbara Wejnert and Zbigniew Tyszka. 2002. ‘Polish Women during Transition to Democracy: A Preliminary Research Report’, in Barbara Wejnert (ed.), Transition to Democracy in Eastern Europe and Russia. Westport, CT: Praeger, pp. 259–77. Szajnok, Bo˙zena. 1992. Pogrom Z˙ydów w Kielcach 4 lipca 1946. Warsaw: Bellona. Sznaider, Natan. 2008. Gedächtnisraum Europa. Die Visionen des europäischen Kosmopolitismus. Eine jüdische Perspektive. Bielefeld: Transcript. Sznaider, Natan, and Daniel Levy. 2010. Human Rights and Memory. Pennsylvania State University Press. Taguieff, Pierre-André. 1987. La force du préjugé. Paris: La Decouverte. Taylor, Charles. 1977. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1992. Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1993a. ‘Die Politik der Anerkennung’, in idem (ed.). Multikulturalismus und die Politik der Anerkennung. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, pp. 13–78. ——— (ed.). 1993b. Multikulturalismus und die Politik der Anerkennung. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer. Teubner, Gunther. 1997. Verrechtlichung – ein ultrazyklisches Geschehen [The Ultracycle of Juridification]. Munich: Institut für Staatswissenschaften.

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Ther, Philipp. 1998. Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene. Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945–1956. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ———. 2012. Die dunkle Seite der Nationalstaaten. Ethnische Säuberungen im modernen Europa. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Thompson, E.P. 1978. The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Tilse, Mark. 2011. Transnationalism in the Prussian East: From National Conflict to Synthesis, 1871–1914. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Tollet, Daniel. 1992. Histoire des Juifs en Pologne du XVIe siècle à nos jours. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Tomaszewski, Jerzy. 2002. ‘Between the Social and the National: The Economic Situation of the Polish Jewry, 1918–1939’, in Simon-Dubnow-Institute Yearbook 1, pp. 55–70. Torp, Cornelius. 2005. Die Herausforderung der Globalisierung, Wirtschaft und Politik in Deutschland 1860–1914. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Trentmann, Frank (ed.). 2000. Paradoxes of Civil Society. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Urbaniak, Danuta. 1997. Die Rolle der Frauen seit der Demokratisierung Polens. Frankfurt (Oder): Scrîpvaz-Verlag. Ury, Scott. 2000. ‘Who, What, When, Where, and Why Is Polish Jewry? Envisioning, Constructing, and Possessing Polish Jewry’, Jewish Social Studies 6(3): 205–28. Vellacott, Jo. 1993. ‘A Place for Pacifism and Transnationalism in Feminist Theory: The Early Work of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’, Women’s History Review 2(1): 23–56. Vertovec, Steven. 2009. Transnationalism. London: Routledge. Vital, David. 1999. A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Volkov, Shulamit. 1994. Juden 1780–1918. Munich: Oldenbourg. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich. 2000. ‘Die Zielutopie der “Bürgerlichen Gesellschaft” und die “Zivilgesellschaft” heute’, in Peter Lundgreen, Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 85–92. Weinbaum, Laurence. 2003. A Marriage of Convenience: The New Zionist Organization and the Polish Government, 1936–1939. Boulder, CO: Columbia University Press. Weiss, Yfaat. 1997. ‘Projektionen vom “Weltjudentum” – Die Boykottbewegung der 1930er Jahre’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte XXVI: 151–80. Wendt, Reinhard. 2007. Vom Kolonialismus zur Globalisierung. Europa und die Welt seit 1500. Paderborn: Schöningh. Wesel, Uwe. 2010. Geschichte des Rechts in Europa. Munich: C.H. Beck. Willetts, Peter. 1996. The Conscience of the World: The Influence of Non-Governmental Organisations in the UN System. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Winock, Michel. 1990. Nationalisme, antisémitisme et fascisme en France. Paris: Seuil. ———. 2004. La France et les juifs: de 1789 à nos jours. Paris: Seuil. Wischermann, Ulla. 2003. Frauenbewegungen und Öffentlichkeiten um 1900. Netzwerke – Gegenöffentlichkeiten – Protestinszenierunge. Königstein (Ts): U. Helmer.

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Wobbe, Theresa. 2001. ‘Institutionalisierung von Gleichberechtigungsnormen im supranationalen Kontext: Die EU-Geschlechterpolitik’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderband 41: 332–55. Wolf, Klaus Dieter (ed.). 1993. Internationale Verrechtlichung. Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus. Zimmermann, Mosheh. 1997. Die deutschen Juden: 1914–1945. Munich: Oldenburg. Zimmermann, Susan. 2002. ‘Frauenbewegungen, Transfer und Trans-Nationalität. Feministisches Denken und Streben im globalen und zentralosteuropäischen Kontext des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert’, in Hartmut Kaelble, Martin Kirsch and Alexander Schmidt-Gerning (eds), Transnationale Öffentlichkeiten und Identitäten im 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, pp. 263–302. ———. 2010. Grenzüberschreitungen. Internationale Netzwerke, Organisationen, Bewegungen und die Politik der globalen Ungleichheit. 17. bis 21. Jahrhundert. Vienna: Mandelbaum-Verl. Zurn, Christopher F. 2009. ‘Einleitung’, in Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch and Christopher Zurn (eds), ‘Anerkennung’, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Sonderband 21, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, pp. 7–24 (9). Zürn, Michael, and Bernhard Zangl. 2004. Verrechtlichung – Baustein für Global Governance? Bonn: Dietz (Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden).

Dieter Gosewinkel is Professor of Modern History at the Freie Universität Berlin and co-director at the Center for Global Constitutionalism at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) after conducting a research group on “Civil Society, Citizenship and Political Mobilization” (together with Dieter Rucht) at the WZB. His main interests are the history of modern Germany and France, European constitutional history, the history of citizenship and civil society. He has recently published Schutz und Freiheit? Staatsbürgerschaft in Europa im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert (Protection and Freedom? Citizenship in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Europe) (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2016).

Part I Concepts

Chapter 1

Struggles for Recognition Bridging Three Separated Spheres of Discourse

Dieter Rucht

Collective struggles for respect, recognition and justice date far back in history. Let it suffice to mention the slave revolts in the Roman Empire, the peasant wars in central Europe in the sixteenth century, and the revolutions in France and elsewhere from the eighteenth century onwards. Today, social and political struggles seem to be omnipresent. Aboriginal peoples, landless workers, ethnic minorities, lesbian/gay/ bisexual/transgender (LGBT) persons, unemployed youth, pensioners, care workers, asylum seekers, right-wing and left-wing radicals, various religious fundamentalists, and many other groups engage in collective and publicly visible struggles across the globe. They distribute flyers, collect signatures on petitions, organize marches, rallies and strikes, block traffic, occupy squares, and damage property. Some groups do not even shy away from injuring or killing others. Activists invest time, take risks, and, as a last resort, may even sacrifice their lives to promote their cause. In the face of this myriad of struggles, let us ask, why do people engage in such activities, and on what grounds do they justify their actions and, in part, their claims for recognition? One source for an answer to this question can be found in the utterances and documents of activist groups involved in social, economic, political and cultural struggles. After all, these groups are expected – and are usually willing – to explain why they act as they do, and on what they base their values, especially when the interests of other groups, the general public or the state are affected. Activists’ claims,

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explanations and justifications range from short slogans or condensed symbolic representations to speeches, declarations, and lengthy treatises. This varied material informs us about what, from the point of view of the activists, they want their audience to know, understand, accept, or actively support. Although an actor’s authentic voice is an important and valuable source for understanding the reasons for, and meaning of, his/her actions, it should not be taken completely at face value. Actors may be unaware or dishonest about some of their actual motives, views and values, especially when the social environment in which they express these views is, or is likely to be, hostile. Under such conditions actors are more likely to engage in strategic interplay with their supporters and potential allies, as well as with their adversaries, by selectively highlighting some aspects of their positions while downplaying others. Therefore, it is advisable to complement actors’ explanations with insights from two other areas of scholarship: (1) psychology and social science, which provide us with theories of collective action; and (2) ethics and social philosophy, which provide us with relevant theories of justice. Strikingly, these three areas within the discourse and corresponding reasoning are largely disconnected from one another. While collective action theorists are relatively attentive to what the actors say, the latter show little interest in the work or ideas of the former. Moral and social philosophers remain largely ignorant of the other two domains, and vice versa. Theories of collective action focus on why actors become engaged, by examining motives, incentives and aims. For the most part, however, this research pays little attention to the moral imperatives or value bases that actors evoke to justify their claims. Collective action theorists also remain largely oblivious to moral philosophers’ discourse on the determination and justification of rights in protracted conflicts. Conversely, most moral philosophers engage in debate about the foundations and procedures of recognition only among themselves; they tend to ignore what the theorists and carriers of collective action have to say. In this chapter, I attempt to bring these three areas within the discourse closer together, under the assumption that this will help us to find a more comprehensive answer to the twofold key question posed above. I argue that the concept of recognition can serve as a useful focal point across these three areas and across a variety of claims and justifications that are often presented under labels other than ‘recognition’. In the first three sections of this chapter, I discuss each area of discourse separately, but my central focus remains on the notion of recognition. In the fourth section I highlight the need to institutionalize rights of recognition and to foster public deliberation on the respective demands. In the final discussion

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and conclusion I argue that bridging these areas within the discourse will contribute to a better, more comprehensive, and more differentiated understanding of struggles for recognition.

Claims for Recognition in the Public Political Arena Many people feel uneasy or dissatisfied with their situation in society, but not all actively strive for change. Some interpret their situation as a matter of fate or the result of their own incompetence or lethargy. Others see no chance to overcome their deplorable situation because they feel powerless or lack resources, allies or advocates. Nevertheless, some still collectively fight back and revolt. Analytically speaking, there are three basic types of collective struggles or associated groups that we can distinguish. First, there are groups who try to maintain or even expand their privileged status and material conditions when challenged by critics. As a rule, they promote two kinds of arguments. One is that their favourable circumstances result from their own outstanding efforts, achievements, and comparatively high level of responsibility, and therefore their privilege is well deserved. The other argument is that their having a privileged status is ultimately beneficial to society at large because the privileged groups provide valuable leadership, expertise, resources, and the like. Second, there are groups who perceive themselves as, or who are indeed, exploited, deprived, marginalized, or discriminated against. They engage in struggles against those whom they blame for their miserable conditions. In justifying their collective protest, these groups usually refer to values such as humanity, dignity, equality, freedom and fairness. Third, some groups act as advocates on behalf of, or in collaboration with, those who are deprived. These groups usually cite the same values as those invoked by the disadvantaged groups, but they may also be driven by feelings of responsibility, solidarity, pity or guilt. The following subsections present concrete examples of collective claims for each of the three types of groups.

Defending Privileges In most cases, if the position of a privileged group is challenged, it will defend its position rigorously. In feudal societies of the past and in present-day authoritarian political systems, this defence has often rested purely on physical force with no, or at best symbolic, attempt to justify the status quo. In full-blown democracies and even in semi-democratic

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societies, disputes of this nature must be carried out to a reasonable extent in the discursive arena of an attentive and potentially critical public. In this regard, let us consider the discussion around Prussian voting rights between 1859 and 1918 (Kühne 1994). The voting system in Prussia that was installed in the wake of the revolutions in 1848–49 was modelled after the communal voting system in the German Rhineland area. That this particular model was chosen was not accidental. The system of franchise linked the weight of a vote to the amount of tax a voter paid. It allowed, for example, the wealthy Friedrich Alfred Krupp, owner of the biggest German enterprise at the time, to elect one-third of the members of the city council (Stadtrat) in Essen. The Prussian three-class franchise system (Dreiklassenwahlrecht) divided the state’s overall tax income into three equal parts, and divided eligible voters (males aged twenty-four and over) into three classes according to the amount of their tax contributions. Without going into details, and ignoring various modifications to the system over time, it allowed roughly 4 per cent of male taxpayers assigned to the first category of voters to elect the same number of representatives as the 80 to 85 per cent of male taxpayers assigned to the third category. In other words, a rich person had much greater voting power than a relatively poor one in determining the composition of the Prussian House of Representatives (Preußischer Landtag). Very poor people who were dependent on state subsidies (as well as all women) had no voting rights whatsoever. Given the egalitarian ideals of the American and French revolutions, and women’s suffrage already introduced in several countries, it comes as no surprise that socialist and liberal groups began to strongly criticize the Prussian three-class franchise system. This in turn provoked a reaction by system proponents. The defenders of the three-class franchise, stemming mostly from the wealthy classes of Prussia, did not confront their opponents in the streets because they could count on the police to repress demonstrators demanding universal suffrage; rather, the privileged defenders of the system countered the views and arguments of their challengers in numerous articles, speeches, and public debates. The main defence of the system was that, in terms of taxation, people contribute in differing degrees to the common good as epitomized in, and secured by, the state – an institution (so conceived, for example, by the German philosopher Georg W.F. Hegel) positioned above conflicting interests and parties (Hegel [1820] 1989). Accordingly, individual taxpayers should be differently weighted as regards their right to determine the political elite who would rule the country.1 From this point of view, it is quite evident that people who made no financial contribution to the state should rightfully be excluded from the franchise.

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The underlying worldview at that time was that of a ‘natural’ or ‘divine’ order based on a hierarchy of powers and rights, an assumption to be found not only among conservative theorists but also among classic liberals such as John Locke (Macpherson 1962, chapter 5). With regard to the franchise, the key was the iron link between economic power and political influence, which the empowered elites interpreted not only as natural, but also as functional and advantageous because wisdom and reason were ostensibly concentrated in the wealthy and well-educated classes.2 However, once the ideas of the Enlightenment began to spread – including concepts of democracy and citizenship, and the rise of socialist ideals – the ruling classes became aware that they had to make some concessions; thus the quest for political participation by the lower classes could not be completely ignored. Nevertheless, from the perspective of the elites, this desire for a greater say had to be curbed and tempered to maintain ‘order’. In the background to the debate over decoupling economic power (or, alternatively, the level of education) from voting rights loomed the more disturbing and potentially explosive question of the underlying reasons for economic inequality. This ‘social question’ (Pankoke 1970) was basically posed by socialist and communist groups who, unlike the liberal forces, criticized ownership of the means of production and excessive accumulation of other sources of wealth, concentrating it in the hands of the few. Whereas socialists questioned political and economic inequality, the conservatives defended it. The liberals sided with the conservatives in justifying economic inequality (and protecting private property in the means of production); but, along with the socialists, they rejected political inequality. As a result of this constellation of forces, universal and equal suffrage was eventually implemented in all representative democracies. At the same time, economic (material) inequality remained largely untouched, except for some distributional concessions made by conservatives and liberals from the late nineteenth century onwards to pacify the revolutionary zeal of parts of the political Left. In many parts of Europe, the nobility was able to secure its privileges, economic wealth and political influence. Whenever quests for greater economic equality came to the fore, particularly those based on strong anti-capitalist stances, liberals responded discursively in a way structurally similar to that of nineteenthcentury conservatives. Economic inequalities were interpreted as ‘deserved’. Nevertheless, one significant difference between liberals and conservatives should be emphasized. Conservatives in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries related inequality to a traditional order wherein privilege was perceived to be ‘naturally’ occurring. By contrast, liberals of former periods did not – nor do neoliberals in our own time

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– dismiss the idea of a natural order. Rather, they relate economic inequalities to different levels of ‘achievement’ against a backdrop of abstract and neutral market mechanisms. From a liberal perspective, economic inequalities should be redressed, if at all, through charitable donations from those who have performed better economically, rather than having benefited from being in a privileged position. Accordingly, today’s liberals reject calls for higher taxation of the rich, denouncing this as a ‘jealousy tax’ (Neidsteuer), which they claim is morally unfounded because it punishes those who have been more industrious than others in achieving economic success.

Acquiring Rights Most observable protest struggles and social movements are about rights not yet in place or rights that have been formally enshrined but ignored, rejected, or violated in practice. The call for justice is probably the most general common denominator of all such struggles. In this regard, it is important to highlight a historical watershed whose first signs became visible at the end of medieval times in the sixteenth century. Prior to that period, in what, with some reservations, might be classified as premodern3 times, insurgent groups like slaves, serfs and peasants claimed rights that were for the most part inherent in an older and in principle inviolable order. Insurgents in fact acknowledged the superior position of the powered elite, but they believed that those in power had deviated from the natural order by violating traditional rights (Schulze 1981: 193). Insurgents felt that their resistance was therefore legitimate; their aim to re-establish justice represented a return to an older system of rights. This was thus an implicit confirmation of the traditional order.4 With the beginning of modern times, the prevailing reference point for legitimating claims related to acts of disobedience was no longer a pre-existing – traditional or divine – order, but rather an imagined, yet to be fully realized new order towards which we are gradually evolving. According to the sociologist Reinhart Koselleck, the idea of making history was not possible before the French Revolution.5 The shift was from a given reality (gegebene Wirklichkeit) to a constructed reality (hergestellte Wirklichkeit), as the German sociologist Friedrich Tenbruck (1976) put it. This new order rests on the ideas of the freedom and equality of (potentially) all human beings, as enshrined in Article I of the Declaration of Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: ‘All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the

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right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness’.6 This wording reflects a truly revolutionary conception of modern natural law that could serve as a general value base for a great variety of groups who felt deprived or excluded from these rights. Among the disenfranchised were (or still are) slaves, indigenous peoples, workers, women, ethnic and religious minorities, prisoners, and LGBT people. It is important to stress that these rights not only formally guarantee equal treatment but, as an implication of the right to liberty and happiness, also guarantee ‘the right to be different’ as long as practices deviating from those of the mainstream do not unduly restrict the rights of other groups. Some recent examples of claims based on modern human rights include the claim to freedom of religion by Tibetan monks in China, the opposition by the liberal middle class to the authoritarian style of the Erdogan-led government in Turkey, the insistence of Jews in Poland on their right to practise ritual slaughter in meat production, the insistence of women in Afghanistan on their right to attend schools, the insistence by human rights activists on fair trials for political dissenters, the claim by refugees from Africa and the Middle East landing in Spain, Italy or Greece to the right of asylum, and the struggle by women’s groups in Germany for equal pay. In flyers, mission statements, and declarations, or when asked directly about the legitimacy of their claims, today’s civil society groups struggling for a cause refer to modern natural laws as codified in international and national declarations of rights, in constitutions, in national and international legislation, in judicial decisions, and eventually adopted or specified in executive directives, political party programmes, and the like. For example, Global Justice Movement activists addressed the ‘rights to land, citizenship, freedom, peace and equality’ in the initial Charter of Porto Alegre issued in January 2001. In that same document, they herald their ‘struggle for another world, a world without misery, hunger, discrimination, and violence, but in favour of the quality of life, justice, respect and peace’. Further, they stress ‘the principle that the human being and life are not commodities’ and they promote the ‘well-being and the human rights of everybody’ (Anand et al. 2004: 142–57).

Advocacy A third type of struggle for justice and recognition is carried on by advocacy groups who, though not deprived themselves, engage on behalf of others who may have no voice, no resources, or no means to

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defend their own interests and rights. A clear-cut case is when advocacy groups like Amnesty International fight against torture and other forms of mistreatment of prisoners. In a similar vein, middle-class feminists may launch campaigns against female genital mutilation, or against human trafficking and forced prostitution. Yet another example is that of union organizers and human rights activists from the Global North who blame employers and/or governments in the Global South for tolerating extreme forms of workforce exploitation, including child labour and egregious working conditions; or the International Labour Organization’s struggle against forced labour in the Global North and South. Members of advocacy groups can be driven by a variety of motives, ranging from feelings of pity to moral indignation and blatant outrage (Boltanski 2008). For the most part they are highly articulate and sophisticated in presenting their views and arguments. It is no accident that many advocacy group members work in the human services sector as medical doctors, teachers, priests, social workers, lawyers or journalists. They know their own rights and they know the rights of those on whose behalf they are engaged; they not infrequently cite phrases and articles from constitutions and laws or from religious tomes as justification for their demands. Some of these advocacy groups are still caught up in a kind of paternalistic spirit; wittingly or unwittingly they may trap their clientele in a state of dependency with their mentors, advisors and donors. Other groups seek to overcome this kind of asymmetric relationship by embracing the concepts of empowerment and self-help, as embodied, for example, in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals ([1971] 1989) or the ideals stressed by progressive NGOs engaged in development policies. In principle, advocacy groups have the advantage of a high degree of moral credibility because they define themselves as not acting for their own benefit, and they are generally so perceived.7 There are even cases of advocacy groups and individuals who deliberately expose (and criticize) their own privileges. For example, an initiative of wealthy people in Germany, the Vermögendeninitiative, has urged that they and their socioeconomic class be subject to higher taxation in an effort to alleviate the burden that the financial crisis has placed on deprived groups.8

Mixed Realities In reality, the three types of groups just outlined rarely exist in pure form. Unionized workers engaged in a labour dispute may be motivated mainly by the chance to obtain higher wages for themselves but, at the same time,

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act (and not just for strategic or rhetorical purposes) on behalf of nonunionized workers. A Western expert working for meagre remuneration in a sub-Saharan African development scheme may be driven mainly by ethical concerns but, at the same time, enjoy the social esteem he/she receives from colleagues, with a view to eventually acquiring a well-paid prestigious position in some international governmental agency. Often we find advocacy groups acting side by side with those they are fighting for; such is the case for many groups engaged in the struggle for the rights of immigrants, especially asylum seekers. Tensions are likely to arise among such mixed groups, resulting, among other things, from the interplay between employed and voluntary activists in social movement organizations, or the interaction between political advocates and the ‘concerned public’. Different conditions of life, different values, different priorities, and especially different strategies can produce internal conflicts and splits, even when the basic aims are undisputed. A telling case in point was the campaign to reduce the debts of poor countries on the occasion of the new millennium. Because of different conceptions, the campaign eventually resulted in a split between the northern-dominated, politically moderate Jubilee 2000 network, and the southern-based, more radical Jubilee South (Yang 2005). Jubilee South, referring to the colonial past, not only called for the cancellation of all debts but argued that the former colonizers from the Global North were morally and financially obligated to redress the Global South for the damages caused by colonialism and its consequences. A relatively successful case of a close cooperation between advocacy groups (partly also struggling to improve their own situation) and deprived groups was the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Progressive student groups, liberal and white-dominated civil rights associations, and black religious congregations worked hand in hand to abolish racial and other forms of discrimination. A highlight of this engagement was the so-called Freedom Summer campaign when more than a thousand mostly northern college students went to Mississippi in 1964 to register black voters and help end racial discrimination (McAdam 1988). It is interesting to have a closer look at one of the documents of this time, the Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), issued in New York City in 1962. This statement is a passionate collective plea for justice and recognition. Above all, it offers a critical analysis of the state of the contemporary world, serves as a reminder of the gap between proclaimed values and reality, and calls for intervention to create a better world. Although recognition is not mentioned in it explicitly, the document can be read as a demand for recognition, formulated primarily by advocates who engaged on behalf

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of those who had been deprived of their rights; nevertheless the authors also make it patently clear that they, too, have strong reasons to stand up for their own rights and ideals. A large part of the manifesto is devoted to identifying the fundamental problems of the time, including human degradation, racial bigotry, white American ethnocentrism at home and abroad, the industrial arms race, the perils of nuclear war, poverty and deprivation in the midst of an ‘affluent society’, depersonalization that reduces human beings to the status of things, uncontrolled exploitation which saps the Earth of precious physical resources, and the rise of a democracy without much in the way of public participation. While such a list of critiques and complaints can be found in many other documents and resolutions, the Port Huron Statement is somewhat special in three respects. First, the authors reflect on their own situation in two ways. They acknowledge their relatively privileged status: ‘We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit’. And they are also aware of the risks of overconfidence and the dangers of nonreflection that permit one to fall into banalities: In suggesting social goals and values, therefore, we are aware of entering a sphere of some disrepute. Perhaps matured by the past, we have no sure formulas, no closed theories – but that does not mean values are beyond discussion and tentative determination. A first task of any social movement is to convince people that the search for orienting theories and the creation of human values is complex but worthwhile. We are aware that to avoid platitudes we must analyze the concrete conditions of social order.

Second, in a section under the heading ‘Values’, the SDS declare and elaborate their moral principles and standards ‘in skeletal form’, beginning thus: ‘Making values explicit – an initial task in establishing alternatives – is an activity that has been devalued and corrupted. The conventional moral terms of the age, the politician moralities – “free world”, “people’s democracies” – reflect realities poorly, if at all, and seem to function more as ruling myths than as descriptive principles’. For the most part, the values invoked are a restatement of classical emancipatory, liberal, and humanitarian thought. For example, there is a positive reference to ‘freedom and equality for each individual, [and] government of, by, and for the people – these American values’ and to the declaration ‘all men are created equal’, which, however, ‘rang hollow before the facts of Negro life in the South and the big cities of the North’. We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love … Men have unrealized potential for self-cultivation,

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self-direction, self-understanding, and creativity. It is this potential that we regard as crucial and to which we appeal, not to the human potentiality for violence, unreason, and submission to authority. The goal of man and society should be human independence: … Human relationships should involve fraternity and honesty. Human interdependence is contemporary fact; human brotherhood must be willed, however, as a condition of future survival and as the most appropriate form of social relations. Personal links between man and man are needed, especially to go beyond the partial and fragmentary bonds of function that bind men only as worker to worker, employer to employee, teacher to student, American to Russian. Loneliness, estrangement, isolation describe the vast distance between man and man today. These dominant tendencies cannot be overcome by better personnel management, nor by improved gadgets, but only when a love of man overcomes the idolatrous worship of things by man.

The third way in which the Port Huron Statement stands out among similar treatises is that, rather than addressing or appealing primarily to the political elites, the authors instead call upon the members of their own generation, urging them to become self-active in the face of what they term an ‘outstanding paradox’, namely, that ‘we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present’. Their statement thus calls for an awakening, for developing alternatives, and for the creation of a ‘New Left’ that ‘must include liberals and socialists’ and that must strengthen contemporary social movements for peace, civil rights, civil liberties, and labour, which ‘have in common certain values and goals’. The Port Huron Statement of the SDS was the outcome of a collective authorship, although Tom Hayden had an unmistakably key role in drafting it. It represents an impressive example of a fairly detailed attempt to justify claims for recognition by expressly laying out violations of officially declared and stated principles and rights. Over the last centuries, many thousands of such statements of purpose have been presented by various social movement groups, but hardly any of them have been quite as comprehensive and well reflected as the Port Huron document.

Theories of Collective Contentious Action A valuable, though not always reliable source for identifying actors’ motives are their own declarations and explanations. But it is also a fact that actors are not always fully conscious of, or honest about, their motives. Therefore it makes sense to look at what theories of collective

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action might be able to tell us about actor motivation. Some of these theories move beyond the micro-level of individuals and add other explanatory factors by addressing the meso-level of groups, networks and organizations, or the macro-level of big societal structures. In part, theories beyond the micro-level also assume that groups, whatever their size, are emergent phenomena with their own logics, which cannot be wholly reduced to mere aggregations of individual behaviours. Rational choice theories, based on the assumptions of methodological individualism, focus on the micro-level. They explain all human activity as the result of an individual cost–benefit calculus which leads to concrete action only when, from the perspective of the individual, the benefit from the action outweighs its costs. More advanced and sophisticated versions of rational choice theories emphasize that individuals act under conditions of ‘bounded rationality’. This means that actors choosing among different options usually have only incomplete information about actual benefits and costs. In the domain of protest studies, the German sociologist Karl-Dieter Opp is one of the most prominent and ardent promoters of rational choice theory. Over the last two decades or so he has elaborated a comprehensive theory (Opp 2009), which has become more and more inclusive because it incorporates various other approaches – for example, resource mobilization, political opportunity, and collective identity – that have been developed outside and partly as a critique of individualcentred rational choice theory. Along with other proponents of advanced rational choice theory, Opp uses a broad notion of costs and benefits that also includes immaterial values and goods (Opp 1994). If, for instance, a religious believer acts against his/her own imminent desires in order to please God, so as to secure entry into Heaven, the expected benefit outweighs the immediate costs; therefore, the choice can be said to be rational. From this perspective, it is irrelevant whether or not an individual’s value base is well founded in terms of intersubjective reasoning and ethical concerns. Motives and reasons of whatever kind, be they greed or pity, are indiscriminately treated as incentives that are of interest only in so far as they are weighed against other costs and benefits. Opp pursues the ideal of a normatively indifferent and strictly ‘objective’ social science. The only access to motives and reasons is what an individual actor utters or expresses. The preferred methodological tool is the questionnaire survey, which usually ignores the possibility that interviewees tend to rationalize their decisions when asked about the reasons for their choices. It is therefore not necessary to distinguish on a conceptual or theoretical level between movements for different causes with different value bases, because the

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relevant unit of analysis, the individual, always operates according to the same basic principles regardless of his/her historical context. Other approaches to explaining collective action do not necessarily embrace the basic assumptions of rational choice theory; in fact, some of them explicitly reject these. First, micro-sociological theories of symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1986) are interested in representations of meaning, especially in the context of small groups, rather than considering an individual’s reasons and calculations. Like micro-sociological rational choice theories, they tend to be indifferent to the substantive causes that underlie social movements as regards the legitimacy of their claims and their value bases. Resource mobilization approaches, like micro-sociological rational choice theories, also emphasize the rational and instrumental aspects of social movement activities but move beyond the perspective of individuals’ attitudes, calculations and choices. Instead, these approaches concentrate on the organizational aspects of social movements; the units of analysis are composite.9 Unlike micro-sociological rational choice theories, resource mobilization approaches take into account different causes of social movements, which may have specific implications for the kind of resources, organizations, and forms of action that ensue. But such theories are also not attentive or sensitive to questions of legitimacy and, more particularly, to problems of recognition. The neglect of recognition can also be found in most macro-sociological theories applied to social movements, emphasizing, for example, largescale processes such as capitalization, state-building, urbanization and modernization (Tilly 1984). Here the central question is under what conditions social movements emerge and flourish, what forms and action repertoires they exhibit, and why. In other words, the focus is on the structural properties of whole societies (e.g. feudalism) and social movements (e.g. local, national, transnational), including those movements’ internal mechanisms (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001) and causalities in terms of emergence (e.g. structural strain, relative deprivation), and large-scale outcomes (e.g. democratization, cultural liberalization). Cultural approaches are difficult to subsume under a single and telling label; they do pay close attention to the values, claims and reasons of activist groups and organizations. This is particularly true for mesolevel approaches centred on aspects of identity, framing, morality, rights and recognition. Some scholars argue that cultural approaches focus on specific kinds of movements or protest groups, for example, moral crusades (Gusfield 1963) or identity-based movements (Polletta and Jasper 2001: 284–92); while other scholars argue that these aspects

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are part and parcel of every movement or protest activity, although to different degrees (Raschke 1985; Swidler 1986; Jasper 1997). Among the many historians studying social movements, Barrington Moore, for example, was extremely sensitive to the role of claimants calling for rights and justice, as evidenced by one of his key publications (Moore 1978). The same is true for E.P. Thompson who emphasized the role of the ‘moral economy’ that spurred many insurrections in England during the eighteenth century (Thompson 1971).10 Among contemporary sociologists, William Gamson, for example, has studied and analysed phenomena such as dealing with unjust authority (Gamson, Fireman and Rytina 1982) or the foundations of collective demands. He considered the ‘injustice frame’, complemented by the frames of ‘agency’ and ‘identity’, to be the key to social movement activity, arguing that ‘[c]ollective action frames are not merely aggregations of individual attitudes and perceptions but also the outcome of negotiating shared meaning’ (Gamson 1992: 11). Unlike other theorists pursuing the causes of unrest and rebellion, Gamson did not promote an all-encompassing general theory like Ted Gurr did with relative deprivation (Gurr 1970) or Karl-Dieter Opp with rational choice (see above); rather, he studied the more concrete and context-dependent content of political demands, framing and blaming. To the best of my knowledge, Gamson did not actually use the term ‘recognition’, but he dealt with the substance of it in many ways through his analysis of the conditions and processes of framing, cultural resonance, morality, racial discrimination, and affirmative action. James M. Jasper,11 another scholar of cultural phenomena who has emphasized the moral dimension of protest, also does not give the concept of recognition a prominent role in his research. Nevertheless, the underlying problems are clearly spelled out by Jasper when he discusses the cognitive and the emotional dimensions of the moral principles guiding collective action. Interestingly, Jasper goes even further than most of his colleagues by laying out a normative view in the last part of The Art of Moral Protest. He embraces Charles Taylor’s liberal understanding of freedom; he praises social movements struggling for ‘greater personal autonomy and political democracy’, and for ‘recognition of the essential equality of all humans, and of the basic individual rights this implied’ (Jasper 1997: 376). However, in spite of all its merits, Jasper’s cultural approach – dealing with recognition in a substantive manner – seems to be largely oblivious to ongoing moral and philosophical debates about struggles for recognition. Up to now, only one publication in the field of social movement studies has focused explicitly on the concept of recognition, namely, a collective volume edited by Barbara Hobson on struggles for recognition

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and social movements (Hobson 2003). Nonetheless, Hobson’s collected contributions do not offer us any elaborated theoretical framework. On the conceptual level, Hobson herself considers recognition and redistribution as dimensions of justice, but her understanding of struggles for recognition remains relatively vague. In her introductory piece to the volume she refers broadly to phenomena such as ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘identity politics’, and to ‘claims resulting from devalued statuses and misrecognized identities’ (ibid.: 1 and 4). She goes on to state the following: ‘We decided that to keep identity and identity formation as a core dimension in the politics of recognition does not inevitably lead to “identity politics”. Recognition struggles are about collective representations constructed around a shared identity that contest social hierarchies in arenas of power’ (ibid.: 15). Although she asserts that ‘not all social movement struggles are recognition struggles’, Hobson is not explicit about the nature of struggles that are unrelated to her understanding of recognition. On the empirical level, she argues that it is ‘impossible to separate out the bands of difference along the spectrum of claims for cultural justice and claims for economic justice’ (ibid.: 14). In accordance with Nancy Fraser who also contributed to Hobson’s volume (Fraser 2003), Hobson criticizes activists’ narrow understanding of identity vis-à-vis their broader claims about material (re)distribution; she points to ‘the dynamic interplay between claims to alter maldistribution and challenges to the devaluation of members of a group based on their identities’ (Hobson 2003: 1). Nevertheless, she does not go as far as Fraser, who promotes a ‘status model’ in sharp contrast to an ‘identity model’ (see below). Without going into Fraser’s critique in detail, Hobson interprets her own understanding of recognition as an extension of Fraser’s status model in two ways: ‘First, recognition outcomes are linked to recognition struggles and the mobilization of collective identities. Second, participation parity and citizen inclusion (Fraser’s norm for recognition justice) are dependent on political voice’ (ibid.: 15). The various case studies in the Hobson volume are essentially tied together with two concluding pieces, but neither of these epilogues elaborates the concept of recognition. Carol Mueller reviews the social movement literature on identity and framing with almost no attention to, or discussion of, the concept of recognition (Mueller 2003). Anne Phillips engages mainly in a discussion of Fraser’s concept, including Fraser’s critique of identity as a reified category. Phillips’ conclusions imply a thoughtful sceptical note to be borne in mind for future discussion on recognition: ‘Perhaps, we now need to be tougher on what is implied in the notion of recognition, more worried by what it threatens to validate, and less swayed by its initial appeal’ (Phillips 2003).

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Philosophical and Moral Theories on Struggles for Recognition Unlike social movement scholars, many philosophers and moral theorists have explicitly used and theoretically elaborated the concept of recognition, in part underscoring its long tradition. Obviously the meaning of recognition varies in different theoretical contexts, and the concept of recognition overlaps with a number of other relevant concepts such as justice, fairness, reciprocity and tolerance (Rucht 2011). An attempt to lay out the various and partly diverging understandings of all these terms would be far beyond the aim and scope of this chapter. Instead, I will focus on a few theorists who have deliberately used the term as a general concept, and/or applied it to various forms of struggles.

Axel Honneth Axel Honneth is among the few theoreticians who linked the concept of recognition to that of struggles, as evidenced in his work, Struggle for Recognition: On the Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts.12 As Dieter Gosewinkel points out in his introduction to this volume, Honneth’s core idea is relatively simple and straightforward, although he takes great pains to trace the concept back to the thoughts of forerunners, in particular the early writings of G.W.F. Hegel (Jenaer Schriften), who used the term and developed it as a concept, mainly with regard to individuals. Accordingly, Honneth distinguishes three forms of recognition, namely love (Liebe), legal norms (Recht), and – related to honour – esteem or merit (Wertschätzung). These ‘three equally ranking principles’ are not only relevant for the individual, but they also form the basis for social justice on the level of groups and, ultimately, society as a whole (Honneth 2004: 358). The corresponding forms of violation or disregard for these three forms of recognition are physical aggression/rape (Vergewaltigung), deprivation of rights (Entrechtung), and dishonour (Entwürdigung, Beleidigung). When such violations occur, they may produce a reaction – a form of resistance that, as a collective reaction, can manifest itself as a social movement. Contrary to many major academic circles within the field of sociology, which, according to Honneth, have reduced the motives for insurrection, protest and resistance to mere ‘interests’, Honneth claims that the disregard of moral norms forms the foundation for social struggles, including social movements (Honneth 2004: 225 and 259). He concludes,

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therefore, that the analysis of social struggles is dependent, in principle, on an analysis of the moral consensus that informally regulates the distribution of rights and obligations between the rulers and the ruled, in the spirit of mutually agreed societal cooperation (ibid.: 267). Without actually providing any evidential details, Honneth merely asserts that ‘recent tendencies within historical scholarship … can substantiate the link between moral disregard and social struggle’ (ibid.: 259).13 Honneth argues that the objective possibilities for individual and collective self-realization have grown enormously in modern societies. At the same time, recognition continues to be neglected or flatly rejected, thereby provoking struggles for recognition. In a historical perspective, the role of these struggles is far from marginal. In Honneth’s view, ‘these struggles, as a moral force within the social reality of the human, account for developments and progress’ (Honneth 2004: 227).14 Honneth is well aware of not being the first and only sociologist or historian to link the concept of recognition to that of struggles. Various authors have offered some valuable insights into the nature of collective struggles, including Karl Marx, Georges Sorel and Jean-Paul Sartre (see Gosewinkel’s remarks on Honneth in the introduction to this volume). However, Honneth criticizes these authors for having misunderstood an important element of collective struggles in so far as they identified (collective) interests as the driving forces behind social conflicts rather than the more hidden ‘moral grammar’ – a kind of subtext, in his view, that underlies struggles for recognition. According to Honneth, only a few social historians and sociologists have had a rough idea of this underlying moral grammar. He names Park and Burgess who explicitly used the term ‘struggle for recognition’ in the context of ethnic conflicts, but without further specification. He also refers in passing to Edward P. Thompson’s widely known concept of a moral economy, to Barrington Moore with his focus on injustice, and to the German historian Andreas Grießinger (1981), who stressed the loss of honour as a driving force behind social unrest. Unlike these authors, Honneth devotes much energy to elaborating the concept of recognition. At the same time, however, he neglects the empirical analysis of collective struggles. His reading of social movement literature is highly selective and casual; he makes no significant effort to identify movements that are more or less concerned with certain violations of norms of recognition; nor does he examine in any detail how social movement activists frame such violations or consider which value bases they refer to. Were he to do so, Honneth might become fully aware of the limits to his threefold concept of recognition when it is applied to collective actors. For example, struggling for love is not a

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constitutive element of any social movement, as Honneth admits (1992: 259). This problem raises more general doubts about whether individual dispositions, feelings and experiences can be simply transferred to the level of large groups analogically. After all, collective actors can be seen as emergent phenomena who follow their own logics. This is also a problem of which Jürgen Habermas is aware. In chapter 8, ‘Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State’, of his larger work The Inclusion of the Other (Habermas 1998: 203–36), he starts with the question of whether a political theory based on individual rights can account for collective struggles for recognition. In search of an answer, Habermas discusses Charles Taylor’s ideas of liberalism, and criticizes his exclusive focus on individual rights. According to Habermas, Taylor thereby misses the aspect of articulation and maintenance of collective identities, or, more precisely, the recognition of collective identities and equal rights (Gleichberechtigung) with regard to different cultural forms of life. To Habermas, this strand of thought neglects the role of public controversy and that of social movements;15 whereas, on a procedural understanding of rights, the democratic process must secure not only private but also public autonomy.16 In accordance with this aim, no counter model is required to correct the individualistic orientation of rights systems by applying other norms; it is sufficient to implement existing norms logically and consistently. In Habermas’s view, however, this can hardly be achieved without social movements and political struggles (ibid.: 208). I would argue that the neglect of the collective dimension of recognition applies not only to Charles Taylor’s liberalism but also (albeit to a lesser extent) to Honneth’s work. Honneth goes too far in trying to establish a principled hierarchy between the more fundamental level of a moral grammar and the allegedly more superficial level of interests. Since he does not define and specify interests, his view is difficult to evaluate. He seems to equate interests with material needs and wishes. However this is a rather narrow understanding of interests. Why not define interests in a more comprehensive way, for example, as Marx or Habermas does? ‘By interests I mean basic orientations attached to certain fundamental conditions for the possible reproduction and self-constitution of human beings, namely, labour and interaction. These basis interests, accordingly, do not aim directly at the satisfaction of immediate empirical needs, but at the solution of systemic problems in general’ (Habermas 1968: 242).17 As soon as we postulate collective interest in recognition and emancipation, Honneth’s conceptualization no longer holds. But even on his narrow understanding of interests, it is hardly plausible that every collective defence of interests is undergirded by a moral claim. For

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example, some groups may selfishly and cynically pursue their material interests without feeling any need for moral justification whatsoever, in particular when these interests are tied to accumulated power and wealth. Honneth also fails to devote any systematic attention to the collective advocacy and engagement of privileged groups on behalf of deprived people (on this point, see Volker Heins’ contribution in this volume), which would require distinguishing between the motives of advocacy groups, on the one hand, and those of deprived groups, on the other. In general, then, despite some reformulations of key concepts, a reasonable criticism of Honneth would be that he remains much too bound to Hegel’s tripartite notion of recognition, while, at the same time, too distant from the reality of collective actors and the complexity of their struggles. Moreover, as Volker Heins rightly remarks, Honneth’s theory of recognition is not strong in explaining social conflicts beyond the role of social norms. Structural factors as well as the strategic interplay of conflicting actors are mainly ignored.

Nancy Fraser Nancy Fraser does not give the concept of recognition such a prominent and overarching status as Honneth does. In fact, she is a strong critic of Honneth’s proposed recognition paradigm. Fraser argues that ‘participatory equality’ is the general, overriding moral principle of liberal societies, and not the idea of recognition, as Honneth proposed (Fraser 1997). Participatory equality can be broken down into two constitutive elements: recognition as a form of cultural justice and redistribution as a form of economic justice (or social equality). Fraser argues that Honneth neglects the category of redistribution and puts too much emphasis on recognition as bound to an ethical principle of individual self-realization. Fraser subordinates the idea of individual equality to the principle of societal participation, whereas Honneth moves from the concept of individual autonomy and identity to the idea of mutual recognition. In her later writings, Fraser expands her concept of justice by adding another principle and situating it in a historical perspective that takes into account the trend towards globalization (Fraser 2005). She points to a historical shift from the ‘Keynesian–Westphalian frame’, typically ‘played out within the modern territorial states’ (ibid.: 69), to the ‘postKeynesian-Westphalian frame’ in which social processes affecting life ‘routinely overflow territorial borders’ (ibid.: 71). She argues that the question of human rights on the normative level was no longer a relevant matter of dispute in Keynesian–Westphalian times, because two claims

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for justice, namely, socioeconomic redistribution and (legal) cultural recognition, were basically acknowledged. In today’s post-Keynesian– Westphalian times, a third element, political justice, becomes a relevant issue. Political justice encompasses participation and representation – that is, inclusion and decision making. It is about membership and procedures; the aim is to democratize the process of frame setting. In other words, political justice is about the politics of framing. Nancy Fraser argues that, in the era of globalization, political justice has become relevant in so far as politics beyond the nation-state and transnational actors have moved into the foreground. This trend brings with it a new form of misrepresentation beyond ‘ordinary political misrepresentation’ over which, for example, the pros and cons of different electoral systems are debated or from which gender quotas have evolved within the Keynesian–Westphalian frame. The new problem is one of metapolitical misrepresentation or misframing. Most people concerned about or affected by the processes of globalization are not only excluded from formal decision making; above all, they are also left out of the framing processes that determine the principles of justice. We therefore encounter a third level of injustice, namely, the failure to institutionalize framing on the meta-level of transnational politics, according to the allaffected principle (Alle-Betroffenen-Prinzip). This issue of metapolitical justice centres on the questions of who has rights and how participation proceeds democratically. This ‘inaugurates a paradigm shift: what the Keynesian–Westphalian frame cast as the theory of social justice must now become a theory of post-Westphalian democratic justice’ (ibid.: 73). The unresolved problem of democratic justice – chiefly concerned with misframing – has repercussions on the other two dimensions of justice: it becomes the source of injustice with regard to recognition and redistribution within the Keynesian–Westphalian frame. Only in passing does Nancy Fraser link the new problems of political justice to collective action and social movements. She points to the fact that it is not only large corporations and investors that are affected by globalization: trade unions, impoverished and landless workers, and indigenous peoples also increasingly relate their struggles to global neoliberalism, and look beyond the territorial state. Fraser makes these empirical references in order to highlight the relevance of the political justice problem, but she never solidly establishes the connection between theory and the real world. Fraser also fails to discuss the relevance of recognition and redistribution for contemporary national and transnational movements, and to acknowledge that, in the Keynesian– Westphalian era, quite a number of transnational issues and transnational movements were already in place (Rucht 2001).

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In general, Fraser, like Honneth, is encapsulated in a debate about the adequacy of different concepts and theoretical architectures that is hardly connected to the real world of (collective) struggles for recognition and justice. Therefore, the respective conceptual preferences of these theoreticians, though armed with general arguments on an abstract level of discussion, have not undergone a reality check in terms of their appropriateness, applicability, preciseness, or explanatory power. Even in the context of Hobson’s 2003 volume on Recognition Struggles and Social Movements, Fraser’s unconditional preference for a status model over an identity model, as laid out in her contribution ‘Rethinking Recognition’, rests on general and debatable assertions about the strengths of one model and weaknesses of the other, while simply bracketing out the complex reality of social movements and the related research.

Reimund Anhut and Wilhelm Heitmeyer Reimund Anhut and Wilhelm Heitmeyer offer another variant of a threefold concept of rights and recognition. The authors place the problem of societal integration and disintegration at the centre of their reflections. Drawing on David Lockwood’s distinction between system integration and social integration, they argue that integration can only be fully achieved if a society secures positional, moral and emotional recognition for all its members. With regard to these three forms of recognition, Anhut and Heitmeyer list three basic tasks to be implemented, and they formulate some general criteria for assessing when and to what extent these tasks have been fulfilled (see Table 1.1). With regard to these three dimensions of recognition, if we compare the work of Anhut and Heitmeyer to that of Honneth and Fraser respectively, we find that there is a great deal of overlap in substance, although the wording is different. For example, positional recognition comes close to Fraser’s principle of redistribution. By the same token, Anhut and Heitmeyer’s emotional recognition is essentially a combination of Honneth’s concepts of love and social merit. The authors’ distinction between the subjective and objective dimensions of recognition, not to be found in either Honneth’s or Fraser’s conceptualization, is useful because it allows us to identify violations to principles of recognition, even when those who are negatively affected do not speak out. This distinction also allows us to raise the question of the conditions under which objective violations of norms result in manifest forms of critique and resistance.

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Table 1.1: Dimensions, aims and criteria for successful social integration Dimension of Integration

Individual– Functional System Integration

Communicative– Interactive Social Integration

Cultural– Expressive Social Integration

Task

Access to material and cultural goods of a society

Balance of conflicting interests without violating the integrity of other persons

Creation of emotional relations between people to enable meaning, self-realization and emotional backing

Criteria

• Participation • Access to in political subsystems, discourse labour, housing and decision markets etc. making (objective (objective dimension); dimension), • Recognition and readiness of professional to participate and social (subjective position dimension); (subjective • Balance of dimension) interests and moral recognition of securing basic norms (fairness, justice, solidarity)

Forms of recognition

Positional recognition

Source: Anhut and Heitmeyer 2000: 48

• Recognition of personal identity by the community and social environment; • Recognition and acceptance of collective identities and their symbols by other collectivities

Moral recognition Emotional recognition

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Regrettably, Anhut and Heitmeyer pay almost no attention to the philosophical debates that preoccupy Honneth and Fraser. Instead, their categories are informed by a variety of empirically orientated studies that they themselves or like-minded colleagues have conducted. In considering the bulk of Heitmeyer’s publications, his deep concern about the violation of these proclaimed standards becomes obvious, most notably with regard to ‘strangers’ or immigrants and ethnic minorities. Via longitudinal surveys of the German population, Heitmeyer diagnoses and empirically measures somewhat increasing levels of what he calls ‘group-related misanthropy’ (gruppenbezogene Menschenfeindlichkeit), as expressed in contemporary, sometimes violent forms of anti-Semitism, anti-Islamic sentiment, disregard for the rights of asylum seekers, and, more generally, disdain for ethnic minorities. The 1999 volume edited by Armin Pongs – In welcher Gesellschaft leben wir? – presents and interviews various well-known and highly influential social scientists. The section on Heitmeyer is entitled ‘The Disintegrating Society’; its subtitle ‘The Increasing Shortage of Recognition’ is even more revealing as regards Heitmeyer’s position (Heitmeyer 1999). In his response to a question put to him by the interviewer, Heitmeyer relativizes the role of consensus for social integration: To me, more important than consensus is to address and carry out conflicts in a way that recognition is generated. Therefore, I deem the notion of tolerance to be dangerous because it implies a one-sided passive acquiescence, but ultimately is also a form of degradation for those who are just tolerated. Recognition as a reciprocal, active concept is more fruitful – including conflicts as an opportunity (ibid.: 143).

With this position, Heitmeyer comes close to Chantal Mouffe’s concept of ‘agonistic pluralism’,18 which allows for, and even encourages, adversarial confrontation as opposed to antagonism between enemies.19 Adversarial confrontation is not perceived as a problem but as an asset of a vital democracy. In response to a further interview question on the rise of violence, Heitmeyer distinguishes between (a) violence that is intended to achieve visibility and gain recognition, and (b) ‘expressive’ violence that, often without selecting a public stage or stating an explicit aim, indiscriminately attacks its victims (Heitmeyer 1999: 145). His statement expresses an idea that is worth spelling out and including in conceptual reflections, namely, that claims for recognition have an addressee and require a public space or stage where they can be heard and evaluated. In contrast to justice theorists such as Honneth, Fraser, Taylor, or Rawls who focus almost exclusively on the value bases and procedures for assessing claims

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for recognition, Heitmeyer, along with most social movement scholars, also devotes attention to the structural preconditions and contextual settings in which claims for recognition are articulated.

Institutionalizing Rights to Recognition and Fostering Public Deliberation When political activists, social scientists, and philosophers invoke rights, justice and recognition, they have two bases of reference: informal social norms and legally enshrined rights. Informal norms embraced by deprived collective actors do not bind every member of society. If these norms are acknowledged by a significant or even overwhelming proportion of the population, claimants insisting on them can count on the ‘cultural resonance’ (Gamson and Modigliani 1989) of their demands. Things become more complicated when two conflicting parties refer to different sets of values that resonate equally within a society or cultural community. A telling example is the conflict over abortion in the United States. While the pro-choice movement evokes the right of a woman to take control of her body, the pro-life movement uncompromisingly values all human life, including that of unborn children or fetuses, as ‘sacred’ (Ferree et al. 2002). Another example is the ongoing debate in several countries over the practice of kosher (shechitah) or halal slaughtering. While Jewish and Muslim groups defend shechitah and halal slaughter as an essential element of their respective religious traditions that should be respected, critics argue, rightly or wrongly, that this form of ritual slaughter is an intolerable act of cruelty to animals. In cases such as this, where cultural norms are highly disputed, the claimants’ main task is to provide good reasons for why a specific practice should be accepted or rejected. A crucial mission for claimants, therefore, is not so much one of chastising an individual for committing an evil act, but rather one of determining whether a particular practice is justified according to a general norm that, in principle, is widely respected. In debates involving conflicting norms, it is extremely important for the agents demanding recognition to progress from free-floating discourse or an alleged moral position (social norm) held by significant parts of a population to legally binding regulation. In many cases, gradual shifts in public opinion about what should or should not be accepted have eventually been transformed into binding law or judicial decrees without major struggles. This applies, for example, to the interdiction of corporal punishment of children in families and schools. In other cases – for example, the exemption from punishment of homosexual practices

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among consenting adults or the legalization of same sex marriage – lawmakers followed the majority opinion among the general population but they also attracted fierce criticism from dissenting minorities in a number of countries. The more legal change is preceded by intensive and open public debate, the more likely it is that conflict will be mitigated once the new law has been introduced; social and normative integration would thus become more likely. As Honneth argues, ‘the normative integration of societies takes place only by the way of institutionalizing principles of recognition that regulate in a comprehensive way the forms of mutual recognition through which its members become involved in the societal context of life’ (Honneth 2004: 355). When claimants refer to rights that are already legally enshrined, they are in a relatively advantageous position vis-à-vis their challengers. Unlike group-specific beliefs and tastes, such rights constitute obligations and promises that authorities, in principle, cannot ignore or deny. Claimants of legal rights are not burdened with the need to convince others – for example, judges, political allies, the general public – of the validity of the legal norms and rights. Those who are or feel deprived of their rights are entitled to demand a judicial procedure by means of which they can attempt to secure ‘justice’ through the binding decision of an institutionalized arbiter. A much more ambitious task for claimants is turning informal norms embraced by a clear minority into an entirely new law, or aiming to make profound changes to an already existing one. In these cases, considerable resistance and protracted struggle are likely, as the issue of women’s suffrage aptly demonstrates. Interestingly, countries with a long-standing democratic tradition such as France, Great Britain and Switzerland were relatively late in granting women’s suffrage – a right that today is undisputed. Institutionalizing new legal regulations or achieving new interpretations of already existing ones, thus guaranteeing rights and recognition for those who were previously deprived, is an important step; however, this does not mean that formal rights have necessarily been implemented. Quite often, authorities find ways to circumvent and bend legal norms so that the struggle for recognition continues, but this time with the focus on the discrepancy between the de jure situation and de facto practice, as enduring forms of racial discrimination show. But even when such a discrepancy is corrected and claimants actually achieve ‘their’ rights in practice, there is no guarantee that their struggle will be over as long as other groups continue to challenge the status quo. After all, positive law, by definition, can be changed by new parliamentary majorities. By the same token, juridical interpretation of law can also change over time, be it to the advantage or disadvantage of once successful claimants.

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Beyond institutionalizing rights through legal norms, it is also crucial to have a generalized cultural and structural setting for dealing with conflict; that is, a deliberative public which supports open discussion and can evaluate claims for recognition, in order to take informed decisions and prevent moral or ethical retrogression. History has shown that even modern societies may choose to passively accept or even actively pursue a fundamental rollback vis-à-vis norms of human dignity and human rights (see also Dieter Gosewinkel’s introduction to this volume). In order to prevent such regression, modern natural law declares some basic rights to be ‘self-evident’, ‘undeniable’, ‘inalienable’, ‘untouchable’, or ‘eternal’.20 These formulations can be understood as expressions of intent and goodwill, but they also signal a certain lack of faith in the wisdom of future legislators. However, such assertions can never serve as a full guarantee: who knows what will happen in a hundred or a thousand years from now? Nor have such ‘natural laws’ resulted from the kind of broad deliberation usually sought after in modern democratic societies, which end in universally agreed consensus. ‘Natural rights’ are ultimately unfounded because they rest on nothing more than belief, but their declaration provides a useful working base. For example, because of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by the governing authorities of almost all of countries in the world, some claims of some groups have become, at least in principle, sacrosanct – beyond question. Few individuals would dare to publicly defend the blatant violation of such legally enshrined human rights. In many other cases, however, particularly in protracted conflicts, each party claims that their perspective on an issue and their value base is the one and only legitimate one. In this situation, determining who is right and who is wrong – whose claim must be respected – can be complicated for a number of reasons. The conflict parties may • acknowledge one and the same right but interpret it differently; • refer to different rights that are, in principle, equally acknowledged and upheld; • prioritize their right over other rights claimed by their opponents, or • repudiate a right claimed by their opponents, or renounce their opponents’ violation of some recognized right. The question of whose rights are eventually to be secured and implemented can be dealt with by different means. First, it may simply be a matter of physical dominance, of political negotiation resulting in an informal compromise, or of authoritative decision making by institutional bodies like parliaments or courts. Second, the debate could be delegated or outsourced to specialists like moral philosophers who presumably are not involved in

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power games or who have no vested interest in the outcome and therefore might be in a better position to freely deliberate and accept the ‘forceless force of the better argument’ (Habermas 1971: 137). Third, the discourse over (competing) claims for rights and recognition could be considered as a truly public matter. Instead of restating, reaffirming and reifying ‘natural’ rights and declaring them sacrosanct, or instead of fully delegating the problem to those who are legally entitled to decide or who are in other ways deemed to be ‘competent’, it would seem to be more appropriate to install and support a permanent process of public deliberation over the legitimacy of rights. These rights can be called reasonable in accordance with Immanuel Kant’s criterion to the extent that they have passed what he calls the test of ‘free and public scrutiny’ (Kant [1781] 1983: 13). This criterion also has implications for struggles for recognition initiated by protest groups and social movements. Neither the reference to someone’s individual consciousness nor to the group-specific values embraced by the claimants can ultimately justify their quest for recognition. Recognition is relational; it cannot be self-attributed. Depending on the values, cognitions and compassion of others, and ideally of all members of a given society, recognition can be legitimately granted or refused. In practice, attempts at public deliberation may be suppressed, unduly channelled or restricted, result in a mutual blockade, or become prohibitively protracted. In some situations, consensus can be reached, although, in deliberative terms, this will always be a preliminary or interim result; an actor may present new arguments at any time, so that the process of deliberation can continue indefinitely. In other situations, it simply makes no sense to try to achieve consensus at all (Ackerman 1985). In still other cases, pragmatic solutions usually resulting from comprise are all one can hope for. Finally, an outcome of deliberation can only be called truly legitimate if, from a procedural justice standpoint, no one, and no perspective, has been excluded from the outset.21 The modern conception of democratic politics no long presupposes a substantive and society-transcending idea of the common good (Dubiel 1994: 118).

Discussion and Conclusion As these brief overviews show, collective struggles for recognition are an important aspect of social, political and intellectual life. We encounter them as subjects of reflection in basically in three domains: (1) the claims, reasons, and value bases of various kinds of social movements acting in public arenas; (2) scholarly findings and theories on the underlying motives and causes of social movement activism; and (3) philosophical

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and sociological theories about the content, dimensions and bases of claims for recognition in terms of individual and collective rights. Regrettably, the discourses in each of these three domains are largely disconnected from one another. Social movement activists are notoriously preoccupied with the organizational, strategic, and technical or tactical aspects of their struggles. It is no wonder, then, that they hardly notice what social scientists and moral philosophers may have to say about the nature and legitimacy of their claims. In any case, most activists are so deeply convinced of the rightfulness of their cause that they feel no strong need to justify it with any degree of rigour. However, in some situations – for example, when activists must stand trial for acts of civil disobedience – they tend to make more systematic and sophisticated efforts to legitimize their claims and actions. Social movement scholars differ widely in their analysis of activists’ motives and reasoning. Rational choice theorists tend to ignore the causes and settings of collective action. Instead, they seek to demonstrate the existence of allegedly universal principles of human behaviour. By contrast, theorists who focus on framing processes, identity, and movement cultures probably come closest to reflecting the moral bases, perceptions, arguments, sentiments and demands of activists claiming rights and seeking recognition. Thus far, however, these scholars seem to be largely disinterested in the debates of moral philosophers about the right to recognition. Moral philosophers, in turn, tend to remain among themselves, comfortable in the ivory tower of purely academic discourse. Even when dealing with questions of justice, they tend to follow a reductionist path by (a) completely ignoring the specific profile and context of claimants for recognition, (b) focusing on the individual as a claimant, and/or (c) neglecting the aspect of a collective struggle for recognition, thereby failing to take adequate account of the conflictive interplay between actors who not only engage in the exchange of arguments, but also in power plays. Few sociologists and moral philosophers – among them Habermas, Honneth and Fraser – acknowledge the fact of collective struggles for recognition, or the role of protest groups and social movements. But even when these theorists refer to social movements, they do so only in a casual or at best illustrative way, without paying much attention to the specific worldviews, reasons or feelings of the claimants. Nevertheless there are two groups who are potentially in an advantageous position to link these isolated domains: the so-called ‘organic intellectuals’ as conceived by Antonio Gramsci, and the ‘movement intellectuals’ as identified by other scholars (Eyerman and Jamison 1991). They take

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part in social movement struggles, but at the same time they may also be close to social movement scholars or philosophers reasoning about rights and recognition. Social movement scholars with a special interest in the justification of recognition claims and socioeconomic justice are in a position to build bridges because they occupy a zone between activists, on the one hand, and social and moral philosophers, on the other. This does not mean that the task of bridge building ought to be delegated to these two groups alone. Rather, agents in all three domains of discourse should make an effort to widen their respective horizons and learn from each other. The blind spots in each of these spheres could be considerably reduced if those acting within these relatively closed circles would begin to take notice of those outside their area. Political activists could surely strengthen their own positions and arguments by better substantiating those underlying values to which they usually only make brief or cursory reference, and by being more attentive to what moral philosophers have to say about the bases and procedures for claiming rights and administering justice. Theoretical debates about different dimensions or components of recognition help to sharpen the eye to what is at stake in real-world conflicts. Moreover, theories of justice and recognition can teach activists that it is not enough to merely refer to the apparently self-evident validity of natural law or to appeal to one’s individual conscience while at the same time ignoring the need for justification and legitimacy of procedures whose rules, in turn, need to be justified. Conversely, moral philosophers should take a closer look at the complex reality of political activists and collective claims, as well as the findings of scholars studying the frames and activities of political protesters. Philosophers might consider that not only progressive but also reactionary movements struggle in some way for recognition. They need perhaps to be made more aware of the fact that groups emanating from privileged social classes may use the rhetoric of recognition and rights strategically in order to defend their privileges. It might be eye-opening for many moral philosophers to learn that not all collective struggles are or even pretend to be struggles for recognition. Sometimes, groups fight for mere survival without making explicit demands. Finally, by drawing closer to the world of social movement activists, theorists might also recognize the fruitlessness or idleness of certain ‘heated debates’ within social movement scholarship (e.g. about strategy or identity) and within the moral philosophical discourse (e.g. the status model versus the identity model; recognition versus justice as the one and only comprehensive key category for moral claims). I am convinced that the notion of recognition is a useful and fertile focal concept for stimulating debate across different, and thus far largely

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disconnected, spheres of discourse. Rather than resulting in a consensus, it will lead, to paraphrase Francesca Polletta (2002), to recognition as the reference point of an endless but nevertheless fruitful meeting.

Notes   1. As a result, in some voting districts populated by poor people there were no voters, based on their taxes, who could contribute to the first two categories. Therefore the districts had to be redefined so that they would include potent taxpayers.  2. Thus, as an alternative to the amount of tax paid, voting rights could be also coupled to the level of education as was done in other countries. Accordingly, the representatives of the educated class were afraid of giving power to the ‘loudmouthed masses’, as Jacob Burckhardt wrote in 1845. ‘I know too much history to expect anything from the despotism of the masses but a future tyranny which will mean the end of history’ (cited in Albert O. Hirschman 1991: 21).   3. The distinction between premodern and modern times is a matter of ongoing dispute among historians. It should be understood as a conceptual distinction in the sense of ideal-types. In reality, some elements of what is attributed to modern times can already be found, at least in rudimentary and less clear forms, in periods usually classified as premodern. It is also clear that elements of ‘premodern’ times – e.g. the persistent influence of nobility, serfdom, traditional bonds of reciprocity, and the intertwinement between religion and the state – can be also found, at least in some regions, in ‘modern’ periods.  4. In this regard, the rebelling peasants and religious dissenters (e.g. Anabaptist groups) in the first half of the sixteenth century had an ambivalent position. See van Dülmen (1987).  5. See Koselleck (1988), especially the chapter ‘Über die Verfügbarkeit der Geschichte’, p. 262.  6. In a similar way, the United States Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, starts as follows: ‘We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed’.  7. This, for example, makes many advocacy groups and individuals natural candidates in some sense for receiving prizes such as the Right Livelihood Award ‘for outstanding vision and work on behalf of our planet and its people’, in recognition of their moral credibility and selflessness; see, e.g., (accessed in January 2014).   8, See ‘Appell für eine Vermögensabgabe’ (accessed 17 November 2013).   9. For one of the seminal works in this line of thought, see McCarthy and Zald (1977). 10. More recent research suggests that the concept of moral economy is too onedimensional to take into account the complexity of the reasons and values of protesters from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. See, for example, Bohstedt (1994).

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11. See Jasper (1997); cf. Polletta and Jasper (2001). 12. This is a revised version of his habilitation thesis, initially published in German (Honneth 1992). 13. Some pages later, Honneth mentions the work of Edward P. Thompson in support of his claim. In other sections of his book, he names but does not discuss two or three additional historical studies. 14. On his interpretation of moral progress in history, see also pp. 360–62. 15. With regard to collective struggles for recognition, Habermas reflects on aspects of feminism, multiculturalism, nationalism, and the struggle against the Eurocentric heritage of colonialism. These are phenomena that ‘are related, in that women, ethnic and cultural minorities, and nations and cultures defend themselves against oppression, marginalization and disrespect, and thereby struggle for the recognition of collective identities, whether in the context of a majority culture or within the community of peoples. We are concerned here with emancipation movements whose collective political goals are defined primarily in cultural terms, even though social and economic inequalities as well as political dependencies are always also involved’ (Habermas 1998, chapter 8, section II, ‘Struggles for Recognition: The Phenomena and Levels of Analysis’, p. 211). 16. Habermas 1998, chapter 8, section I, ‘Taylor’s Politics of Recognition’, p. 210. 17. Author’s translation. Emphasis in the original. 18. In an interview published online, ‘Hearts, Minds and Radical Democracy’ (Red Pepper 1998), website deputy editor, Dave Castle, spoke with Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Chantal Mouffe offered the following explanation: ‘I use the concept of agonistic pluralism to present a new way to think about democracy which is different from the traditional liberal conception of democracy as a negotiation among interests and is also different to the model which is currently being developed by people like Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls. While they have many differences, Rawls and Habermas have in common the idea that the aim of the democratic society is the creation of a consensus, and that consensus is possible if people are only able to leave aside their particular interests and think as rational beings. However, while we desire an end to conflict, if we want people to be free we must always allow for the possibility that conflict may appear, and provide an arena where differences can be confronted. The democratic process should supply that arena.’ See (accessed 18 October 2013). 19. See ‘“A Vibrant Democracy Needs Agonistic Confrontation” – An interview with Chantal Mouffe’, (last accessed in January 2014). 20. The constitution or Basic Law (Grundgesetz) of the German Federal Republic states in Article 17(3) that it is illegal (unzulässig) to change the basic principles laid down in Articles 1 to 20. 21. Proposing a procedural concept of deliberation must not necessarily lead to Habermas’s overly cognitively loaded model of discourse as an exchange of arguments. Hans Joas, for example, favours societal discourse which cannot be reduced to an exchange of moral or judicial arguments, or to a conflict and struggle over the distribution of goods between fixed collective identities. See Joas (1997: 293).

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Bibliography Ackerman, Bruce. 1985. ‘Why Dialogue?’, Journal of Philosophy 86: 5–22. Alinksy, Saul. (1971) 1989. Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals. New York: Vintage Books. Anand, Anita, et al. (eds). 2004. Eine andere Welt. Das Weltsozialforum. Berlin: Dietz. Anhut, Reimund, and Wilhelm Heitmeyer. 2000. ‘Desintegration, Konflikt und Ethnisierung. Eine Problemanalyse und theoretische Rahmenkonzeption’, in Reimund Anhut and Wilhelm Heitmeyer (eds), Bedrohte Stadtgesellschaft. Weinheim/München: Juventa, pp. 17–75. Blumer, Herbert. 1986. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bohstedt, John. 1994. ‘Moralische Ökonomie und historischer Kontext’, in Manfred Gailus and Heinrich Volkmann (eds), Der Kampf um das tägliche Brot. Nahrungsmangel, Versorgungspolitik und Protest 1770–1990. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, pp. 27–51. Boltanski, Luc. 2008. Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dubiel, Helmut. 1994. Ungewißheit und Politik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Dülmen, Richard van. 1987. Reformation als Revolution. Soziale Bewegung und religiöser Radikalismus in der deutschen Reformation, 2nd revised edition. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Eyerman, Ron, and Andrew Jamison. 1991. Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ferree, Myra Marx, et al. 2002. Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fraser, Nancy. 1997. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition. New York and London: Routledge. ———. 2003. ‘Rethinking Recognition: Overcoming Displacement and Reification in Cultural Politics’, in Barbara Hobson (ed.), Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Agency and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21–32. ———. 2005. ‘Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World’, New Left Review 36: 69–88. Gamson, William A. 1992. Talking Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gamson, William A., Bruce Fireman and Steven Rytina. 1982. Encounters with Unjust Authority. Homewood, IL: Dorsey. Gamson, William A., and Andre Modigliani. 1989. ‘Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach’, American Journal of Sociology 95(1): 1–37. Grießinger, Andreas. 1981. Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und kollektives Bewußtsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen im 18. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein. Gurr, Ted Robert. 1970. Why Men Rebel. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Gusfield, Joseph. 1963. Symbolic Crusade. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1968. Erkenntnis und Interesse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1971. ‘Vorbereitende Bemerkungen zu einer Theorie der kommunikativen Kompetenz’, in Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, Theorie der Gesellschaft

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oder Sozialtechnologie – Was leistet die Systemforschung? Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 101–41. ———. 1998. The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, edited by Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. (1820) 1989. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse, 2nd edition. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Heitmeyer, Wilhelm. 1999. ‘Die desintegrierende Gesellschaft: “Verknappung von Anerkennung”’, in Armin Pongs (ed.), In welcher Gesellschaft leben wir eigentlich?, volume 1 of two volumes. Munich: Dilemma Verlag, pp. 129–46. Hirschman, Albert O. 1991. The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy. Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press. Hobson, Barbara (ed.). 2003. Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Agency and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Honneth, Axel. 1992. Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 2004. ‘Recognition and Justice: Outline of a Plural Theory of Justice’, Acta Sociologica 47(4): 351–67. Jasper, James M. 1997. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Joas, Hans. 1997. Die Entstehung der Werte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Kant, Immanuel. (1781) 1983. Kritik der reinen Vernunft (vol. 3, Kant Werke, special edition in 10 volumes, edited by Wilhelm Weischedel). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Koselleck, Reinhart. 1988. Vergangene Zukunft – Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, 8th edition. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Kühne Thomas. 1994. Dreiklassenwahlrecht und Wahlkultur in Preussen 1867–1914. Landtagswahlen zwischen korporativer Tradition und politischem Massenmarkt. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag. Macpherson, Crawford B. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McAdam, Doug. 1988. Freedom Summer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly. 2001, Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarthy, John, and Mayer N. Zald. 1977. ‘Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory’, American Journal of Sociology 82(6): 1212–41. Moore, Barrington. 1978. Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt. London: Macmillan. Mueller, Carol. 2003. ‘Recognition Struggles and Process Theories of Social Movements’, in Barbara Hobson (ed.), Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Agency and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 274–91. Opp, Karl-Dieter. 1994. ‘Der “Rational Choice”-Ansatz und die Soziologie sozialer Bewegungen’, Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen 7(2): 11–26. ———. 2009. Theories of Political Protest and Social Movements: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Critique and Synthesis. London: Routledge. Pankoke, Eckhart. 1970. Sociale Bewegung – Sociale Frage – Sociale Politik. Grundfragen der deutschen ‘Socialwissenschaft’ im 19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Klett.

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Phillips, Anne, 2003. ‘Recognition and the Struggle for Political Voice’, in Barbara Hobson (ed.), Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Agency and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 263–73. Polletta, Francesca. 2002. Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Polletta, Francesca, and James M. Jasper. 2001. ‘Collective Identity and Social Movements’, Annual Review of Sociology 27: 283–305. Raschke, Joachim. 1985. Soziale Bewegungen. Ein historisch-systematischer Grundriß. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus. Red Pepper. 1998. ‘Hearts, Minds and Radical Democracy’, interview with Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. (accessed 18 October 2013). Rucht, Dieter. 2001. ‘Transnationaler politischer Protest im historischen Längsschnitt’, in Ansgar Klein, Ruud Koopmans and Heiko Geiling (eds), Politische Partizipation im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, pp. 77–96. ———. 2011. ‘Civil Society and Civility in Twentieth Century Theorising’, in Dieter Gosewinkel and Dieter Rucht (eds), Civility in History: Concept, Discourse and Social Practice. Special issue, European Review of History 18(3): 387–407. Schulze, Winfried. 1981. ‘Herrschaft und Widerstand aus der Sicht des “gemeinen Mannes” im 16./17. Jahrhundert’, in Hans Mommsen and Winfried Schulze (eds), Vom Elend der Handarbeit. Probleme historischer Unterschichtenforschung. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, pp. 182–98. Swidler, Ann. 1986. ‘Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies’, American Sociological Review 51(2): 273–86. Tenbruck, Friedrich H. 1976. ‘Glaubensgeschichte der Moderne’, Zeitschrift für Politik 23(1): 1–15. Thompson, Edward P. 1971. ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present 50(1): 76–136. Tilly, Charles. 1984. Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Yang, Mundo. 2005. ‘Der Nord-Süd-Konflikt im Umfeld der internationalen Jubilee2000-Kampagne’, Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen 18(1)S: 72–79.

Dieter Rucht is retired since July 2011. Before retirement he was co-director of the research group “Civil Society, Citizenship and Political Mobilization in Europe” at the Berlin Social Science Center and Professor of Sociology at the Free University of Berlin. His research interests include political participation, social movements, political protest and public discourse. He recently co-edited Meeting Democracy: Power and Deliberation in Global Justice Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Chapter 2

Understanding Transnational Social Movements Potentials and Limits of Recognition Theory

Volker M. Heins

Why Recognition Theory? On the occasion of the Arab Spring and the Egyptian uprising in February 2011, Thomas Friedman commented in the New York Times: ‘Humiliation is the single most powerful human emotion, and overcoming it is the second most powerful human emotion’ (Friedman 2011). This is a pretty good summary of the central claim of social and political theories of recognition. According to these theories, social movements are motivated and spurred by experiences of disrespect, denigration or undue indifference. If this is true, Axel Honneth’s theory, arguably the most elaborate and sophisticated version of a critical theory of recognition, should be attractive to researchers of contemporary social movements, if only because it offers a counterweight to the rationalist methodologies and frameworks so dominant at present. Let us take a closer look. There are indeed some advantages of a recognition-theoretical approach. First of all, Honneth’s theory takes into consideration that painful and consequential experiences at the root of social movements can be made not only in relation to the politics of the state, but also in the sphere of public discourse, at workplaces and the in private sphere of family life and intimate relations. The state is neither necessarily the main source of injustice and social suffering nor the main target of the political

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mobilization that can emerge as a result of certain bad experiences. This proposition is both historically valid and resonates with the experience of social movements. Moreover, the critical theory of recognition is opposed to overly rights-based approaches to the problem of justice. In the last chapter of the first volume of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville (2003) predicted that the situation of Afro-Americans in the United States would not improve substantially as a result of the abolition of slavery. He rather believed that racism would be perpetuated by the white majority’s social mores, which would likely become even more ingrained after its legal basis had vanished. Similarly, Honneth is keenly aware that the denial of rights is only one among many ways of humiliating human beings or, conversely, that the evils of humiliation and disrespect cannot be simply outlawed by establishing rights. Recognition theories are sensitive to different modes of power which can be exercised either as control through others (lack of freedom) or as neglect by others (lack of care or concern); both these modes are analysed as sources of potentially crippling moral injuries. All these are, in my view, advantages of a recognition-theoretical approach as opposed to approaches that explain protest and opposition to political institutions primarily as consequences of rational decisions or deviant behaviour. Yet, the idea that social movements are driven by dignity deficits is less original than authors such as Honneth have claimed. In fact, Hobbes had already written that bloody conflicts can be provoked even by small disrespectful gestures such as ‘a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue’ (Hobbes 1985: 185). This raises the question of how struggles for recognition are different from Hobbesian desires for applause, honour or fame. The main difference is that Honneth regards certain moral feelings of being humiliated or disrespected not only as driving empirical struggles, but also as justifying them. Those feelings and experiences both explain efforts towards social transformation and provide the normative criteria for evaluating those efforts. Hobbes’s struggles for recognition are more like pub brawls that started for no intelligible reason and can only end with everybody’s exhaustion or the intervention of an outside police force, and where taking sides is pointless. Honneth’s struggles for recognition, on the other hand, hold the promise of a better society. Rather than relying on the idealizations of philosophical theories of justice, Honneth believes that it is wise to understand and give more credit to the moral convictions held by ordinary citizens even before all theory (Honneth 2012a: 50). Against the backdrop of these preliminary remarks, I divide the remainder of this chapter into three sections. First, I sketch Honneth’s basic model of the struggle for recognition, focusing on the contingency

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of the link between social suffering and struggle as well as on the openness of any real-world struggle for recognition. I then draw attention to the peculiarity of Honneth’s concept of struggle, which supports a consensus theory of conflicts. In conclusion, I offer a few thoughts on what I see as the sociological deficit of recognition theory. This deficit forces even social scientists well-disposed to the recognition paradigm to look out for additional theoretical resources.

What is a Struggle for Recognition? The central idea of the theory of recognition is that human autonomy and agency is not a given fact but the result of a continuous and dynamic process of mutual recognition between individuals and groups. The theory is centred on the relevance, reproduction and distortion of social relations of respect, esteem and affection in modern societies. Although socially shaped, striving for recognition is seen as ‘the natural inclination of the human heart’, to use a phrase favoured by Rousseau. Relationships of mutual recognition differ fundamentally from fame or prestige, which are by their nature highly asymmetric. By contrast, the concept of recognition is connected with questions of behavioural and institutional justice. Furthermore, the concept of recognition is strictly victim-centred. More attention is given to phenomena of social suffering than to analysis of the causes of suffering. If we take Honneth’s book The Struggle for Recognition as our point of departure, it becomes immediately clear that the theory starts with ‘victims of disrespect’ and goes on to claim that modern social struggles can ultimately be traced back to the experiences of groups who are not only disadvantaged materially, but who feel that they have also been treated with contempt or undue indifference (Honneth 1995: 164–65). The history of modern society, then, is a history of struggles for recognition. Honneth believes that all social suffering has normative meaning in so far as it is the result of the violation of wellgrounded moral expectations or principles. This suggests that suffering has a teleological force which impels disrespected individuals and groups to push for the realization of those standards of justice in the light of which they interpret their own experiences as the result of unjust behaviours or institutions. On the other hand, Honneth makes it clear that struggles for recognition cannot be traced back to certain moral feelings in the same way a disease can be traced back to an infection. Rather, he describes feelings of damaged self-worth as only the ‘emotional raw materials [Rohstoff] of social conflicts’ (Honneth 1995: 168). For Honneth, the

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first task of a critical theory of recognition is to pay attention to what happens ‘underground’ (Honneth 2003: 120) and below the radar of public attention: to the early rumblings of what one day may become an organized struggle for recognition.1 Here Honneth’s texts reveal a striking and crucial ambivalence. On the one hand, his Aristotelianism makes him assume that systematic disrespect creates a pull towards a meaningful struggle for recognition. Honneth’s metaphor of raw materials, on the other hand, suggests a more open-ended situation. Taken by themselves, those inchoate feelings of not being sufficiently respected or esteemed have no force of their own. Like all raw materials, they are mouldable and undirected. Honneth seems to acknowledge this when he writes that ‘moral feelings – until now, the emotional raw materials of social conflicts – lose their apparent innocence and turn out to be retarding or accelerating moments within an overarching developmental process’ (Honneth 1995: 168). In some of his later writings, this openness is emphasized by dramatic examples. Honneth admits that people who have been treated unjustly do not always fight for good causes; some might well become neo-Nazi skinheads, ultra-nationalists, or even suicide bombers (Honneth 2007: 77–78; Honneth 2012b: 150). In what I see as a move bordering on inconsistency, he now even juxtaposes his explicit endorsement of a teleological conception of moral progress with Max Weber’s wide open, distinctly non-teleological concept of ‘objective possibility’ (Honneth 2011: 27). Figure 2.1 illustrates the abstract model of struggles for recognition: they always ‘start from feelings of having been unjustly treated’; and there is an ‘internal connection’ between those experiences and observable forms of protest and revolt (Honneth 1995: 165, 161; emphasis added). Honneth also seems to agree with Frantz Fanon who insists that there is no shortcut from experiences of disrespect to liberation. According to this revolutionary writer, recognition granted by benevolent rulers or through third-party pressure ‘without a struggle’ (Fanon 2008: 191) has no transformative power. Yet, given the wide range of possibilities of what can be made of unformed moral feelings in the course of social struggles, Honneth also admits to the need for an external ‘normative standard’ that allows him to distinguish ‘between the progressive and the reactionary’ (Honneth 1995: 168) in those struggles. In his debate with Nancy Fraser, he even writes that ‘an “independent” terminology is required, since the forms of institutionally caused suffering and misery to be identified also include those that exist prior to and independently of political articulation by social movements’ (Honneth 2003: 117). Note the scarce quotes around ‘independent’, which highlight Honneth’s uncertainty in this matter.

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Fig. 2.1  A model of the struggle for recognition

There are two points I wish to draw from this brief reconstruction of the basic model of the struggle for recognition (see Heins 2012a). First, the model is silent on the conditions under which victims of disrespect engage in struggles for recognition at all. Sometimes an environment of disrespect and abuse might destroy the moral fibre of the affected groups to such an extent that they have no hope to change their situation. To be more precise: the conditions under which suffering populations are both willing and able to respond to their situation with a struggle are not specified (Pettenkofer 2010: 174–75). Second, the model is also silent on the conditions under which victims of disrespect who do engage in struggles for recognition either contribute to, or hamper, the development of a social and political order that fosters the necessary preconditions for individual self-realization. To repeat, there is no shortcut from situations of denied recognition to ‘ethical life’ (the earthly equivalent of ‘salvation’) without struggle. Nor is there anything like a moral autopilot, as it were, that holds struggles for recognition on course towards ethical life. Rather, these struggles are waged by justice-oriented groups as well as by groups who fight for non-moral forms of self-respect at the expense of justice (‘sin’).2 This ambiguity is likely to be compounded once we move from domestic to transnational struggles. My argument is that recognition theory, as it stands today, is not a very good ‘explanatory’ theory of social conflicts, since it proposes to start with an analysis of the raw materials of moral feelings but without offering an account of the social factors that shape and organize this inert material into a political force.

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A Consensus Theory of Conflicts Scholars interested in ‘struggles for recognition’ as a new research programme have devoted much attention to the concept of ‘recognition’, but I am convinced that the concept of ‘struggle’ deserves no less attention. In a recent discussion with Luc Boltanski, Honneth has emphasized that his concept of struggle differs from Marxist or Weberian concepts in that it tries to combine ‘the conflictual and the peaceful’ (Boltanski and Honneth 2009: 89). Struggles for recognition are struggles by disrespected and marginalized groups for inclusion into a larger moral community. Put simply, Honneth is engaged in ‘conflict theory as consensus theory’ (Pettenkofer 2010: 166). To be more specific, this means that struggles for recognition involve a triadic structure: they are waged by humiliated subjects against their humiliators in the light of already institutionalized norms of mutual recognition that are perceived as being ‘inadequately applied’ (Honneth 2003: 157) to their respective life situations. In Honneth’s most recent work we find a more systematic expression of this idea. The modern ideals of legal equality, solidarity and love are already ‘de facto institutionalized’ (Honneth 2011: 21), which means: they are ‘in principle generally accepted’ (ibid.: 571). This, however, does not imply that they are already fully realized. One could say, for example, that the young Stephen Dedalus, James Joyce’s literary alter ego, felt the well-established principle of bodily integrity to be inadequately applied to him when his open hands were hit by the prefect of his school with a flat, wooden bat, after which his ‘whole body was shaking with fright, his arm was shaking and his crumpled burning livid hand shook like a loose leaf in the air’. Then the physical pain and humiliation quickly transformed into the conviction that something utterly ‘unfair and cruel’ (Joyce 1992: 51, 54) had happened to him, something that could not be allowed to remain unanswered. Recognition theory holds a special place among different conceptions of moral cosmopolitanism in that it starts not from ideal standards of justice distilled from thought experiments about hypothetical original positions, but from the experiences and normative expectations of human beings like Stephen Dedalus. Under favourable circumstances, these needs for recognition can give rise to social movements which, however, always take place ‘within’ the framework of an ‘inherited cultural horizon’ (Honneth 1995: 134). This language raises some serious questions. If victims of disrespect wage their struggles by appealing to the norms and values of the common culture, what about wrongdoers? Do they not also struggle for the social

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good of recognition, albeit interpreted in radically different ways? Or should we not conclude that the various Jewish, female, black or colonial transnational social movements have most of the time tried to upset the common culture in which their activists were raised, instead of appealing to its norms and values? In a nutshell, is it plausible to assume, in particular from a transnational perspective, that activists confine themselves to ‘applying’ already valid moral or legal principles to the situation at hand? Or should we rather follow the Canadian political philosopher James Tully, who points out that contemporary social movements not only voice demands for the adequate application of already institutionalized norms of recognition, but often go further by calling these very norms into question. As Tully puts it, we are often dealing with encompassing ‘struggles “over” recognition, not simply “for” recognition’ (Tully 2004: 86; Heins 2008). The contested nature of the very standards and dimensions of mutual recognition can be demonstrated by exploring the case of the civil rights and black liberation movement in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Honneth refers to the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. to illustrate the causal connection between legal disenfranchisement, feelings of shame, and collective protest and self-organization for change (Honneth 1995: 120–21). But he does not mention the other powerful social movement in recent black American history, which is epitomized by the name Malcolm X (on these two social movements, see Eyerman 2001, chap. 6). At no point in his short and violent life did Malcolm X appeal to established civil rights standards or the US Constitution to improve the situation of America’s black minority. It seems clear to me that he did not conceive and organize the resistance of African Americans, whom he did not even view as ‘Americans’, within the horizon of a common culture shared by all citizens. The idea was instead to create a new, ultimately separatist African and Muslim identity out of the revived collective memory of slavery and oppression. Black Muslims likened US law enforcement authorities in the urban ghettos to occupying powers, and their own struggle to postcolonial emancipatory movements in Africa. In November 1963, for example, Malcolm addressed a crowd and started mocking the pacifism of civil rights leaders and some of their practices, like singing ‘We Shall Overcome’, the anthem of the AfricanAmerican civil rights movement: ‘You don’t do that in a revolution. You don’t do any singing; you are too busy swinging. It’s based on land. A revolutionary wants land so he can set up his own nation, an independent nation’ (quoted in Marable 2011: 264). Despite his unfortunate antiSemitic leanings, Malcolm’s concept of emancipation was modelled on

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the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. For him, the choice was not between exit and voice, but for both at once: a clamorous exodus. Together with the ambition to create a parallel culture with distinctly ‘black’ ways of dressing, speaking, making music, worshipping, and child rearing, the public representation of a proud new black identity was itself considered a political action (Eyerman 2001: 183). Self-respect was sought not as a consequence of white America finally changing its mind and recognizing black women and men as equal fellow citizens, but through spiritual self-reliance and a kind of self-sustaining bootstrapping operation that was conceived to shorten the path to liberation by deemphasizing the importance of what the ‘white devils’ were thinking or doing. To be respected by ‘the white man’ was still a goal of the movement, but Malcolm urged his followers to ‘demand his respect’ in the way strong personalities command respect and awe without ever expecting ‘love’ (quoted in Marable 2011: 186). This example points to a systematic problem in recognition theory. It shows that the answer to the question of who the ‘others’ are from whom recognition is sought, depends on the cognitive map guiding the action of a social movement.3 For the black Muslims in the United States these others were not their own fellow citizens, but Muslims in other parts of the world. Like some of his comrades, Malcolm travelled extensively in the Middle East and Africa, and even joined the pilgrimage to Mecca, not only to garner sympathy for an imagined common cause, but also to deepen his particular transnational Shi’a Muslim identity. As Manning Marable writes in his critical biography, the Nation of Islam, where Malcolm started his career as a ‘minister’ and chief organizer, did not care at all about being recognized by non-black people in the United States, but tried hard to obtain and ‘had much to gain from recognition or even acknowledgment by major Muslim states’ (Marable 2011: 165) and other, non-state authorities. The irony of this huge detour was that, by becoming an orthodox Muslim, Malcolm discovered that Islam is indifferent to race and as colour blind as the American liberals he disliked so much. This in turn led him to soften his stance on black nationalism to a point where, in his last years, he became an advocate of international ‘human rights’ (ibid.: 305, 408), a move that later made him a global icon whose image has been put on a postage stamp not only in Egypt, but also in the United States. The important lesson here is that a neo-Hegelian, teleological conception of social movements as collective actors struggling for recognition tends to restrict the space of empirical possibilities by focusing only on struggles by disrespected and marginalized groups for inclusion into the same pre-existing moral community from which they

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were first excluded. By no means do protesters always seek recognition from everybody, as Pettenkofer (2010: 173) rightly emphasizes. Sometimes protesters try to elicit sympathy only from third parties such as spectators or witnesses. The example of the black Muslims in the United States shows furthermore that disrespected groups may not at all be driven by the desire to be recognized by the same community that is the source of their humiliation; they might rather prefer to struggle for inclusion into an altogether different, transnational community that has yet to be created.

The Cultural Deficit of Recognition Theory To understand transnational social movements, recognition theory is helpful, yet insufficient. The social psychology of recognition is part of the story of how transnational movements are motivated to challenge authority and social dependency in contemporary society. However, Honneth’s use of the ‘principle/application’ distinction cannot fully grasp the cultural or symbolic dimension of social struggles. Social movements are considered to be interesting in so far as they are ‘helping to realize the general values and ideals of modern societies’ (Honneth 2011: 26). These general values and ideals themselves are viewed as essentially unproblematic and uncontested. In his book Das Recht der Freiheit (2011), Honneth challenges ‘constructive’ approaches to the problem of justice by engaging in the ‘normative reconstruction’ of standards of freedom and emancipation from the historical material of real social struggles. His approach is meant to give philosophical theories of justice a more sociological twist, but he stops halfway through by insulating the semi-transcendent footings of recognition principles from the maelstrom of social struggles. However, as we have seen, social movements can ‘sin’ against their professed ideals of freedom and justice, or they can even be born corrupted. Fascist movements are a case in point. In Honneth’s recent book, in which social struggles have almost completely disappeared, fascism as a social movement and a political regime is not only, like many other developments, a lamentable ‘departure’ from the values and ideals of modern society, but a phenomenon that Honneth calls inexplicable from the standpoint of his own theory (Honneth 2011: 598). Powerful European movements and collective sentiments rooted in xenophobia and racism are described as something like bolts from the blue that changed societies and publics ‘all of a sudden’ and ‘overnight’ (ibid.: 491–92). In an earlier paper on recognition between nations and

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states he has at least attempted to offer elements of an explanation for such bad social movements within the framework of recognition theory (Honneth 2012b). Here Honneth refers, among other examples, to the conflict between Weimar Germany, the emergent Nazi movement, and the Western powers over the Treaty of Versailles, suggesting that there is a link between the lack of sympathy and respect on the part of victors of the First World War, and the readiness of vanquished peoples to engage in or support extreme violence. As always, Honneth tends to neglect the role of symbolic labour and the ways in which political actors draw on anchored narratives and codes in constructing generalized understandings from contingent events, including the benign or hostile acts of adversaries. Honneth states that after the First World War ‘widespread feelings of collective humiliation among the German population owing to the Treaty of Versailles’ helped to create a ‘justification for an aggressive policy of reparations and revenge’ (Honneth 2012b: 145). While this is certainly correct, it is by no means certain that the Allied powers, once they were tainted by the rising Nazi movement as driven by a vicious global conspiracy against Germany, could have done much more to dispel those feelings of humiliation. In order to include Germany in the moral community of nations it would have taken more than ‘globally visible and clear signals’ (ibid.: 150) of the goodwill of the Western powers; what was lacking was a strong public able to read those signals and absorb their message. The fact that in the course of the 1920s the economic burdens imposed on the Germans by the Versailles settlement were significantly eased and that Germany had been invited to resolve her political differences with Western Europe’s major powers in a process of reciprocity and compromise, did little to free the minds of many Germans from the powers of ‘demonization and resentment’ (ibid.). The reason is that significant sections of the German public had been cocooned in myths of betrayal, heroism, national destiny, and righteous victimhood that made them deaf to reconciliatory messages from abroad, and attuned to the most egregious of fear-mongering lies. In line with the basic model of the struggle for recognition, Honneth speaks again of the ‘raw materials [Rohstoff] of collective feelings’ that are moulded into shape by ‘political narratives of justification’ (Honneth 2012b: 147; translation amended following Honneth 2010: 196). By introducing the distinction between diffuse feelings and political narratives, Honneth is more careful than one of his disciples who simply claims that National Socialism came to power ‘because of the Treaty of Versailles’ (Lindemann 2010: 131–32, emphasis added). However, he has not much to say either about the crafting and diffusion of those

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narratives or about the conditions and mechanisms that account for the forcefulness and success of political and moral narratives. To my mind, this gap could be closed by a fusion of recognition theory with a sociology that takes culture and signifying practices more seriously (see, e.g., Jasper 1997). Such a perspective would still start from the analysis of collective feelings of having been despised or unjustly treated, but would specify the symbolic variables that mediate between those experiences and observable forms of protest and revolt without assuming any kind of historical teleology. Much more attention would be paid to the narratives used by social groups and activists to make sense of random occurrences and turn them into meaningful events. Narratives are compelling, authoritative stories that reconstruct the history of a group, moralize past events and predict future challenges. They endow the world with meaning, and orient the behaviour of groups towards adversaries, state institutions, foreign countries or the general public. The American sociologists Ron Eyerman (2001) and Jeffrey Alexander (2004) have explained how temporal and competing narratives define and contextualize the nature of a painful situation or occurrence (such as slavery or having been defeated in a war), attribute blame, and connect victims to broader audiences. Once we integrate such an approach with the model of the struggle for recognition, even Honneth’s basic forms of disrespect appear in a different light. Consider his discussion of violence in The Struggle for Recognition. When Honneth discusses ‘physical abuse’ and the experience of ‘being defencelessly at the mercy of another subject’ (Honneth 1995: 132), he does not distinguish, for instance, between the loss of self-confidence experienced as a result of a massive military defeat and the interpretive reaction to this shock. Yet, the example of the defeat of Nazi Germany makes clear that such a distinction is important. In hindsight, even many survivors of the bombing campaigns against Germany in the Second World War, and certainly their successors, have come to see the violence unleashed against them as necessary or unavoidable, though hardly as welcome or just. The harrowing experience of being bombed was by no means automatically perceived as an insult or a sign of disrespect. The connection between the emotional raw material of being terrorized by bombs and many possible narratives, which in hindsight make sense of that experience, is contingent on the symbolic labour of civil societies. Recognition theorists have trouble to understand this very real possibility of humans being able to stomach even massive violence without feeling mortally humiliated and desperate to take revenge against the perpetrators (Heins and Langenohl 2011). Similarly, they lack the theoretical means to understand the willingness of people to struggle on

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the basis of a traumatic event in the distant past, about which very little is known for sure. Think of examples like the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 between the Serbs and the army of the Ottoman Empire, which strongly influences Serbian national identity to this day, or the torments suffered by Christians for two thousand years about the death by crucifixion of the founder of their religion. Much-publicized cases like these illustrate the power of symbolic events that are more effective than ‘real’ events in shaping social struggles. At a deeper level, there are two problems here. A useful theory of transnational social movements should be able to explain how groups that suffer from injustice manage to galvanize a non-involved public, and how, conversely, neutral spectators turn into passionate sympathizers who take sides and start to act on behalf of others. With regard to the first problem, Honneth himself writes that ‘the experience of social movements hinges on the existence of a shared semantics that enables personal experiences of disappointment to be interpreted as something affecting not just the individual himself or herself but also a circle of many other subjects’ (Honneth 1995: 163–64). However, recognition theory has little to say about how a ‘shared semantics’ is created and put to use by social movements able to navigate the morass of mass communication. For this purpose, we need to draw on the insights of sociologists who have explored the ways in which political actors bring conditions into being through the very act of talking, employing metaphors or stretching analogies to bridge vastly different experiences and perspectives. It has been shown, for example, how victims of injustice have cast themselves as moral witnesses who succeed in sharing a certain traumatic representation of their own experience with a wider public of citizens who authenticate, preserve and generalize the testimony of victims (Alexander 2004; Heins 2012b). The opposite situation occurs when advocacy networks, moral entrepreneurs or NGOs act vicariously for others without having themselves gone through a history of experiences of disrespect. Strictly speaking, such a case is not even presumed to exist for Honneth’s recognition theory, for he tends to ignore the significance of otherregarding models of political action. It is assumed that it is only one’s own experiences of being disrespected that can trigger social conflicts: ‘[A] moral experience that can be meaningfully described as one of “disrespect” must be regarded as the motivational basis of all social conflicts: subjects and groups see themselves as disrespected in certain aspects of their capacities or characteristics’ (Honneth 2003: 157, emphasis added). By contrast, other-regarding models of action based on an ethic of brotherliness (or sisterliness) carry the implication that it is

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not just one’s own experiences that can act as the cause of social conflicts. Groups of people may intervene on behalf of others by assuming the role of advocates, thereby helping to influence the course of conflicts in multiple ways. Honneth’s theory harks back to the model of the workers’ movement and, to a lesser extent, the struggle against colonialism, which are for him prototypes of modern social movements concerned with selfliberation. He thereby ignores the alternative model of the transnational nineteenth-century campaign against slavery in which the anti-slavery sentiment among mostly white non-slaves was crucial for creating a moral climate that encouraged rebellions and ultimately led to the abolition of human bondage (Heins 2008: 65–69). My conclusion is that Honneth’s theory of the struggle for recognition is too harmonious and teleological; it underestimates the regulative power of cultural codes and symbols; and it is insufficiently open to consideration of the involvement of third parties such as advocates, witnesses and prophetic intellectuals, who have often played important roles in transnational social movements without having themselves been victims of disrespect before entering the conflict arena. It remains to be seen whether these weaknesses can be addressed without affecting the deep structure of recognition theory itself.

Notes  1. An extensively reorganized and expanded version of this chapter has been published under the title ‘Recognition, Multiculturalism, and the Allure of Separatism’, in Patrick Hayden and Kate Schick (eds). 2016. Recognition and Global Politics: Critical Encounters between State and World. Manchester: Manchester University Press. The moral ‘underground’ is one of Honneth’s favourite metaphors, which happens to mesh well with the imagery of ‘raw materials’ of collective action. See the reference to Dodson (2009) in Honneth (2011: 458–59 as well as Honneth 2012b).   2. This language of sin and suffering was introduced by the British political scientist Martin Wight to distinguish between different kinds of Kantianism in political theory (see Wight 2004, chap. 3).  3. On this neglected issue of the wider social constellations of struggles for recognition, see also Rogers (2009) and Pettenkofer (2010: 171–72).

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Bibliography Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2004. ‘Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma’, in Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Boltanski, Luc, and Axel Honneth. 2009. ‘Soziologie der Kritik oder Kritische Theorie? Ein Gespräch mit Robin Celikates’, in Rahel Jaeggi and Tilo Wesche (eds), Was ist Kritik? Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, pp. 81–114. Dodson, Lisa. 2009. The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy. New York: The New Press. Eyerman, Ron. 2001. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black Skins, White Masks, trans. R. Philcox. New York: Grove Press. Friedman, Thomas. 2011. ‘Out of Touch, Out of Time’, New York Times, 10 February. Heins, Volker. 2008. Nongovernmental Organizations in International Society: Struggles over Recognition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2012a. ‘The Global Politics of Recognition’, in Shane O’Neill and Nicholas H. Smith (eds), Recognition Theory as Social Research: Investigating the Dynamics of Social Conflict. Basingstoke: Palgrave. ———. 2012b. ‘Saying Things that Hurt: Adorno as Educator’, Thesis Eleven 110: 68–82. Heins, Volker, and Andreas Langenohl. 2011. ‘A Fire That Doesn’t Burn? The Allied Bombing of Germany and the Cultural Politics of Trauma’, in R. Eyerman, J.C. Alexander and E.B. Breese (eds), Narrating Trauma: On the Impact of Collective Suffering. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Hobbes, Thomas. 1985. Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson. London: Penguin. Honneth, Axel. 1995. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. J. Anderson. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 2003. ‘Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser’, in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, trans. J. Golb, J. Ingram and C. Wilke. London and New York: Verso. ———. 2007. Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 2010. ‘Anerkennung zwischen Staaten: Zum moralischen Untergrund zwischenstaatlicher Beziehungen’, in Honneth, Das Ich im Wir: Studien zur Anerkennungstheorie. Berlin: Suhrkamp, pp. 181–201. ———. 2011. Das Recht der Freiheit: Grundriss einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit. Berlin: Suhrkamp. ———. 2012a. ‘The Fabric of Justice: On the Limits of Contemporary Proceduralism’, in Honneth, The I in We: Studies in the Theory of Recognition. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 35–55. ———. 2012b. ‘Recognition between States: On the Moral Substrate of International Relations’, in Honneth, The I in We: Studies in the Theory of Recognition. Cambridge: Polity, 137–52. Jasper, James M. 1997. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Joyce, James. 1992. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Penguin.

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Lindemann, Thomas. 2010. Causes of War: The Struggle for Recognition. Colchester, UK: ECPR Press. Marable, Manning. 2011. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. New York: Viking. Pettenkofer, Andreas. 2010. Radikaler Protest: Zur soziologischen Theorie politischer Bewegungen. Frankfurt and New York: Campus. Rogers, Melvin L. 2009. ‘Rereading Honneth: Exodus Politics and the Paradox of Recognition’, European Journal of Political Theory 8(2): 183–206. Tocqueville, Alexis de. 2003. Democracy in America, trans. Gerald Bevan. London: Penguin. Tully, James. 2004. ‘Recognition and Dialogue: The Emergence of a New Field’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 7(3): 84–106. Wight, Martin. 2004. Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant, and Mazzini. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Volker M. Heins is Permanent Fellow and Head of Research at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) in Essen, Germany, as well as a member of the social science faculty at the University of Bochum. His areas of teaching and research include moral struggles in world society, multiculturalism and human rights, and the Frankfurt School and its aftermath. His most recent publication is “Recognition, Multiculturalism, and the Allure of Separatism” in Recognition and Global Politics: Critical Encounters between State and World (Manchester University Press, 2016).

Part II The Cases for Jews and Women

Chapter 3

‘By the sacred ties of humanity and common decent’ The Transnationalization of Modern Jewish History and its Discontents

Tobias Metzler

Two seemingly paradoxical developments characterize modern Jewish history: the process of political emancipation in the framework of the nation-state transforming Jews into ‘citizens of Jewish persuasion’ on the one hand, and the turn towards transnational Jewish solidarity and activism on the other. Bereft of pre-emancipation corporatist identity of a segregated minority, West and Central European Jews faced the question of how to reconcile elements of diasporic transnational Jewishness with the aim of becoming and remaining firmly integrated citizens in their respective national contexts. These attempts to reconceptualize Jewishness faced numerous challenges. The mass influx of East European co-religionists, the rise of Zionism and, not least, soaring anti-Semitism represented some of the strongest counterforces to this integrationist agenda. The consequent attempts to find a middle ground between nationalization and transnationalization has henceforth dominated the modern Jewish experience. They challenge the dominance of the traditional national paradigm of Jewish historiography and call for a broadening of the scholarly perspective on global Jewish history. Rather than regarding nationalization and transnationalization as poles between which modern Jewish existence and experiences oscillate, this chapter suggests juxtaposing the two, treating them as intertwined

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and entangled phenomena. Put differently, the central claim is that both processes represent aspects of emancipated European Jews’ attempts to find their place in their respective social and national contexts. Hence, the re-emergence of transnational ethnic solidarity is not a countermovement to the agenda of national integration, but a result of it. In order to explore the interrelations and tensions between the two processes, I juxtapose and compare the work of two nineteenth-century Jewish organizations. The (trans)national activities and agendas of the Paris-based Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) and its British partner the Anglo-Jewish Association (AJA) will be explored on several levels: a macro-level, that is the relationship of both organizations to their respective national (and imperial) contexts; a meso-level, focusing on the transnational rhetoric and activities of both organizations; and finally a micro-level, exploring their activities on behalf of their oriental co-religionists at a local level. Raising the question in what ways the processes of nationalization and transnationalization influenced and shaped the work of these two organizations, I seek to unveil the paradoxical simultaneity of divergent elements in modern Jewish transnational activism, and to show how it altered Jewish identities across national borders. Moreover, I suggest that the context of empire – all too often sidelined by historians of modern Jewish history – constitutes a component that has fundamentally shaped transnational Jewish activism. The European colonial project not only played a vital part in the agendas and activities of transnational Jewish organisations but also in the emergence of postcolonial elements of resistance among the indigenous Jewish populations around the Mediterranean. Before turning to the case study of the AIU and AJA, it is appropriate to reflect on the transnational dimensions of Jewish history more generally. In recent years, the term ‘transnationalism’ has entered into numerous discussions across the humanities and social sciences, and opened up new fields of research.1 The boom in transnational studies has produced various definitions of the term. The growing set of definitions, connotations and conceptual distinctions – often referring to very different phenomena – makes the use of ‘transnationalism’ increasingly difficult.2 Likewise, an attempt to retrace transnational elements in modern Jewish history produces a large array of different manifestations. For instance, we find numerous case studies corresponding to the model of immigrant transnationalism developed by Nina Glick Schiller and others in the early 1990s. Schiller and her co-researchers conceptualize transnationalism as a set of ‘processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement’ (Basch, Glick Schiller and Blanc-Szanton 1994: 8).

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Transnationalism, hence, opens up a sphere to analyse the complex flows and interplay between immigrants’ old and new homes.3 Beyond the context of migration, this model of transnationalism has also influenced discussions long dominant in political science on the structure and activity of transnational non-government organizations (NGOs) and social agents (Faist 2009). Transnational hence comes to be conceptualized in opposition to official or governmental international policy. Both aspects find their equivalents in the context of the modern Jewish experience. The creation of landsmanshaften in North America or Western and Central Europe by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe is a striking example of the perpetuation of cross-continental migratory networks (Soyer 1997; Boyarin 1991).4 Similarly, many political movements of modern Jewry operated similarly to contemporary NGOs and transnational lobby groups. The history of the early Zionist movement is but one example thereof; another is the transnationally organized Jewish campaign against white slavery during the years bracketing the turn of the century.5 The intensifying scholarly debates on transnationalism have not bypassed Jewish studies.6 Yet, the adaptation of the term transnationalism for the Jewish context constitutes specific challenges. Traditionally, the term ‘diaspora’ has been the dominant one in analysing and describing the dispersion and activities of Jews across borders. Although both terms refer to similar aspects, they come with notable conceptual differences. Whereas the traditional model of diaspora denotes a religious or national minority group living outside of its (imagined) homeland, which continues to shape its identity and patterns of action, transnationalism, as indicated above, rather refers to migrants’ cross-continental ties and various social formations of transnationally active networks, groups and organizations.7 With the renewed interest in the phenomenon of diaspora outside of Jewish studies, the meaning of the term has undergone significant transformations and conceptual extensions.8 Various scholars have consequently tried to integrate diaspora and transnationalism into a common analytical framework.9 Understood in a broad sense as activities and networks spanning across borders, transnationalism is virtually omnipresent in modern Jewish history (see, e.g., Stein 2008; Green and Viaene 2012). Already this incomprehensive overview underscores the varied uses of the term. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that an organizational-centred approach seems insufficient to analyse and understand the complex interplay between local, national and transnational elements in modern Jewish history in general, and the ideologies and activities of Jewish corporate actors in particular. Rather than suggesting a static definition, I employ the term ‘transnationalism’ in a broad sense, referring to activities exceeding the realm of the nation-state. Employing such a wide framework

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allows us to bring into focus the multiple layers of cross-border Jewish activism and cross-cultural encounters under discussion, and underscores that Jewish corporate actors’ pattern of action (though at times closely linked to national contexts and projects) cannot simply be subsumed under the label ‘international’. Central to the concept of transnationalism employed throughout the following pages is the emphasis on the elements of dynamics. Processes such as social and institutional networking across borders, as well as cross-border practices like Jewish diplomacy and intercultural exchanges and transfers, constitute the central component of transnationalism.10

Sacred Bonds of Brotherhood Following their legal emancipation, West European Jews began to engage in activities aimed at their ‘less fortunate brethren’ in Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Orient. The ritual murder accusations against Syrian Jews in 1840, known as the Damascus Affair, launched modern Jewish politics on an international scale.11 The subsequent mission of Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Crémieux on behalf of the leading Jewish bodies in France and Britain, the Board of Deputies and the Consistoire Centrale (Central Consistory) set new standards (Green 2010, chapter 7; Guesnet 2002: 54). The Montefiore-Crémieux mission to the East marked the starting point of European Jewish diplomatic missions on behalf of their persecuted brethren in other lands. Furthermore, they reveal the increasingly close links between Jewish transnational activities and international policies of nation-states. On the one hand, Jewish diplomatic missions mimicked patterns of national diplomacy; on the other, national officials, including Palmerston, then British foreign secretary, approved Montefiore’s mission in the Ottoman Empire and actively supported it by providing official diplomatic backing (Green 2010: 138). One of the reasons for this close entanglement of national and Jewish diplomacy was the shared belief in fundamental morality as the basis of overseas engagement, most notably in the idea of a moral mission underpinning British imperialism. The decades following the Damascus Affair saw the continuation and extension of Western Jewish diplomatic activities aiming to protect foreign co-religionists against state discrimination. In 1846, Montefiore embarked on a mission to Tsarist Russia. In 1863, he went to Morocco and convinced the sultan to issue a formal dahir (edict) ending legal practices discriminating against Jews in the Sherifian Empire (Littman 1985). In 1865, Crémieux visited Romania where he hoped to put an end to anti-

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Jewish violence. Montefiore followed two years later.12 The Jewish press reported extensively on these missions and played an important role in the process that saw a growing awareness among Western Jews of the fate of their Eastern and oriental brethren.13 In Britain, these developments coincided with the heyday of Jewish legal emancipation marked by Lionel de Rothschild taking his seat in the Commons in 1858.14 Hand in hand with achieving legal emancipation, the British Jewish leadership increasingly stressed that the Jewish community was deeply embedded in the nation and contributed significantly to its advancement.Around the same time, similar tendencies gained momentum in France and the idea of Franco-Judaïsme, aiming at reconciling Jewish values with the republican ideal, became widely accepted among France’s Jewish elites.15 Although these developments manifest a turn towards national integration, they also formed an ideological basis for the future transnational activities of British and French Jews. Embracing the ideals of 1789 and French Republicanism provided French Jews with the ideological basis for reconceptualizing the Jewish identity. Emulating Republican universalism, Judaism was assigning a universal mission (Rodrigue 1990b: 186). A contribution to L’Univers Israélite in 1850 is emblematic for this tendency: ‘There is no such thing as a geographical Judaism, that is one confined to, and circumscribed by, certain countries, and influenced by certain local mores; but there is a cosmopolitan, universal, invariable, and independent entity called Judaism, above time, space, soil and races’.16 This juxtaposition of universal French republicanism and Judaism formed an important basis for the transnational turn in French Jewish history. A decade later a group of young French Jews came together in Paris to found an organization based on the idea of a cosmopolitan and universal Judaism, the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU). The circle of founders included the politician Adolphe Crémieux, the lawyer Narcisse Leven, the poet Eugene Emmanuel and the businessman Charles Netter. Well integrated into French society, they represented the high degree of FrenchJewish social and cultural integration under the Seconde Empire (Burrows 1986: 122; see also Weill 1978: 6). Rejecting the Gallocentric views held by the older generation of French Jewish leaders, they spoke freely of a Jewish ‘race’ and Jewish cosmopolitanism (Abitbol 1985: 36). Despite such rhetoric, the establishment of the AIU was rather an extension of Franco-Judaïsme than a revolt against existing communal structures. The creation of the AIU was especially welcomed outside France. Central and East European Jewish intellectuals euphorically embraced the new body as an important step towards a Jewish rebirth (Graetz 1996: 249–52). In just a few years, the new body witnessed a breathtaking

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development. The number of AIU members rose from 142 in 1860 to 3,900 in 1865, and in 1870 this figure reached 13,370. By 1863, the year Adolphe Crémieux became AIU president, a central administration had been established in Paris, as well as branches in Amsterdam, Berlin and Jaffa (Chouraqui 1965: 45; Leven 1911, vol. I: 72). Support for the new institution came also from the British Isles where the AIU counted several hundred subscribers, though no formal branch was established there.17 Twelve years later, events in France provided the immediate reason for the setting up of a similar body in Britain. On 7 July 1871, a public meeting assembled at the Westminster Jews’ Free School to constitute an Anglo-Jewish Association ‘for the promotion of objects pursued by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, and for cooperation therewith’ (Marks, Löwy and Goldsmid 1882: 224–25). The name of the new organization underlined the strong ties with its French parent body. But why did British Jews decide to form a body of their own rather than continue to support the AIU’s work through subscriptions and local branches? The first report of the new association justified the decision with reference to the ‘grave apprehensions’ (i.e. the impact of the Franco-Prussian War) that interrupted the work of the AIU and the fear that it ‘would perhaps fail to be renewed’. Therefore, the text declared that ‘zealous and intelligent men, sympathizers with the objects of the Alliance … conceived the idea of establishing a kindred institution in England, having for its object to sustain and assist the Alliance Israélite in its distress’.18 Following this declaration, the founding of the AJA could be regarded as an AngloJewish act of cross-Channel, transnational relief work on behalf of their French co-religionists. The bylaws of the new body underscored its cooperative character and close ties with its French predecessor. In fact the statement of the AJA’s aims was almost identical to those of the AIU formulated a decade earlier: 1. To make every practicable effort to remove any disabilities under which the Jews may labour, and to promote wherever needful the moral, social and intellectual advancement of our people. 2. To give efficient aid to those who may suffer in consequence of being members of the Jewish community. 3. To promote the publication of works calculated to advance these purposes. 4. The Anglo-Jewish Association recognizes in every Israelite to whom it is bound by the sacred ties of humanity and common descent to protect and assist to the utmost of its power.19

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The formation of the AJA highlights the ambivalence between national particularism and transnational Jewish solidarity. Already prior to the formal establishment of the new body, the Jewish Chronicle had stressed that, in the face of the anti-Jewish events in Russia, ‘it is clearly the place of England – especially of England – to take up the work of the Alliance’, thus insinuating national competition.20 Leading AngloJewish figures, such as Sir Francis Goldsmid, regarded such competition with concern.21 Despite the predominantly cooperative, often amicable relationship between the two associations, the foundation of the AJA did indeed mark a shift towards growing competition between transnational Jewish philanthropic organizations. This trend accelerated in the wake of the formation of the Israelitische Allianz in Vienna in 1872, and especially of the German Hilfsverein in 1900. Like the group that had founded the AIU in 1860, the founders of the AJA represented a new generation of Anglo-Jewry marked by a liberal attitude that set them apart from the rather orthodox communal leadership, the so-called Cousinhood. Geoffrey Alderman has argued that internal divisions within the Anglo-Jewish elites led to the foundation of the AJA (Alderman 1992: 98f.). The fact that many AJA founding members were connected to the Reform movement that was still excluded from representation on the Board of Deputies, Anglo-Jewry’s principal representative body, seems to support this argument (Loewe 2006: 205). The two principal founders of the AJA were Albert Löwy, the minister of the West London Synagogue, and Abraham Benisch, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle. Although not formed in opposition to the board, the foundation of the AJA can be seen as a call for greater participation in the political structure of Anglo-Jewry by leading figures in the Reform movement.22 A closer look at the AJA’s supporters, however, reveals that its creation was anything but a rebellion against the Anglo-Jewish establishment. In fact, numerous leading figures of the community sat on the AJA Council.23 Within the first year of its existence, the AJA had already established several branches across the British Isles, as well as overseas. Besides branches in Liverpool, Manchester and New South Wales, subscriptions for the new body came from Brighton and Brisbane, Cape Town and Cheltenham, Sierra Leone and Sheffield.24 On its tenth anniversary, the organization counted thirty branches across the entire British Empire.25 The geographical distribution of the branches highlights the interconnectedness of the AJA network and empire. The AJA was indeed a British institution, but, in a different way, the AIU was a French body. Different from the AIU with branches in various European countries controlled by a predominantly French central administration in Paris, the

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AJA’s administrative network remained almost exclusively within the framework of the British Empire. Hence, the London-dominated central administration saw no need for the fixed representational quota with which its French partner operated.26 In its activities, the AJA was fundamentally inspired by its French parent organization. Especially the AIU’s educational work among Eastern and oriental Jews served as a model. The two bodies shared a biased view of their Eastern brethren.

The Making of the Oriental Jew By the mid nineteenth century, the idealized image of the high-cultured Sephardim held by many proponents of Jewish enlightenment, the maskilim, began to give way to the picture of the deprived, backward and destitute oriental Jew. The growing imperialist jingoism in European societies fostered a sense of superiority among Western Jews vis-à-vis their oriental brethren (Rodrigue 1990a: 12).27 Aron Rodrigue has shown that the obsession of the leadership of the AIU with the régénération of oriental Jews through education reflected the stance of the French-Jewish establishment on philanthropy as a means of reforming and moralizing the Jewish masses (ibid.: 7). The AIU’s aim ‘to work everywhere for the emancipation and moral progress of the Jews’ formed the ideological basis for its activities in North Africa and the Levant as well as French Jews’ perception of their oriental brethren.28 The concepts émancipation and progrès moraux or régénération shaped the transcultural relationship between Western and oriental Jews fundamentally. Moreover, they offer yet another example of the connection between French-Jewish national identity and transnational agenda. French Jews, having achieved emancipation, felt a responsibility to use their privileged position to realize Jewish emancipation elsewhere. In 1864, Narcisse Leven concluded his report on the state of the AIU’s schoolwork by declaring, ‘the emancipated West pays its debt to the regenerated Orient’.29 Daniel J. Schroeter and Joseph Chetrit have pointed to the ambivalent and tentative character of ‘emancipation’ and ‘regeneration’ in connection with the AIU’s work in North Africa, arguing that both terms became the ‘rationales of French Jewry in support of colonialism’ (Schroeter and Chetrit 2006: 173). The two terms were closely interconnected. In fact, the conceptual framework of regeneration originated in the debates on Jewish emancipation in Revolutionary France. Post-emancipation French Jewry embraced the framework of French universalism, and by

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combining it with ideas of transnational Jewish solidarity extended it to their oriental brethren. They came to regard oriental Jews as anachronistic, unemancipated versions of themselves, who – provided they received the necessary support and expertise of their Western brethren – could achieve a social and cultural status similar to that enjoyed by French Jews.30 Regeneration, French Jewish representatives believed, would transform their unenlightened brethren and pave the way for their acceptance into civilization – that is to say, the French nation. French Jewish policies in colonial Algeria are a clear indication of this commingling of the national and transnational elements in transnational Jewish activism. Rather than promoting their Algerian co-religionists’ integration into Algerian society (for instance, by overcoming the traditional system of Jewish subordination as dhimmis), French Jews advocated granting them French citizenship, thus extracting them from the Algerian context.31 While this aim was formally achieved in Algeria with the Crémieux Decree of 1870, similar attempts in Tunisia and later in Morocco were opposed by the French authorities, fearing to stir up inner tensions in these countries by privileging the Jewish minorities (Schroeter and Chetrit 2006: 175). British Jews held very similar views on the emancipation of their less fortunate brethren. Like the AIU, the AJA and the Board of Deputies believed it their duty to enable Jews in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Orient and North Africa to follow the path of their Western brethren (Bayme 1977: 264).32 The fear of continued Jewish mass migration became a central motivation of Western Jewish transnational bodies in their work for the emancipation of their Eastern brethren.33 The common belief was that if Eastern Jews achieved the status of equal citizens in their countries of origin, the option to emigrate would be less attractive.34 The emphasis on vocational and agricultural training as well as apprenticeship schemes became a key tool in the work of transnational Jewish organizations (Laskier 1983b: 157–58).35 Above all, education came to be seen by the AIU and the AJA as the central tool for achieving the regeneration of Jews worldwide. Hence, they invested a large share of their budgets in the establishment and maintenance of Jewish schools, primarily around the Eastern Mediterranean, across the Middle East and in North Africa.

Education, Education, Education The result of a complex interplay of adaptations of European colonialism, the extension of national standards into foreign realms as well as a space of encounter between European Jewish activists and their Eastern coreligionists, the educational endeavours of the two bodies stood at the

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heart of their agenda and activities. They bracketed both the meso- and the micro-level of the AIU’s and AJA’s transnational activities. The establishment of new schools by the AIU and later by the AJA followed a general pattern. The associations provided part of the funding necessary to establish and operate the schools. Moreover, in most cases they provided personal and administrative leadership. It is hence fair to say that in most instances the establishment of schools revealed a paternalistic attitude rather than a sense of partnership. The Jewish associations firmly believed in the superiority of Western education as a means to uplift their oriental brethren. The subsequent encounters between Western Jewish ideas of education and the traditional structures of Levantine and North African Jewish communities stress the transcultural interconnectivity as well as the contradictions inherent in the project of transnational Jewish solidarity.36 While these encounters, at times, caused open disputes, and local Jewish leaders feared for their cultural identity and autonomy, it would be going too far to regard the establishment of schools as a mere exercise of Western Jewish power. Realizing that local support would be essential for the success of their mission, the AIU and the AJA sought the support of local communities and authorities. To a certain extent, the schools became a field of exchanges between West European Jewish organizations and local Jewish communities, and a laboratory for attempts to reconcile different conceptions of Jewishness and modernity. Besides the cooperation between European and oriental Jews, the establishment of schools also provided a framework for collaboration between French and British Jews. Already the foundation of the AIU’s first school in Morocco became an issue of transnational Jewish negotiations and cooperation. In 1861, the orientalist Joseph Halévy (as representative of the AUI) and the historian James Picciotto (as representative of the Board of Deputies) met with local leaders of the Tetuan Jewish mellah to discuss the establishment of a school there. According to the agreement reached in these discussions, subsidies for the school would come from the AIU, the Consistoire Central in Paris and the Board of Deputies in London. While the teachers for French and general education would come from France, the local rabbis would provide teachers for instruction in Hebrew and Jewish religious classes (Laskier 1983a: 61). The Tetuan Jewish Boy’s School was inaugurated on 23 December 1862, marking the beginning of a growing network of AIU schools around the Mediterranean. In the first decade of its existence, the AIU founded another 14 schools. By 1900, no less than 100 schools were operating under its auspices, and on the eve of the First World War over forty-eight thousand pupils were enrolled in 188 AIU schools (Chouraqui 1965: 161).37

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The leaders of the AJA, like the AIU, recognized the importance of schools as a means to further their objectives. Already during the first year of its existence, the AJA formed an Educational Committee to consider the ‘advisability of establishing schools abroad’. Smyrna and Thessaloniki were considered prime locations for founding schools, ‘either in conjunction with or independently of the Alliance’.38 Additionally, the AJA was particularly interested in supporting the work of the Agricultural School, Mikveh Israel, near Jaffa, which had recently been established by Charles Netter, one of the founders of the AIU. Initially, however, the financial situation of the AJA only permitted the organization to subsidize existing schools rather than establish new ones.39 In 1874, the AJA Council passed an educational scheme, committing itself to raise £200 annually to make grants available for Jewish teachers to be sent to Eastern schools.40 Besides supporting the foundation of new Jewish schools, the AJA also entered into negotiations with the AIU on hiring an English teacher for the school in Baghdad.41 In 1878, a letter from Bombay addressed to the secretary of the AJA, Rev. Albert Löwy, provided the starting point for expanding the AJA’s educational activities abroad. The letter, written by Abraham Daniel, secretary of the Bene Israel Benevolent Society, contained the following request: I would request you, in the name of our community at large, to establish a school for our people, and send out teachers and missionaries to educate and enlighten us. We are poor, very poor, and ignorant too, in comparison with the other races in this vast country, and we look to bodies like your Association for our social and moral improvements.42

One of the three Jewish communities of India, the Bene Israel resided mainly in the presidency of Bombay.43 Over the course of the following years, Bombay became home to an AJA school as well as a branch of the association.44 The Indian case is telling in several ways. It indicates the growing reputation of the AJA among Jewish communities overseas. It also shows that the decision to establish or support schools was not always a top-down affair based on considerations of the London AJA Council but also the result of initiatives from the colonial periphery. The metropolitan decision to comply with the colonial request is hardly surprising considering that the establishment of a school in India fitted neatly into the AJA’s imperial agenda. The trajectory of the AJA’s Bombay branch, moreover, points to the ambivalence between transnational Jewish solidarity and imperial centralization attempts. In the 1880s, the AJA headquarters in London

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tried to gain more control over the Bombay branch, initially constituted by and exclusively consisting of members of the Bene Israel community. It did so by supporting Baghdadi Jews in gaining influence over AJA affairs in India (Roland 1998: S 71). Especially the Bombay branch of the Sassoon family contributed substantially to the AJA’s work in India and was given a prominent role in representing the association on the subcontinent.45 The establishment of another AJA branch in Calcutta in 1883 reflected the power shift among Indian Jews, partly directed from London.46 For a long time, the Bombay school remained the only such institution set up by the AJA in a British colony. Apart from schools in Egypt (under British control after 1882) and Cyprus, the majority of the schools supported by the AJA until the early twentieth century were located outside the British Empire, in various parts of the Ottoman Empire, Persia or Morocco.47 The school network run by the AIU, and to a minor extent by the AJA, represents a transnational network that enabled various forms of transfer between the metropolitan centres and the (colonial) peripheries. In many cases these transfers were characterized by attempts to exercise Western domination over colonial Jewish communities. The question of teachers for the Western Jewish schools is a clear indication. In order to ensure that schools taught according to Western standards, specially trained teachers were needed. The local communities in which the schools were situated were unable to provide these teachers, or the AIU officials were convinced that this was so. Like their English counterparts they feared that the traditionalists, namely the rabbinic authorities, would otherwise infiltrate the schools and direct their curriculum away from the standards set by the AIU and AJA. Recruiting enough European teachers to work in the Ottoman Empire or North Africa, however, turned out to be a difficult task. In response to this situation, the AIU decided to set up the necessary infrastructure to train teachers for its schools. In 1867, it founded a central teacher training college for its schools, the École Normale Israélite Orientale (ENIO). Initially the ENIO had only twentyfive male and ten female students. By 1899, their numbers had risen to ninety and thirty-seven respectively (Bigart 1901: 419).48 Both male and female students followed roughly the same curriculum. Instead of Hebrew classes, which were optional for them, female students were often offered special classes designed to provide them with ‘a suitable education and excellent pedagogical instruction’ – in other words, housekeeping (Bigart 1904: 360).49 With the foundation of the ENIO, the AIU established a further tool for ensuring central control over its schools. Moreover, the example of ENIO underscores the centrality of knowledge as an instrument of

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power in the colonial project, thus pointing to the affinity between imperialist practices and the transnational activities of Western Jewish organizations. The majority of ENIO students were graduates of AIU schools in North Africa or the Levant. Selected by the schools’ principals, the best pupils were sent to Paris to undergo a four-year teacher-training programme modelled on that for schools in France, which led to the national examination for the brevet supérieur. Besides French language and literature classes, the school’s curriculum included English, mathematics, natural science, drawing, history, physical education, biblical exegesis and Hebrew (Rodrigue 2003: 34–36). On completing their training, ENIO graduates were sent back to teach in the Alliance schools in Morocco, Romania or the Ottoman Empire, often in countries other than their own. Before leaving Paris to take up their new posts, ENIO graduates were given clear instructions as to their future duties. Passed by the AIU Comité Central, these instructions stated that the ‘true objective of the primary schools, especially in the Orient’, was instruction rather than education. The teachers’ principal task was ‘to fight the bad habits, more or less widespread among the oriental population, such as, selfishness, pride, the exaggeration of personal feeling, dullness, the blind belief in the force of fortune, [and] the violence of petty passions’. In conclusion, the guide stated: ‘You have to instruct, but you also have to moralize. You have the duty to fight against prejudices and superstitions … You cannot fulfil your duty any better [or] render more great services to the Jewish population than by fighting these defects in the children whose moral future is in your hands’ (Leven 1911: 28–29). Consequently, the new teachers became ‘vectors of modernisation and missionaries of westernisation’, as Frances Malino (1999: 97) puts it. Moreover, they maintained close ties with AIU headquarters and reported back to Paris on the current situation at their schools.

Westernization vs. Tradition With their curriculum, the schools stood in stark contrast to that of traditional institutions of Jewish learning, namely religious primary schools, the chederim and the Talmudei Torah. Representatives of the AIU and AJA regarded the administrative structure of the traditional rabbinate, and especially the system of instruction, as a principal factor for the perpetuated backwardness of Eastern Jews and as central obstacles on the way towards their ‘regeneration’ (Rodrigue 1987: LVI). An 1887 AJA report on the state of Jewish education in the East is exemplary of the harsh critique of traditional institutions of Jewish

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instruction. According to the report, the Talmudei Torah in the East were ‘worthless and inefficient’, the teachers ignorant, the curriculum insufficient, and even Hebrew was only taught in an ‘antiquated, and, for all practical purposes, obsolete form’. Far worse than the lack of quality in teaching, according to the report, was the fact that a majority of Jewish children attended them. Unless checked, the report concluded, the traditional school would ‘prove an insurmountable obstacle to the progress of the Jewish race in the East’ and a decisive element in ‘a struggle between enlightenment and darkness; between education and ignorance’.50 Consequently, the rhetoric of transnational Jewish solidarity all too often concealed the open confrontation between the new schools set up by Western Jews and the traditional system of instruction that continued to exist in many Levantine and North African communities. The Western accusations of backwardness and ignorance were countered by local religious leaders of many oriental communities, who accused the teachers in the AIU and AJA schools of encouraging secularization and the assimilation of Jews (Iram 1992: 587). Despite these mutual accusations, the AIU and the AJA repeatedly cooperated with existing Talmudei Torah.51 By co-funding them, the council in London hoped to fuse elements of traditional and Western education, so as to afford the poorest ‘children of the indigent classes all the advantages of a good training’.52 With its school work, the AIU and AJA were increasingly drawn into the inner Jewish conflicts between Francos, local westernized elites and the traditional religious leadership in Eastern communities. These conflicts between loussavorial (enlightened) and khavarial (obscurantist) were particularly virulent in the Sephardic communities in the Western parts of the Ottoman Empire. In several cases, representatives of the local westernized elite aimed to seize power in their communities and embark upon reforms with the aid of Western Jewish bodies. They turned to the AIU to found schools as counter-institutions to traditional places of Jewish education. As early as 1863, a group of Francos established an AIU branch in Constantinople, showing their allegiance to the new body and its programme (Benbassa and Rodrigue 1995: 72–78). A special feature of the schools founded by the AIU and the AJA, and repeatedly hailed in the publications of both bodies, was the education of girls, who had been excluded from traditional Jewish learning.53 Providing girls with an opportunity to receive a secular education was yet another open challenge to the network of chederim and Talmudei Torah. Despite the inherent emancipatory elements, girls’ education also served other purposes. Following a visit to the Balkans, the eminent AngloJewish philanthropist Fredric D. Mocatta reported back to the AJA that in all the Jewish schools he visited ‘the vernacular is taught, though not

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always to the girls, who have much needlework to do, and properly so’.54 In the eyes of many Western Jewish contemporaries, girls’ education served a different purpose from that of boys. Rather than representing an emancipatory endeavour, it aimed at making them into good wives and mothers. As mothers, Western Jewish officials believed, these girls would later pass on the appreciation for Western standards and values to their children. Crémieux aptly summed up this view in his keynote address at the annual AIU conference in 1866: The girls become women, the women become mothers; it is through the mother that the first principles are received, the first ideas that become imprinted in the heart of the child, and the first ideas that are decisive for their future life. … I came to realize that our children’s fate depends on them, that is to say, our well-being (BAIU 1866: 34).

The AJA and other Jewish organizations held similar views on women’s education. The association’s annual report for 1913/14, for instance, declared: ‘Give me the daughters, and the grandsons will look after themselves’.55 Margalit Shilo has shown that the idea of girls’ education as a significant tool for social change was shared by many nineteenthcentury philanthropic organizations. She stresses that in many cases colonialist and/or missionary considerations were the prime motivation behind girls’ education placing motherhood in the social service of the empire (Shilo 2005: 164). The ambivalent interplay of westernization, colonialism and nationalism characterizing the educational endeavour of the AIU and the AJA found its continuation in the context of debates concerning the schools’ languages of instruction. The languages taught at the newly founded school were those of the Western associations establishing or funding them.56 The curriculum of the Tetuan School provides a clear example thereof. Unlike Western languages (French, later also English, as well as Spanish to accommodate the large community of Jews of Castilian decent), Arabic was absent from the curriculum, as were any courses in local history or geography. The school’s curriculum had an almost exclusively metropolitan air to it (Laskier 1983a: 100–101).57 By the end of the nineteenth century, French had become the lingua franca of the Levant. Besides being taught in the schools of the AIU and most missionary institutions, French also occupied an important place in the curriculum of Ottoman schools (Thobie 1981). Since it was the language of trade and commercial transactions, a knowledge of French was imperative for Jews aiming to advance up the social ladder. An AIU teacher reported to Paris that of the 300,000 Jews in the Ottoman

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Empire 100,000 knew French compared to only 1,000 who understood Turkish (Shaw 1991: 169). While these figures might be exaggerated, the AIU played an important role in the diffusion of French around the Mediterranean during the decades bracketing the turn of the century (Spaëth 2010). Over the years, the language question caused considerable conflict between Jewish representatives from different European countries, as well as between Western Jews and local Jewish communities. At times a veritable ‘language war’ was waged (Thobie 2008: 345–46). The disputes over the European languages taught in the schools highlights the paradoxical interplay of nationalism and universalism running through the philanthropic endeavour of the European Jewish associations. An 1860 AIU memorandum on the foundation of schools shows this paradox. While stressing that as a universal body the AIU ought not to promote ‘an exclusively French character’ in its schools, the French language ‘destined to widely propagate the génie of the country that has done most for the liberation of consciousness’ should nonetheless occupy a special place in the schools’ curriculum (Leven 1911: 10).58 When necessary, the AIU was willing to defend the special status of French against competing European languages (Laskier 1983a: 69). Although open tensions rarely arose between French and English Jews on questions of language teaching, the question remained controversial (Loewe 2006: 208).59 With repeated reference to the benefits of learning English, the AJA was eager to counterbalance the dominant role of French (Loewe 2006: 55).60 Most attempts to promote English, however, had only a minimal impact. Even in schools where English featured on the curriculum, only a small number of students enrolled in these classes. Among the 436 students attending the AIU school in Tangier, for instance, only 81 learned English, compared with 105 who learned French and 210 Spanish.61 The differing status of indigenous languages in the AIU’s schools underscores the ambiguities of the project of westernization through education. Whereas Arabic in Morocco was not considered part of the schools’ curricula, Turkish was an integral part of the curriculum in most schools across the Ottoman Empire. This phenomenon calls for explanation. By the early 1880s, the AIU began to suppress JudeoSpanish – used by the majority of Turkish Jews – as a language that set Jews apart from society at large. Simultaneously, AIU officials attached special importance to the instruction of Turkish. A good knowledge of that language, they believed, was a necessity for the emancipation of the Jews of Turkey (Rodrigue 1990a: 85ff.). Hence, the decision on what languages were taught in the schools reveals conflicting concepts of

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Jewish emancipation held by the AIU, namely a model of Jewish linguistic integration into the majority society on the one hand, and emancipation through detachment from the non-Jewish population through French naturalization, as attempted in the Maghreb, on the other. Furthermore, they provide yet another example of Jewish associations mimicking European colonial agendas.

Triangular Relationship Although neither the AIU nor the AJA received any financial support for their schools from French or British government sources, their activities were increasingly drawn into the arena of national foreign cultural politics – especially in the case of the AIU. Given the fact that the AIU and Catholic organizations accounted for practically all French schools in the Middle East, it does not come as a surprise that the French Foreign Ministry followed their work very closely (Burrows 1986: 133). At times, this interest went as far as attempting to instrumentalize the AIU’s network for official French cultural policies overseas. In a 1912 report to the Quai d’Orsay, a French diplomat in Tangier declared: ‘It would be extremely desirable if the French government would come to the aid of the Alliance Israélite, for it serves the propagation of the French language’. In Morocco, the report continued, the AIU played ‘the same role as Catholic missionaries in the Orient’.62 French imperial policy and the activities of the AIU intersected at different points. Without the support of local Western consuls in general and French diplomats in particular, for instance, the staggering extension of the AIU’s school network in Morocco would not have been possible. David Laskier points out that the diplomatic representatives of the powers envisaged in the AIU work an ‘indispensable force for the moral and intellectual regeneration of the Jews and for enhancing European cultural and geopolitical influence’ (Laskier 1979, vol. I: 106). The establishment of the first AIU school in Tunis in 1878 on the eve of the establishment of a French protectorate in Tunisia is exemplary of the nexus of transnational Jewish activism and France’s imperial agenda. The idea to establish such a school had been met with strong opposition from the Bey, the local ruler of Tunisia. Massive diplomatic pressure from the Quai d’Orsay, which regarded such an institution as a cultural bridgehead for French interests, eventually ensured the success of the endeavour.63 A statement from the AJA’s annual report for 1875/76 indicates that similarly close ties existed between the London association and the British government:

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The Council can affirm with patriotic pride that for the success of some of their efforts in favour of foreign Jewish communities, they are deeply indebted to the humane and effective aid rendered by Her Majesty’s Government, whenever emergencies have arisen demanding prompt intervention, or whenever it was deemed needful to obtain information through the medium of the Foreign Office.64

The close ties with their respective governments presented Jewish bodies with a fundamental dilemma.65 Increasingly, the AIU and to a lesser extent the AJA found themselves caught between their national governments and those of the countries in which they operated schools. Consequently, they involuntarily became a factor in political conflicts, regarded either as instruments of foreign policy or as agents of Western domination. Consequently, Western Jewish associations eagerly tried to play the role of intermediates in the ‘relation triangulaire’.66 Arguably, these attempts mostly failed to overcome the association’s dilemma. Mathew Burrows goes as far as to argue that non-governmental organizations such as the AIU and its Catholic counterparts, rather than official French foreign policy, truly promoted the idea of mission civilisatrice as the guiding principle of foreign cultural policy (Burrows 1986: 135). While such a view can be disputed, the idea of a civilizing mission permeated many aspects of the AIU’s and AJA’s activities and agendas in the Orient. Repeatedly, metropolitan Jewish bodies employed colonial rhetoric and instruments of power towards the indigenous Jewish population around the Mediterranean. The conflicts surrounding the establishment of a consistorial system in Algeria is exemplary of the reproduction of colonizer and colonized relationships in the context of European and oriental Jews predating the AIU (Schwarzfuchs 1980: 37–48; Abitbol 1985). It is also undeniable that Jewish associations played a role in the colonial endeavours. However, matters were far more complicated as a letter sent to the AIU’s Central Committee by the Tangier’s Jewish community president Moses Nahon in 1863 shows: We thank you from the bottom of our hearts in the name of all our coreligionists, who, owing to your incessant efforts and continuous generosity, are no longer so readily exposed to the vexations of the past. You may count on our devotion and appreciations for your civilizing mission among our brethren who, until not too long ago, were deprived of such a privilege (Laskier 1979, vol. I: 60).

This letter is but one example of the repeated blurring of the lines between colonizer and colonized. Both European and oriental Jews found themselves in an ambivalent in-between position of colonizer and/ or colonized.

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In Morocco, for example, many of the clerks, interpreters and simsars (Moroccan commercial agents) working for European banks, companies and consulates had come from the local Jewish elite, many of whom had received their education in an AIU or AJA school (Laskier 1983: 43, 53). Given their importance for the European operations in Morocco, prior to the establishment of a formal protectorate, it is not surprising that many of these local Jews were granted the status of protégés by the consulates of different European powers (Kenbib 1996). Although non-Jews also benefited from the protégé system, the Moroccan Jewish elite figured most prominently in this context. Sultan Hassan I regarded the extension of the system of foreign protection for a small elite as a threat to his government’s authority, and called for revisions. In 1880, an international conference gathered in Madrid to settle the issue of the protégés. Fearing that the Western powers were considering the abolition of the protégé system, both the AIU and the AJA started an extensive lobbying campaign (Laskier 1983: 51). By supporting the AIU in defending the Jewish protégé system, the AJA and the Board of Deputies placed themselves in opposition to the British government, which favoured its abolition (ibid.: 48). In a memorandum to the Foreign Office, the Conjoint Committee of the board and the AJA stressed that the protection of a ‘useful portion of the inhabitants of Morocco’ was essential for the ‘extension of those civilising and beneficent influences by which the Moorish Empire may be redeemed from its present unhappy condition’. Moreover, a removal of protection would subject Moroccan Jews ‘to endless indignities and acts of injustice and oppression’.67 Eventually, the Madrid conference did little to alter the status quo in the protégés question, a result that the AIU and the AJA considered to be the outcome of their successful intervention. The continuation of the protégé system, however, had a negative impact on Muslim–Jewish relations, and stirred anti-Jewish sentiments. The system of Jewish protégés and its defence by the AIU and the AJA highlight the extent to which both institutions eventually had been drawn into the colonial policies of their respective countries.

From Universalism to Nationalism? Some Concluding Reflections By the turn of the century, European Jewish solidarity, that had hitherto formed the ideological basis for the cooperative activities of Jewish associations in the East, came under increasing scrutiny. It has been suggested that the formation of the AJA and the Hilfsverein grew out of

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the desire by Jewish activists of various nationalities to free themselves of the hegemony of the Alliance (Penslar 2001: 227). In the case of the AJA, such an interpretation could be disputed. The secession of German AIU branches and the subsequent founding of the Hilfsverein in 1900, however, marked the beginning of a new phase in the history of the AIU and its affiliated bodies. During the following years, the growing antagonism between universal agenda and national interests became virulent (Szajkowski 1957: 29–50). This development did not put an end to European Jewish cooperation but it increasingly led to conflicts based on the conflicting national(ist) interests of the various Jewish associations. The growing jingoism in Germany, France and Britain, particularly after the outbreak of the First World War, added to this development, as a 1915 pamphlet entitled ‘Jews and Germans’, written by the Zionist Davis Trietsch, shows. It claimed that the previous decades had seen a decline of French as a world language, and a rise of German in many parts of the Orient. ‘The mistake of the AIU’ has been to ignore this linguistic shift. Consequently, the persistence of French as a language of instruction in all its schools threatened the AIU status as a ‘global Jewish cooperation’ (Trietsch 1915: 35–36). However, already prior to 1914, similar warnings had been voiced. In 1900, a group of Tunisian Jews sent a letter to Zadoc Kahn, the Grand Rabbin of France, complaining about what they regarded as the AIU’s colonialist policy in Tunisia, and declaring: ‘Each nation has a national education system … imbued with its spirit and national traditions’. In their view, the AIU had violated this assumption by ‘seeking to impose the French spirit, embodied by the French national education system, on the Jewish population of Tunisia’. What followed reveals the deep divides between European and Maghrebin Jews, divides that the AIU had seemingly failed to bridge: [T]he Jews of France … will surely not venture to believe that … Tunisian Jews, whose past has nothing to do with France or the French, and whose traditions and mores have nothing to do with French civilization – a civilization, moreover, that appeared in Tunisia only yesterday … In order to enlighten this population, to introduce it to modern life, one must not replace its traditions and historical memories by other traditions and other memories. One must not seek to replace one’s own national spirit by that of another nation. On the contrary, the ingredients of a nation’s progress must be drawn from its own historical past. (Abitbol 1985: 53)68

Some years later, the AIU experienced a serious setback in its attempts to receive official recognition in Russia. Hitherto, the reluctance of tsarist officials had jeopardized such plans. By 1908, even Russian Jews

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had come to regard the legalization of the AIU in Russia with growing scepticism, fearing that it would provide a pretext for anti-Semites to blame Russian Jews of conspiring with their Western brethren against Russian interests.69 These perceptions indicate that the very idea on which the AIU had been founded in 1860, namely that of a body fighting for Jewish rights worldwide, had since come under increasing scrutiny and had begun to yield to it, being regarded as a player in international rather than in transnational relations. In the same year, the London based Jewish World even went a step further and declared the universalist claim of the AIU outdated and overtaken by reality. The establishment of national bodies in Britain and the Habsburg Empire, the article claimed, had reduced the AIU to a mere French body. What the Alliance is evidently trying to do … is to revive the cosmopolitan position it enjoyed when it was first established. But since that time the Jews have shown that they are instinctively opposed to cosmopolitan action … [T] he Alliance Israélite Universelle … has now become practically a French body, and is certainly chary of pushing French interests everywhere. Well, we have no objection to a French institution playing so patriotic and national a part, so long as it does not set itself up to be the agent of international Jewry.70

These examples seem to suggest an early twentieth-century Jewish national(ist) turn. It is undeniable that attempts to reconcile national and transnational elements, emancipation and solidarity, which organizations such as the AIU and the AJA had set out to achieve, came under increasing scrutiny. To conclude that these tendencies marked the beginning of the end of the idea of transnational Jewish activities and ethnic solidarity would, however, be premature. Rather than indicating an emerging crisis of the project of emancipating and regenerating Eastern Jews, they point to the contradictions and tensions inherent in the attempt to reconcile national and transnational agendas from the start. The Western Jewish aim of culturally regenerating and politically emancipating their Eastern brethren in the Balkans, North Africa and the Levant was closely linked to the self-perception of post-emancipation Western Jewry, who saw themselves as a kind of Jewish avant-garde. From its beginnings, the notion of social responsibility and the concept of ‘solidarity’ underpinning the transnational activities of Western Jewish associations, also served ‘national’ aims, namely the combat against antiSemitism at home. Educating their unfortunate brethren would reduce their visible alterity and thus stereotypical Jewish features by helping them on to a path towards self-improvement. Moreover, the advocates of transnational Jewish philanthropy also hoped to reduce the attraction of

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their countries of origin as destinations for Eastern Jewish migrants. The entanglement of Jewish transnational activities with the colonial politics of European nation-states is yet another indication for the ambiguous simultaneity of Jewish national integration and transnational ethnic identity and activity. This growing entanglement, moreover, resulted in the increasingly complicated in-between position of European Jewish associations. This ambivalence characterizing AIU and AJA activities was not limited to the Western Jewish advocates of a mission civilisatrice juive but also found expression among this policy’s addressees. The abovequoted letter by representatives of indigenous Tunisian Jews highlights the ambivalence of transnational and national frames of reference that in later decades was to play a central role in many postcolonial movements and struggles for independence. Postcolonial resistance is marked by the ambiguous simultaneity of transnationalism and renationalization. Although fundamentally transnational – growing out of the realization of the transnational asymmetries of power – many postcolonial liberation movements turned to the nation as the framework of a new postcolonial society.71 This ambivalent simultaneity reverberates in the letter from Tunisia conceptualizing the nation as a frame of reference countering the alleged colonialist domination exercised by another nation. At both ends, Jews are regarded as representatives and an integral part of their respective nations. The reference to the colonized nation’s long ‘historical past’, moreover, points to another common feature of many postcolonial movements. Reviving indigenous precolonial cultural patterns and traditions became a central element in attempts to overcome the dominant systems of knowledge established by the colonial discourse.72 Employing the patterns and tradition as sources for the (re-)creation of postcolonial identities, in turn, presents a master narrative of continuity that provides a justification for the nation’s independence and sovereignty, as well as a possible framework for a transnational group identity of movements such as négritude. The nation hence becomes a concept to counter the transnational impact of the metropolitan transfer of knowledge to the colonial periphery. Taken together, these elements challenge binary views of nation/ transnation. The above discussed aspects highlight that the national and the transnational are often closely entangled and that the boundaries between them are at times highly unstable and fluctuating. The Jewish context might be a specific case in many respects, but it reveals patterns that are relevant on a broader scale. What makes this context particularly interesting are the numerous attempts to reconcile the two elements. As the case studies presented show, the aim to overcome the numerous divides

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characterizing transnational Jewish philanthropy came under increasing scrutiny by the conflicting forces at work in this endeavour. The overall aim ‘to give our Jewish boys and girls the virtues of the West without robbing them of the virtues of the East’ – to borrow the apt phrase of a turn-of-thecentury AJA report – all too often remained wishful thinking.73

Notes   1. For an attempt to map and discuss the concurring approaches to transnationalism, especially in the social sciences, see Vertovec (2009).   2. See the discussion in Clavin (2005).  3. For a critical perspective on the model of immigrant transnationalism see, for instance, Waldinger and Fitzgerald (2004).   4. For a more contemporary example, see Remennick (2007).   5. For details, see Bristow (1982).   6. An example of the growing conceptual interest in transnationalism in the field of Jewish studies is the 2007 workshop at the University of Tel Aviv, published as Ben-Rafael and Sternberg (2009).  7. For a critical discussion of the traditional notion of the Jewish diaspora, see Cohen (1997, chapter 1) and Safran (2005).   8. One of the finest examples of the adaptation and reconceptualization of the ‘idea diaspora’ is Gilroy (1993).   9. An example of a pioneering attempt is Tölölyan (Spring 1996). See also, Bauböck and Faist (2010). 10. Transfer in this context follows the model outlined by Espagne and Werner (1988). For an attempt to conceptualize transnationalization, see Kaelble, Kirsch and Schmidt-Gernig (2002). For an attempt to adopt these considerations for the context of Jewish studies, see Schmale and Steer (2006). 11. For details on the Damascus Affair, see Frankel (1997) and Florence (2004). 12. For further details on Montefore’s mission to Romania, see Green 2010. 13. Different from its contemporary prerogative connotation the term ‘oriental Jews’ is used here as a neutral term to refer to a variety of Jewish communities, mainly Sephardim in North Africa, the Levant, the Balkans, and the Middle and Far East. 14. The classic study on Jewish emancipation in England remains Salbstein (1982). 15. On the emergence of Franco-Judaïsme, see Graetz (1996); Berkovitz (1989); Albert (1977); and Birnbaum (1996). 16. L’Univers Israélite 9 (1850): 398–99. 17. Bulletin de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle (1869): 46 [henceforth BAIU]. 18. Here quoted after Anglo-Jewish Association, Centenary Review, 1871–1971 (London 1971): 5. 19. [2nd] Report of AJA in connection with the AIU (1873), 4, University of Southampton, Special Collections, MS137 AJ 95/150/1. Unless otherwise stated, all references to the AJA’s annual reports refer to holdings in this archival collection. 20. Jewish Chronicle, 30 June 1871, 8. 21. Jewish Chronicle, 7 July 1871, 12.

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22. As its first president, the AJA elected Jacob Waley, professor of Political Economy at University College, London. 23. Besides the Liberal MPs Sir Francis and Julian Goldsmid, this group included: the Rev Aaron Levy Green, first minister of the Central Synagogue, Great Portland Street; Rev David Woolf Marks, former minister of the West London Reform congregation; Francis Henry Goldsmid, professor of Hebrew at University College, London; and the leading Jewish philanthropist Frederic David Mocatta, as well as a member of the Rothschild family. 24. For a full list, see 2nd Annual Report of AJA (1873), 59–77. 25. 10th Annual Report of the AJA (1881), 12–16. 26. Majority of members not French but the French/Parisian representatives held the majority on the Comité central. 27. See also Tolédano-Attias (2009). 28. Statuts de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paris 1861), 3. 29. AIU, Procès-verbal de l‘Assemblée générale de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle tenue le 31 mai 1864 (Paris 1864), 12. For further details on the ideology of the AIU, see Weill (1978). 30. On Jewish Orientalism, see Kalmar and Penslar (2005). 31. On the dhimmi status, see Ye’or (1980) and Littman (1976). 32. See also Levene (1992: 4–5). 33. The case of the AIU’s activities to provide aid to Russo-Jewish refugees is an emblematic example of the attempts to discourage immigration to Western Europe by way of repatriation or redirecting migration routes to America. For further details, see Kauffmann, Laskier and Schwarzfuchs (2010: 102–16). The late John Klier pointed to the paradoxical outcome of this policy, and put forward the argument that, contrary to its intention, the AIU’s refugee policy rather encouraged further Russo-Jewish migration (Klier 2011: 267). 34. It was against this backdrop that initially the cooperation between the AIU and Baron de Hirsch’s Jewish colonization association proved difficult (Szajkowski 1953). 35. See also Weill (1982: 122–23) and Dumont (1982: 228–29). 36. For details on the concept of transculturality, see Welsch (1999). 37. On the development of the AIU’s school network, see Silberman (1974). 38. 2nd Annual Report of the AJA in connection with the AIU for the Year 1872– 1873, 14. 39. 3rd Annual Report of the AJA (1874), 5. 40. Ibid., 56–57. 41. 5th Annual Report of the AJA (1876), 20–22. 42. Ibid., 43. 43. An example of the continued interest was a questionnaire the AJA had sent to the Bene Israel congregation earlier. 5th Annual Report of the AJA (1876), 43–51. 44. 10th Annual Report of the AJA (1881), 9, 15. 45. 10th Annual Report of the AJA (1881), 46. 46. 12th Annual Report of the AJA (1883), 13. 47. 45th Annual Report of the AJA (1916), 13–28. 48. For further details on the ENIO’s development, see Navon 1935. 49. For further details of the curriculum, see Laskier 1983a: 109–10.

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50. 16th Annual Report of the AJA (1887), 40–41. 51. 9th Annual Report of the AJA (1880), 93; 2nd Annual Report of the AJA (1873), 13. For details on the coexistence of the Edirne AIU school and local Talmudei Torah, see Haker (2006, chapter 10). 52. 14th Annual Report of the AJA (1885), 9. 53. On the role of the AIU in girls’ education, see Benbassa (1991). 54. 14th Annual Report of the AJA (1885), 64. 55. 43rd Annual Report of the AJA (1914), 47. See also Sinkoff (1988). 56. On the role of Western languages in the colonial project, see, for instance, Pennycook (1998). 57. Rodrigue (1990a: 80) shows that there were also significant differences to the metropolitan curriculum, and that AIU schools offered subjects specifically intended to ‘regenerate’ oriental Jews. 58. ‘La langue française, destine à propager au loin de génie du pays qui a le plus fait pour la liberté de conscience, et dont les tendances les plus sainement libérales se personnifient dans l’Alliance israélite, sera préférée dans les écoles’. 59. See also 45th Annual Report of the AJA (1916). 60. See also 12th Annual Report of the AJA (1883), 29. 61. 11th Annual Report of the AJA (1882), 62. 62. Eugène Regnault (French Minister Plenipotentiary in Tangier) to the Quai d’Orsay (1912), quoted after Laskier (1979, vol. I: 103). On the role of Christian missionaries for the French foreign cultural policy, see Daughton (2006). 63. Haim Saadoun. 2007. ‘Tunis, Tunisia’, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edn, vol. 20 (Detroit), p. 184. 64. 5th Annual Report of the AJA (1876), 6. 65. For a discussion problematizing the perpetual Jewish dependency on state authorities, see Horkheimer and Adorno (2002: 144). 66. For an example from Tunisia, see Hagège (1980: 9–28). 67. Quoted after Schroeter (1984: 70). 68. Archives of the AIU, Tunisia I G 3, 22 October 1900. 69. Jewish Chronicle, 31 July 1908. 70. Jewish World, 31 July 1908. 71. Examples of this turn towards the nation can be found in Fanon’s call for national cohesion in connection with the decolonization of Algeria or the emergence of competing nationalism in the struggle for independence in the British Raj, and later in the countries created by partition. For further discussions, see, for instance, Boehmer (2002) and Hiddleston (2009, esp. chapters 2–3). 72. For a further discussion of this aspect, see Innes (2007, Introduction); also McLeod (2000, chapter 4). 73. 30th Annual Report of the AJA (1901), 47.

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Clavin, Patricia. 2005. ‘Defining Transnationalism’, Contemporary European History 14(4): 421–39. Cohen, Robin. 1997. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Daughton, J.P. 2006. An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880–1914. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Dumont, Paul. 1982. ‘Jewish Communities in Turkey during the Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century in the Light of the Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle’, in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society. Vol. I The Central Lands. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, pp. 209–42. Espagne, Michel, and Michael Werner. 1988. Transferts: Les relations interculturelles dans l’espace franco-allemand (XVIIIe et XIXe siècle). Paris: Éditions recherche sur les civilisations. Faist, Thomas. 2009. ‘The Transnational Social Question: Social Rights and Citizenship in a Global Context’, International Sociology 24(1): 7–35. Florence, Ronald. 2004. Blood Libel: The Damascus Affair of 1840. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. Frankel, Jonathan. 1997. The Damascus Affair: ‘Ritual Murder’, Politics, and the Jews in 1840. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Glick Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch and Cristina Blanc-Szanton (eds). 1992. Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered. New York: The New York Academy of Sciences. Graetz, Michael. 1996. The Jews in Nineteenth-Century France: From the French Revolution to the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Green, Abigail. 2010. Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Green, Abigail, and Vincent Viaene (eds). 2012. Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Guesnet, François. 2002. ‘Strukturwandel im Gebrauch der Öffentlichkeit: Zu einem Aspekt jüdischer politischer Praxis zwischen 1744 und 1881’, in Jörg Requate and Martin Schulze Wessel (eds), Europäische Öffentlichkeit: Transnationale Kommunikation seit dem 18. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, pp. 43–62. Hagège, Claude. 1980. ‘Communautés juives de Tunisie à la veille du Protectorat français’, Le Mouvement social 110: 35–50. Haker, Erol. 2006. Edirne, its Jewish Community, and Alliance Schools, 1867–1937. Istanbul: Isis Press. Hiddleston, Jane. 2009. Understanding Postcolonialism. Stocksfield: Acumen. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. 2002. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Innes, Catherine Lynette. 2007. The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Iram, Yaacov. 1992. ‘The History of Franco-Jewish Educational Philanthropy in North Africa and the Levant’, Paedagogica Historica 28(3): 580–88.

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Kaelble, Hartmut, Martin Kirsch and Alexander Schmidt-Gernig. 2002. ‘Zur Entwicklung transnationaler Öffentlichkeiten und Identitäten im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine Einleitung’, in Kaelble, Kirsch and Schmidt-Gernig (eds), Transnationale Öffentlichkeiten und Identitäten im 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, pp. 7–33. Kalmar, Ivan Davidson, and Derek Jonathan Penslar (eds). 2005. Orientalism and the Jews. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press. Kauffmann, Grégoire, Michael M. Laskier and Simon Schwarzfuchs. 2010. ‘Solidarité de défense des droits des juifs (1860–1914)’, in André Kaspi (ed.), Histoire de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle de 1860 à nos jours. Paris: A. Colin, pp. 101–55. Kenbib, Mohammed. 1996. Les protégés: Contribution à l’histoire contemporaine du Maroc. Rabat: Université Mohamed V. Klier, John D. 2011. Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Laskier, Michael M. 1979. ‘The Jewish Communities of Morocco and the Alliance Israélite Universelle: 1860–1956’. Ph.D. dissertation. Los Angeles: University of California. ———. 1983a. The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco, 1862–1962. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 1983b. ‘Aspects of the Activities of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in the Jewish Communities of the Middle East and North Africa: 1860–1918’, Modern Judaism 3(2): 147–71. Leven, Narcisse. 1911. Cinquante ans d’histoire: L’Alliance israélite universelle (1860–1910). 2 vols. Paris: F. Alcan. Levene, Mark. 1992. War, Jews, and the New Europe: The Diplomacy of Lucien Wolf, 1914–1919. Oxford and New York: Published for the Littman Library by Oxford University Press. Littman, David. 1976. ‘Quelques aspects de la condition de dhimmi juifs d’Afrique du Nord avant la colonisation (d’après des documents de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle)’, YOD: Revue des Études Hébraïques et Juives Modernes et Contemporaines 2(1): 1–33. ———. 1985. ‘Mission to Morocco (1863–1864)’, in Sonia L. Lipman and V.D. Lipman (eds), The Century of Moses Montefiore. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 171–229. Loewe, David. 2006. ‘The Anglo-Jewish Association: Past and Present’, in Alan Stephens and Raphael Walden (eds), For the Sake of Humanity: Essays in Honour of Clemens N. Nathan. Leiden and Boston: Nijhoff, pp. 203–16. Malino, Frances. 1999. ‘French Jews’, in Rainer Liedtke and Stephan Wendehorst (eds), The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation State in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, pp. 83–99. Marks, David Woolf, Albert Löwy and Louisa S. Goldsmid (eds). 1882. Memoir of Sir Francis Henry Goldsmid Bart., Q.C., M.P. 2nd edn, revised and enlarged by Louisa S. Goldsmid. London: Kegan Paul. McLeod, John. 2000. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Navon, Albert H. 1935. Les 70 ans de l’École normale israélite orientale (1865–1935). Paris: Durlacher.

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Pennycook, Alastair. 1998. English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London and New York: Routledge. Penslar, Derek J. 2001. Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press. Remennick, Larissa I. 2007. Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration, and Conflict. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Rodrigue, Aron. 1987. ‘The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Attempt to Reform Jewish Religious and Rabbinical Instruction in Turkey’, in Simon Schwarzfuchs (ed.), L’‘Alliance’ dans les communautés du bassin méditerranéen à la fin du 19ème siècle et son influence sur la situation sociale et culturelle. Jerusalem: Misgav Yerushalayim, pp. LIII–LXX. ———. 1990a. French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860–1925. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1990b. ‘L’exportation du paradigme révolutionnaire: son influence sur le Judaïsme sépharade et oriental’, in Pierre Birnbaum (ed.), Histoire politique des Juifs de France: entre universalisme et particularisme. Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, pp. 182–95. ———. 2003. Jews and Muslims: Images of Sephardi and Eastern Jewries in Modern Times. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Roland, Joan G. 1998. The Jewish Communities of India: Identity in a Colonial Era. 2nd edn. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Safran, William. 2005. ‘The Jewish Diaspora in a Comparative and Theoretical Perspective’, Israel Studies 10(1): 36–60. Salbstein, Michael C.N. 1982. The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain: The Question of the Admission of the Jews to Parliament, 1828–1860. Rutherford, NJ and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses. Schmale, Wolfgang, and Martina Steer (eds). 2006. Kulturtransfer in der jüdischen Geschichte. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus. Schroeter, Daniel J. 1984. ‘Anglo-Jewry and Essaouira (Mogador), 1860–1900: The Social Implications of Philanthropy’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 28: 60–88. Schroeter, Daniel J., and Joseph Chetrit. 2006. ‘Emancipation and its Discontents: Jews at the Formative Period of Colonial Rule in Morocco’, Jewish Social Studies 13(1l): 170–206. Schwarzfuchs, Simon. 1980. ‘Colonialisme français et colonialisme Juif en Algérie (1830–1845)’, in Michel Abitbol (ed.), Judaïsme d’Afrique du Nord aux XIXe– XXe siècles: Histoire, société et culture. Jerusalem: Institut Ben-Zvi, pp. 37–48. Shaw, Stanford J. 1991. The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. London: Macmillan. Shilo, Margalit. 2005. Princess or Prisoner?: Jewish Women in Jerusalem, 1840–1914. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press; Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Silberman, Paul. 1974. ‘An Investigation of the Schools Operated by the Alliance Israélite Universelle from 1862 to 1940’. Ph.D. dissertation. New York: New York University. Sinkoff, Nancy B. 1988. ‘Educating for “Proper” Jewish Womanhood: A Case Study in Domesticity and Vocational Training, 1897–1926’, American Jewish History 77(4): 572–99.

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Soyer, Daniel. 1997. Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880–1939. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Spaëth, Valérie. 2010.‘Mondialisation du français dans la seconde partie du XIXe siècle: l’Alliance Israélite Universelle et l’Alliance Française’, Langue française 167(3): 49–72. Stein, Sarah Abrevaya. 2008. Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Szajkowski, Zosa. 1953. ‘Emigration to America or Reconstruction in Europe’, American Jewish Historical Quarterly 42: 157–88. ———. 1957. ‘Conflicts in the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Founding of the Anglo-Jewish Association, the Vienna Allianz and the Hilfsverein’, Jewish Social Studies 19(1/2): 29–50. Thobie, Jacques. 1981.‘La France a-t-elle une politique culturelle dans l’Empire ottoman à la veille de la première guerre mondiale?’ Relations Internationales 25: 21–40. ———. 2008. Les intérêts culturels français dans l’empire ottoman finissant: L’enseignement laïque et en partenariat. Paris and Dudley, MA: Peeters. Tolédano-Attias, Ruth. 2009. ‘L’image des Juifs séférades en France au XIXe siècle’, Archives Juives 42(2): 10–24. Tölölyan, Khachig. 1996. ‘Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational Moment’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 5(1): 3–36. Trietsch, Davis. 1915. Juden und Deutsche: Eine Sprach- und Interessengemeinschaft. Vienna: R. Löwit. Vertovec, Steven. 2009. Transnationalism. London and New York: Routledge. Waldinger, Roger, and David Fitzgerald. 2004. ‘Transnationalism in Question’, American Journal of Sociology 109(5): 1177–95. Weill, Georges. 1978. ‘Emancipation et humanisme: Le discours idéologique de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle au XIXe siècle’, Les nouveaux cahiers 52: 1–20. ———. 1982. ‘The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Emancipation of Jewish Communities in the Mediterranean’, Jewish Journal of Sociology 24: 117–34. Welsch, Wolfgang. 1999. ‘Transculturality: The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today’, in Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash (eds), Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 194–213. Ye’or, Bat. 1980. Le dhimmi: Profil de l’opprimé en Orient et en Afrique du nord depuis la conquête arabe. Paris: Anthropos.

Tobias Metzler is Assistant Professor of Global History and Transnational Studies at Thammasat University in Bangkok and Fellow of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/ non-Jewish relations at Southampton. Besides modern Jewish history, his prime academic interests lie in the area of encounters and exchanges between Asia and the West. His publications include Tales of Three Cities: Urban Jewish Cultures in London, Berlin, and Paris (c. 1880–1940) (Harrassowitz, 2014). He is currently working on a monograph entitled Yellow Perils and their Discontent.

Chapter 4

Institution Building and Policy Making at the Transnational Level Challenges in the Early History of the World Jewish Congress

Emmanuel Deonna

Transnational political projects elaborated within intergovernmental bodies, disseminated by epistemic communities, or propagated by nongovernmental organizations at the end of the nineteenth century, have been at the centre of an ongoing historical debate (e.g. Irye 2004; Clavin 2005). Struggles for recognition have often been at the core of such projects, and they represent a familiar feature in the political history and landscape of the twentieth century. Transterritorialism, denoting the absence of the referential framework of sovereignty or describing sociocultural links and practices of organized ethnic groups vis-à-vis an imagined homeland, has been widely associated with the condition of the Jews in modern times.1 The notion has also gained currency in the field of migration and diaspora studies where the influence of human geography can be felt. As for the concept of transterritoriality, it primarily evokes spaces where the reproduction or transformation of society and social processes are located and taking place (Spiliotis 2001: 480–88). In that regard, transterritorial nongovernmental Jewish diplomacy of the interwar period seems to be an especially interesting case in point. As a paradigm of minority diplomacy located in the European context, it has been interpreted as a harbinger of contemporary issue-oriented non-governmental organizations, especially those engaged in human rights advocacy (Graf 2008: 35).2

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Often used interchangeably with transterritorialism, the related notion of transnationalism has become time-worn.3 Nonetheless, it aptly describes the fundamental processes at work in modern European history and the prototypical role that Jews have played in that history (Diner 2003). Ethnonational diasporas, like the one that Jews have belonged to historically, are said to form a specific subset of transnational entities.4 Such diasporas are characterized by the shared, common ethnic origin of their members and by the high degree of organization, cohesiveness and solidarity displayed among members of the group.5 The concept of transnationalism also derives its explanatory force from its ability to refine our understanding of modern Jewish attempts to achieve recognition in the public sphere. Neither the underlying causes nor the practical effects of twentieth-century struggles for recognition were limited to the national level. This is all the more apparent with regard to twentieth-century political, socioeconomic and cultural forms of mobilization in the Jewish world in general, and in the Zionist movement in particular. The transnational organization of struggles for political, socioeconomic and cultural rights within the Jewish world gained importance in the wake of rising anti-Semitism during the interwar period. Jewish communities worldwide were eager to gain the support of non-domestic, preferably transnational bodies, which they thought could exert pressure on their respective domestic governments. The fact that this form of transnational mobilization crystallized in the 1930s, in the context of an upsurge of nationalism in the Jewish world triggered by the growing threat of antiSemitism worldwide, buttresses the following argument: despite efforts to de-emphasize nation-state paradigms in the literature (e.g. Munch 2001: 186–99), shifts from nationalization to transnationalization processes cannot be regarded as linear. As this study on the early history of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) will demonstrate, the transnationalization of struggles for recognition based on Jewish solidarity along ethnic lines constitutes a fundamental paradox inherent in an age of increasing nationalization.

Jewish Minority Diplomacy at the League of Nations The need to harness civil society participation in voluntary organizations – a result of the rising complexity of social relations in the newly constitutionalized nation-states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – led to the impressive rise of non-governmental organizations operating across borders. This trend did not leave the Jewish world unaffected. The World Jewish Congress was one of the more than 450 non-governmental

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organizations (Chatfield 1997: 20–27) with which the League of Nations would establish working relationships during the interwar period. The WJC served as a vehicle for articulating demands for equality and for difference by a growing number of Jewish communities endangered by the rise and consolidation of anti-Semitism in pre-Holocaust Central and Eastern Europe. In line with the ideology of the Zionist movement, the very purpose of the WJC was to channel transnational Jewish political activism along ethnic lines. Even if it were successful to a certain extent, the WJC would still have to face important challenges pertaining to the development of its organizational structure and the elaboration of its policies. These transnational challenges are investigated in this chapter; the main policies of the World Jewish Congress within its different spheres of political action are examined. We look at the specific patterns of WJC mobilization for the French, American and Polish Jewish communities, and then illuminate the ambivalent effects of transnational mobilization vis-à-vis national considerations. This type of transnational mobilization, as argued in the concluding section of this chapter, dovetails with a specific mode of enforcing claims for recognition through which ethnonational diasporas can combine their aspirations for equality and their aspirations for difference. Despite its meagre political and financial resources, the burgeoning World Jewish Congress sought to be recognized as the permanent and authoritative spokesman for all Jewish affairs in the diaspora. According to the terms of the mandate system established by the League of Nations, the Jewish Agency for Palestine already acted as a Jewish guarantor on all questions related to Palestine.6 While cooperating with and supplementing the activities of this parallel Zionist body, the WJC aimed no less than to become the official Jewish authority on all questions of minority treatment, migration and relief in the diaspora.7 In the realm of minority protection, the WJC could benefit from the solid expertise acquired by the legal experts of the Comité des délégations juives. As the institutional forerunner of the WJC, under the leadership of Leo Motzkin, it had played an important role in formulating the minority protection treaties at Versailles (see Janowsky 1933: 264–369; and Feinberg 1970: 15–19).8 Since then it had strived unremittingly to secure the enforcement of treaty stipulations (Feinberg 1970: 13–19). The Comité des délégations juives had introduced a distinctively nationalist component in Jewish diplomacy, notably by participating, from a Jewish standpoint, in the mobilization of non-Jewish transnational organizations. In the 1920s, the Comité des délégations juives participated in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, took the lead at the European Congress of National Minorities, and sought to establish Jewish branches of the World Federation of League of

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Nations Societies (Granick 2010: 21–22). Notably, these organizations advocated the rights of national minorities severed from their political homeland, and promoted the ideals of peace and solidarity among peoples by formulating proposals for a reform of League of Nations’ minority procedures (Fink 2004: 282; Graf 2008: 90). Their agenda was at odds with the low-key politics of their main rivals in the Jewish public sphere, the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Joint Foreign Committee of British Jews, nineteenth-century precursors of modern Jewish politics. Despite the high degree of legal formalization it had acquired, the international minority protection regime was inherently deficient. The Great Powers had charged their small allies from the recently founded or territorially enlarged states of Central, East Central and South Eastern Europe with minority duties in the hope of placating the defeated states of the First World War. However, the formula was satisfactory for no one (Liebich 2008: 246, 262). Abused by the revisionist states, neglected by the Great Powers, and loathed by its minor allies, the minority protection regime had gradually gained the mistrust of the minorities themselves and was in sharp decline by the 1930s. Its fate seemed to have been symbolically sealed in 1934, when Poland dramatically renounced its detested obligations (Mazower 1997: 49–54; Fink 2004: 338–43). However, in a few instances, the WJC did have some residual success with its attempts to preserve the legal rights of endangered Jewish communities by activating the minority protection machinery.9 The best known of such instances was the Bernheim Petition,10 in which several government representatives took the rare step of criticizing Nazi policies against Jews all over Germany.11 Protecting the interests of the persecuted Jewish minority in Germany represented an extremely disconcerting task for several reasons. The Great Powers routinely invoked the doctrine of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states to justify their political passivity in the face of Hitler. They were also reluctant to use the weapon of economic boycott to bring about political change in the Third Reich, and Germany had contracted no minority obligations at Versailles. Finally, the attitude of the German Jews themselves seemed to make their situation even more hopeless. Ultra-assimilationist groups, objecting to any kind of foreign intervention in German affairs, bitterly opposed the WJC.12 Liberal and Zionist representatives of the German Jewish community, under direct threat from Nazi officials, called on Jews in America and Britain not to endorse the boycott of German goods and services (Friedländer 1997: 32; Rosenbluth 1961: 251–53), one of the main planks of the WJC in its infancy. The Nazi press was raging in the most violent terms against the alleged ‘declarations of war’ against Germany issued by the leaders

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of ‘world Jewry’ in Geneva.13 Meanwhile, some German Zionists seemed to give their implicit consent to Nazi ideology and policies. The Nazis encouraged German Zionists to maintain and nurture their communal singularity on German soil (Nicosia 2008: 106–34 and 207–28). Eager to hasten Jewish emigration from Germany, their objectives seemed to coincide with those of the Zionist leadership. This convergence of interests would become operationally significant within the framework of the transfer agreement between the Anglo-Palestine Bank and the Reich Economics Ministry, which allowed German Jews to escape Germany with a portion of their economic wealth in exchange for increasing trade in goods and services between Nazi Germany and Jewish Palestine.14 Because German Zionists were playing a crucial role in Zionist decisionmaking bodies (Lavsky 1996: 263), expressions of support for the economic boycott of Nazi Germany by the World Jewish Congress could not exceed a certain threshold.15 Legal experts from the Comité des délégations juives were busy exposing the arsenal of measures that had gradually stripped German Jews of their civil rights. Continuing calls for the immediate restoration of these civil rights would be heard in the League of Nations and its related bodies throughout the 1930s.16 WJC leaders were also deeply involved in efforts aimed at alleviating the plight of the many German Jewish refugees who could not be directed to Palestine. Expanding the scope of legal protection provided to refugees in host countries (especially by trying to prevent their forced repatriation and to secure work permits for them), advocating durable solutions (financial aid for settlement or resettlement), and seeking safe havens for refugees by pressuring Western governments to ease their restrictive immigration laws or to convince others to open their gates – such were the conventional, but rarely successful,17 tasks of the burgeoning WJC. No consensus could be found on the desired level of collaboration with existing Jewish organizations with a transnational scope of action, which were also active in the fight against anti-Semitism, in the realm of refugee assistance, or in relief activities on behalf of impoverished Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover, WJC leaders were well aware that they could not reasonably compete with some of these other organizations in their reserved domain.18 Chronically underfunded,19 and lacking the required coordination between its burgeoning departments, the WJC would have to wait patiently for its executive machinery to take more efficient shape.20 At the consultative level, consensus had prevailed that delegates would have to be distributed on a geographical basis and that their exact number would have to reflect the relative demographic weight of their respective communities in the Jewish world.21 The World Jewish

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Congress prided itself on having gathered together a wide array of Jews from all over the world, representing different shades of political opinion.22 However, the natural tendency of the delegates, who were mainly drawn from the rank and file of Zionist parties in the United States and Central and Eastern Europe, was to regroup along political lines within their respective national deputations. One had to reckon with factional rivalry – a defining feature of Jewish politics in general and Zionist politics in particular. The risk that the WJC would just add another institutional layer in which divided impulses would go unfettered was clearly palpable.23 In order to prevent such an evolution from occurring, formulas had to be designed to eliminate potential sources of additional friction. In consequence, and at the risk of being blamed for a lack of ideological or spiritual ambition (Jehouda 1936: 98–99), the WJC declared its commitment to not interfering in the religious or cultural affairs of its affiliated communities. It further declared its willingness to act on behalf of Jewish minorities in cases where they were reluctant to take energetic steps against the oppressive policies of their own governments for fear of political reprisals. At the same time, WJC leaders were also keen to emphasize that they had no intention of preempting the political autonomy of their members by stripping them of their decision-making powers (Goldmann 1936: 8–10). Rival integrationist organizations feared a loss of political influence as a result of the establishment of the World Jewish Congress. The leaders of these rival organizations were also afraid that the World Jewish Congress would revive the old blame of dual loyalties and lend credence to the recurrent idea that all Jews were part of some organized cabal, secretly plotting world domination.24 Well aware of these risks, WJC leaders argued to the contrary that the kind of Jewish solidarity that they were promoting, in so far as this was done openly, should serve precisely to quell such suspicion.25 Many signs attest to the WJC leadership’s acute receptiveness to the arguments brought forward by the integrationist organizations against the wisdom of convening a World Jewish Congress. The WJC was supposed to provide a platform for the moral indictment of anti-Semitic regimes. However, the struggle to protect world Jewry had to be waged with great caution. More precisely, the WJC saw as its task the curbing of protest by ‘extremist elements’, deemed politically dangerous, by drawing these elements, more appropriately, into the framework of a ‘responsible’ organization.26 While sensitive issues had to be broached behind closed doors,27 open debates would have to be thematically circumscribed and obey strict rules. For fear of reprisals, none of the delegates to the World Jewish Congress were willing to recount the particular situation of the Jews in their respective countries.

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Evocation of specific wrongs visited upon the various Jewish communities assembled at the Congress thus had to be subsumed in general reports on the overall situation of Jews in Europe.28 The fact that WJC leaders shared a great deal of political sensitivity with their integrationist rivals is also indicated by the importance they attached to gaining non-Jewish support. Endorsement of their project by high-ranking French, British or American government officials, as well as League of Nations representatives, was especially coveted.29 When obtained, it was to be carefully scripted in the course of WJC public gatherings.30 WJC leaders also did not hesitate to enlist the services of non-Jews in conducting public relations campaigns on their behalf.31 Efforts to legitimize the WJC’s political enterprise were meant to allay the fears of integrationist leaders in the hope of gradually winning them over to the World Jewish Congress cause.32 Although integrationist organizations were often accused of advocating political quietism, instances of cooperation with them were actually numerous, especially in the battle for the restoration of Jewish rights in Germany waged at the League of Nations. Many attempts were made to enlist the support of integrationist groups; this, among other things,33 also accounts for the repeated decision to postpone the constituting session of the World Jewish Congress. The fact that these efforts eventually bore no fruit probably exacerbated the resentment of WJC partisans. The tone of the debate with their integrationist rivals became more and more acrimonious as time went by.34 However, existing tensions between the two groups could hardly conceal the salience of common political attitudes. This is particularly well exemplified in the French Jewish context.

The Search for a Transnational Jewish Alliance The ‘Comité français pour le Congrès juif mondial’ was the first committee established at the national level for propagating the idea of a World Jewish Congress,35 and mobilization for the congress was initially more successful in France than in other European countries.36 The World Jewish Congress movement sparked intense debate among French Jews, whose attitudes were representative of those of the Western Jewish establishment in general. Examining these disputes allows us to probe the symbolic and cultural dividing lines spanning the whole Jewish world at this time. With its increasing popularity among Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, the World Jewish Congress movement represented a factor in French Jewish life that the official representative organizations of French Jewry – the Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Consistoire – could

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not afford to ignore (Weinberg 1974: 116–17). Their very lukewarm, if not outright hostile, position vis-à-vis the WJC, according to WJC critics of those organizations, stemmed from their apparent lack of sensitivity to the plight of their Jewish brethren. The WJC alleged that these organizations had totally sacrificed the sense of ethnic belonging among Jews for the luring promises of assimilation (Spire 1933: 105–6). True, with its distinctly centralized nation-state and the powerful appeal of its culture, France represented the perfect setting for integration (Mendelson 1993: 49). The outpouring of thousands of refugees escaping Nazi Germany would force the French Jewish community to redefine its priorities while putting the notion of Jewish solidarity to a critical test. Having adopted a particularly liberal approach towards the German Jewish refugees in the first few months following Hitler’s rise to power, French authorities reversed their policy in autumn 1933 (Schoenberg 1934: 181; Caron 1993: 314–18). The Great Depression had spurred a period of serious economic hardship. Spearheaded by the middle class, anti-Semitism was assuming new garbs in the form of organized campaigns targeting foreign economic competition (Caron 1998: 27–51). Nevertheless, being particularly attuned to these threatening developments, French Jewish leaders continued their involvement in relief activities for Jewish refugees, within the various committees established for that purpose. French Jewish leaders represented refugee interests and advocated their cause at the international level with varying degrees of commitment (Caron 1993). Many expressed concern over the increasing public visibility of immigrant Jews, especially those of East European origin (ibid.: 317).37 Immigrants’ involvement in turbulent left-wing political activities ran the risk of being seen as further proof of the continued collusion of Jews and bolshevism (Hyman 1998: 148). Particularly frowned upon by French Jewish delegates to the World Jewish Congress were the mass demonstrations sponsored by the Ligue Internationale contre l’Antisémitisme (LICA).38 The LICA enjoyed the support of French and immigrant Jewish youth; this organization linked its battle against anti-Semitism with the wider, universally conceived struggle against fascism.39 French members of the WJC were also impervious to the many criticisms levelled against refugee relief organizations.The Comité national de secours was faulted for its dismissive attitude towards German Jewish refugees of East European origin, but criticism of this kind was routinely rejected on the grounds that aid should not be extended to ‘professional beggars’.40 The fear among Western Jews of being associated with their East European brethren was widespread. The prospect of perhaps having to relinquish some of their decision-making prerogatives within the WJC was held in particular abhorrence by French Jews. While discussing

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the composition of the various delegations expected to attend the first congress, French Jews requested that membership in their delegation be restricted to Jews holding French citizenship, as opposed to Jews residing in France.41 They also made the incongruous request that WJC sessions be conducted in French,42 their unbridled patriotism apparently being matched by an inflated perception of their own importance. American Jewish nationalists probably felt more entitled than their French counterparts to set the rules and the agenda of the future congress. They represented the largest Jewish community in the Western world; without their contributions, the WJC would not have been able to sustain itself financially.43 American Jewish involvement in the WJC, so the argument went, would bestow on it an international character. Factual reports about the condition of the Jews in the United States by prestigious figures from the academic community with strong intellectual credentials were intended to reinforce this impression at WJC rallies.44 American Zionism, like West European Zionism in general, differed from East European Zionism in many respects. Whereas the Zionist movement in Eastern Europe aimed at fostering aliyah (Jewish immigration to Palestine) and was involved in the politics of Gegenwartsarbeit (present-day work in the diaspora), the range of action available to American Zionists was more limited. It was mainly restricted to fundraising (Mendelsohn 1993: 59). Because American Jews were endemically embroiled in organizational disputes and deeply divided along religious and socioeconomic lines, philanthropy was in effect the only instrument on which they could rely to achieve some measure of united action (Halperin 1960: 91). In the eyes of its main American leader, Stephen Samuel Wise, the WJC was waging a struggle for the democratization of Jewish activities in America and around the world. Its purpose was to undermine the primacy of philanthropic organizations by challenging their political and financial operational structures as well as the entire philosophy underlying them (Segev 2006: 274). The battle over the WJC became part of a broader struggle for influence between Zionists and integrationists within American Jewry.45 Cooperation in fundraising schemes between American Zionists and non-Zionists began with the absorption of influential integrationists into the enlarged Jewish Agency in 1929. This came to an end in 1935, due notably to conflicting assessments of the role to be played by Palestine in coping with the distress of European Jewry (Kaufman 1991: 27–34). Because there was no longer any need to placate integrationist leaders, previously uncommitted American Zionist leaders began to close ranks with the WJC.46 Stephen Samuel Wise was convinced that he had strengthened his status among American Jews when he assumed the

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chairmanship of the United Palestine Appeal. He would now be in a much better position to muster support for the WJC.47 His distinctive sensitivity to the deteriorating plight of European Jewry (Wise 1944: 38) was clearly at the core of his call for the creation of a World Jewish Congress with a grand transnational design; but America remained his main frame of political reference (Arad 2000: 170–77). Wise’s commitment to the new fundraising drive of the American Zionist movement was so time-consuming that it prevented his deeper involvement in propaganda work on behalf of the WJC, which he was expected to carry out in Europe.48 Not having financial means comparable to those of their integrationist rivals,49 WJC partisans needed to seek alternative ways to strengthen their movement. Various attempts were thus made to reach an across-the-board understanding within American Jewry on the issue of the World Jewish Congress.50 Negotiations dragged on for quite some time, but yielded no results.51 The ultimate wish to bring hundreds of thousands of American Jews to symbolically cast their ballots in favour of the congress52 would not be fulfilled. A constantly stated ambition of the WJC movement was to confer a democratic character on the congress through elections to be held in the United States, Poland, and other countries. The call to meet democratic requirements was probably meant to impress both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences as well as achieve broader recognition and legitimacy in both settings.53 However, the social structures and modes of government of the various Jewish communities varied far too greatly for fixed electoral rules to be enforced (Vital 1999: 851). A compromise had to be found. The organizers reiterated their declared aim of having delegates to the congress selected by democratic election, but at the same time they allowed the rule to be circumvented, so that ‘in countries where there are democratically elected representation of Jewries, the existing representations shall appoint the delegates to the congress’.54 In countries where the political climate was particularly tainted, the required governmental authorization to conduct elections would not be obtained.55 Moreover, WJC members were forced to acknowledge that election processes in the United States and Poland would probably not stand the democratic test.56 American Jews and Polish Jews seemed to be trapped in a relationship of mutual dependence, which proved detrimental to both parties because each waited for the other to achieve a sufficient level of mobilization before it would seriously consider the launching of an election process in their own country.57 The World Jewish Congress project was originally adjusted largely to address the specific sociopolitical realities of Eastern Europe (Nesemann 2007: 7–9; Feuereisen 2004: 308–15); it was supposed to provide a solution

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to the crisis befalling East European Jews. The acuteness of the threats faced by the Jewish populations of Poland and Romania, the largest demographic reservoirs of East European Jewry, naturally induced the WJC to engage in far-reaching propaganda work in these two countries.58 Because of a growing sense of isolation among East European Jews, the World Jewish Congress had a strong emotional appeal within their communities. But German and other Western Jewish organizations engaged in transnational advocacy and relief work began to reorder their priorities after Hitler’s rise to power. Whereas East European Jewry had been the central focus of their attention up to that point, this focus shifted and German Jews subsequently became the main beneficiaries of the services and aid provided by these organizations (Bauer 1974: 3–137; Margaliot 1977: 256–57; Chernow 1993: 402–3; Weiss 1999: 211). It was now incumbent upon Polish Jews to shoulder advocacy responsibilities on behalf of German Jews who had upheld the interests of Polish Jewry in the past.59 The need to assume this task was felt all the more urgently in that the Poles were increasingly falling prey to the doctrine of anti-Semitism, which was gradually finding its way to Poland from Germany. Although it was different in character from anti-Semitism in Germany,60 Polish anti-Semitism could only be a cause for grave concern, especially now that Poland had entered into a political rapprochement with Nazi Germany.61 The principled stance that Polish Jews took against Nazism prompted them to demonstrate unrelenting support for the boycott of German goods and services (Melzer 1982; Wislicki 1994). Therefore, they felt deeply betrayed upon learning that a transfer agreement between the Nazis and the Zionist leadership in Palestine had been signed (Weiss 1988). The World Jewish Congress became a platform where Polish Jews could express their remaining hopes and mounting fears; the WJC was to serve as an outlet to vent their anger against the Zionist leadership in London and Jerusalem.62 In Western Europe, transnational mobilization could have a disintegrative impact on largely assimilated Jewries; by contrast, it seemed to have the valuable effect of facilitating Jewish political integration at the national level in Eastern Europe. In Poland, for example, the WJC provided a framework in which Polish Jews could express their aspirations to unity.63 The notoriously conflictual nature of political culture among Polish Jewry in the interwar period was due as much to the constraints placed on its actions by Polish authorities as to the fragmented patterns of political behaviour that had taken root before the rise of the Second Republic (Engel 2001: 651–61). Given the fact that division along regional, cultural or ideological lines was also characteristic of the Polish Zionist movement in particular (Melzer 1997a: 430–34), the WJC could justifiably pride itself on gradually having attracted a broad spectrum of Zionist supporters

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in Poland.64 Zionist mobilization for the WJC was apparently more successful in Congress Poland than in Galicia.65 This probably owed much to the legacy of radical politics which had dominated in Poland under the Russian Empire, as opposed to the tradition of moderation and compromise that typified Jewish life under Austro-Hungarian rule (Mendelsohn 1974: 205–6). Yet the WJC did not limit itself to seeking Zionist support: it aimed at imparting a comprehensive quality to Polish Jewish participation in the congress. This was reflected, for example, in the repeated attempts to rally the support of the Orthodox Jews from Agudat Yisrael and the Jewish Socialists from the Bund. Agudat Yisrael and the Zionists were rivals in the Sejm, in the Senate, and in the kehillot66 where the two advocated different political strategies, in particular with regard to education and the allocation of funds for cultural activities. In the 1930s, however, Agudat Yisrael began to shift its position on Jewish emigration to Palestine more favourably (Bacon 1995: 72–90). Some of the organization’s Polish members now supported the idea of a World Jewish Congress,67 although the international leadership of Agudat Yisrael was more reluctant to endorse such a move. In the debate surrounding participation in the WJC, the international leadership of Agudat Yisrael would eventually gain the upper hand.68 The planned mass demonstration in anticipation of elections to the congress clearly constituted an unacceptable breach of Agudat Ysrael’s well-tried policy of quiet intercession.69 The concept of ethnically based Jewish solidarity was alien to the Jewish Socialist Bund. As illustrated by Gertrud Pickhan in the next chapter, in accordance with the Bundists’ ideology of class solidarity, they preferred to wage an energetic struggle against anti-Semitism with the help of leftwing Polish political groups, in particular the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). Their insistence on the struggle against anti-Semitism in Poland, as well as their identification with the Arab population in Palestine, alienated them from both left-wing and bourgeois Zionists.70 Unsurprisingly, attempts to win the Bundists’ support for the WJC would therefore be inconclusive.71 The transnationalization of struggles for recognition based on Jewish solidarity along ethnic lines carried positive implications in terms of exerting political pressure. Moreover, as Polish Jewish mobilization for the WJC shows, transnationalization could also generate potential economic benefits. Because economic organizations representing small merchants, craftsmen and shopkeepers played a crucial role in the public life of Polish Jewry, the WJC invested great effort to obtain their support.72 Traditionally, Polish Jews, unlike their Catholic Polish neighbours, were conspicuously present in urban economic sectors and the free professions. Poles were particularly badly hit by the Great Depression (Rotschild 1981: 593–94

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and 601–2). Non-Jewish Poles began to find exposure to their Jewish competitors ‘irritating’, especially in densely populated areas; this irritation became the source of mounting anti-Semitic feelings in Poland among nonJews. Discriminatory economic steps against the Jews, at first spontaneous, would soon receive governmental sanction. Jakob Lestchinsky, a learned economist from Warsaw, kept a precise record of the great variety of hostile measures that Jews had to face. Among these were falsified demographic censuses; economic boycotts; quotas in public administration, in the universities, and in other professions; prejudicial tax assessments; and ultimately violence.73 The list was probably not exhaustive.74 The particularly harsh prejudicial treatment inflicted on small Jewish merchants increased their expectations regarding the World Jewish Congress. The WJC, it was hoped, would provide crucial solutions to their economic distress. According to one of their representatives, by activating a transnational network of like-minded Jewish economic actors, the WJC could expand new export opportunities for the many victims of state-sponsored economic anti-Semitism in an age of unchecked protectionism.75 The WJC would also be seen as a remedy to the harmful patterns prevailing in Jewish philanthropy. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), in particular, was criticized for its utter failure to engage with its beneficiaries. According to the spokesman of the Poale-Zion party in Poland, the future WJC, in contrast to the American JDC, would handle the recipients of its aid like equals and in a truly accountable manner.76 The economic difficulties of Polish Jewry underlined the necessity of formulating a consistent policy on the issue of emigration.77 Since the death of Marshal Pilsudski, Polish government officials as well as Polish opposition leaders had been sly enough to dictate the terms of a murky debate by advocating mass emigration as the solution to the ‘Polish Jewish problem’.78 Transplanting the ‘superfluous’ Polish Jewish population to the French colony of Madagascar was the option finally settled upon for ridding Poland of its Jewish demographic and economic burden. True, WJC leaders were anxious to qualify their acceptance of the scheme: it could be implemented only to the extent that the civil rights of Polish Jewry were simultaneously upheld.79 But, following the lead of the Jewish Agency, WJC Executive Committee members conferred on the resettlement issue with Polish and French dignitaries; and, in so doing, they seemed to be giving the whole evacuation idea the seal of Jewish approval.80 For some infuriated Polish Jewish delegates to the WJC, the fact that prominent Jews took part in the negotiations surrounding forced emigration could only reinforce the Polish anti-Semitic camp, and seriously undermine the Jewish claims for equal rights.81

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Transnational Mobilization for National Purposes The WJC was tasked with the articulation of Jewish interests and needs at the transnational level. By targeting diplomatic actors assembled at the League of Nations, as well as the cluster of non-governmental institutions gravitating around the supranational organization in Geneva, it could confer an increased degree of legitimacy on urgent Jewish claims for recognition. By linking their fate to the WJC movement, French and American Zionists hoped to raise their profiles among their respective domestic constituents. This observation falls into line with the theory of Keck and Sikkink, according to which transnational advocacy networks are more likely to emerge in the absence of political opportunities at the national level, when domestic groups tend to look for outside support in order circumvent national authorities and exert pressure on the state from outside (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 12–13). Thus the World Jewish Congress project naturally became a major bone of contention for its integrationist rivals. Paradoxically, however, while endorsing a Jewish nationalist platform, French and American Zionists carried with them the same baggage of cultural beliefs and attitudes that characterized the old integrationist establishment that the Zionists criticized. On the political level, American and French Zionists were ready to support a nationalist agenda enabling East European Jews to consolidate their legal status in their countries of residence. However – probably because they had gained legal emancipation much earlier and were satisfied with the terms of their citizenship – West European Zionists in the WJC would not agree to let East European Zionists translate their national aspirations into a Western political reality. The patterns of political mobilization as well as the drive towards acculturation, which typified the aspirations of Western Jewish communities, were unsuited to the principles of national autonomy for minorities (Mendelsohn 1993: 57–58). When a WJC legal expert of East European origin voiced the idea of universalizing the minority protection regime during the proceedings of the Bernheim petition, his proposition met with a strong rebuttal from Western Zionists.82 The question re-emerged in 1934 when Poland, in defiance of the Great Powers and in an appeal to the disgruntled subjects of the Versailles settlement, launched a campaign for generalization of the minority treaties (Fink 2004: 336–42). The issue was so divisive that it had to be discussed behind closed doors.83 Imbued with the idea of a specifically French mission in the realms of politics and culture, French Zionist supporters of the WJC readily succumbed to the siren calls of French patriotism. In both public and

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private venues, they displayed a high measure of paternalism, if not hostility, towards the Eastern Jews whom they were called upon to aid. American Zionists endowed the WJC with the hoped-for international prestige, perceived political might, and intellectual finesse. They also equipped the organization with the badly needed financial means to perform its fledgling mandate. American Jewish supporters of the WJC were keenly aware of the force of isolationist sentiment among the American public. Whereas they supported the claims of European Jews, American Jews were remarkably cautious in word and deed, and therefore remained, more often than not, engulfed in national preoccupations. Their assessments were thus not consistently in line with the complex political emergencies of the Old Continent. While Western Zionists mainly took up the task of political advocacy, the WJC agenda primarily reflected the concerns of East European Jewries. This observation seems to fall into line with Axel Honneth’s critical theory of recognition, which hypothesizes struggles for recognition that are directly caused by immediate discrimination or deferential treatment of individuals who are struggling for recognition (Honneth 1996: 131–41). Eastern Jewish involvement in the World Jewish Congress originated in the personal feelings of moral injury that they experienced in an age of staggering anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, political and moral narratives were shaped, diffused and harnessed into a political force by both Eastern and Western Jews. In that sense, the WJC arguably captured the ‘raw material of moral feelings’ of anguished Jews from all over the world in the 1930s. In the eyes of East European Jews, the WJC was bound to become a powerful counterweight to the policies of antiSemitic governments, which were inclined to emulate Nazi Germany in their treatment of Jewish minorities. Hopes pinned on the World Jewish Congress were commensurate with the anguish felt by a significant number of Jews, especially in countries such as Poland and Romania. The many thousands of victims of a series of legislative and administrative measures entrenching the ruthless principles of political discrimination and economic degradation formed an impressive potential power base. In a growing number of cases Jews also had to face state-condoned violence. For those many men and women exposed to crippling moral and physical injury, the WJC provided the long-awaited hope of a unitary framework for political action. It also held the promise of a more activist style of Jewish politicking, truly capable of restoring Jewish pride and honour, now key motives in a comforting nationalist discourse. National campaigns surrounding the World Jewish Congress were marred by intense political bickering, so age-old divisions could not be smoothed away. In some instances, these campaigns even seemed to

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sow the seeds of further discord. The WJC often raised incompatible expectations on the part of its supporters and would-be affiliates. Patterns of transnational mobilization ultimately varied in different national and sub-national contexts, and determined the dynamics of the WJC’s attempts at institution building and its policy-making processes. Since the nineteenth century, groups advocating, for example, the rights of women, the rights of workers, or the cause of peace have attempted to overcome national and sociopolitical divisions. Because they are said to favour the ‘convergence of social and cultural norms’ (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 89) in an era of intensified internationalization and globalization, transnational civil society networks are supposed to facilitate integration among nation-states.84 However, there are few studies that link interwar transnational civil society networks to presentday phenomena.85 Even if they share issue-oriented as well as valuedriven objectives, ethnonational diasporas seem to differ, to a certain extent, from the rest of contemporary transnational civil society networks. In the case of the World Jewish Congress, as we have shown, political mobilization on the transnational level was geared towards, and led to the strengthening of, ethnic particularism. This study thus seems to allow for contextualized and bounded generalizations. In terms of theory building, its main value is to highlight the underlying qualities of transnational struggles for recognition. As Nancy Fraser has argued, aspirations for equality and aspirations for difference should not be regarded as incompatible aims in struggles for recognition (Fraser 2004: 153–64). The maintenance and protection of difference hinges, very frequently, on the principle of mutual respect (Fraser 2003: 55), which is in turn a precondition for universal equality (Laforest and de Lara 1996: 315). By stretching its political agenda at the transnational level, the Zionist movement succeeded, if only to an extremely limited extent, to have its demands for both equality and difference to be addressed simultaneously at the international level (the League of Nations) in the 1930s. As this analysis of the different patterns of political mobilization for the WJC has shown, Western and Eastern Zionists put varying – and at times conflicting – emphasis on these two types of aspiration. The fact remains, however, that claims for equality and claims for difference were framed simultaneously. Their combined articulation arguably strengthened the very process of transnational mobilization. In that sense, the early history of the World Jewish Congress aptly illustrates the analytical value of the concept of transnationalism in examining both the causes and effects of struggles for recognition.

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Notes I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Dalia Ofer, Dieter Gosewinkel, Jacques Ehrenfreund, Michael A. Meyer, Zohar Segev, Marcos Silber and Jannis Panagiotidis for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this text.   1. That is, before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. See Diner (2005: 30–32).   2. Jewish diplomacy in the interwar period was based only on minority rights. The human rights agenda was adopted only after the nearly complete destruction of the Central and East European Jewish communities had made the principle of special protection for Jewish minorities essentially superfluous. From 1944 onwards, WJC legal experts progressively renounced allegiance to the minority protection regime and embraced the notion of universal and individual human rights. On the key role of the WJC legal experts for the development of the postwar global human rights regime, see Feuereisen (2004: 323–27) and Picard (2005: 125–30). For a detailed account of the crucial role Jews have played in the rise of international human rights movements, see Galchinsky (2008). See also Lewis (2014: 150–300).   3. Although the term ‘transnationalism’ derived originally from the concept of the ‘nation state’, transnationalism now evokes a large variety of processes involving different types of groups, ‘from specific migrant communities to all migrants, to every ethnic diaspora, to all travellers and tourists’ (Vertovec 2001: 576).  4. Once used to describe Jewish, Greek and Armenian dispersion, the term diaspora is now part of a much larger semantic field encompassing notions such as immigrant, expatriate, refugee, guest worker, exile community, overseas community, and ethnic community. For a critical assessment of this terminological conflation and an exploration of the specific meaning of the Jewish diaspora, see Band (1996) and Safran (2005).  5. This is in contrast to other transnational entities, which are better termed ‘networks’. Networks are more heterogeneous in their composition because their members share characteristics other than ethnic origin – for example, religious and cultural beliefs or practices, language, or regional origin. Such transnational entities tend to be less rigorously organized, and their interests are constantly being redefined under the twin impact of globalization and liberalization. See Sheffer (2006, especially pp. 126–30).   6. The role of the League of Nations and the function of its mandatory powers were stipulated in article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, in June 1919. The WJC was recognized as a ‘public body’ in the British Mandate for Palestine, approved by the Council of the League of Nations in July 1922.   7. WJC Records, 1918–1982. Manuscript Collection No. 361. Series A: Central Files, Subseries 1: Organizational History and Activities. ‘League of Nations Relations, 1936,’ p. 1, Box A4, Folder 20. American Jewish Archives (AJA), Cincinnati, Ohio. WJC Records of this type from the American Jewish Archives will be cited in abbreviated form in subsequent notes: WJC/AJA, MS-361.  8. Some authors have downplayed the role of the Zionist leadership in the formulation of the minority treaties, by stressing the important input provided by the British integrationist leadership. See, for example, Levene (1992, especially pp. 262–302). Other authors contest the whole idea of a decisive Jewish influence on the elaboration of minority treaties, by stressing, instead, the fact that Britain had

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drawn them up in line with German interests, mainly to curtail Polish territorial ambitions. See, for example, Engel (2002).  9. The Comité des délégations juives ensured that Jewish rights in the Saarland would be upheld after this territory was restored to Germany following the 1935 plebiscite. The Saarland Jews were given a one-year period of grace in order to liquidate their assets and to emigrate in an orderly manner. Intense lobbying at the League of Nations also delayed the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws in the Free City of Danzig, and granted a brief period of respite during which its Jewish population could emigrate under tolerable conditions. Romanian Jewish communities under the threat of denaturalization and disenfranchisement also got themselves out of a serious situation in 1938 when the WJC succeeded in obtaining the resignation of the particularly fierce anti-Semitic Romanian government of Octavian Goga. 10. The petition bore the name of Franz Bernheim, a warehouse employee from Upper Silesia, who had been fired from his work as the result of the enactment of Nazi law in that region. Sponsored by the Comité des délégations juives as well as other Jewish organizations, the petition demanded that the League of Nations declare that all anti-Jewish measures infringe upon the Geneva Convention of 1922 and consequently order their nullification. 11. As a result of this action, the Nazi regime decided to abide by its obligation to restore Jewish rights in Upper Silesia until the expiration of the German–Polish Convention of 1922 in 1937. See Graf (2008: 95–239). 12. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Report about a telegram to Hitler from the League of National German Jews, Berlin, Aug. 28 1934’. Box A7, Folder 5: Foreign press releases 1931–1934. 13. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Jewish World Conference at Geneva, Declaration of War Against Germany, Insolent Demands and Boycott Threats’ (translation from the Fraenkische Tageszeitung, 24 Aug 1934). Box A7, Folder 5: Foreign press releases 1931–1934. See also Weiss (1997). 14. Twenty thousand of the fifty-five thousand German Jews who migrated to Palestine in the 1930s benefited directly from this agreement. Their emigration allowed the transfer of 139.6 million Reichmarks (the equivalent of 8.1 million British pounds) to Palestine, an important contribution to the economic development of the Jewish Yishuv, especially after the latter had suffered a long period of economic decline. See Strauss (1981: 345–46). 15. WJC/AJA, MS-361. Series A: Central Files. Subseries 3: Plenary Assemblies, Pre1936 Conferences and Special Conferences. ‘Résolution sur le boycottage’. Box A40, Folder 5: Protocole de la IIIème Conférence juive mondiale, Genève, 20–23 août 1934, édité par le Comité exécutif pour le Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 1934, p. 89. See also Edelheit (1998: 78). 16. An extraordinary wealth of sources documenting this struggle can be found at the Central Zionist Archives (CZA) in Jerusalem. For the case of the Bernheim petition and the debates surrounding it in the Assembly, Council and Minority Section of the League of Nations, see the personal archives of Leo Motzkin (A126/615-616), Emil Marguiles (A299/8) and Nathan Feinberg (A306/54, 71-74). For the defence of German Jews in the framework of the European Congress of Nationalities, see, for example, Nathan Feinberg (A306/114), and in the World Federation of League of Nations Societies, see, again, Nathan Feinberg (A306/46).

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17. WJC efforts in that realm would culminate in the Evian Conference in 1938, initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to solve the refugee problem. Despite its efforts to achieve united Jewish representation, no less than twentyone Jewish organizations would report their specific recommendations. Not only did the conference fail to resolve, even in the slightest, the deteriorating plight of the refugees that it had been convened to aid, but it also failed to bring any overall condemnation of Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. 18. Such was the case, for example, for competition with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the field of economic assistance. 19. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Goldmann to Kallen, Tel-Aviv, 12 avril 1935’, Box A27, Folder 1; ‘Kubowitzki, Protokoll der Sitzung des engeren Executives-Comités, 28 Januar 1936’, Box A6, Folder 8; ‘Goldmann, Séance du comité exécutif du 11 octobre 1936’, Box A6, Folder 8; ‘Goldmann, Barou, Zuckermann, Nurock, Perlzweig, Réunion du comité exécutif du 31 janvier 1937, Paris’, Box A6, Folder 10. 20. WJC/AJA, MS-361. Réunion du Comité executif du 31 janvier 1937 à Paris, Box A6, Folder 10. 21. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Kubowitzki: Protokoll des Plenarsitzung des ExecutiveComités, Paris, 22 Februar 1936’, Box A6, Folder 8. 22. Two hundred and eighty delegates from thirty-three countries were present at the constituent session of the WJC in Geneva in August 1936. The delegations claimed to represent entire Jewish communities (e.g. Palestine, Canada, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria) or important groups or organizations within their communities (e.g. United States, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, Great Britain, Belgium). See Zelmanovits (1943: 19). 23. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Robert Stricker (Autriche), Protocole du premier Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 8–15 août 1936’, édité par le Comité exécutif du Congrès juif mondial, Genève/Paris/New York, 1936, pp. 115–17, Box A40, Folder 5. 24. See Oualid (1934: 361–64). See also WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Press Voices against the World Jewish Congress’, Jewish Advocate, 28 August 1934, Box A7, Folder 5; American Hebrew, 9 November 1934, Box A7, Folder 5. 25. Central Zionist Archives (CZA), Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Goldmann: Statement about the Jewish World Congress, 9 June 1933’. 26. Ibid. 27. This was the case, for example, for the touchy debates related to the economic boycott of Nazi Germany. Discussions around the negotiations with Soviet representatives regarding the participation of Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union and Jewish communists from the West in the World Jewish Congress were also handled with the same discretion. 28 CZA, Jerusalem, C2/1250. ‘Goldmann: Sitzung der engeren Executive des Comité des délégations juives in Paris, 4 Februar 1934’. 29. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Goldmann to Kallen, Paris, November 3, 1934’; ‘Kallen to Goldmann, New York, January 10, 1935’, Box A27, Folder 1. ‘Lettre de remerciements pour les messages au Congrès envoyés par des hommes d’Etat: adressée à Lord Cecil, Yvon Delbos, Ed. Daladier, Pierre Cot, Paul Claudel, Henry Beranger, Justin Godart…’, Box A9, Folder 2. 30. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘M. Ehrler, Conseiller d’Etat de la République et Canton de Genève; M. Le Professeur William E. Rappard (Genève); Allocution de Sir

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Neill Malcolm, Haut Commissaire de la Société des Nations pour les Réfugiés provenant d’Allemagne: Protocole du premier Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 8–15 août 1936 (édité par le Comité Exécutif du Congrès Juif Mondial, Genève/ Paris/New York, 1936)’, p. 50, Box A40, Folder 5. 31. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Wise to Goldmann, March 23, 1936’ and ‘Wise to Goldmann, April 2, 1936’, Box A27, Folder 1. 32. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Kallen to Goldmann February 14, 1935’, Box A27, Folder 1. 33. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/1249. ‘Rundschreiben, 10 juin 1933’. The other main factor for the postponement of the constituting session of the World Jewish Congress was the opposition to it by influential Zionist leaders in America (Louis Dembis Brandeis, Louis Lipsky), London (Nahum Sokolow, Chaïm Weizmann) and Palestine (David Ben-Gurion). According to them, the Zionist movement had reached a critical juncture in its history, and had to focus exclusively on promoting its interests in Palestine. See ‘February 9, 1934, to Nahum Goldmann, Geneva’, in Voss, 1969, p. 198; WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Kallen to Goldmann, November 24, 1934’, Box A27, Folder 1. See also Urofsky (1982: 300). 34. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Wise to Goldmann, February 10, 1936’, Box A7, Folder 1. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Der Board of Deputies und die juedischen Massen’, report on an article by A. Alperin in the Paris Haint, 1 April 1936, Box A6, Folder 9. ‘[Letter from Stephen Wise] To Louis D. Brandeis, London, July 24, 1936’, in Voss (1969: 212). 35. This is largely due to the fact that (a) the headquarters of the Comité des délégations juives, with which the Executive Committee for the WJC would merge in 1934, were located in Paris, and (b) French Jews with Zionist proclivities maintained close relationships with its leader, Leo Motzkin, and after the latter’s death in autumn 1933, with his successor, Nahum Goldmann. 36. CZA, Jerusalem C2/1250. ‘Dr. Nachum Goldmann (Comité Exécutif du Congrès juif mondial): Protocole de la IIème Conférence Juive mondiale, Genève, 5–8 Septembre 1933 (édité par le Comité exécutif pour le Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 1933), p. 37; and Jeyfrokin, Sitzung des Pariser Executive-Comites der Comité des délégations juives Juedischen Weltkongress, 8 mai 1934. 37. Refugees of East European origin formed 50 per cent of the total number of refugees arriving in France in 1933. 38. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/1250. ‘Bollack: Sitzung der Executive der westeuropaischen Mitglieder des Comité des délégations juives und Jüdischen Weltkongress, 24 février 1934’ and ‘Bollack: Dritte Sitzung, Sonntag 25 Februar 1934’. 39. The doctrine of anti-fascism was a cement for the different components of the French Left in the 1930s, and was to serve as an ideological platform for the French Popular Front. However, this did not necessarily imply a pro-war orientation on the part of left-wing groups, which could also be tainted by pacifism. La Ligue Internationale contre l’antisémitisme was blamed for its bellicose stance towards Nazi Germany by anti-fascist left-wing intellectuals. This criticism was very likely to be shared by French members of the WJC; see Wolikow (2005). 40. WJC/AJA, MS-361, Box A40, Folder 3. ‘Protocole de la IIème Conférence Juive mondiale, Genève, 5–8 Septembre 1933 (édité par le Comité exécutif pour le Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 1933)’: Dr. Henryk Rosmarin (Comité réuni des Délégations Juives de Pologne), p. 76; M. Turkow (Comité Réuni des Délégations Juives de Pologne), p. 79; E. Tscherikower (Comité des délégations juives, Paris),

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p. 81; A. Levy (Comité français pour le congrès juif mondial), p. 76; Mademoiselle Dr. A. Bass (Comité français pour le congrès juif mondial), p. 80; R. Bollack (Comité français pour le congrès juif mondial), pp. 81ff. 41. CZA Jerusalem, C2/1250. ‘Corcos: Dritte Sitzung der Executive der Westeuropaischen Mitglieder des Comité des délégations juives und Judischen Weltkongress, 25 fevrier 1934’. 42. Corcos, Zweite Sitzung der Executive der Westeuropaischen Mitglieder des Comité des délégations juives und Jüdische Weltkongress, 25 Februar 1934. 43. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Goldmann: Sitzung der engere Executive, 24 Oktober 1934, Paris’; WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Goldmann to Kallen, 12 Avril 1935, from Tel Aviv’, Box A27, Folder 1; ‘Kubowitzki: Sitzung des engeren Executives-Comités, 28 Januar 1936’, Box A6, Folder 8; ‘Wise to Goldmann, May 15 1936’, Box A27, Folder 1. 44. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Goldmann to Kallen, 12 Avril 1935, from Tel Aviv’, Box A27, Folder 1. ‘Wise to Goldmann, May 15 1936’, Box A27, Folder 1. 45. The same struggle was taking place on the British Jewish political scene. See Cohen (2002: 366–68). 46. In particular Louis Lipsky. In this regard, see Frommer (1978: 486–87) and Shafir (1971: 521). 47. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Wise to Goldmann, February 3, 1936’. Box A27, Folder 1. 48. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Wise to Goldmann, March 10, 1936’, Box A27, Folder 1. 49. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Kallen to Goldmann, March 25, 1935’, Box A27, Folder 1. 50. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Jeyfrokin: Executive-Sitzung der engeren Executiv Mitglieder, 28 nov 1934’. On top of integrationist support, partisans in the World Jewish Congress in the United States specifically sought to enlist the backing of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Prospects for rallying AFL support seemed fairly good after that organization had joined the movement to boycott German goods and services in autumn 1933. 51. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/1250. ‘Goldmann: Sitzung des Pariser Executive-Comites des Comité des délégations juives und Weltjudischen Kongress, 8 mai 1934’. 52. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Statement about the Jewish World Congress, June 9, 1933’; CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Wise: Exekutiv Sitzung am 19 august 1934 in Genf’. 53. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Goldmann, Genève, 8 juin 1933’; CZA, Jerusalem C2/1250. ‘Jochelmann: Sitzung der engeren Executive des Comité des délégations juives in Paris, 4 Februar 1934’; CZA, Jerusalem C2/2644. ‘Wise, Exekutiv Sitzung am 19 August 1934 in Genf’; CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Goldmann: Sitzung des Pariser Executive, 4 Januar 1935’. 54. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Protokoll der Plenarsitzung des Executive-Comites, 23 Februar 1936’, pp. 7–8, Box A6, Folder 8. 55. This applied to Romania in particular. CZA, Jerusalem C2/2644. ‘Goldmann: Sitzung des Organisationskommission des dritten Juedischen Weltkongress, 22 August 1934’. 56. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Wise to Goldmann, February 28, 1936’, Box A27, Folder 1; Ing. A. Reiss (Pologne, yiddisch), Protocole du premier Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 8–15 août 1936, (édité par le Comité Exécutif du Congrès juif mondial, Genève/Paris/New York, 1936)’, pp. 242–45, Box A40, Folder 6; ‘Nurock, Réunion du Comité Executif du 31 janvier 1937’, Box A6, Folder 10.

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57. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Rosmarin: Exekutiv Sitzung am 19 august 1934 in Genf’; CZA, Jerusalem, C2/1258. ‘Jeyfrokin: Protokoll der Sitzung von Montag den 25 Februar 1935, Paris’ and ‘Protokoll der Sitzung von Mittwoch den 6 Maerz 1935’. 58. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/1250. ‘Goldmann: Dritte Sitzung, Sonntag 25 Februar 1934’, and ‘Goldmann: Sitzung des Pariser Executive-Comites des Comité des délégations juives und Juedischen Weltkongress, 8 mai 1934’; C2/2644, CZA. ‘Goldmann: Rundschreiben no. 3, Paris, 20 November 1934’; WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Rundschreiben 10, Kongress-bulletin, 25 May 1936, Box A6, Folder 8. 59. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Grand Rabbin Isaak Rubinstein (Communauté juive de Wilno): Protocole de la IIIème Conférence Juive Mondiale, Genève, 20–23 août 1934 (édité par le Comité exécutif pour le Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 1934)’, pp. 111–12, Box A40, Folder 5. See also Weiss (2000: 16). 60. The racial element was not a central component of Polish anti-Semitism, except for extreme right-wing fringe groups. See Melzer (1995: 1–12). 61. Notably by signing a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany and by abrogating the Minority Treaty in 1934. For more details, see Melzer (1977: 193–206). 62. WJC/AJA, MS-361. Box A40, Folder 3. ‘Protocole de la IIème Conférence Juive mondiale, Genève, 5–8 Septembre 1933, édité par le Comité exécutif pour le Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 1933’: E. Mazur (Comité Réuni des Délégations Juives de Pologne), p. 67; Dr. Henryk Rosmarin (Comité Réuni des Délégations Juives de Pologne), p. 75. 63. WJC/AJA, MS-361. Box A6, Folder 9: Pressestimmen. I. Grüenbaum, ‘Wenn ein Volk sich entwaffnet’, Haint (Warsaw), 23 March 1936; Dr. I. Schwarzbart, ‘In Rumanien ja – warum in Polen nein?’, Moment (Warsaw). 64. Especially by attracting not only ‘General Zionists’ and different types of leftwing Zionists, but also Revisionists and Mizrahis. CZA, Jerusalem C2/1250. ‘Goldmann: Dritte Sitzung, Sonntag 25 Februar 1934’; CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Exekutiv Sitzung am 19 august 1934 in Genf’. 65. The first committee organized for the propagation of the idea of the World Jewish Congress and for the organization of district conferences meant to pave the way for elections to the congress was established in Warsaw. See WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Rundschreiben 10, Kongress-bulletin, 25 May 1936’, Box A6, Folder 8. Jews from Congress Poland also formed the majority of Polish Jewish delegates within the Executive Committe of the WJC. See WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Membres de l’exécutif du Comité des délégations juives et du Comité exécutif pour le Congrès juif mondial’, Protocole du premier Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 8–15 août 1936 (édité par le Comité Exécutif du Congrès juif mondial, Genève/Paris/ New York, 1936)’, Box A40, Folder 6, p. XI. 66. Local Jewish communal structures organized in application of the principles of national personal autonomy. 67. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Executiv Sitzung am 19 August 1934 in Genf’. 68. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Rundschreiben 10, Kongress-bulletin, 25 May 1936’, Box A6, Folder 8. 69. WJC/AJA, MS-361. D. Flinker, ‘Der Juedische Weltkongress’, Dos jiddischer Togeblatt (Warschau), Box A6, Folder 9: Pressestimmen. 70. Limited instances of collaboration with Labor Zionists did occur though in the interwar period, and Polish Bundist leaders were less critical of Jews living

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in Palestine than of their Zionist rivals at home. Generally speaking, however, the position of the Polish Bund towards Zionism was very hostile. Zionism was castigated as an inherently bourgeois movement and was blamed for exploiting anti-Semitism to promote its political goals instead of combating anti-Semitism earnestly. See Jacobs (2005: 242–58). 71. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. Rundschreiben no. 3, Paris, 20 November 1934; CZA, Jerusalem, C2/1250. Rundschreiben no. 10, Kongress-bulletin, 25 May 1936. Efforts by Zionist groups to create a common framework for political action and collective self-help in Poland would last until 1938. Even the elaboration of a minimum set of policy parameters could not help to overcome the opposition from the Bund and Agudat Yisrael, or to prevent intra-Zionist infighting. See Melzer (1996: 98–101). 72. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Exekutiv Sitzung am 19 August 1934 in Genf’, and Rundschreiben no. 3, Paris, 20 November 1934. 73. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Jakob Letschinsky (Pologne, yiddisch): Protocole du premier Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 8–15 août 1936 (édité par le Comité Exécutif du Congrès juif mondial, Genève-Paris-New York, 1936)’, pp. 63–68, Box A40, Folder 6. 74. For more details, see Tomaszewski (2002). 75. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Dr. Roman Zylbersztajn (Pologne, yiddisch): Protocole du premier Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 8–15 août 1936 (édité par le Comité Exécutif du Congrès juif mondial, Genève/Paris/New York, 1936)’, pp. 196– 99, Box A40, Folder 6. The recent enactment of a law banning ritual slaughter, modelled on a similar decree first issued in Nazi Germany, underscored the desirability of establishing an export bank, which could help extricate the small merchants from their predicament. See, WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Prof. Benhard Szczupakiewicz: Protokoll der Sitzung des Executive-Comites, 31 Januar 1937, Paris’, p. 54, Box A6, Folder 10. 76. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Ing. A. Reiss (Pologne, yiddisch): Protocole du premier Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 8–15 août 1936 (édité par le Comité Exécutif du Congrès juif mondial, Genève/Paris/New York, 1936)’, pp. 69–75, Box A40, Folder 6. 77. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Dr. A.Tartakower (Pologne, yiddisch): Protocole du premier Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 8–15 août 1936 (édité par le Comité Exécutif du Congrès juif mondial, Genève/Paris/New York, 1936)’, pp. 69–75, Box A40, Folder 6. 78. Their rhetoric was sadly reiterated by the Revisionist leader, Vladimir Jabotinski, who formulated an excessively ambitious ‘Evacuation Plan’. See Melzer (1997b: 136). 79. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Déclaration de l’Exécutif du Congrès juif mondial au sujet des problèmes d’émigration soulevés par la délégation polonaise à l’assemblée de la SDN, 11 octobre 1936’, Box A6, Folder 8. 80. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Dr. Nahum Goldmann, Prof. Bernhard, M. Marc Jarblum, Réunion de l’Executif du Congrès juif mondial à Paris, 11 octobre 1936’, pp. 9–12, Box A6, Folder 8. See also, Melzer (2003). 81. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘N. Prylutzki, J. Lestschinky: Sitzung des AdministrativeComites des Juedischen Weltkongress, 19. und 20. Mai 1936 in Wien’, pp. 19 and 23, Box A6, Folder 8.

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82. WJC/AJA, MS-361. ‘Dr. Emil Marguiles (Parti juif de Tchécoslovaquie), R. Bollack (Comité français pour le congrès juif mondial): Protocole du premier Congrès juif mondial, Genève, 8–15 août 1936 (édité par le Comité Exécutif du Congrès juif mondial, Genève/Paris/New York, 1936)’, p. 50, Box A40, Folder 6. 83. CZA, Jerusalem, C2/1250. ‘Nahum Goldmann: Besprechung des Comité des délégations juives, Paris, 2 June 1934’; CZA, Jerusalem, C2/2644. ‘Nahum Goldmann: Exekutiv Sitzung am 19 August 1934 in Genf im Salle Centrale’. 84. Especially in the European context. See, for example, Machiavelli (2001: 33–37). 85. Exceptions to this trend are: Smith, Chatfield and Pugnucco (1997: 3–19 and 25–27); Boli and Thomas (1999: 101–22 and 202–18).

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———. 2003. ‘Emigration versus Emigrationism: Zionism in Poland the Territorialist Projects of the Polish Authorities, 1936–1939’, in Joshua D. Zimmerman (ed.), Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and its Aftermath. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 19–33. Mendelsohn, Ezra. 1974. ‘The Dilemma of Jewish Politics in Poland: Four Responses’, in Bela Vago and George L. Mosse (eds), Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918–1945. New York: Wiley and Sons. ———. 1993. On Modern Jewish Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Munch, Richard. 2001. Nations and Citizenship in the Global Age: From National to Transnational Ties and Identities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Nesemann, Frank. 2007. ‘Leo Motzkin (1867–1933): Zionist Engagement and Minority Diplomacy’, Central and Eastern European Review 1: 2–24. Nicosia, Francis R. 2008. Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. New York: Cambridge University Press. Oualid, (Israel) William. 1934. ‘Le Judaïsme français et le Congrès juif mondial’, La Revue juive de Genève 2(9): p. 361–364. Picard, Jacques. 2005. ‘Zwischen Minoritätenschutz und Menschenrechte – Paul Guggenheims Rechtsverstandnis im Wandel, 1918–1950’, in Dan Diner (ed.), Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, volume 4. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 111–30. Rosenbluth, Martin. 1961. Go Forth and Serve. New York: Herzl Press. Rotschild, Joseph. 1981. ‘Ethnic Peripheries versus Ethnic Cores: Jewish Political Strategies in Interwar Poland’, Political Science Quarterly 96(4): 591–606. Safran, William. 2005. ‘The Jewish Diaspora in a Comparative and Theoretical Perspective’, Israel Studies 10(1): 36–60. Schoenberg, Bernard. 1934. ‘L’aide aux réfugiés allemands’, La Revue juive de Genève 2(5): 181–85. Segev, Zohar. 2006. ‘European Zionism and the United States: The Americanization of Herzl’s Doctrine by American Zionist Leaders’, Modern Judaism 26(3): 274–91. Shafir, Shlomo. 1971. ‘The Impact of the Jewish Crisis on American–German Relations, 1933–1939’. Ph.D. dissertation (unpublished). Washington, DC: Georgetown University. Sheffer, Gabriel. 2006. ‘Transnationalism and Ethnonational Diasporism’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 15(1): 121–45. Smith, Jackie, Charles Chatfield and Ron Pagnucco (eds). 1997. Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity beyond the State. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Spiliotis, Susanne-Sophia. 2001. ‘Das Konzept der Transterritorialität oder Wo findet Gesellschaft statt?’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 27. Jahrg., H. 3: 480–88. Spire, André. 1933. ‘Le But du Congrès juif mondial’. Allocution prononcée le 15 novembre 1932 à la réunion constitutive du Comité français pour le congrès mondial juif’, La Revue juive de Genève 1(3): pp. 105–106. Strauss, Herbert. 1981. ‘Jewish Emigration from Germany: Nazi Policies and Jewish Responses (II)’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 26(1): 343–409. Tomaszewski, Jerzy. 2002. ‘Between the Social and the National: The Economic Situation of Polish Jewry, 1918–1939’, in Dan Diner (ed.), Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, volume 1. Stuttgart and Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, pp. 64–70.

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Urofsky, Melvin I. 1982. A Voice That Spoke for Justice: The Life and Times of Stephen S. Wise. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Vertovec, Steven. 2001. ‘Transnationalism and Identity’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27(4): 573–82. Vital, David. 1999. A People Apart: The Jews in Europe 1789–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Voss, Carl Hermann (ed.). 1969. Stephen Wise: Servant of the People. Selected Letters (with a foreword by Justine Wise Polier and James Waterman Wise). Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. Weinberg, David. 1974. Les Juifs à Paris de 1933 à 1939, translated from English by Micheline Pouteau. Paris: Editions Calmann-Lévy. Weiss, Yfaat. 1997. ‘Projektionen vom “Weltjudentum” – Die Boykottbewegung der 1930er Jahre’, in Dan Diner (ed.), Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte: Deutschlandbilder, volume 26. Gerlingen: Bleicher Verlag, pp. 151–79. ———. 1998. ‘The Transfer Agreement and the Boycott Movement: A Jewish Dilemma on the Eve of the Holocaust’, Yad Vashem Studies 26: 134–43. ———. 1999. ‘Polish and German Jews between Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Outbreak of the Second World War’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 44(1): 205–23. ———. 2000. Deutsche und Polnische Juden vor dem Holocaust: Jüdische Identität zwischen Staatsbürgerschaft und Ethnizität, 1933–1940, translated from Hebrew by Matthias Schmidt. Munich: Oldenburg Verlag. Wise, Stephen. 1944. As I See It. Chapter 1, ‘The Jewish Fate and Faith’ section, ‘An Hour in Warsaw (1936)’. New York: Jewish Opinion Publishing Corporation. Wislicki, Alfred. 1994. ‘The Jewish Boycott Campaign against Nazi Germany and its Culmination in the Halbersztadt Trial’, in Antony Polonsky, Ezra Mendelsohn and Jerzy Tomaszewski (eds), The Jews In Independent Poland 1918–1939. London: Littman Library, pp. 282–89. Wolikow, Serge. 2005. ‘Les Gauches, l’antifascisme et le pacifisme durant les années 1930’, in Jean-Jacques Becker and Gilles Candar (eds), Histoire des gauches en France. Paris: La Découverte, pp. 1–22. Zelmanovits, L. 1943. Origin and Development of the World Jewish Congress: An Historical Survey. London: British Section of the World Jewish Congress.

Emmanuel Deonna holds a Master of Arts in International Relations as well as a Master of Advanced Studies (DEA) in Contemporary History from the Graduate Institute (Geneva). He is enrolled as a PhD Candidate at the University of Lausanne and took part in the research project “The Transnationalization of Struggles for Recognition: Women and Jews in France, Germany and Poland in the 20th Century”, managed by the Berlin Social Science Center (Profs. Dieter Gosewinkel and Dieter Rucht, WZB) and funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. His main fields of interests are contemporary Jewish history, migration and citizenship studies, social work and cinema. His publications include “Jüdischer Weltkongress”, in Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur (Metzler Verlag, 2012).

Chapter 5

Jewish, Socialist, Anti-Zionist The Bund and its Transnational Relations

Gertrud Pickhan

‘Yes, Jews are “different”. So what? Does everyone have to be the same? Isn’t Pawel also different from Gawel? And isn’t this very “otherness” among people one of the most enchanting beauties of life?’ —Wiktor Alter

Wiktor Alter, Jewish socialist activist, political theorist, and publicist for the General Jewish Labour Bund of Poland (known as ‘the Bund’), made this observation in 1938 in a piece appearing in the Bund’s theoretical journal, Nowe Z˙ycie (New Life).1 The Bund was a secular left-wing organization, and Nowe Z˙ycie was aimed at a readership of ethnic Poles and Jews acculturated in Poland. Alter’s remarks are early evidence of the recognition that ethnocultural plurality is a basic fact of almost all modern societies. In his plea for the appreciation of otherness, it is significant that this Jewish socialist cited a well-known poem by Aleksander Fredro (often called ‘the Polish Molière’) to highlight the transnational dimensions of the Bundist struggle for recognition. The history of the Bund can only be understood in the complex context of the Jewish and East European, international and transnational history of the labour movement. The multiethnic plurality of Eastern and Eastern Central Europe is an important matrix of analysis; it determines the status of ethnicity and the contextual relations between ethnic minorities and majority populations in which the Bund was embedded. At the same time, the Jewish Workers’ Party was also the institutional

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pillar of a social movement and of a definable sociocultural milieu. With regard to the history of the Bund in Poland, the link between ethnic group differences and social class differences in the Jewish working class milieu of the interwar years needs to be taken into account. Given the declining importance of older agents of socialization, and the development of new identity-building collectives and movements among the Jewish population of Eastern Europe, the Bund’s contribution to the political culture of East European Jewry calls for examination. We begin with a brief overview of the internal structure of the party, exploring its collective identity concepts. We investigate transnational relations – ordered, as it were, in concentric circles – at the levels of the Second Polish Republic and in the Labour and Socialist International (LSI). The May Day demonstrations in Poland, solidarity with the ‘Red Vienna’ initiative, and solidarity with Spain during its Civil War are examples of the struggle for recognition by a party that could not be confined to national categories.2

A Jewish Labour Party in the Second Polish Republic In the aftermath of the First World War, the Bund faced difficult and protracted adaptation in the transition from the multiethnic Russian Empire to the Polish nation-state; for it was now acting under completely different conditions from those prevailing in the Russian Empire, when the General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia was founded in Vilnius in 1897, and where, until 1918 (with a negligible interruption of only a few years), it had been a fundamental element of Russian social democracy. The most important turning point in the history of the Bund in Poland came after the First World War between 1928 and 1930. This marked the end of the consolidation phase, which saw a shift in the course of the party with regard to its three environments, the yidishe gas (Yiddish/Jewish community), the Second Polish Republic, and the LSI. The Bund increasingly opened its doors in the Jewish context to impoverished small craftsmen, effectively bidding farewell to its self-conception of a purely working-class party, although the rhetoric of class struggle was retained. What was now at issue was the struggle for recognition in milieus that had little to do with socialism. In the Polish environment, contacts between the Bund and the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) intensified from 1928 onwards, after the rift between Jewish and Polish socialists had deepened in the early postwar period. The PPS was, without a doubt, more important for the Bund than vice versa; the relative size of the two parties was cause enough. The PPS

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represented the numerical majority of labourers in Poland, but the Bund, vis-à-vis the PPS, also represented an ethnic minority in the context of the dominant titular nation. It was thus the Jewish socialists who had to struggle for recognition from their Polish comrades. Finally, with their 1930 accession to the LSI, the Bundists also rejected the communist experiment of Soviet provenance. Nevertheless the eminent biographical importance of the Russian revolutions remained a key factor in the socialization of the generation of Bund leaders – most of them born between 1879 and 1891 – in the interwar years, nourishing a lasting interest among them in happenings in the Soviet Union. The revolutionary mood of 1905, in particular for those who had experienced it as young people, had a lasting impact that was often evoked even in the interwar period. In 1905, the dissatisfied masses had risen against their oppressors in an everyday life context – albeit crisis-ridden – but not, as in 1917, in the turmoil of a world war. In the interwar period, people had overcome national antagonisms to some extent. It was thus possible for a long time to bask in the ‘sacred fire’ of the 1905 uprisings, and nurture the belief that such a popular uprising could still occur, even under the changed conditions of the Second Polish Republic. The urban life into which most Bundists were born differed greatly from the self-containment of the shtetl or small town, despite the persistence of traditions. Compared to rural Poland, where nationalist parties were stronger, there was more room in the multicultural urban centres for transnational negotiation. In the cities, new supra-family communication structures developed that were essential for the opportunities the still-young Jewish labour movement could offer a youthful clientele.3 Labour associations and like-minded circles presented a clear alternative to traditional religious institutions, which were often seen to be no longer abreast of the times as well as appearing to be undemocratic. The typically urban competition between ‘old and new’ was also reflected in the early biographies of Bundists born in the final decades of the nineteenth century (Pickhan 2001b). Whereas the party leadership profile is relatively clear from the available biographical material – mostly in Yiddish – the picture of the party base in the interwar period is blurred, due to a lack of sources. The most important material that could have provided information about the composition of membership, the Bund party archives, perished in the Warsaw Ghetto after the uprising. And the Bund itself was not always very accurate with its figures. In 1930, the secretary general of the party reported a membership of fifteen thousand to the LSI, of which only nine thousand were paid up.4 The social profile of the party base also remained vague; all that can be said is that simple party members were

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on average younger than the members of the leading party institutions.5 It can also be assumed that the proportion of workers was much higher among the party base than in the party leadership, who, by contrast, were typically well educated. A look at the regional distribution of Bund organizations in interwar Poland shows that the party was strongest in and around Warsaw, Łódz˙, Lublin and Białystok, where just slightly fewer than 50 per cent of all Polish Jews lived in 1931.6 During the interwar years, the cities of Kraków and Lviv did not develop into very strong centres of Bundist activity, so the organization was not really able to extend its reach very deeply into the surrounding regions. The so-called Galician Bund was not particularly successful in carrying on the tradition of the Jewish Social Democratic Party. The results of the 1931 census are instructive in this regard: whereas some 90 per cent of the Jewish population in Warsaw gave Yiddish as their mother tongue, in Lviv the figure was only 67.7 per cent, and in Kraków just 41.3 per cent (Steinlauf 1987: 236). With its pronounced Yiddishist bias, the Bund therefore had little prospect of success in the two largest Galician cities. The course set in the late 1920s was the essential prerequisite for the Bund’s having become the strongest Jewish party in Poland by the second half of the 1930s. However, self-assertion in an increasingly anti-Semitic climate was possible only through the strong internal coherence of the Bundist meshpokhe (family), which comprised a complex community of Jews from all walks of life – a community characterized by strong convictions and solidarity. The meshpokhedikeyt was apparently a trade mark of the Bund for contemporaries, too. However, meshpokhedikeyt and khavershaft (comradeship) did not mean that there were no conflicts. As in any proper family, there were repeated ‘family fights’ within the Bund – top–down between the party leadership and the party base, and horizontally between the moderate party majority, the Eynser, and the boisterous left wing, the Tsveyer. Nevertheless, internal conflicts were conducted in the context of a highly developed political culture of reflection and controversy, probably unprecedented in the history of political parties in the twentieth century. The integration of the Bundist periphery as a sociocultural milieu was achieved above all in the areas of work and culture. The Bund benefited from the growing pauperization and proletarianization of the Jewish population in the 1930s with a skilful, positive rhetorical turn to the topos of wage labour. The party’s success in this endeavour was shown not least by the strong growth of Bundist trade unions, which increased their membership from twenty thousand in about 1920 to some one hundred thousand by 1939 (Zigelboym 1972: 192–213). The

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huge increase in union membership, especially during the 1930s, is a clear indication of a change in awareness among the Jewish population in Poland that accompanied changes in employment structures. The largely involuntary transition to wage labour and the loss of economic independence, however modest, apparently aroused the need among many to entrust the defence of their interests to collective representation. Thanks to this reorientation caused by socioeconomic processes, Jewish trade unions were able to become the biggest form of mass organization in Polish Jewry, and they also became an integral part of the trade union landscape throughout the country. In the second half of the 1930s, the Bund was to become the strongest political force among Polish Jewry. This is clearly evidenced by city and community council elections. Researchers have hitherto interpreted the considerable gains by the Jewish labour party as protest voting provoked by disappointment with the lack of success of the Zionist parties and the conservative religious Aguda. The Bund certainly profited from the seeming futility of Zionist ambitions in light of British policy on Palestine, and the discredit into which the Aguda had fallen with their pro-government stance. What proved particularly important in changing political patterns of thought and action was the development of socioeconomic conditions that considerably broadened the social basis of the Bund and thus its political perspectives. Owing to the increase in wage labour, Jewish trade unions, traditionally closely associated with the Bund, grew in importance; this strengthened the party in its struggle for recognition as the leading political force in Polish Jewry. The Bund also became the most important political mouthpiece of the secular Yiddish cultural movement, after it had succeeded in gaining the collaboration of numerous leading Yiddishists over the course of the 1920s. Through the network of schools, associations and institutions of the secular Yiddish cultural movement, the party was deeply embedded in Jewish life beyond the working environment; at the same time, it made an essential contribution to the blossoming of Yiddish culture in interwar Poland, which, according to Chone Shmeruk, was due ‘above all [to] the Bundists and their supporters’ (Shmeruk 1989: 286). All this harmonized with the Bundist concept of national–cultural autonomy and the associated notion of cultural pluralism, which demanded the right for all ethnic minorities to freely develop their cultural identity in an everyday climate, free of discrimination. With regard to the non-Jewish environment, collective self-defence for Jews was organized as it had been in the Czarist Empire against the growing threat of anti-Semitism. This went along with an encouraging rhetoric of self-assertion, which contributed considerably to the Bund’s

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success in local elections in the period 1936 to 1939. For Wiktor Alter, ‘work’ was a key word in the resistance to anti-Semitism: Jewish nationalists come and say: How can we stand up to the enormous moral and spiritual pressure of anti-Semitism? The answer is: We will stand up to it! However bad the situation of the Jewish masses is, we will endure. And the more the Jewish population is transformed into a working population, the easier it will be to endure! (Alter 1937b: 132)

Thus, unlike leftist and bourgeois Zionists, the Bundists demanded the recognition of their right to remain in Poland precisely in the context of their struggle against anti-Semitism.

Cooperation and Conflict: Jewish, Polish and German Socialists The Bundists had an ally in the PPS, in their struggle against antiSemitism, although not a completely reliable one (Pickhan 2001a: 326–52). Relations between Polish gentiles and Jewish socialists typically ranged from conflict to cooperation and from rejection to agreement. Reformism and Polish nationalism on the part of the PPS, vis-à-vis uncompromising left-wing socialism and the concept of national– cultural autonomy for ethnic minorities on the part of the Bund, led to friction and repeated disputes. However, closer examination of relations between the parties shows that it was the left wing of the PPS, headed by Zygmunt Zaremba, that sought contact with the Bund, and even used the Bund’s Polish-language press as its own mouthpiece. Conversely, the Bundists took a certain pleasure in annoying the ‘big brother’ PPS a little, and in stepping up their role of maverick troublemakers vis-à-vis the PPS establishment. Although there was a clear power differential between the PPS and the Bund, being two major organizations of different ethnic composition, they were very much focused on one another. Although, as socialist parties and members of the Second Socialist International, the two formally enjoyed the same rights, relations between the PPS and the Bund were marked essentially by structural inequality: whereas the PPS quite clearly felt threatened by the greater radicalness and uncompromising stance of the Jewish socialists, the Bund accepted the outsider position its ethnicity imposed, using it to deal self-confidently with a sister party intent on dominance. An important yardstick for relations between the parties, as regards integration and demarcation, was the domain of symbolic politics,

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reflected above all in the festive staging of party conferences and International Workers’ Day events. In this respect, too, 1928 and 1929 were pivotal years: on the First of May 1928, Polish and Jewish workers marched together for the first time in the streets of the Second Republic’s capital; and in January 1929, Mieczysław Niedziałkowski became the first leading representative of the PPS to address a Bund party conference. In that same year, Henryk Erlich and Israel Lichtenstein, representing the Bund, and Herman Diamand, representing the PPS, participated in the ‘unification party conference’ of the DSAP (Deutsche Sozialistische Arbeitspartei in Polen – German Socialist Labour Party in Poland) in Łódz˙. For the German socialists, the significance of this joint participation was great: it established, in their view, the ‘Minor International in Poland’ (Blachetta-Madajczyk 1997: 88). Henryk Erlich extended greetings to the Polish socialists on the occasion of their party conference in 1931, which the Naye Folkstsaytung (New People’s Daily) reported in extenso on its title page. Just one year later, drawing upon that success, he stressed the ‘growing solidarity between Polish and Jewish workers’ on the fortieth anniversary of the PPS.7 In 1932, Erlich also addressed participants in Polish and German during celebrations on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the DSAP in Łódz˙.8 This was in contrast to Mieczysław Niedziałkowski, speaking during festivities on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Bund in 1929, who expressed his regret at not being able to address the assembly in Yiddish. He also did not deny that there continued to be considerable tensions between Polish and Jewish socialists, who nevertheless advanced ‘hand in hand’.9 Just how eager the Bund was to maintain good contacts with the German socialists in Poland was evident, particularly after the secession of the right-wing DSAP faction, who sympathized openly with the National Socialists (Blachetta-Madajczyk 1997: 100–107). In early 1935, a conference of the residual DSAP took place in Łódz˙, at which Henryk Erlich not only greeted the assembly, but also participated actively in the political debate, which, according to the Folkstsaytung, was ‘very warmly welcomed’ by all delegates.10 The close bonds between the Bund and the DSAP were apparent not least in the fact that the Bund provided the DSAP with financial assistance to maintain its newspaper until 1939 (ibid.: 252–53).11 This says much for the few remaining German socialists in Poland who, because of their consistent stance against the National Socialists, were described in Nowe Z˙ycie as the ‘advocates of Germans throughout the world’.12 The last major public demonstrations of solidarity between the parties took place in 1937. At the beginning of the year, Henryk Erlich attended the PPS conference in Radom; in his words of address, he urgently called

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on the delegates to maintain the course adopted at the joint labour conferences in 1936.13 And during the fortieth anniversary celebrations of the Bund, the chairmen of the Polish trade unions in Warsaw, Antoni Zdanowski and Kazimierz Czapinski ´ (also a member of the central executive committee of the PPS), likewise stressed the closing of ranks between Polish and Jewish workers.14 In the special issue of the Folkstsaytung on the occasion of the party jubilee in 1937, the DSAP chairman, Emil Zerbe, once again evoked the ‘Minor International in Poland’ formed by the PPS, the Bund and the DSAP. The collaboration between Polish, Jewish, German and Ukrainian Socialists was for Zerbe a first step towards a joint party.15 It is a moot point that Zygmunt Z˙ uławski, secretary general of the trade union commission and chairman of the supreme council of the PPS, referred to the ‘superiority complex’ of the PPS, as noted by Wiktor Alter; in that same issue of the Folkstsytung, Z˙uławski emphasized the necessity for unreserved recognition of ‘equality among combatants’. At any rate, he showed no arrogance on the part of the PPS towards the Bund; instead, he expressed ‘the intense wish that, in the common interest of the proletarian cause, we are able to develop the strongest possible mutual trust, and close our ranks as firmly as possible’.

May Day as a Measure of Mutual Recognition An appropriate occasion arose every year on the First of May, which, in conjunction with the founding of the Second Socialist International in 1889, had been declared ‘International Workers’ Day’. This carried the struggle of the working class into the urban public arena. The Second Socialist International and May Day had two main objectives: a public demonstration of the determination to fight for better working and living conditions, and the display of international solidarity among workers as a counterculture to the dominant nationalism of European nation-states (Ruppert 1988: 71). In 1929, the Bund, too, stressed that the First of May was not a ‘specifically Jewish’ occasion and that the demand for national–cultural autonomy advanced at the May Day demonstrations was nothing other than the ‘natural consequence of the common ideals of socialism’.16 Every year in April the local organizations were also instructed by the central committee to organize ‘international’ parades and events.17 However, the first attempt at a joint May Day demonstration on Theatre Square in Warsaw in 1928 ended in tragedy (Goldstein 1960: 105–8).18 Speaking before Polish and Jewish workers united in festive mood, Erlich had just declared ‘What victories we could gain if we unite

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in the struggle!’ when the first shots fell. According to the PPS, they were fired by communists, who tried to push their way into the PPS procession but were fended off by the militia; similar reports were issued by the Warsaw police, who recorded four deaths.19 The following year, no major joint event was held in the capital. The government wished to avoid a repetition of the 1928 incidents, so the Warsaw mounted police staged manoeuvres before the city as a demonstration of force. In view of the tense situation the Bund militia was also reinforced.20 The separate May Day parades nevertheless went off more or less peacefully. As a sign of solidarity at subsequent May Day demonstrations, which were required by the authorities to henceforth take place in halls and not in the open air, speakers were exchanged; Henryk Erlich spoke for the Bund at the PPS event, and Tomasz Arciszewski, deputy chairman of the Warsaw PPS, represented the Polish socialists before the Bund.21 As the Warsaw authorities noted, the Bundists were very satisfied with the ‘solidarity in action’ thus demonstrated.22 Joint May Day parades could not be held in the streets of Warsaw again until 1930 and 1931. A successful demonstration of international solidarity was all the more important for the Bund leadership, as, in early June, accession to the Labour and Socialist International was to be voted on. The Tsveyer, who rejected joining or having closer cooperation with the PPS, voted against a joint May Day parade.23 Probably not least because of that, the tone of reporting on the 1930 and 1931 events was extremely emotional. Under the heading, ‘A Magnificent 1st of May in Warsaw’, the Folkstsaytung described the spirit of optimism in 1930 – ‘a beautiful spring day … in the hearts of thousands and thousands of workers’. This ‘sense of proletarian fraternity and solidarity’ was also the focus of reports in the Nasza Walka (Our Struggle)24 in 1931. In April 1931, Wiktor Alter described the May Day demonstrations as the yardstick for the strength of the labour movement; and Henryk Erlich noted that, in this year, the joint parade had been ‘a turning point in the history of [the] movement’.25 The dramatic scene of the meeting between the Jewish and Polish demonstrators on the First of May 1931, just before the unification of their parades, was described by the Folkstsaytung as follows: It is strangely quiet in the street. Quiet, no one is breathing. Arciszewski and Dzie˛gelewski head the PPS parade. The first words of greeting resound: Long live unity! Long live unity! Long live the Yiddish proletariat! Long live the Yiddish proletariat! Long live the Polish working class! Long live the Polish working class! ‘To the Barricades’ rings out, and ‘Die Shvue’. The processions unite. They have become one!26

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Hope marks the conclusion: ‘The ways part on the Przejazd, until the next encounter – in the common struggle, in the struggle for the cause of the working class!’27 A comparison between the reports of the security authorities on the two joint demonstrations is also instructive. A confidential report from 1930 revealed that Henryk Erlich was greeted by ovations at the concluding PPS rally on the Okopowa Sports Ground.28 In 1931, by contrast, it was reported that the PPS leadership attributed the drop in Polish participation in the May Day parade of 1930 to the greater presence of Jewish workers.29 This contradiction could be interpreted as meaning that the more prominent Bundists were better accepted than their simple Jewish colleagues; but caution is called for, given the preconceived opinions of the Polish security authorities. In 1932 and 1933 there were no joint PPS–Bund May Day parades in the Polish capital. The background to this was the growing strength of the right-wing Poale Zion (Workers of Zion), which did not want to march with the Bundists. The PPS had to weigh its options carefully: in 1932 it pointed out to the Bund that the Poale Zion was also a member of the LSI, and therefore could not be prevented from participating.30 The rift within the party among Polish socialists was particularly apparent in 1933. Whereas the executive of the Warsaw PPS was willing to admit the right-wing Poale Zion in consensus with the Bund only if it would forego Zionist slogans on flags and banners, the central executive committee of the party agreed to participation by the left-wing Zionists without reservation. The Warsaw central committee of the Jewish trade unions thereupon wrote an open letter to the PPS central committee, addressing the situation in Palestine, where, they claimed, Zionists were acting ‘with the backing of English bayonets and in oppression of the Arabs’, as well as pointing to the failure of the rightist Poale Zion to contribute to trade union work in Poland. In 1934, out of consideration for the Bund, the PPS decided not to admit Poale Zion, and this provoked considerable annoyance among leftist Zionists.31 But on the First of May 1934, after the PPS and Bund parades had united in Theatre Square in Warsaw, the picture was once again one that could ‘fill the heart of every proletarian with courage and enthusiasm’.32 From 1935 onwards the ban by the Warsaw security authorities meant that no more joint demonstrations could be staged in the capital. In 1935, the Bund still blamed the CPP (Communist Party of Poland) and its provocations, while also protesting against police repression of the communists.33 In the final years before the outbreak of the Second World War, the Bundists wanted to give a clear signal of resistance to anti-Semitism with their May Day parades. Thus, in 1936, the central

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committee instructed party sub-organizations to use the First of May to mobilize as broadly as possible; now, the joint demonstration with Polish workers had become more important than ever before.34 Against this backdrop, the PPS’s decision to demonstrate with the Bund in Warsaw in 1936 was of particular importance. Because the authorities had once again banned a joint demonstration, both parties agreed internally that large groups from each organization would take part in the respective parade of the other, thus circumventing the ban.35 Reporting for the New York paper Forverts (Forward), Jakob Lestschinski, who tended to sympathize with Zionism, gave an account of the First of May 1936 in Warsaw; he commented that this arrangement had largely been put into effect because ‘the struggle against anti-Semitism [has never] been so popular at Polish events than it is now’.36 In 1937, the two parties again swapped speakers at First of May celebrations; the Folkstsaytung wrote: ‘Never before have the leaders of Jewish workers been so warmly received at a PPS event; never have our comrades greeted the leaders of the Polish proletariat so heartily’.37 This could have had something to do with the fact that a five-year-old boy had been shot during the Bund demonstration by anti-Semitic thugs; according to a report in the central organ of the Bund in November of the same year, the killer was acquitted by a Polish court.38 In 1939 a general ban on all May Day street parades ensued. The May Day appeal that the Bund issued, exactly fifty years after the proclamation of International Workers’ Day, shows that the threat of war was already the main topic of discussion. Attention focused more and more on fears for the country and the willingness to defend it. The last major proclamation in peacetime was the Bund’s May Day appeal in 1939, as it were the ‘last will and testament’ of Jewish socialists in Poland: In the midst of the thunder and lightning of the approaching storm, the working class will celebrate the First of May this year. As long as fascist barbarism prevails, the freedom and existence of no nation and no country can be secure; until it is overcome, a state can be wiped off the map and free countries can be transformed into concentration camps. As citizens of a country with whose history our fate has been entwined for centuries and which now faces great peril, we as socialists with our love of freedom and hate of all oppression, and as Jews for whom the victory of fascism would mean physical annihilation, proclaim in the name of the broad mass of the Jewish population our determination to defend the country against the dangers that threaten its existence and independence with all our strength and at the price of great sacrifice, shoulder to shoulder with the Polish masses.39

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On the First of May 1939, the ‘citizen of the country’ took precedence over the ‘socialist’ and the ‘Jew’. This was probably the greatest proof that the Bundists could offer for their attachment and loyalty to Poland. Kegn Shtrom (Against the Current) was not only the title of a Bundist publication; it could also be taken as a leitmotiv for the history of the Bund in the interwar years. On all three levels of action – oyf der yidishe gas (on the Jewish street), within the Second Republic, and within the labour movement – Jewish socialists resisted the temptation to adapt to changing majority opinion.

The Bund and the Labour and Socialist International The Labour and Socialist International constituted the outermost of the concentric circles representing different spheres or levels of transnational relations that surrounded the Bund in the interwar period; after 1918, it split into the Moscow Comintern and the Socialist International. The Bund joined the LSI in 1930, opting clearly for democratic socialism. As a revolutionary Marxist party, on the other hand, the Bund had explicitly welcomed certain ideological foundations of the Soviet system – not least in solidarity with the Russian revolutions of the past, in which many Bundists had taken an active part. After the seizure of power by Stalin, however, criticism among Bundists of the aberrations of communist one-party rule predominated. Membership in the LSI became all the more important. The fact that the Bund was also sheltered under this respected umbrella organization, to which the major European socialist parties belonged, doubtlessly contributed to its success in the 1930s: no other Jewish party could claim that it belonged as an equal member to any worldwide organization whose composition was not majority Jewish. For the Bundists themselves it was most important to be an organic part of the international labour movement. The engagement of the Bund in the Austrian workers’ uprising of 1934 and during the Spanish Civil War, as well as its strong identification with combatants, showed that the sense of community among Jewish socialists in Poland fed not only on the Bundist meshpokhe, but also on awareness of equal partnership in the ‘great workers’ family’ of the Socialist International. Inspired by the Austro-Marxist theorists, Karl Renner and Otto Bauer, and the concept of national–cultural autonomy, Bundists traditionally solidarized with Austrian Marxists. It was fortunate that the first LSI congress in which the Bund participated after rejoining the organization took place in Vienna. For that congress, the Bund had even prepared a detailed portrait of the organization in German, published as a bound,

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forty-page brochure by the Hilfsgruppe des ‘Bund’ in Wien; reports in the Bund press about the socialist meeting were euphoric.40 Looking back, Wiktor Alter and Henryk Erlich also commented that the atmosphere in Vienna had been ‘wonderful’, which Alter, with a small dig at his own comrades (‘If only things were like that with us!’), attributed not least to outstanding organization by the Austrian socialists in Vienna.41 Only two years later, the Austro-fascist dictatorship established itself.42 The Left reacted to the coup d’état with caution; only in February 1934 did the Schutzbund (a paramilitary organization of the Austrian Social Democratic Party) attempt an uprising, first in Linz and then in Vienna; but the insurgency was put down within a few days. The socialist party leadership fled to Czechoslovakia; nine Schutzbund leaders were executed. The Bund leadership reacted quickly, and on 14 February 1934 a joint demonstration by the youth organizations of the Bund and the PPS was staged before the Austrian consulate in Warsaw.43 In view of the hopeless situation of the insurgents, solidarity campaigns were intensified. On 19 February 1934, large sections of the Polish and Jewish proletariat staged a strike for a number of hours.44 In late February of that year, the central committee issued a circular to sub-organizations calling on all party members to participate actively in aiding Austria. The situation in the areas affected by the uprising was often described in very dramatic language: ‘The better part of the Austrian proletariat is drowning in blood. They need our help!’45 Even a year after the uprising, the Bundist children’s association, SKIF (Sotsyalistishe Kinder Farband), and the youth organization, Tsukunft (Future), organized memorial events in honour of the defeated Austrian workers. For the international anti-fascist movement, the Spanish Civil War embodied the struggle for a better world in even stronger measure than did the Austrian uprising. In 1994 Erich Hobsbawm described how strongly the movement identified with the republican side in Spain: What Spain meant to liberals and those on the Left who lived through the 1930s, is now difficult to remember, though for many of us the survivors, now all past the Biblical lifespan, it remains the only political cause which, even in retrospect, appears as pure and compelling as it did in 1936. It now seems to belong to a prehistoric past, even in Spain. Yet at the time it seemed to those who fought fascism to be the central front of their battle. (Hobsbawm 1994: 160)

This view was shared by the Bund in Poland. In February 1936, Wiktor Alter stated that the ‘triumphal victory’ of the Left in Spain was above all a blow against fascism46 (although the military superiority of the fascists would soon afterwards make itself felt). The Bundist press reported at great

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length about events in Spain after the right-wing military putsch against the democratically elected popular front government, under trade union leader, Largo Caballero. From August 1936 onwards, two correspondents, Yankev Vinter and B. Vald, covered Spain for the Folkstsaytung (Shvarts 1956: 385). In 1937, Wiktor Alter and Jakob Pat, a leading TSYSHO (Central Yiddish School Organization) activist, travelled to Spain; their letters were also published by the central organ of the Bund. In the first phase of the Civil War, the contrast between the Spanish Republic and the Soviet system of government was the focus of written comment in Poland. In September 1936, the policy of non-intervention initially favoured by Stalin was variously judged in the Polish-language theoretical journal My´sl Socjalistyczna (The Socialist Idea). Whereas Jan Wagner, a writer for that periodical, assumed that the comparatively small influence of the Soviet Union in Spain was good for the republic and international socialism, an unsigned article on the same page sharply criticized British and French neutrality. Wagner, who believed in the invincibility of the isolated republican forces despite the superior force of the fascists, nevertheless saw the difference between the ‘Russian and Spanish revolutions’ as decisive for future direction and development: ‘Spain will hammer a completely new path into the rock of social history that will be different from that taken by the Russian Revolution’.47 This assessment clearly shows what hopes were associated with the alternative model of the Spanish People’s Republic, which Wagner claimed was borne by the ‘fraternal and heartfelt cooperation’ of the entire Left. Wiktor Alter, too, initially stressed the difference between the Spanish Popular Front and Bolshevist rule. In the winter of 1936/37, Alter took particular interest in the Spanish anarchists and the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista – Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification). Anarcho-syndicalist and anarchist forces marked the first phase of the Spanish Civil War, in which, even before the formation of the ‘popular army’, the defence of the republic (in the power vacuum that ensued after the coup by the Right) was in the hands of spontaneously organized anti-fascist militias. The Marxist POUM, although numerically not very significant, played a major role in the intellectual debates of the Left.48 In December 1937, Alter emphasized the merits of the Spanish anarchists, who collaborated loyally in the Largo Caballero government with the main forces of the Popular Front – the Socialist and Communist parties. He saw this as being in blatant contrast to the oppression of the leftwing opposition in the Soviet Union.49 In January 1937, Alter rebuked the Comintern for its accusation of Trotskyism against the POUM. He equated the communists’ ‘Trotskyism’ reproach of the POUM and also of the Bund (in both cases unjustified) with the stereotyping of Jews (a commonly

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cultivated practice among anti-Semitic national democrats), concluding that the Comintern ought to be dissolved because it was impeding the unity of the labour movement. With this ‘moral climate’ in mind, Alter considered it necessary to defend the POUM against the communists.50 The particular importance of the Spanish Civil War for Jews throughout the world was documented by Arno Lustiger in Shalom Libertad! (Lustiger 1989). He collected some seventy individual biographies and, using these as the basis of his work, described Jewish participation in the struggle of the International Brigades. The brigades were organized in the autumn of 1936 primarily by French communists; they constituted a good tenth of the republican army. The French were also the largest national contingent in the brigades, followed by Poles and Germans who joined them primarily after having first fled to France. According to historian Walther Bernecker, the communists made up between 60 and 70 per cent of the volunteers (Bernecker 1991: 11012). In Lustiger’s account, Polish Jewry made up the largest contingent (eleven men and one woman). The majority of Polish Jewish combatants in Spain were communists; Lustiger did not include biographies of any Bundists (Lustiger 1989: 107–50). Nor are there any reliable figures on Bundist participation in the International Brigades; but in the collection of biographies, Doyres Bundistn (Generations of Bundists), we find the story of Beniek Livshits, which gives a good example of the attraction of the Spanish Civil War for members of the Bund (Hertz 1956: 462–64). Livshits was born in 1908 into a Warsaw working-class family; he first belonged to the left-wing Zionist organization, Hashomer Hatsair (The Youth Guard), before joining the Bundist youth organization, Tsukunft, in 1925. He exercised no particular functions in the party, but as a trained carpenter he was active in the trade union. His biographer Leon Oler (who was a member of the Bund’s left wing fraction, the so called Tsveyers) noted that Livshits was profoundly convinced that the Bund needed to be present in the Spanish Civil War. On the occasion of the fortieth party jubilee, Livshits sent the following greeting from Spain: ‘I have the party to thank for everything I have achieved. The party has made me into what I am. Far from you I am nevertheless with you!’ (ibid.: 464). Livshits was to fall in Spain as ‘Sergeant Salenzo’.51 In early 1937, Jakob Pat travelled to Spain as emissary of the Bund. The Folkstsaytung published his letters in January and February 1937. In the spring of 1937, Wiktor Alter, as representative of the central committee of the trade unions in Poland and representative of the Jewish Landrat (district administrator/authority), also travelled to Spain and paid an extended visit to the combatants of the Spanish Republic comprising the XIIIth Da˛browski Brigade, which consisted largely of Polish volunteers.

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Alter was accompanied by the Polish socialist and trade union leader, Antoni Zdanowski. Both men also met Gustaw Reicher in Spain and, in consequence, they were fiercely attacked in the right-wing Polish press (Z˙arnowski 1965: 278–79, 297–98). Wiktor Alter rejected the reproach that Reicher was an official member of the trade union delegation, and corrected the claim advanced by the Rightist press that the Da˛browski Battalion as part of the International Brigades was subject to the authority of the Comintern.52 Alter’s reports from Spain were published in April and May 1937 in the Bundist central organ. After his return to Poland, a publication by him and Julius Deutsch entitled Spain under Fire, containing impressions of the Civil War, appeared in Warsaw. Wiktor Alter wrote a piece for this anthology, ‘Letters from Spain’ (Alter 1937a: 27–78),53 in which he described in great detail the left-wing forces in the Spanish Republic, from the perspective of the Bund. The importance of Spain for the party is indicated in an introductory quotation which Alter ascribes to a young worker in Vilnius: ‘For us the sun is now going up not in the East but in the West, in Spain!’ (ibid.: 27). Nonetheless, Alter gave a critical account of the participating left-wing parties without favouring any one of them over the others. Regarding the anarchists, he referred to Largo Caballero in discussion, who praised the good work done by the anarchist ministers in his government (ibid.: 32–38). Alter described the Spanish communists as the grouping most interested in cooperating with the conservatives; they saw their main rival in the POUM, who sharply condemned the coalition between communists and conservatives. Alter acknowledged the ‘revolutionary instinct’ of the POUM, but criticized their ‘superficial revolutionary solutions that lack[ed] any sort of wellconsidered political line’ (ibid.: 43–49, 56). Alter saw the socialists as the pivotal force on which integration of left-wing forces depended, noting that there was a certain programmatic overlap with the guidelines adopted by the PPS, the Bund, the DSAP, and trade unions in Poland in May 1936 (ibid.: 50–54). The change in leadership from Largo Cabellero to Juan Negrin took place after Alter had already left Spain. Shortly beforehand, the so-called ‘May Events’ had erupted in Barcelona, pitting the communists on the one side against anarchists and the POUM on the other in a ‘civil war within the civil war’. The anarchists and the POUM were largely ousted from power under the right-wing socialist, Negrin, who sought an alliance with the communists (Bernecker 1991: 147–48). Alter disapproved of Negrin’s concessions to the communists; his sympathies lay clearly with the leftwing trade union leader, Largo Caballero. Alter described the changes in the coordinates of war and revolution. Whereas the war alone counted

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for the communists, the anarchists had sought to link war and revolution. Under the socialist–communist alliance, the revolution now took second place, which Alter noted with regret (Alter 1937a: 70–72); but he also stated that he did not want to set himself up as a judge. In his view, the success up to that time in resisting the military superiority of the fascist Spanish, German and Italian forces was due only to the united front of the Spanish working class. In concluding, Alter reiterated an appeal that he had heard from various people in Spain – from the Catalan head of government, Luis Campanys, from a member of a workers’ committee in a textile factory, and from a member of the International Brigades – ‘Trust us!’ He made the following statement: ‘The Spaniards have convinced us. And when the train brought us through the Pyrenees from the country torn by war and revolution into quiet and sunny France, we summed up our impressions. The result was: trust the Spanish working class and hurry to their aid from every quarter!’ (ibid.: 77–78). Despite their modest capabilities, the Bundists answered Alter’s call. By May 1938 the Landrat had collected some 10,000 złoty, which was dedicated to helping needy Spanish children. From 1937 onwards, every trade union member regularly donated between 25 and 50 groszy for Spain, in addition to his union dues.54 Despite this effort, the sad ‘finale of the Spanish epic’55 could not be prevented. In February 1939, Wiktor Alter finally had to acknowledge the defeat of the republican side. Alter blamed the collapse not only on exhaustion, hunger, and the lack of supplies, but above all on the demoralization of the republican combatants, which had begun as early as 1937 after the ousting of the anarchists and which was further intensified by the brutal violence of the communists.56 The disastrous end of the Spanish Civil War occasioned Alter to reflect on and compare the situation with Soviet conditions in the USSR. He paid homage to the heroes of the Spanish army, on whose defeat he remarked: ‘There are limits to what human nerves can endure!’ He noted that the communists in Spain had behaved in accordance with the same patterns that characterized their counterparts in Moscow: with police methods and targeted repression, first the Trotskyists and then the left-wing socialists were persecuted until finally the terror spread to the ranks of the communists themselves.57 In his 1967 book on the Bund, The Politics of Futility (1967), British author, Bernard Johnpoll, concluded that the Second Socialist International was only of marginal importance for the Jewish working class in Poland. However, considering the evidence available on Bundist engagement in Austria and Spain, Johnpoll clearly errs in asserting that it made no difference to Jewish workers if the Bund belonged to the same International as Scheidemann and Hilferding or Thälmann and Zinov’ev.

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It was precisely the awareness of being in the democratic socialist camp and fighting side by side with the Austrian insurgents and the defenders of the Spanish Republic that helped Bundists to bolster their courage and retain their belief in a better world under the often arduous conditions of everyday life in Poland and oyf der yidishe gas. Their sense of community derived not only from the Bundist meshpokhe but also from the ‘great working-class family’ of the Socialist International.

Conclusions To sum up, the analytical concept of the ‘struggle for recognition’ is applicable, in both its socioeconomic and political dimensions, to the history of the Bund in Poland. The lives of Jewish workers in Eastern Europe were strongly marked by social and cultural experiences of disrespect. In Jewish society, the conflict between capital and labour was intense, and led to the immiseration of wage labourers. Inspired by the socialist vision, the Bundists demanded a fundamental redistribution of goods and property as the precondition for a just society. Politically, the struggle for the recognition of difference and for equal respect was in the foreground (see Gosewinkel, Introduction, this volume). This was true on all three levels at which the Bundists operated: the Jewish community, the Second Polish Republic and the Labour and Socialist International. The ‘we-identity’ of the Bund was characterized by unusual openness; starting with the Jewish arbetsmenshn (working person), the Bund was closely linked with the country in which Jews lived together with a non-Jewish population, and with the world as it manifested itself in the Labour and Socialist International. The humane variant of a collective ethnic identity was to suffer a cruel end in the Holocaust. However, it left behind a vital legacy: precisely in the light of the current discussion on integration and multiculturalism, it is well worth looking back on the Jewish labour party and its struggle for recognition oyf der yidishe gas, in the Polish nation-state of the interwar years, and in the international labour movement. The otherness lived by Bundists in the knowledge of belonging to a multicultural human community demonstrates that they were far ahead of their time.

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Notes  1. Nowe Z˙ycie, 15–31 May 1938, no. 4, p. 6.   2. On the history of the Bund in the Second Polish Republic, see Pickhan 2001a and Jacobs 2009.   3. For greater detail see Jacobs 2009.   4. See the proceedings of the Labour and Socialist International, vols. 4–5, Zurich and Paris 1932–33, here: vol. 4, part 1, p. 327. The number fifteen thousand is also given in the German-language portrait of the ‘Bund’ for the Labour and Socialist International: see Allgemeiner Jüdischer Arbeiterbund ‘Bund’ in Polen, 1931, p. 29.  5. Naye Folkstsaytung [New People’s Daily], 24 March 1933, no. 89, p. 5. Eightyfour members did not state their ages. From these figures, Secretary General Emanuel Novogrudski concluded that the party no longer consisted ‘of the old guard of the past’, nor was it suffering from ‘childhood diseases’ such as measles and the like.   6. For more details on the regional distribution of the Bund in Poland, see Pickhan 2001a: 134–38.  7. Naye Folkstsaytung, 24 May 1931, no. 130, p. 1; Internationale Information für Pressezwecke, ed. by Secretariat of the SAI Zurich, 31 December 1932, no. 55, p. 741.  8. Naye Folkstsaytung, 25 January 1932, no. 27, p. 2.   9. Ibid., 19 December 1932, no. 359, pp. 3–4. 10. Ibid., 9 February 1935, no. 41, p. 3. 11. Report by Emil Zerbe of the Sopade (the exile organization of the Social Democratic Party of Germany) in Paris 1939. In 1937 and 1938 the DSAP had received $500 and $1,000 respectively from the Jewish Labor Committee in New York, through the good offices of Henryk Erlich, whom Zerbe described as ‘our dear common friend and comrade-in-arms’; see, Jewish Labor Committee, Holocaust Era Files WAG.025.001 (Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives), 1934–1947, Subseries IV:B:2, Box 49, Folders 35–36 (mixed materials: Poland). 12. Nowe Z˙ycie, 30 June 1939, no. 12, p. 2. 13. Naye Folkstsaytung, 5 February 1937, no. 37, p. 3, p. 11. 14. See Naye Folkstsaytung, 14 November 1937, no. 348, pp. 1–2. On 13 November 1937, Zygmunt Zaremba arrived belatedly at the jubilee celebrations of the Bund in the Nowo´sci Theatre; according to reports by the Warsaw police, this was registered with disappointment by those attending. See Archiwum Akt Nowych [The Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw], Komisariat Rza˛du miasta stołecznego Warszawy, Sprawozdania, [Warsaw government commissariat, reports] 297-VII-7, 1937, no. 11, pp. 167–68. 15. Naye Folkstsaytung, 19 November 1937, p. 11. 16. Nasza Walka, 1929, nos. 2–3, p. 2. 17. See YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, Bund Archives and Library, MG 2-443d, Barikht tsum VItn tsuzamenfor [report of the 4th convention/ congress], 14–16 February 1935, p. 17.

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18. In 1921–1923 separate demonstrations took place on Theatre Square after consultation with the PPS. 19 Archiwum Akt Nowych [The Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw], 297-Vll-2, Sprawozdania [reports], 28 April – 5 May 1928, pp. 100–105; at the same time it was noted that Polish workers showed ‘no enthusiasm’ about the arrival of the Bund procession on Theatre Square. 20. See Archiwum Panstwowe ´ miasta stołecznego Warszawy, Poufne Komunikaty Informacyjne Komisariatu Rza˛du miasta stołecznego Warszawy [State Archive of Warsaw, confidential communication …], 16 April 1929, no. 42, p. 1, p. 5; 26 April 1929, no. 48, p. 7; Naye Folkstsaytung, 3 May 1929, no. 102, p. 1. 21. Information, 18 May 1929, no. 16, p. 185; on behalf of the Bund, Erlich stressed the need for unifying the labour movement, regardless of national or racial differences (ibid.); see also Naye Folkstsaytung, 5 May 1929, no. 103, p. 4. 22. See Archiwum Pa nstwowe ´ miasta stołecznego Warszawy Komunikaty [State Archive of Warsaw, communication], 7 May 1929, no. 52, p. 5. Joint demonstrations took place in Łódz˙,Vilnius, Krakow, and other cities; the demonstration in Łód z˙, in which the German socialists also participated, was the biggest May Day demonstration up to that time; see, in this regard, Naye Folkstsaytung, 5 May 1929, no. 103, p. 4; Information, 18 May 1929, no. 16, p. 185. 23. See Archiwum Pa nstwowe ´ miasta stołecznego Warszawy, Komunikaty [State Archive of Warsaw, communication], 28 April 1930, no. 58, p. 7. 24. Naye Folkstsaytung, 2 May 1930, no. 101, pp. 1–2; Nasza Walka, 1931, nos. 4–5, pp. 17–18. 25. Naye Folkstsaytung, 28 April 1931, no. 105, p. 3 (Alter); 3 May 1931, no. 110, p. 1 (Erlich). As Goldstein (1960) reported, in joint preparations for the parade, the Bund did not pay heed to the PPS call for ‘idealism and solidarity’ and adopt the PPS’s plan to deploy Jewish militia to protect Polish workers, and, vice versa, Polish militia to protect Jewish workers; rather, the Bund preferred to demonstrate ‘openly, without fear, and, if necessary, to defend [themselves]’. 26. Author’s translation. Naye Folkstsaytung, 2 May 1931, no. 105, p. 1. ‘Die Shvue’ (The Oath) was the party anthem of the Bund. 27. Ibid. 28. See Archiwum Pa nstwowe ´ miasta stołecznego Warszawy, Komunikaty [State Archive of Warsaw, communication], 5 May 1930, no. 62, p. 10. 29. See Archiwum Pa nstwowe ´ miasta stołecznego Warszawy, Komunikaty [State Archive of Warsaw, communication], 2 May 1931, no. 85, pp. 6–7. 30. See Naye Folkstsaytung, 2 May 1932, no. 132, p. 1. In 1932 the government commissariat reported differences of opinion within the Bund central committee over a joint May Day demonstration. It was said that the Left, which demanded a separate parade, had successfully joined forces with the pro-communist faction against the party leadership under Erlich and Alter, who had wanted a joint demonstration with the PPS; see Archiwum Akt Nowych [The Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw], 297-VII-6, Sprawozdania [reports], March 1932, p. 112; ibid., April 1932, p. 133. 31. See Archiwum Pa nstwowe ´ miasta stołecznego Warszawy, Komunikaty [State Archive of Warsaw, communications], 25 April 1934, no. 51, p. 6, and ibid. 9 May 1934, no. 56, pp. 4–5. The left-wing Zionists were said to have blamed the Bund

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for this decision, which ‘nourished the illusion of closer ties with the PPS’ (State Archive of Warsaw, communications, 9 May 1934, no. 56, pp. 4–5). 32. Naye Folkstsaytung, 2 May 1934, no. 126b, p. 1. 33. My´sl Socjalistyczna, 27 April 1936, no. 10, p. 1; Naye Folkstsaytung, 3 May 1935, no. 124, p. 3. 34. See YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, Bund Archives and Library, MG 2-470, Circular, April 1936, no. 37. The central committee also pointed to the fact that communist workers could join in local parades without carrying their own flags; but if this blocked a joint demonstration with the PPS, it should definitely be renounced. 35. See Archiwum Pa nstwowe ´ miasta stołecznego Warszawy, Komunikaty [State Archive of Warsaw, communications], 28 March 1936, no. 48, p. 2, and ibid. 28 April 1936, no. 60, p. 4. 36. See YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, Bund Archives and Library, MG 2-451, report by Lestschinski in Forverts, 22 May 1936. 37. Naye Folkstsaytung, 3 May 1937, no. 130, p. 3. In 1938, too, PPS representatives took part in Bund celebrations on the First of May; see Sprawy Narodowo´sciowe, 1938 no. 3, p. 317. 38. Naye Folkstsaytung, 2 May 1937, no. 128, pp. 1–2; 28 November 1937, no. 363, p. 1. 39. Nowe Z˙ycie, 30 April 1939, no. 8, p. 1. 40. Naye Folkstsaytung, 27 July 1931, no. 196, p. 2; 28 July 1931, no. 197, p. 2; 29 July 1931, no. 198, p. 2; 30 July 1931, no. 199, p. 2; 6 August 1931, no. 206, p. 4. 41. See Nasza Walka, 1931, nos. 6–7, pp. 1–3 (Alter); Naye Folkstsaytung, 4 August 1931, no. 204, p. 3 (Erlich). 42. In referring to the Austrian political system under Dollfuss and Schuschnig as fascist, I follow Emmerich Tálos and Wolfgang Neugebauer (2005). 43. See Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam, ‘Bund’, nos. 28–29. 44. Ibid.; see also, Naye Folkstsaytung, 18 February 1934, no. 52, p. 1; 19 February 1934, no. 53, p. 1; and 23 February 1934, no. 57, p. 10. 45. See YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, Bund Archives and Library, MG 2-470, Circular, 27 February 1934. 46. My´sl Socjalistyczna, 27 February 1936, no. 5, p. 1. 47. Ibid., 25 September 1939, no. 88, p. 1. 48. For greater detail, see Bernecker 1991: 130–48. 49. My´sl Socjalistyczna, 25 December 1936, No. 24, p. 2. 50. Ibid., 25 January 1937, no. 2, p. 1, p. 4. 51. As Lustiger remarked in a 1937 letter to Gustaw Reicher (alias Rwal) in Warsaw – an official of the CPP and the Comintern, who held a leading position in the political apparatus of the International Brigades – Livshits had nothing to do with a resolution approving the execution of the Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Reicher himself was later summoned to Moscow in 1938, where he was murdered in the course of the liquidation of the CPP leadership (Lustiger 1989: 142–43). 52. My´sl Socjalistyczna, 15 June 1937, no. 13, p. 1. 53. Julius Deutsch was one of the founders of the Austrian Schutzbund and a member of the executive committee of the Social Democratic Party of Austria.

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He played a pivotal role in the 1934 Austrian workers’ uprising and, again, during the Spanish Civil War as a general in the Republican army; see, in this regard, Lustiger 1989: 243–45. 54. Archiwum Akt Nowych, 297-VII-7, Sprawozdania, no. 7, p. 71; 297-VII-11, Sprawozdania, May 1938, p. 35. 55. Title of an article by Wiktor Alter in Nowe Z˙ycie, 30 April 1939, no. 8, p. 4. 56. Nowe Z˙ycie, 15–28 March 1939, no. 4, p. 3. 57. Ibid., 30 April 1939, no. 8, p. 4.

Bibliography Allgemeiner Jüdischer Arbeiterbund ‘Bund’ in Polen. 1931. Unser Weg. Vienna: Hilfsgruppe des ‘Bund’ in Wien. Alter, Wiktor. 1937a. ‘Listy z Hiszpanii’ [Letters from Spain], in Hiszpania w ogniu: rok wojny domowej [Spain on Fire: Year of Civil War], edited by Wiktor Alter and Julius Deutsch. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo ‘My´sl Socjalistyczna’, pp. 27–78. ———. 1937b. Tsu der yidn-frage in Poyln. Warsaw: s.n. Bernecker, Walter. 1991. Krieg in Spanien 1936–1939. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Blachetta-Madajczyk, Petra. 1997. Klassenkampf oder Nation? Deutsche Sozialdemokratie in Polen 1918–1939 (Schriften des Bundesarchivs 49). Düsseldorf: Droste. Goldstein, Bernard. 1960. 20 Yor in Varshever Bund 1919–1939 [20 Years in the Warsaw Bund, 1919–1939]. New York: National Yiddish Book Center. Hertz, J.S. (ed.). 1956. Doyres Bundistn [Generations of Bundists], vol. 2 (of 3 volumes: 1956, 1956, and 1968). New York: Farlag Unser Tsayt. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1994. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991. New York: Vintage Books. Jacobs, Jack. 2009. Bundist Counterculture in Interwar Poland. Syracuse, NY: Sycacuse University Press. Johnpoll, Bernard K. 1967. The Politics of Futility: The General Jewish Workers Bund of Poland, 1917–1943. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lustiger, Arno, 1989. Shalom Libertad! Juden im spanischen Bürgerkrieg. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum Verlag. Pickhan, Gertrud. 2001a. ‘Gegen den Strom’. Der Allgemeine Jüdische Arbeiterbund ‘Bund’ in Polen 1918–1939. Schriften des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts Leipzig, volume 1. Stuttgart and Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. ———. 2001b. ‘Kossovsky, Portnoy, and Others: The Role of Members of the Bund’s Founding Generation in the Interwar Polish Bund’, in Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe: The Bund at 100, edited by Jack Jacobs. Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 69–80. Ruppert, Wolfgang. 1988. Fotogeschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, edited by Willy Brand. Berlin: Siedler Verlag. Shmeruk, Chone. 1989. ‘Hebrew–Yiddish–Polish: A Trilingual Jewish Culture’, in The Jews of Poland between Two World Wars, edited by Yisrael Gutman et al.

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Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press, pp. 285–311. Shvarts, Pinkhos, 1956. ‘Folkstsaytung’, in Fun Noentn Ovar: The Yiddish Press in Warsaw [From the Recent Past: The Yiddish Press in Warsaw], volume 2. New York: Altveltlekhn Yidishen Kultur-Kongres [Congress for Jewish Culture]. Steinlauf, Michael. 1987. ‘The Polish-Jewish Daily Press’, Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 2: 219–45. Tálos, Emmerich, and Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds). 2005. Austrofaschismus. Politik, Ökonomie, Kultur 1933–1938, 5th edn. Vienna: Lit Verlag. Z˙arnowski, Janusz. 1965. Polska Partia Socjalistyczna w latach 1935–1939 [The Polish Socialist Party between 1935 and 1939]. Warsaw: Ksia˛´zka i Wiedza. Zigelboym, Shmuel Mordekhai. 1972. ‘Di profesionele bavegung fun di yidishe arbeter’ [The Jewish Workers’ Professional Movement], in Di geshikhte fun Bund [The History of the Jewish Labor Bund], vol. 4 of five volumes (1960, 1962, 1966, 1972, 1981), edited by G. Aronson et al. New York: Farlag Unser Tsayt, pp. 179–219.

Gertrud Pickhan is Professor of East and Central European History at the Free University of Berlin. After teaching at the Bundeswehr University in Hamburg from 1985–1992, she was a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw from 1993–1997. From 1997–2000 she taught at the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture in Leipzig, where she also served as deputy to the Founding Director. Her research focuses on the historic cultural landscape of Eastern and Eastern Central Europe, which was largely shaped by its multiethnic and intercultural circumstances. She studies its plurality and diversity and the resultant contacts and conflicts in various projects.

Chapter 6

Struggles for Recognition and the Concept of Gender in Twentieth-Century Poland

Claudia Kraft

This chapter is about the concept of recognition. My focus is on the issue of the synchronicity of integration in and among nation-states. When it comes to the recognition of women, the role of the state is crucial not only for the allocation but also for the restriction of rights. At the same time one cannot think about the state without considering it in a transnational network of other states (i.e. the international system) and in a communicative network of transnational actors and concepts. In a way, gender and transnational history converge in terms of their critical potential to challenge so-called ‘general’ history. Hierarchies of domination and constructions of difference not only shape gender relations, they are also decisive for the conceptualization of an international order in which the state has been depicted as the normal or universally valid form of societal organization (Lüthi 2009). Concerning their subversive potential, gender and transnational history also converge conceptually in challenging the male-dominated international order. This observation can be confirmed on the basis of Nancy Fraser’s writings about the public sphere and her discontent with the Habermasian definition of that sphere. While she had originally criticized Habermas’ concept of a public sphere within the nation-state for not being universal at all but excluding certain social groups, among them women (Fraser 1990), she later moved on to question in principle Habermas’ nexus between the institutions of nation-state and public sphere, for a lot of issues that are

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politically debated in public cannot not be parochially limited to the nation-state (Fraser 2007). Polish history in the twentieth century reveals a particularly vivid panorama of the processes of nationalization and transnationalization. I try to present this panorama as it unfolds in a tripartite historical frame. In the first section of the chapter I focus briefly on the early decades of the twentieth century; I sketch the role of transnationalism before the First World War, followed by the period of state building and rapid nationalization during the 1920s and 1930s. At the end of the twentieth century we can observe processes that mirror those of the century’s beginning. These processes will be at the centre of my analysis in the third part. The end of the Soviet Bloc not only meant the re-establishment of sovereign nation-states, but also the growing importance of transnational entanglements, especially those resulting from Poland’s integration into the European Union. These two periods – the early decades of the twentieth century and the end of the century – are connected by a kind of hinge or pivotal point in the socialist period. In the second section of the chapter, I investigate 1968 and its aftermath as this crucial point in time when the traditional concepts of recognition were at the same time challenged and re-established. In each of the three periods, the intertwining of national and transnational processes and events influenced the meaning of gender equality in Polish society. Concepts like ‘civil society’, which travelled initially from West to East, were also transferred back from East to West. I try to demonstrate how this travelling of concepts and their particular appropriation has altered the definition of gender equality and, at the same time, how such concepts were shaped by gendered assumptions. The focus of my research is on Polish history, but for the above-mentioned reasons Polish history can also be seen as a paradigm of transnational history. Thus I direct side glances at West European – especially German – history, but without aiming at any explicit comparison. This seems a reasonable approach given the restricted space of a single chapter; but it is also my conviction that, in writing transnational history, a perspective focusing on transfers and entanglements will be more productive than one based on classical historical comparison.

Lack of a Nation-State, State Building, and the Second Polish Republic after 1918 As Susan Zimmermann has pointed out, in order to be able to demand political rights that are not confined to the nation-state, there must be a nation-state to which one belongs. Zimmermann describes convincingly

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how Polish women and other East European feminists living in supranational empires joined international women’s organizations in the decades preceding the First World War; they claimed to be members of a particular nation in order to assure themselves a place in those organizations whose scope and activities were not confined to the limits of national borders, and which served as the primary advocates of rights for women as a group, transcending national and imperial borders (Zimmermann 2002, 2005).1 A good example for the entanglement of national and transnational processes and events can be found in the engagement of Polish women from different parts of partitioned Poland in the International Council of Women (ICW). Participation in this international forum depended to a great extent on the existence of a nation-state to which an ICW member belonged; the nation-state thus served as the institutional basis from which one could act and achieve visibility. Moreover, the demands that dominated in the international women’s movement – suffrage, the right to gainful employment, and the right to higher education – could best be achieved, if at all, within a nation-state. Polish women’s demands for political rights, especially the right to vote, were relatively quickly fulfilled after the establishment of the Second Polish Republic in 1918. On closer scrutiny, however, it becomes clear that Polish women did not achieve these rights through acknowledgement of their group-specific emancipatory demands, but rather as a manifestation of solidarity among all Poles – female and male – against internal and external ‘enemies’ challenging the integrity of the new state. The new Polish state was characterized by a great degree of heterogeneity among its citizens, owing to the presence of large national and confessional minorities; at the same time, it strived for institutional and cultural homogeneity (Stegmann 2000: 203). It was precisely this arena of conflict that made equal (political) rights tenuous whenever gender and ethnicity were concerned. The March Constitution (1921), proclaiming the equality of all citizens, made no mention of gender at all, although it explicitly banned discrimination on the basis of ethnicity. The fervid discussions about marriage law that ensued in the Second Polish Republic during the 1920s clearly showed that political agency in the public sphere was not characterized by abstract norms valid for all citizens, but rather by an implicit understanding of a public sphere where an essentialist definition of Polish culture predominated. This essentialist notion of Polishness pushed aside other possible, diverging identities of Poland’s citizens. As a consequence, the constitutionally guaranteed rights of Polish women became blurred. A more progressive marriage law should have provided women with equal legal status in the private sphere, in lieu of

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subordination to their husbands, resulting from canonical law as well as from the civil codes of the partitioning powers. The new quality of gender relations in everyday Polish life, which ensued not least from the social and political upheavals caused by the First World War, was taken into account by the lawmakers. However, with the ferocious debates that followed the drafting of the constitution in 1921, it became obvious – and not only in the eyes of conservative and clerical critics of the new law – that the institutions of marriage and family were of such crucial importance for the Polish nation that, by comparison, the individual rights of women seemed to be of only minor consequence (Kraft 2004). It was very clear that purportedly universal political rights were gendered and that the recognition of gender equality was problematic – not only in the private sphere, which was still dominated by traditional role models (Pietrzak 2000; Kraft 2002); the notion that a dichotomous gender order was indispensable for the shaping of a public sphere was equally important. Politics in the public sphere became increasingly characterized by an ethnocentric concept of citizenship that deemed the Polish language, Catholicism, and affiliation to a specific Polish culture as prerequisites for entitlement to citizenship. In this atmosphere, political and civil rights for women were still recognized, but it was obvious that they had to be integrated into a set of societal values giving prominence to the Polish family, which was seen as the building block for an ethnically homogeneous nation. One could therefore argue that the high esteem for Polish women in the cultural community of the Polish nation was thwarted by women’s subordination within a traditional gender order propagated by the defenders of an ethnocentric concept of the Polish nation. This undoubtedly contributed to the perpetuation of women’s politically and economically subaltern position. The recognition of women, which granted them equal rights under the March Constitution of 1921, was undermined by the affirmation of traditional gendered subordination in the private sphere; this precluded equality in the area of personal relationships, which a modern secular marriage law ought to have otherwise guaranteed by extending the constitutionally guaranteed equality of women from the political sphere to the private sphere. The more the critics of a modern secular marriage law emphasized and praised the exceptional role of women for Polish society, the more they subverted the social status of women and undermined the equality that should have been guaranteed under public law.2 From this perspective, then, the political mobilization of women during the Second Polish Republic becomes ambivalent if one considers the general discursive framework that overshadowed the movement.

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The historian Eva Plach has shown that the malleable concept of a morally ‘sane’ nation, which had been propagated by successive Polish governments after Piłsudski’s coup d’état in 1926 (the so called sanacja or recovery movement), offered women multiple possibilities to take initiatives as citizens, especially in associations concerned with ethics and social welfare (Plach 2006).3 At the same time, politically active women faced an institutional system of values that permitted only ‘good’ mothers and housewives to become public actors (Kałwa 2001). Again, this could be interpreted as an example of an ostensibly universal concept of citizenship that proceeded from gendered assumptions, since traditional maternity served as the basis for women’s political activism (Plach 2006: 114). The subordination of women’s issues to the interests of the respective ethnic or confessional group applied not only to the largest group, Catholic Poles, but also to other collectives, as can be shown, for instance, in regard to the emancipatory strategies of Jewish women, which often clashed with political projects like Zionism within the Jewish community (Steffen 2007; Mickute 2014). Beyond that, female emancipatory strategies had not only to overcome the apparent priority of national or confessional group interests but also the exclusionary practices in the legal profession, which also impeded full recourse to political and civic rights for women (Dadej 2015).

Socialism and the Legacies of 1968: Or 1968 as a Turning Point in Postwar History In this second section, I elaborate on the significance of the socialist transformation after the Second World War for Poland, focusing especially on the challenges posed by the dissident movements confronting the socialist system. Here the relationship between group-specific rights and universal rights comes to the fore; I take a more transnational perspective and try to show how political developments in the East and the West were entangled despite the presence of the ‘Iron Curtain’. To reiterate, national and transnational aspects are closely intertwined. The Polish state emerged from the Second World War ethnically more homogeneous than ever before following the murder of Polish Jews during the Holocaust and the abolition of other ethnicities through ethnic cleansing during and directly after the war. The new political elites aptly merged the ideals of national homogeneity and social equality into a concept of a new socialist Polish nation (Kraft 2010; Zaremba 2011). Ironically, in some sense they followed in the footsteps of the nationalist and often extremely anticommunist elites of the Second Republic, who had been agitating for a

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more homogeneous Polish nation-state. On the other hand, the People’s Republic of Poland was a member of the Soviet Bloc and thus part of a decidedly international and ostensibly anti-imperialist community that propagated class solidarity across national borders. However, this is not the only aspect of transnationalism that must be taken into account. At the same time, Poland and the other countries of the Soviet Bloc, as system compatriots, were in permanent ‘competition’ with their neighbours west of the Iron Curtain. From a gender perspective, this is all the more important since social welfare and equality were considered important indicators of modernity and success in the struggle between these opposing political blocs. At least in the 1950s and 1960s, the two sides faced comparable challenges; one could ask with good reason whether the history of the Cold War should not be written as a history of entanglements, because ‘competition with the “actually existing” socialist alternative made elites in the United States and especially in Western Europe more amenable to the expansion of social welfare provisions in response to workers’ demands’ (Chari and Verdery 2009: 19). With this perspective in mind, it may be helpful to consider how social science convergence theory in the 1950s and 1960s would interpret these phenomena. Proponents of convergence theory had long argued that modern industrial societies – socialist and capitalist – in East and West were confronted with comparable demands and challenges such as a high degree of division of labour, an ever-increasing concentration of the workforce, high demand for investment capital, and a strong need for improved efficiency. According to the theory, this resulted in a degree of convergence between the two socioeconomic systems in the technical, organizational and economic spheres. Against this theoretical backdrop, I now address the iconic year of 1968 from a ‘revisionist’ perspective. If we compare Eastern Europe to the West in 1968, not only do the differences seem to dominate; from a political point of view, the inadequacy of such a comparison becomes apparent for many observers and scholars. In 1968 in Western Europe, the theoreticians of communism were widely cited or read, and their writings served as the basis for a proposed new political order. By contrast, in that same year in Central and Eastern Europe, profound criticism was being formulated against the existing state socialist system. In retrospective interpretation – for example, of the kind often found in reflections on the fortieth anniversary of 1968 – the events of 1989 are declared to have been the fulfilment of political concepts and demands formulated by Central and East European dissidents from the late 1960s onwards. The failure of state socialism as a project of political and social reconstruction became evident with the events of 1989; these events superseded the delayed reforms that

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would never come to fruition under that socioeconomic system. The West European protagonists of 1968 were confronted with the political intelligence of their counterparts in Eastern Europe, the critics of state socialism, whose admirable far-sightedness would eventually lead them to declare the defeat of the communist project little more than twenty years later. One could hence conclude that the student protests in Western Europe represented nothing more than a regrettable but short-lived deadlock in Europe’s ongoing history of democratization since the Second World War. Women’s liberation, at best, seems to have vanished beneath the subsequent groundswell of sentiment in the push for universal political and human rights; at worst, it remains a particularly notorious example of the perfidiousness of the communist regimes that had declared all women in socialist countries to be emancipated.4 Historically speaking, it is difficult to locate Eastern Europe’s 1968 in the collective memory without automatically seeing it through the lens of 1989.5 For the moment, we should set aside the ideologically shaped East– West confrontation and consider the wide array of protest movements, their forms, and their social and economic environments. Generally speaking, we observe that political protest developed in relatively highly industrialized countries (the United States, Japan, Western and East Central Europe) whose level of advancement had been achieved during the dynamic reconstruction phase after the Second World War. A common feature in many of these societies seems to be that the protest movements that developed within them were reflections of generational conflicts deeply rooted in the cleavages between the first postwar generation (a kind of building-up generation) and their children, who began to challenge the ideals and values of their parents.6 The generation that survived the catastrophe of the Second World War was now looking to the future but was compromising values in pursuit of the aim to rebuild and modernize their societies. Postwar reconstruction and the accompanying availability of higher education to a significantly larger number of individuals than before resulted in a generation of youth critical of the social realities that had evolved compared to the democratic or socialist ideals previously held by their parents. The protest movements can thus be seen as a response directed against the negative aspects of fully developed industrial societies.7 Focusing on gender relations in East and West after the Second World War, it could also be useful, for analytical purposes, to exclude the overall conflict between the antagonistic political systems on either side of the Iron Curtain. Normally this conflict was perceived as the stable framework that divided the two paths of European postwar political and

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social development from the outset. This implies a kind of static theory stressing abnormal or constricted developments in socialist countries in contrast to the Western master narrative of ever-growing democratization and prosperity. If we follow, instead, Tony Judt’s monumental history of Europe after 1945, aptly entitled Postwar, it seems more appropriate to stress the unity of European history, especially in the early postwar period, as a history of material reconstruction.8 The First World War having already blurred gender relations, at least in the urban settings of Central and Western Europe, the 1939–45 period partially destroyed the traditional gender order; its restoration was initially postponed in the postwar era in favour of subordinating all social structures to postwar reconstruction. Especially during the first postwar decade, women were confronted with new duties and activities. In Eastern Europe, one of the main attributes of system transformation was the general mobilization of everyone into the workforce, whereas in Western Europe women just substituted for male workers on the labour market, even if only for a transitional period. I am not going to idealize this period, but I think that it is crucial to bear in mind that gender relations had become blurred just after the end of the Second World War. From the 1950s onwards, more traditional arrangements of gender order returned, signifying the end of the ‘emergency situation’ in Western Europe or, in the case of Eastern Europe, defining the end of the period of ‘Stalinist reconstruction’. The socialist ideal of female emancipation in Eastern Europe concentrated on the liberation of women through professional work; this placed a burden on the whole idea of female emancipation.9 Looking at gender relations in processes of de-Stalinization we can observe that the partial restoration of older, traditional gender arrangements represented a return to a ‘good’ societal order following the period of ‘Stalinist aberrations’. Thus, the so-called women’s question was highly politicized, not only in terms of its treatment by the socialist state parties, but also in terms of its role as an indicator for political liberation after the period of Stalinist totalitarianism.10 Normally, the political theory of totalitarianism placed state intrusion into the lives of citizens – both male and female – at the centre of critique, whereas gender inequalities that could have been detected in state socialist policy were largely ignored. However, if we look more precisely at the descriptions of socialist societies generated from within those societies, we find several examples of female social scientists criticizing established gender arrangements, not by comparing state socialism to an idealized West, but rather by taking the existing socialist systems as the frame of reference.11 As early as the 1960s, Polish sociologists demanded a reformulation of gender roles stressing, above all, a new concept of

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masculinity. They criticized the gap between the official discourse on equality and the continuing inequalities in gender relations, especially in the areas of child rearing and household tasks (Sokołowska 1973 [esp. 137–49], 1976; Komorowska 1975). Thus, during this decade, it was not just in the West that the private sphere became political; Eastern feminist critique actually bore greater similarity to that in the West than the ex-post discourse seems to suggest. Whereas feminists in the West wanted the welfare state to recognize inequality not only along class but also along gender lines (Fraser 2006: 39–41), some of their East European counterparts were already aware that mere redistribution would not suffice to rectify injustice. By insisting on a redefinition of masculinity, East European feminists shifted the focus, to some extent, from redistribution to recognition, because the societal status of men and women – on the shop floor as well as in the family – was at stake. A good example expressing this new sensitivity to the lack of recognition (in lieu of focusing on material redistribution, i.e. emancipation through productive labour) can be found in an article in a Polish youth magazine from 1972. The article describes a young woman who, despite having pursued a successful career, nevertheless suffers from a lack of societal respect, which her achievements alone could not bring about because she did not have a spouse or life partner.12 Here, the disharmony between redistribution and recognition once again becomes apparent. As long as a traditional code of values dominates in a given society, the stable code of gender ascriptions impedes the ‘parity of participation’13 that Nancy Fraser calls for, based on her concept of ‘perspectival dualism’. The year 1968 and its aftermath seem to be an important turning point; the critique of the existing gender order began to take different paths in Eastern and Western societies. In the West this critique resulted in the second wave of feminism, which thus created a powerful new social movement. In the East, dissident circles began to emerge and establish themselves in the late 1960s; they were successful in creating a kind of counterculture or counter-society, but questions of gender relations and women’s emancipation seemed to have vanished completely. This is demonstrated impressively by Agnes Arndt’s in-depth study of left-wing dissidents in Poland, where she points to the striking under-representation of women in oppositional circles, as well as to the lack of discussion about feminist issues (Arndt 2013: 44–52). In the dissident movements of the 1970s, key words like ‘national sovereignty’ and ‘human rights’ dominated the political discourse of oppositional actors – regardless of whether they were male or female (Kenney 1999: 407).14 One could argue that, with the shift by dissidents to the establishment of countercultures or counter-societies, and their conviction that socialism was not to be

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reformed but only to be counteracted through the creation of a sphere of autonomous political agency, all hope in the reformatory power of redistribution ceased. What was now at stake was a new notion of ‘living in truth’ that focused sharply on individual integrity. Recognition of the individual citizen came to the fore, and the category of gender shifted to a different plane – or better, was conveniently overlooked – in the quest to construct a new type of ‘citizen’. Universal rights for the individual were increasingly gaining in importance and dominance, whereas groupspecific rights for formerly underprivileged collectives such as workers or women were seen to be debased through the state socialist rhetoric, and were consequently relegated to the back shelf of political attention.

From Socialism to Post-Socialism In the third period of time under consideration, the post-Cold War era, our starting point is the misunderstanding between Western women and their Eastern counterparts as to how feminism and the necessity to fight for women’s rights was to be understood after the end of communism in Eastern Europe. What is at stake is the failure of the concept of ‘universal’ feminism and, at the same time, the increasing role of the Europeanization discourse.15 In a sense, the problem is clearly one of translation. Feminism as a universal political concept obviously does not work in the now reunited Europe.16 Several feminists have argued that the different settings of the public and private spheres in East and West must be taken into account in order to understand why East European women rejected feminist political programmes in times of system transformation. They point out that males and females had been excluded from political power and that, for this reason, ‘political/civil citizenship in both its formal, abstract, positive sense and its real, everyday, negative sense was impervious to social difference. That is, whatever the effect in daily life of social factors such as gender, level of wealth, ethnicity or age, in terms of political identity, participation and voice, they made no difference’ (Watson 1997: 24f.). Reasoning about these misunderstandings, the Polish sociologist Mira Marody observes ‘that the most controversial issues are not democracy or market economy, but some vague feelings and reactions deeply rooted in the specificity of our historical and cultural experiences’ (Marody 1993: 854). Concepts of ‘public’ or ‘civil society’ are not at all stable; they have been created by historical actors. As Peggy Watson puts it: ‘It is the representation of civil society as an absolute political space rather than a socially specific domain of power relations that underlies the limits to

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mutual understanding of East and West’ (Watson 1997: 27). I would like to explore how gender and the gendering of spheres were essential for the communicating and legitimizing processes of political and social change in Central and Eastern Europe after the Second World War. I therefore argue that, on the one hand, there was gender-neutral exclusion of citizens from the public sphere and from political agency and, on the other, gender concepts were used quite aptly by the authorities as well as by the various oppositional groups. Whereas in Western countries the second wave of feminism claimed the private to be political, in the East the late 1960s were marked by a new understanding of the private sphere, perceived as an area that should be protected against intrusion by state politics and policies, and therefore indexed in a different way. While the family qua ‘private sphere’ was seen as a refuge from ever-increasing state influence, a new space was conceptualized, especially in the 1980s, under the heading ‘civil society’ in reference to an older historical concept stemming from the period of bourgeois emancipation from the absolutist state. The adaptation of the civil society notion to the totally different circumstances of the socialist countries in the second half of the twentieth century is a superb example for the theory of travelling concepts and the constructive power of translational processes in history. I will therefore examine more closely how this concept has travelled back and forth between East and West over time, because it seems to be crucial for today’s understanding of, and difficulties with, the adaptation of gender cultures. With regard to the norms and regimes of gender equality before and after 1989, the concept of civil society seems to be of central importance for the self-description of the post-socialist societies as well as for their predecessors in the oppositional movements. Civil society has been referred to as Eastern Europe’s genuine contribution to European political culture, particularly during the latter decades of the twentieth century (Thaa 1996: 172ff.; Falk 2003). Western historians rediscovered the concept after political turmoil erupted in Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s; ‘civil society’ became an important issue and a critical subject of research for Western scholars after 1989 (Hildermeier, Kocka and Conrad 2000; Bauerkämper 2003; Gosewinkel et al. 2004). Scholars investigating how the concept of civil society had been used in Central Europe have argued that it was incorporated relatively late into the political language of East and Central European historical actors, and rather as a matter of adopting West European semantics in order to describe political change in Eastern and Central Europe (Arndt 2007: 109–21 and 137). In so doing, developments in Eastern Europe during the 1970s and 1980s have often been cast in quite a narrow light: civil society

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is regarded as a space in which dissidents and oppositional movements created a kind of countercultural public sphere, enabling historical actors to create institutions that were not dominated by the state. On this interpretation, civil society appears to be a universalistic concept ensuring citizens’ freedom from state intervention, be it absolutist or socialist. However, this perspective seems to be ahistorical in the sense that late eighteenth- and late twentieth-century actors had to struggle in varying, often disparate historical contexts,17 and that applying the concept ahistorically fails to take into account the fact that a universally valid notion of civil society does not exist. Equally important is the fact that from its very inception and at its very core the concept of civil society was gendered (Hagemann 2011: esp. 23–26). Over the course of time, but especially in the 1970s and 1980s in the East, critique of the prevailing gender order was no longer recognized by oppositional actors in the socialist states – for instance, Václav Havel declared feminism in the circumstances of struggle with an authoritarian regime to be just ‘dada’ (Havel 1990: 139), and issues of gender equality were rarely if ever discussed within Poland’s oppositional mass movement Solidarno´sc, ´ even though some 50 per cent of its membership were women (Reading 1992; Kondratowicz 2001; Penn 2005). Nor did feminism figure prominently in the analyses of Central and East European societies by Western scholars. The discussion was now dominated by the notion of human rights, proclaimed universal by oppositional activists who referred to the institutionalization of these rights through the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Helsinki process in the early 1970s (Korey 1998: 229–47; Snyder 2011).18 Interestingly, social scientists have declared in retrospect that the rhetoric of human rights gained its usefulness in the struggle with authoritarian systems through its universality and its applicability to varying social contexts and groups, including women (Wielgohs and Pollack 2004). Nevertheless, this perspective seems to be inadmissibly narrow, because, in addition to the official state-dominated public sphere and the civil society sphere, which ought to guarantee individual freedom, a third sphere needs to be recognized, namely the family, or the so-called ‘private privacy’ sphere which was shaped by state politics as well as by the civil society. On closer examination of these different spheres, it becomes compellingly clear that civil society is a relational concept, as Dieter Gosewinkel and Dieter Rucht have pointed out (Gosewinkel and Rucht 2004: 34 and 53). For this reason the family should not be characterized as beyond or outside civil society, or (as argued in more recent publications) as a part of civil society where clever women were

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able to subvert the segregation of the ‘public’ and the ‘private’.19 Instead, one should focus on how these spheres, themselves malleable constructs, were used to construct each other. In state-socialist Poland, for example, this means that the dissidents had created something like a new public sphere, even though this new public sphere partially incorporated formerly private ground (Falk 2003: 325). As a consequence, the spheres of family or ‘private privacy’ and civil society were essentially built upon each other, as well as civil society being in part a product of the rejection of state order by the dissidents. Here we once again encounter the decisive role of a gender code in defining the public–private divide (Gal 2003). Whereas the free citizen in civil society has rights as a seemingly ‘genderless’ human being, the private sphere was intentionally gendered. Symbolically, traditional gender order in family life not only served as a kind of oppositional act against the system; it was also used to demarcate the new public sphere from the old notion of private life. Civil society ‘became a key word of anti-dictatorial critique … especially in East Central Europe, where dissidents used the term to challenge party dictatorship, Soviet hegemony and the destruction of traditional social structures brought about by totalitarian domination’ (Kocka 2000: 18).20 The emphatic way in which the civil society notion was depicted for its subsequent transfer from West to East in the 1980s should be put into proper perspective as far as gender equality is concerned, a fact that is underlined by more recent publications critically questioning the gender blindness of research in regard to the concept of civil society (Hagemann, Michel and Budde 2008).21 On the one hand, civil society is historicized by political and social sciences as a valuable contribution to Europe’s political culture. On the other, in today’s political practices, shaped by civil society in the 1970s and 1980s, the earlier concept has become obsolete. It must now adapt to the requirements of transnational interdependences, although it has always been part of, and, in a way, one of the driving forces behind transnationalization. Nevertheless, as a special contribution to Europe’s political culture, civil society plays an important role in the positioning of states in the ‘new’ Europe and could perhaps be seen as a mark of postsocialist identity politics. The semi-public sphere of civil society in East European countries during the period of socialism was often located in the private homes of dissidents; after 1989, this sphere went public and it has become the normal political arena. However, it still carries signs of its predecessor: for instance, gender issues do not seem to fit well into this arena where the notion of the autonomous genderless individual dominates. One blatant example for the general disregard of gender concerns can be seen in the abolition of the post of the government

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representative for women’s issues in Poland after the elections in 2005, when post-Solidarno´sc´ political elites assumed power (Graff 2001). The concept of family also carries marks of the pre-1989 divide. Many political actors believe that the family should be protected from intrusion by transnational actors into a domain that has historically been considered especially worthy of safeguarding and preservation. From a gendersensitive perspective, therefore, the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe is often described today as characterized by the deprivation of political agency and the re-creation of traditional gender roles (Keinz 2008: esp. 90–94).

Conclusion It has become obvious that national and transnational struggles for recognition are narrowly intertwined. In general it is the (nation-)state that allocates rights to its citizens, but at the same time the state is always embedded in transnational networks and discourses. However, the mobilization of transnational discourses has not always redounded to the advantage of emancipatory strategies, since political concepts like emancipation or gender equality cannot easily be transferred from the transnational to the national arena. Investigation of the Second Polish Republic after 1918 has shown the state to be the institution that was in charge of allocating rights, and it thus met the demands women had already made in transnational networks before 1918. At the same time, the politics of the nation-state impeded the emancipation of women, since their struggles for recognition clearly had to take second place to specific national interests within the state. It is important to notice that these national interests were grounded not least on a concept of citizenship that was gendered to the core. After 1945, gender again played an important but often unacknowledged role in political struggles. While (male) dissidents fought for allegedly universal rights, they clearly rejected notions of group-specific rights, and especially women’s rights, since the project of emancipation for them was contaminated by state intrusion into the private life of its citizens. Thus, especially since the 1960s and 1970s, discourses about the ‘political’ and the ‘private’ sphere were diverging in East and West. ‘Civil society’, which had become a powerful catchword in the transnational discourse since that time, thus rested on diametrically different assumptions about how to relate the public sphere to the private. With this in mind, one can decode the ‘cultural misunderstandings’ that came to the fore after 1989. The allegedly universal discourse of Europeanization was not always helpful

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in overcoming the diverging historical experiences that were reflected in the different opinions about what feminism could be and how gender equality could be reached. In this chapter I have tried to demonstrate the usefulness of a longterm perspective, encompassing the whole of twentieth-century Polish history. Knowing how the interwar years and the socialist period are depicted seems to be indispensable for properly understanding how certain political arguments and perceptions that continue to influence political actors today have evolved. However, to explain this development does not mean that we must insist on the notoriously invoked East European ‘backwardness’, or the year 1989 as the vanishing point in the narrative of the twentieth century; but a long-term perspective allows us to analyse and interpret the concepts of ‘civil society’ or ‘universal rights’ more precisely, because they are deeply embedded in specific historical contexts and travel back and forth among nation-states, influencing the perception of recognition. Poland is an excellent example of a successful struggle for political rights based on a long-term perspective. These struggles were won not least with the aid of a transnational, travelling concept of civil society. At the same time it is important to keep in mind that specific historical contexts persist that are responsible for the continued unequal treatment of, and lack of recognition for, gender equality. The lack of a state (before 1918) as well as the lack of democracy (before 1989) positioned women’s struggles for recognition in Poland in a specific discursive framework that paradoxically confined their emancipatory potential through the application of allegedly universal concepts (such as civil society). The synchronicity of gaining political rights while simultaneously losing the right to self-determination in the sphere of reproduction (which came with the anti-abortion legislation of Poland’s post-communist governments) can best be understood when we bear in mind that the political sphere is always constructed by gendered ascriptions, that struggles for recognition are constructed by gendered assumptions, and that progress in political rights and gender equality is not a linear process. As the Polish feminist Bo˙zena Umi´nskaKeff exclaimed after 1989: ‘It is amazing to see that our rights as human beings have grown, but as women, they have shrunk’.22

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Notes   1. For the attempt to create one women’s movement and the divisions within the different collectives, see Rupp (1997).  2. This lends strong credence to Nancy Fraser’s (2003: 64–67) position against redistribution in the form of public social benefits, which undermine the social status of those benefited.  3. Interestingly, the liberalization of marriage law was one of the main points of contention between the politically active women in the sanacja movement and its male leadership (Plach 2006: 123–26 and 153–65).   4. While feminism was declared ‘bourgeois’ (and thus to be rejected) by communist activists like Clara Zetkin and many of her successors, after 1989, with the breakdown of communism, concepts of gender equality through material redistribution, especially in the sphere of the workforce, fell into discredit. For the ever-troublesome relationship between feminism and communism, see Fraser (2003: 88–94) and Boxer (2010).   5. For a critique of this interpretation, see Kraft (2009: 13–15).   6. For the aspect of generation, see, for example, Berman (1998: 17ff.); Judt (2005: 390ff.); and von der Goltz (2011).  7. For a comparative, transnational perspective on 1968, see, for example, Fink, Gassert and Junker (1998); Kastner and Mayer (2008); Klimke, Pekelder and Scharloth (2011).   8. See Judt (2005), especially parts I and II.   9. For the mobilization of Polish women, especially during the Stalinist period, see Fidelis (2010). 10. For this argumentation, see Fidelis (2004, 2008). Interestingly, after 1989 the political transformation from state socialism to parliamentary democracy was discursively framed in a similar way, namely, as the ‘return to the natural order’, whereby gender relations had high symbolic relevance; see, in this regard, Keinz (2008). 11. For just such a perspective, see also Penn and Massino (2009) and Kraft (2004). ´ 12. ‘Dookoła Swiata’ [Around the World], 7 May 1972, quoted in Sokołowska (1973: 146f.). 13. Fraser (2003: 36f.). 14. For the women in the Solidarity movement, see Penn (2005). The former Czech dissident Jiˇrina Šiklová (1998) recalls that, among the 572 documents published by Charta 77, none was concerned with the women’s question (but instead with other ‘subaltern’ groups like the Roma or the Sudeten Germans); she explains this fact by pointing out that both men and women were under a great deal of political pressure from the state party; thus women were more inclined to see their specific problems as being of less importance – ‘Interview with Jiˇrina Šiklová’, in Liebermann, Fuchs and Wallat (1998: 88f.). 15. See Watson (2000); see also the special issue of Femina Politica, Geschlechterpolitik nach der EU-Osterweiterung (2006); and Ghodsee (2011). 16. For the problems of translating feminism, see Muharska (2005); Raynova (2010); Kampichler (2010). 17. For a careful reflection of the problems that emerge with the concept of ‘civil society’ in different historical contexts see, for example, Keane (1998: 4–7). Dieter

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18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

Gosewinkel has convincingly pleaded for a strong consequential historicization of the concept; in this regard, see Gosewinkel and Rucht (2004: 31–41). On claims for historicization from a gender perspective, see also in Einhorn and Sever (2005: esp. 28 and 46). For a critical assessment of the Helsinki process as it relates to gender equality, see Lottenburger-Bazin (1994). And it is precisely this reasoning that makes the mere declaration of the family as one of the ‘core institutions of civil society’ a matter clearly open to dispute. In this regard, see Budde (2003: 71). ‘“Zivilgesellschaft” [wurde] zu einem Schlüsselwort anti-diktatorischer Kritik in Lateinamerika und vor allem in Ostmitteleuropa, wo Dissidenten mit dem Begriff gegen Parteidiktatur, sowjetische Hegemonie und die Zerstönmg traditioneller gesellschaftlicher Strukturen durch totalitäre Herrschaft antraten.’ See the instructive opening article (chapter 1) by Hagemann. Quoted in Penn (2009: 217); see also Einhorn (1993: 1).

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———. 2010. ‘Schafft sich der Staat eine polnische Nation oder eine sozialistische Gesellschaft? Systemwandel durch Bevölkerungspolitik in Ostpreußen und Niederschlesien im Vergleich’, Bohemia 50(1): 23–41. Lottenburger-Bazin, Ingrid. 1994. ‘Die Konferenz für Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa – ein Wirkungsfeld für die Frauenbewegung?’, Feministische Studien 12(2): 66–70. Lüthi, Barbara. 2009. ‘Gender in Transit: Geschlecht und transnationale Perspektiven’, in Martina Ineichen et al. (eds), Gender in Transit. Transnationale und transkulturelle Perspektiven. Zurich: Chronos, pp. 9–16. Marody, Mirosława. 1993. ‘Why I Am Not a Feminist: Some Remarks on the Problem of Gender Identity in the United States and Poland’, Social Research 60(4): 853–64. Mickute, Jolanta. 2014. ‘Making of the Zionist Women: Zionist Discourse on the Jewish Woman’s Body and Selfhood in Interwar Poland’, East European Politics and Societies 28(1): 137–62. Muharska, Ralitsa. 2005. ‘Silences and Parodies in the East–West Feminist Dialogue’, L’Homme. Europäische Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 16(1): 36–47. Penn, Shana. 2005. Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ———. 2009. ‘Writing Themselves into History: Two Feminists Recall Their Political Development in the People’s Republic of Poland’, in Shana Penn and Jill Massino (eds), Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 201–19. Penn, Shana, and Jill Massino (eds). 2009. Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pietrzak, Michał. 2000. ‘Sytuacja prawna kobiet II Rzeczypospolitej’ [The ˙ Legal Situation of Women in the 2nd Polish Republic], in Anna Zarnowska and Andrzej Szwarz (eds), Równe prawa i nierówne szanse. Kobiety w Polsce mie˛dzywojennej [Equal Rights, Unequal Chances. Women in Interwar Poland]. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, pp. 77–91. Plach, Eva. 2006. The Clash of Moral Nations: Cultural Politics in Piłsudski’s Poland. Athens: Ohio University Press. Raynova, Yvanka B. 2010. Feministische Philosophie in europäischem Kontext. Genderdebatten zwischen ‘Ost’ und ‘West’. Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: Böhlau. Reading, Anna. 1992. Polish Women, Solidarity and Feminism. London: Macmillan. Rupp, Leila. 1997. Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Šiklová, Jiˇrina. 1998. ‘Interview with Jiˇrina Šiklová’, in Doris Liebermann, Jürgen Fuchs and Vlasta Wallat (eds), Dissidenten, Präsidenten und Gemüsehändler. Tschechische und ostdeutsche Dissidenten 1968–1998. Essen: Klartext Verlagsgesellschaft, p. 88f. Snyder, Sarah B. 2011. Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sokołowska, Magdalena. 1973. Frauenemanzipation und Sozialismus. Das Beispiel der Volksrepublik Polen. Reinbek: Rowohlt. ———. 1976. ‘The Women Image in the Awareness of Contemporary Polish Society’, The Polish Sociological Bulletin 35(3): 41–50.

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Steffen, Katrin. 2007. ‘“Für bewußte Mutterschaft” und eine “physische Erneuerung der Judenheit” – die jüdische Frauenzeitschrift “Ewa” (1928–1933) in Warschau’, in Eleonore Lappin and Michael Nagel (eds), Frauen und Frauenbilder in der europäischen jüdischen Presse. Bremen: Edition Lumière, pp. 103–22. Stegmann, Natali. 2000. ‘“Wie die Soldaten im Feld”: Der widersprüchliche Kampf polnischer Frauen für “Vaterland” und Frauenrechte im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Sophia Kemlein (ed.), Geschlecht und Nationalismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa, 1848–1918 (Publications of the German Historical Institute Warsaw No. 4). Osnabrück: fibre-Verlag, pp. 197–216. Thaa, Winfried. 1996. Die Wiedergeburt des Politischen. Zivilgesellschaft und Legitimitätskonflikt in den Revolutionen von 1989. Opladen: Leske + Budrich. Watson, Peggy. 1997. ‘Civil Society and the Politics of Difference in Eastern Europe’, in Joan W. Scott, Cora Kaplan and Debra Keates (eds), Transitions, Environments, Translation: Feminisms in International Politics. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 21–29. ———. 2000. ‘Theorizing Feminism in Postcommunism’, in Anna Bull, Hanna Diamond, Rosalind March (eds), Feminisms and Women’s Movements in Contemporary Europe. Basingstoke: Macmillan, pp. 100–117. Wielgohs, Jan, and Detlef Pollack. 2004. ‘Conclusion: Comparative Perspectives on Dissent and Opposition to Communist Rules’, in Jan Wielgohs and Detlef Pollack (eds), Dissent and Opposition in Communist Eastern Europe: Origins of Civil Society and Democratic Transition. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 231–66. Zaremba, Marcin. 2011. Im nationalen Gewande. Strategien kommunistischer Herrschaftslegitimation in Polen 1944–1980. Osnabrück: fibre-Verlag. Zimmermann, Susan. 2002. ‘Frauenbewegungen, Transfer und Trans-Nationalität. Feministisches Denken und Streben im globalen und zentralosteuropäischen Kontext des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts’, in Harmut Kaelble, Martin Kirsch and Alexander Schmidt-Gernigk (eds), Transnationale Öffentlichkeiten und Identitäten im 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus Verlag, pp. 263–302. ———. 2005. ‘The Challenge of Multinational Empire for International Women’s Movement’, Journal of Women’s History 17(2): 87–118.

Claudia Kraft is Professor for European Contemporary History at the University of Siegen, Germany, since 2011. She holds a Herder-Chair for Central and Eastern European History and in this function cooperates closely with the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe. Her main research interests are Polish and Eastern European history from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, gender history, history of forced migrations, history of cultural memory and politics of history in Europe, legal history and history of international law in Central and Eastern Europe. She has recently published Zwischen Geschlecht und Nation. Interdependenzen und Interaktionen in der multiethnischen Gesellschaft Polens im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, co-edited with Matthias Barelkowski and Isabel Röskau-Rydel (fibre Verlag, 2016).

Chapter 7

The Emergence of an Impossible Movement Domestic Workers Organize Globally

Helen Schwenken

In June 2011, at the end of the 100th session of the International Labour Conference (ILC), the director general of the International Labour Organization (ILO) hugged dozens of enthusiastic domestic workers’ representatives from all continents. They were celebrating the adoption of ILO Convention 189 concerning ‘Decent Work for Domestic Workers’ (ILO 2011). Conference delegates adopted the convention by an overwhelming majority of 396 votes to 16 (with 63 abstentions), and the accompanying recommendation by a vote of 434 to 8 (with 42 abstentions). The numerical result signifies that, not only worker delegates but also most of the governments and, surprisingly, a majority of employer delegates in this tripartite body of the United Nations (UN) were in favour of this new international labour rights instrument. The convention gives recognition and labour rights, equal to those granted to other workers,1 to a group of workers in precarious jobs, most of whom are women from disadvantaged social strata. Domestic workers perform paid work, often in the informal sector for private households as live-in workers or work on an hourly basis in a number of households. For centuries their profession has been devalued; their working conditions are often poor, and domestic workers are frequently without sufficient legal or social protection. In 2008, when the decision was made by the ILO’s Governing Body to convene a standard-setting procedure on domestic work, hardly any

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observer would have predicted an outcome that included a widely endorsed convention and spawned a global movement of domestic workers. Pessimism was well founded for many reasons: (1) for more than half a century, domestic work as an issue had wandered on and off the ILO agenda; (2) trade unions had not shown much interest in this sector of feminized, informal work; (3) many national labour laws have explicitly excluded domestic work from their regulatory sphere; (4) domestic workers, if they were organized at all, were organized only on the local or possibly national level, but not globally; (5) domestic workers’ organizations were without significant resources; and (6) a comparable convention on ‘homeworkers’ (Prügl 1999) had an extremely weak ratification record. Therefore, for some of the initiators of the ILO procedure in 2008, and for trade unionists, it was clear that success was only conceivable with a strong workers’ movement to back it – workers from a broad range of trade unions as well as domestic workers themselves. This chapter tells a part of that amazing story – that ‘impossible’ feat – showing how, within the short period of just three years, a consolidated worldwide campaign – a global movement2 – of domestic workers and trade union allies emerged and subsequently celebrated its first major achievement. The notion of impossibility is closely related to the dominant narratives on domestic workers, particularly their lack of capacity and ability to organize and mobilize. For trade unions, organizing this group of women workers has always been considered a logistical and financial challenge. Domestic workers work in the isolation of private households and are hardly reachable for union organizers; therefore they are considered ‘unorganizable’ (Smith 2000). They do not have at their disposal, nor can they mobilize, traditional sources of trade union power, such as structural, institutional and associational power (Wright 2000). Also on a societal level, as well as on an individual basis, many domestic workers face a lack of respect and recognition for their job. In many countries domestic workers belong to immigrant communities; many of them are undocumented or they belong to historically disadvantaged groups like the Dalits in India who have seldom been at the centre of trade union activities or concern. Catherine Raissiguier (2010) coined the term ‘impossible subjects’, referring to the sans papiers, in particular the women amongst them, in France. On an individual level, this label applies to many domestic workers: as (undocumented) migrants, minors, or members of historically disadvantaged groups, they lie outside the pale of citizenry. Discursive practices make them ‘unthinkable members of the national body’, while ‘material and legal practices … locate them in spaces of impossibility’ (ibid.: 4). Private households are just such spaces

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of impossibility: they are not considered workplaces proper; domestic workers are often expected to behave as if they were invisible, to enter a house through the back door, and not to disturb the private lives of their employers. In a second, related sense the term ‘impossible’ also refers to the attitude of servitude inscribed into the very nature of domestic work, which does not allow domestic workers to display disobedience and it does not give them the self-confidence or authority to demand labour rights. Monisha Das Gupta calls labour struggles among domestic workers and other low-income immigrants ‘unruly’ (Das Gupta 2006: 4), thereby calling into question the automatic link between citizenship and (labour) rights. Against this backdrop, where all of the factors mentioned made the task of organizing seem insurmountable, and the prospect of actually succeeding in bringing about a legal framework to improve the situation for domestic workers seem impossible, it is imperative to ask what the most important mechanisms were that explain the emergence of a global movement of domestic workers within such a short period, and against all odds. This success also has to do with how the struggle was conceived. By considering the fight for their rights as a struggle for recognition, domestic workers were able to redefine themselves, their work, and their formal labour relationships. This chapter will explain first my methodological approach from social movement theory – on a different level from the recognition theory much cited in this volume – to mobilization and organization, and then empirically analyse the emergence of the global movement that ultimately made the ‘impossible’ possible.

Explaining the Emergence of a Social Movement: Theoretical and Methodological Means In his critique and extension of the political opportunity structure (POS) approach, Jack A. Goldstone proposes a model to differentiate between factors that explain the emergence of a social movement and those that explain success (Goldstone 2004: 347). According to Goldstone, both kinds of explanation need to be more dynamic and context-sensitive than the macro-oriented POS approach permits (ibid.: 356). The POS approach and political process theory (PPT) have been criticized – whether justifiably or not is not the issue here – for being too centred on the state as a determinant for a movement’s success, for focusing too much on opportunities rather than threats, and for focusing too narrowly on structures (Goodwin and Jasper 2004a; for responses, see Part I in Goodwin and Jasper 2004b). Indeed, a POS approach alone

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does not suffice to explain what we saw happening with the domestic workers’ movement. This is where questions of recognition – as workers with labour rights – and of how recognition is facilitated come in. The conditions for organizing were weak and the context was stable, but the global movement emerged at a speed that requires explanation. Without abandoning the explanatory capacity of the PPS and POS approaches – in particular the opening of a ‘window of opportunity’ at the International Labour Organization – Goldstone’s ‘external relational field’ approach does capture some important features in the emergence of the global domestic workers’ movement; I will be coming back to these. Goldstone’s basic idea is to focus more on relationships, thus paying greater attention to meso-level processes. They can be enabling or constraining, so they do not necessarily constitute ‘opportunities’ in the strictest sense; and they are issue-specific as well as group-specific. Goldstone mentions a minimum of seven external fields: ‘(1) other movements and counter-movements that may compete for attention and resources, or provide reinforcement and alliances …; (2) political and economic institutions …; (3) various levels of state authorities and political actors … whose responses to the movement and its actions affect its development and outcomes; (4) various elites – economic, political, religious, media – whose interests, capacities and actions affect movement development and its outcomes; (5) various publics whose interests, capacities and actions affect movement development and its outcomes; (6) symbolic and value orientations available in society that condition the reception and response to movement claims and actions; and (7) critical events …’ (Goldstone 2004: 357). Within these external fields domestic workers used to be a group of workers that did not enjoy much recognition in the three basic patterns of intersubjective recognition identified by Axel Honneth: love (in a broad sense, including friendship) in primary relations; rights in the legal sphere; and solidarity in the ‘community of value’ (Honneth 1992: 148ff.; see also the introduction to this volume by Dieter Gosewinkel). I do not argue that the deeply embedded recognition deficit of domestic workers has turned completely. What I show in subsequent parts of this chapter is how, in a number of external fields, some of these relational factors contributed to the mobilization and success of the domestic workers’ movement that made a difference at all three levels of recognition. I argue that the domestic workers’ organizations, supportive trade unions, and NGOs came together and ‘(re)invented’ themselves as a movement – first locally, then transnationally – essentially through two mechanisms: first, fast-paced upscaling of the movement, which brought different and more sympathetic political elites into the struggle; and second,

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synchronous strategic coalition building that gave the movement access to various publics. Strategic coalition building is a frequently mentioned but still under-investigated mechanism in social movement studies (Van Dyke and McCammon 2010); I elaborate on the type and function of these coalitions in what follows. The POS approach and Goldstone take existing coalitions and elites into account, but the absence of organized employer interests also contributes to explaining the success of the domestic workers’ movement. Further, the transnational dimension must also be regarded as crucial for the movement’s success. The critical event spanned three to four years, an ‘episode of contention’ (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001: 28–30) culminating in the 2011 ILC and the ratification of ILO Convention 189. Without the catalyst of gaining the ILO Convention – which was co-constituted through movement activities – the movement probably would have been much less dynamic and confined to the national and regional levels. Another crucial factor contributing to the movement’s success was its ability to draw discursively on moral orientations, which resulted in a more broadly accepted definition of domestic work, including it in the sphere of regular work and traditional labour relations. These ‘external fields’ do not matter independently, but, in conjunction and on the basis of pre-existing organizations of domestic workers in a significant number of countries, they become a force to be reckoned with (Goldstone 2004: 357). It is not sufficient for analysis, therefore, to consider external factors in isolation; they always have to be viewed in light of factors internal to the movement. This focus on relations fits well with the ‘dynamics of contention’ approach (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001; McAdam and Tarrow 2011), transforming the analysis of political settings by identifying mechanisms (activities) rather than factors (characteristics) or conditions. A methodological challenge for this case study is the short time it took this global movement to emerge, act and succeed: it all happened within less than half a decade. This makes it difficult to identify factors and cause-and-effect relations. Social movement scholarship usually calls for distinct analytical models for each of these phases (Goldstone 2004: 359). However, in the case of the global domestic workers’ movement, the phases overlap – one could even say that success coincided with the emergence of the global movement itself. Nevertheless, I attempt to dissect movement activities and to identify movement-relevant factors and dynamics. To this end, I rely on extensive participatory observation, document analysis and interviews conducted throughout the period of investigation, 2008–2012 (see, for example, Schwenken and Pabon 2011), and an in-depth study of a pre-existing regional network between 2001 and 2005 (Schwenken 2006: 235–306).

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Scaling Up and Building a Base: The Transnational Formation of the Movement There was no global movement of domestic workers before the ILO started its renewed initiative for standard-setting in the field of domestic work in 2008. But by 2012, a campaign for ratification of the convention took action in at least eighty-four countries (ITUC 2012). It is therefore interesting to establish why such a global movement could emerge so quickly. Part of my argument is that the movement built on existing regional movements in Asia and the Pacific, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, and to some extent in Africa and Europe. The way in which organizations scattered around the globe managed to transnationalize is theoretically interesting, and speaks against some of the assumptions in the literature on the regionalization of social movements. Imig and Tarrow (2001: 8), for example, postulate that the more politically integrated a region is, the better are the conditions for cooperation between movements.3 However, in the case of domestic workers, contrary to expectations, the transnationalization of organizations was not strongest in the European Union but rather in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Asia. Upscaling did not emerge from a strong national centre, but rather from several regional hubs. Regarding the actors involved, global campaigning was carried out through a transnational advocacy network. Keck and Sikkink’s seminal definition of transnational advocacy networks captures their characteristics quite well; transnational networks include ‘those actors working internationally on an issue, who are bound together by shared values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of information and services’ (Keck and Sikkink 1999: 89). They also include local social movements, foundations, national and international NGOs, researchers and think tanks, media, trade unions, intellectuals, parts of national and international governmental organizations, and parts of executive and parliamentary branches of governments (ibid.: 91–92). All of these groups played a major role during the three-year-long campaign for the ILO domestic work convention (although constituents have evaluated their own leadership roles and importance differently). To begin with, a number of governments were very supportive of the convention, emphasizing the relevance of state actors, as key POS theorists had done (Tarrow 1996). During the negotiations, government delegates, in particular from Australia, South Africa, Uruguay and the United States, argued strongly in favour of the convention. Within the ILO, several units and various regional offices developed strong expertise

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in, and commitment to, the field of domestic work. Other international organizations jumped on the bandwagon of media and policy attention already devoted to domestic workers, publishing their own reports and initiating campaigns. Upscaling thus meant domestic workers gained new allies who themselves profited from catering to a new target group and from positioning themselves advantageously on the moral high ground, demanding justice for a historically disadvantaged group of women. Although trade unions supported domestic workers’ demands, domestic workers’ issues did not have much practical relevance for most of them, because so few domestic workers were actually unionized. Domestic workers therefore had to work hard to earn recognition as part of the labour movement (see below) and as legitimate negotiation partners capable of articulating their demands by themselves without advocates. This development points to the crucial role of domestic workers themselves in the transnational advocacy network or transnational movement. Existing organizations and domestic workers’ trade unions were brought together initially at an international seminar on ‘Protection for Domestic Workers’, hosted by the Dutch national trade union federation, FNV, in Amsterdam in 2006. The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF)4 has since been instrumental in providing domestic workers with a ‘union home’, logistical support, and funding and facilitating. Within the IUF, a small number of women were decisive in making this happen. Social movement studies have often identified such ‘bridge builders’ as an important factor in facilitating cross-movement alliances (Reese, Petit and Meyer 2010: 270–72; Rose 2000). Facilitators of the international seminar in Amsterdam from the IUF had had previous experience and personal liaisons with the research and policy NGO, Women in the Informal Economy Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), with whom they had campaigned in the 1990s for another but less successful ILO convention on homeworkers’ rights. For the IUF and WIEGO, therefore, it had become crucial to learn from previous experiences; this meant, inter alia, shaping broader alliances, integrating the affected workers themselves into the campaign, and providing statistical evidence from this informal sector in order to counter opponents’ questioning of the relevance of the number of domestic workers and hence the need for a legal framework to regulate the sector (Heimeshoff and Schwenken 2010). One important result of these efforts was the founding of the domestic-worker-led International Domestic Workers’ Network (IDWN), in 2009. ‘Domestic-worker-led’ means the principle that advocacy NGOs cannot be members of the network, which is composed only of organizations in which domestic

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workers (or former domestic workers) are organized and hold elected positions. The IDWN was a network of regional networks. Up to 2013, its interim structure had consisted of a steering committee and regional coordinators; in October of that year the IDWN officially transformed itself into the formal and democratically legitimized International Domestic Workers’ Federation (IDWF) at its founding congress in Montevideo, Uruguay. The regional networks of domestic workers functioned as an important link between national-level activities and the global-level ones. A recent analysis of protest events has shown that the more domestic workers were already organized nationally and regionally, the more they were integrated into the global campaign for the ILO Convention 189 (Schwenken 2013). Such regional networks also functioned as showcases, demonstrating to domestic workers whose activities were less well coordinated that regional organization pays off and can succeed. Regional networks existed in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and to a lesser extent in Europe. Of these various regional networks, the Confederación Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Trabajadoras del Hogar (CONLACTRAHO)5 has been the most sustained. CONLACTRAHO has existed since 1988; it comprises member organizations from all over Latin America and the Caribbean islands (Goldsmith Connelly 2010). Among other things, the network proclaimed 30 March to be an annual Domestic Workers’ Day in Latin America. The existence of such a day has been instrumental in supporting the unity of the regional network because activities are coordinated between member organizations. Different types of domestic workers’ organizations collaborate within the network – some are unions, and some women’s associations. The network also includes organizations representing special groups such as indigenous women or senior domestic workers. Regional diversity is reflected in the network’s governing board which, after its regular elections in 2012, consisted of representatives from Costa Rica, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil (Aguilar Pérez 2012). In Asia, workers’ organizations coordinate their activities mainly through three domestic worker bodies, the Asian Domestic Workers’ Alliance (ADWA), the Asian Domestic Workers’ Network (ADWN), and the Migrant Forum Asia (MFA), one of the most active and wellorganized civil society entities in migration-related debates at the global level. Specific to the Asian region is the plurality of organizations in each of the countries, reflecting the structures in Asia that are less centralized and less unionized than in other regions.

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Relations Matter: Coalition Power Goldstone’s (2004) key assertion is about the significance of relations between and among movement mechanisms. The emergence of a global domestic workers’ campaign illustrates the power of coalition building and the importance of establishing multi-scalar relations. This is in line with some labour studies and reasoning about when and how trade unions enter into strategic coalitions. For example, Edwards and Heery have argued that ‘it is when unions seek to represent workers with low “organizational power” (capacity to sustain collective organization) and low “positional power” (low skills and secondary labour market positions) that they are most likely to turn to coalition[s]’ (Edwards and Heery 1989: 10–11, quoted in Frege, Heery and Turner 2004: 146; see also Abbott, Heery and Williams 2012). Studies from countries where domestic workers are not organized in particularly strong unions have shown this to be the case. Coalition partners such as community-based organizations, faith-based groups, and ethnic organizations give trade unions access to groups who may otherwise be hard to reach (Frege, Heery and Turner 2004: 140). From a trade union perspective it is important to note that organizing domestic workers – at least at first – does not function without intermediaries and coalition partners. Martina Benz sheds light on another aspect to the centrality of the role of coalition building in domestic workers’ campaigns. She argues that the concentration of domestic workers in global cities gives them access to a broader range of already existing alliances that they can then join and influence (Benz 2011: 66–69). In the Netherlands, for instance, it was decisive for a successful campaign in 2011 and 2012 that unionized domestic workers had shown solidarity with the cleaners who were organized in the same union. Although many domestic workers were undocumented, they nevertheless participated in demonstrations and even supported public strike action. The cleaners, who are a much stronger unionized segment in the FNV Bondgenoten,6 in turn, allied themselves with the domestic workers when the latter’s campaign became more public.7 The domestic workers thus earned recognition as serious trade union militants who deserved the solidarity of union members from other sectors. For trade unions, therefore, the logic of membership (Schmitter and Streeck 1999) is crucial to, and a prerequisite for, engagement. Alliances sometimes include less politically engaged groups. During the early 2000s, domestic workers in California set up a ‘statewide web of relationships between domestic workers and their families, employers, faith communities, unions, and celebrities … built around the dignity

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of domestic work’ (IDWN 2012). The US network used notions of recognition, dignity, love and care strategically as the core of its campaign and engagement. For example, ‘Leading with Love’ was the slogan for the fifth anniversary celebrations of the National Domestic Workers’ Alliances in November 2012. Also taking into account the demand for a rights-based legal framework, the slogan reads as a direct quote from Honneth outlining the three dimensions of recognition (1992: 148ff.). Coalitions that are not built upon this or a similar kind of normative framework – in this case, those seeking the support of employers – are considered to be rare cases in labour and social movement studies (see Frege, Heery and Turner 2004: 141–44, on labour; and McCammon and Van Dyke 2010, on social movements). In the European Union (although on a different level and with significantly fewer broad coalitions), one finds a similar mechanism at work, where cross-movement alliances involving mostly feminist and pro-migrant lobby groups took up the issue of domestic work and were part of the strategic alliance building of domestic workers’ organizations (Schwenken 2006: 260–66). Although the alliances encompass different social movement and advocacy sectors, characteristic of the domestic workers’ struggle in recent years is that their organizations have focused increasingly on trade unions as allies or as the main constituent bodies reaching out to others. There are a number of reasons for this. The most obvious one is that access to the ILO works only through trade unions, because other NGOs are not considered stakeholders. Second, in the European Union, for example, domestic workers’ organizations have been frustrated by the inclusion of their issues under the human trafficking frame, which became a popular cause in the EU – the EU consequently shifted a lot of funds from women’s rights to anti-trafficking engagement (for a critical reflection on this, see Anderson 2007). Resource mobilization became more difficult and thus the Europe-wide network RESPECT could no longer sustain their transnational activities. This dependency on third-party funding made some observers and activists think that a membership-based logic of organizing, whereby an organization relies on membership dues as its primary resource base, has clear advantages, because this structure gives the organization greater independence. Third, at the beginning of the new millennium, domestic workers began to stress their role as workers rather than victims (Schwenken 2006: 261–77). This shift in framing their demands signalled a new openness for trade unions. In other regions of the world such as Latin America and the Caribbean, or sub-Saharan Africa, it is more common to have sectorspecific trade unions for domestic workers or to have multi-sector trade unions that include domestic workers. So, in addition to determining

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that allies provide significant opportunities, it is crucial to look into the relations between those involved. The following section examines these relations more closely, considering some of the tensions that developed between domestic workers and the trade unions.

Trade Union–Domestic Worker Relations For the 100th Session of the ILC in 2011, which adopted the historically groundbreaking Convention 189, thirty-five national trade union federations appointed domestic workers (or somebody who worked very closely with domestic workers) as official delegates or substitute delegates. The number of official delegates from the domestic work sector had increased from eleven in the year before. By nominating these individuals, the trade unions provided institutional access to domestic workers – an important step for any emerging movement (Goldstone 2004: 349). The reasons for the increase may be a mixture of factors: for instance, unions rewarding the sustained activities of domestic workers and, in some countries, their increased union membership; unions acknowledging the professionalism of domestic workers as representatives; and unions reacting to public pressure to show more openness towards this group of female workers. In most cases where domestic workers were selected as union delegates, these individuals were already strongly rooted in a domestic workers’ union or a larger union. They did not participate on an individual basis; they were organized, instead, in one of the regional alliances, and nearly all of them were active in the IDWN. Whether or not migrant domestic workers were represented in the union delegation depended on the region from which their employment came: the domestic worker delegations from the United States and the European Union countries, where the majority of domestic workers are migrants, also included migrant domestic workers. In the union delegations from Asian countries this was not the case, although many Asian countries are also labour ‘exporting’ or ‘importing’ countries. Undocumented migrant domestic workers were indirectly represented at the ILC 2011 by some formerly undocumented women who had, in the meantime, acquired secure legal status. Given the tripartite structure of the International Labour Organization, the relationship between domestic worker organizations and trade union centres is important. Apart from sympathetic governments, trade union centres are the only channels through which domestic workers’ organizations can gain visibility and influence on the ILO floor. The openness of trade unions for domestic workers, and the degree to which

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trade unions are able to organize them, depends on the specific context and ‘trade union identity’ (Hyman 1994), which means the type of trade union and the respective characteristics in terms of internal democracy and other factors. In Germany, for example, trade unions have just begun to engage with domestic workers at a very low level of intensity; in contrast, domestic workers’ unions are common in some other countries – like Brazil where they have been active since 1936, and Chile since as long ago as 1926. In countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, domestic workers have been integrated into general trade unions and have struggled successfully to gain representation in union decision-making bodies. Nevertheless many domestic workers worldwide are still not organized in trade unions, probably for a variety of reasons: for instance, some unions only accept members with proper addresses and bank accounts to pay membership fees – a condition that many undocumented domestic workers may not be able to fulfil; union dues can be quite high for low-income earners like domestic workers; and, in a range of countries, national labour laws prohibit domestic workers from joining unions. The reasons why domestic workers often turn to less formalized associations also vary: for instance, many associations, NGOs, and similar organizations offer domestic workers resources and important services such as emergency shelters or legal advice; many associations are formed around shared religious or cultural practices among migrant workers, or they bring together migrants from the same region. Some of these social network associations have also developed broader political demands, and they even fulfil roles similar to unions but without being formally recognized as such. Often it is easier to organize activities without having the formal status of a trade union, because of statutory, labour-related restrictions on striking or collective bargaining. Research shows that migrant domestic workers who are in fact organized in proper unions continue in most cases to have their own cultural or ethnic organizational structures and associations, staunchly maintaining their independence from as well as within the union context (Nuriyati and Pabon 2009; Blofield 2009). Therefore, Shireen Ally’s (2005) ideal-typical models of domestic workers either organizing in unions or in associations are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they may merge. Nevertheless, structural tensions often underlie the relationships: trade unions are usually established organizations with a specific logic and clear hierarchies; they are often dominated by men and anchored in formal sector employment. Domestic workers, on the other hand, work in precarious and isolated environments, and their main form of organizing is through informal networks. They perform typically feminized work, often in the informal sector. From this alone, it is easy to

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surmise how the organization of domestic workers in traditional unions may bring difficulties. Trade unions can reach domestic workers only with intensive effort and substantial financial investment, because these workers are geographically dispersed in private homes. The fact that, in many countries, irregular migrants dominate the sector makes their organization in trade unions even more difficult, because many unions do not actively support them. In fact, trade unions often consider irregular migrant workers as competitors who undermine the general working conditions and wages of everyone else (Penninx and Roosblad 2000). Employers also tend to create a ‘hierarchy of the bottom’ (Waldinger and Lichter 2003: 164) and foster competition rather than solidarity among workers (ibid.: 141–80). The face-to-face relationship between employers and domestic workers also often makes the employers forget that it is a contractual work relationship and not a personal, private one. Some employers even think that the domestic workers are ‘part of the family’. Some of these perceptions of migrant workers are reflected in the dilemmas that trade unions face. Should unions cooperate with the state concerning migration policies? Should they agree to imported labour or guest-worker programmes that often come with low labour standards? In recent years the trade union movement has agreed to use a language that emphasizes the universality of workers’ rights, and not to ask about a worker’s status, stressing the de facto working relationships that verify the existence of workers’ rights. Although this is the agreed language at the international level, the reality on the ground often looks different among the union rank and file, who play migrant workers off against non-migrant workers. Despite the increased openness of trade unions towards workers in ‘non-standard employment relations’, which includes domestic workers and many recent migrants, the relationship between associations and unions in the sphere of domestic work has many hitches. Associations may challenge a traditional union-based labour movement by having better access to precarious workers, and seeking influence through lobbying. Conversely, from their perspective as membership-based organizations, trade unions criticize NGO- or donor-driven associations for lacking proper democratic legitimacy and having a high percentage of external funding, which makes them potentially susceptible to donor influence. These discussions show how important it has been in the emergence of the global organization of domestic workers not only to bridge activities on different spatial levels, but also to take into account different organizational logics, like those of influence and membership (Schmitter and Streeck 1999). The campaign for an ILO convention on domestic work brought these different actors and logics together productively,

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symbolizing what has been called ‘coalition power’ and leading to greater mutual recognition, in particular on the level of solidarity, of domestic workers and trade unions.

The Movement’s Goal: Increasing Institutional Power and Legal Recognition In addition to the coalition-building power that drove the domestic workers movement, another crucial source of movement strength discussed in the literature is that of ‘institutional power’ (Bispinck and Schulten 2009: 201), and the ability to wield influence through political and socioeconomic institutions (Goldstone 2004: 357), such as the ILO. For trade unions this means, in particular, labour law and institutionalized systems of industrial relations as a reflection of prior compromises between capital and labour. In their 2009 study, Bispinck and Schulten discuss current changes in labour relations, with the focus on institutional power in the highly institutionalized context of Germany. Trade unions are weakened where institutional power declines (and, conversely, strengthened where institutional power increases). In the case of domestic workers, it is therefore a clever strategic move to create new legal conditions that integrate domestic workers into formalized labour relations. The rationale behind this is that without such institutionalization it would be even more difficult to organize ‘as workers’ in collaboration with trade unions. From a social movement perspective taking into account various forms of contention, institutionalization meant the dominance of ‘coalitions of influence’ over ‘coalitions of protest’ (Frege, Heery and Turner 2004: 144) because dialogue was favoured over confrontation. During the ILO negotiations, members of the transnational advocacy network managed to communicate in different institutional languages, convincing various stakeholders and addressing their primary concerns – for example, with proposals to regulate the shadow economy or to bring justice to disadvantaged workers. It is clear that without such broad alliances, the demands of the domestic workers would have been perceived as only partial interests. The transnational advocacy network thus engaged successfully in ‘building new links among actors in civil societies, in states and international organizations, [and multiplied] the opportunities for dialogue and exchange’ (Keck and Sikkink 1999: 89). Closer examination of ILO Convention 189 and the negotiations leading up to it shows that although the convention succeeded discursively and provides a framework for legal recognition, implementation of the

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measures that it called for will be a harder nut to crack. One key reason is the importance of the idea of ‘national sovereignty’ and ‘built-in escapes’, which grant nation-states exemption from the general rule if pre-existing national legislation precludes transposition of the new regulation embodied in Convention 189. Such is the case, for example, concerning whether or not domestic workers may be included in minimum wage regulation. Negotiations over Convention 189 also pointed to another challenge, namely, the mismatch between existing labour regulations which include domestic workers and the reality of most domestic workers in the informal sector not being able to claim their rights. During negotiations, representatives from the European Union – in particular from the Nordic countries and Germany – were generally dismissive about the newly proposed labour regulations, referring to their own high standards, and seeing ILO Convention 189 as a matter of concern primarily for the lessdeveloped world. This also explains why employer representatives at the ILO did not show much resistance to the proposed convention.8 Further, domestic worker employers are individuals and families, not huge firms that are traditionally members of employer organizations. Thus, the latter’s core interests have not been at risk with the convention.9 What this shows is that institutional power is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for achieving domestic workers’ recognition and rights. E.O. Wright’s reference to three different loci of contention helps to explain this challenge. Wright differentiates between the ‘sphere of exchange’ located primarily within the labour market, the ‘sphere of production’ found within companies, and the ‘sphere of politics’ where the struggle over public policy formulation and implementation takes place (Wright 2000: 963). Domestic workers’ struggles occur primarily in the political sphere rather than the sphere of production, even though the preamble to ILO Convention 189 clearly recognizes ‘the significant contribution of domestic workers to the global economy’ (ILO 2011). The attempts to build up institutional power can be read as the movement improving its own legal political opportunity structures by creating new bonds of solidarity-based recognition. According to Tarrow ([1994] 2011: 184ff.; 1996: 58f.), political opportunity structures are not a given, but they can be created and shaped by movements themselves. This is the case with domestic workers whose political opportunity structures resulted from their own struggles for recognition and inclusion in labour legislation; ILO Convention 189 is partly a consequence of their having achieved better structural conditions to argue for rights codified through earlier campaigning.

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Struggles for Recognition: Domestic Work as an Employment Relation The preceding sections have focused on how the domestic workers’ movement managed to organize itself mainly through transnationalization efforts, alliance building, and advocating the inclusion of domestic workers in the area regulated by labour law, in order to create better political opportunity structures. This section turns its attention towards the quality of domestic workers’ struggles, looking at that which has united their efforts worldwide – namely, the struggle for recognition. Domestic workers’ struggles actively relate to existing ‘symbolic and value orientations in society’ (Goldstone 2004: 357). The project group from which this volume emerges defines struggles for recognition as ‘a specific mode of making and enforcing claims for equality or difference – be it on political, social, or cultural grounds – which are derived from concepts of justice based on personal dignity and mutual respect’ (Choluj et al. 2006). Domestic workers’ struggle for political recognition is the struggle to have the work that they do formally acknowledged as proper work. This is what ILO Convention 189 was designed to achieve, and such achievement is strongly linked to socioeconomic recognition. International labour standards are of value only if the labour relation is acknowledged by all parties involved – the workers themselves, their employers, labour organizations, negotiators, lawyers, and so on. On a discursive level in the domestic work sector, derogatory terminology prevails, dating back from a centuries-long perception of household workers as ‘maids’ or ‘servants’. They were not considered ‘workers’ – self-employed or employed by others. For many domestic workers’ organizations, therefore, discursive recognition has been an important part of what their struggles have been about. They demanded, for example, a reform of Mexican labour legislation to change the term ‘servant’ to ‘worker’ (Thomson 2009: 288). In cases such as this, domestic workers challenge long-established, commonly held attitudes towards themselves and their profession; their claim is one of inclusion in a more equalitybased value system. During negotiations on ILO Convention 189, the term ‘worker’ itself was not questioned: ‘any person engaged in domestic work within an employment relationship’ (ILO 2011: Art. 1b). What was contested, however, was how broad this definition should be. For example, subject to debate was whether the term ‘household’ in the singular or ‘households’ in the plural should be used. The plural form was what was finally accepted and included in the convention’s text, because ‘household’ in

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the singular would have excluded the many domestic workers who work on an hourly basis in multiple households, common for most live-out domestic workers. A similar clarification of preferred terminology should also have been necessary for ‘employers’, but this was not discussed as controversially as the definition of ‘domestic worker’. Employers of domestic workers do not usually consider themselves as employers in the proper and strictest sense of that term (see also endnote 9); and, as already mentioned, they are only very rarely organized in employers’ associations. For example, the successful campaign for a Bill of Rights for Domestic Workers in the state of New York therefore aimed at ‘convincing the public, employers and legislators that domestic work is real work and that employers are real employers’ (Hobden 2010: 23). For that purpose, domestic workers solicited the support of some of their employers who were active in the organization ‘Jews for Racial and Economic Justice’. Hobden considers this element of the campaign to have been the key to its final success – the passing of the New York Bill of Rights for Domestic Workers (ibid.: 24). For many employers, clear regulations can also provide a welcome guide to what actual standards are. Experiences at the national level show that in only very few countries were employers’ associations identifiable and recognized – a precondition for collective bargaining. During the ILO Convention 189 debates, this dilemma became obvious when the accredited employers’ associations stated that employers of domestic workers were all private persons and not represented by the established umbrella employers’ associations at the ILO. These controversial debates over defining domestic workers, their employers, and their workplaces pointed to the fact that real recognition was thus far outstanding: domestic workers had not been considered or legally recognized as ‘proper’ workers, their employers as ‘proper’ employers, or their workplaces as ‘proper’ workplaces. The struggle for recognition, however, has still not been won, even after the overwhelming success of the 2011 ILC. In California, for example, the five-year-long campaign for a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights culminated in its adoption by the California Assembly and State Senate. In October 2012, however, Governor Brown vetoed it. One of the campaigners, care worker Sylvia Lopez, interprets the veto as misrecognition: ‘It is a huge disappointment that Governor Brown chose not to recognize the people caring for California’s families and homes as real workers’ (IDWN 2012). In the case of domestic workers, the political, legal, discursive and socioeconomic struggles for recognition are also closely interlinked with recognition of historical injustice (in particular, exploitation,

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discrimination and inequality brought about by slavery and colonialism), which, in turn, falls under the category of cultural recognition. This is in line with Nancy Fraser’s (2003) assertion that the different forms of struggle for recognition are often closely intertwined. Through their struggles for recognition, domestic workers have attempted to shift their status from ‘impossible’ to ‘possible’ subjects who are included in the workforce as fully fledged members, having access to the institutional sources of workers’ power and recognized labour rights.

Conclusion: Making the Impossible Possible Domestic workers’ organizations used to be scattered all over the world, with little cooperation between them. This changed in the wake of the global campaign for an ILO convention between 2008 and 2011. The emergence of the global debate and the global movement can be attributed to coinciding factors, among the most important of which were successful strategic coalition building between trade unions and domestic worker associations, the bridge-building capacities of some labour-friendly NGOs, and the institutional setting (ILO) and discursive framing of the domestic workers’ struggle making it a labour rights issue. For many trade unions, engagement for domestic workers’ issues is new. Although support has been forthcoming at the top union levels, in order for this to turn into sustainable engagement it must progress beyond the symbolic level and sporadic action to a real, long-term programme – or, in the words of Richard Hyman, it must move from a ‘formal’ agenda to a long-term or ‘real’ agenda. This can be achieved in ‘actual practice’ only by fostering a more open trade union culture and policy receptive to the needs of, and willing to represent, precarious workers and migrant workers; ‘formal declarations’ alone cannot suffice (Hyman 1994: 125). The ILO offers technical assistance not only for governments to implement Convention 189, but also for trade unions to continue their activities in support of domestic workers. For example, in 2012 (and since then regularly), the ILO training centre in Turin invited European trade unions to a series of workshops to develop plans of action and to exchange experiences in organizing domestic workers. In 2012 and 2013, a number of regional tripartite knowledge-sharing forums were held with the aim of bridging gaps between government, employer organizations, and trade unions by discussing concrete problems such as labour inspections, social security, wages, working time, and collective bargaining (ILO 2013: 8), and by encouraging the diffusion of good/best practice from other contexts. After the successful adoption of Convention 189, a ‘12 by 12’

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campaign was launched by the International Trade Union Confederation and its partners to have twelve countries ratify the convention in 2012 (ITUC 2012). Seven countries actually did so in that year (as of August 2016, twenty-two countries have completed the ratification process), and related activities were launched in more than eighty countries. Scaling down one level back to the national level, but within the context of a global campaign, has been crucial for reconnecting to the initial basis of the transnational movement – local activism. What is the likely future of the domestic workers’ movement, the campaign, and the transnational advocacy network? Current indications suggest that it will be difficult to keep up the same level of attention and activities by trade unions that ultimately led to the adopting of ILO Convention 189. The processes that culminated in this success all took place within a relatively short episode devoted to pushing the convention through at a single international event. After adoption of the convention in June 2011, movement activities declined significantly. Most activists needed a break after three years of continuous, intensive campaigning. Moreover, despite the movement’s success, the domestic workers’ role in labour unions and the labour movement has remained marginal in most cases. In countries where strong domestic workers’ organizations are active – in a trade union context as well as independently in non-union associations – it can be expected that domestic workers will be able to maintain the momentum – keeping up various activities including media coverage and street mobilization on symbolic dates like International Women’s Day (8 March), International Workers’ Day (1 May), and other specially designated domestic workers’ days. However, keeping the demands of domestic workers a burning issue will be more difficult in countries where it has hardly reached any trade unionists beyond individual ILO delegates. In such environments, NGOs, including faithbased and local organizations, are more likely to be the relevant actors and partners offering concrete support and advice to domestic workers. Social movement studies point to two types of prominent movement trajectories: movement careers and protest cycles (for a critique, see McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001: 64–67). After the high-intensity protest episode of 2008–11, the transnational domestic workers’ movement has had to face the challenge of developing regular transnational activities and maintaining the relations formed over wide spaces, involving many different actors – or in the words of Goldstone, ‘external fields’ (2004). Using McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly’s (2001: 66–67) two-trajectory model allows us to resituate the domestic workers’ struggle or view it from a different perspective: it should not be seen as an isolated struggle, but rather as a movement closely intertwined with other important

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struggles for recognition – in particular, the labour movement, but also the migrants’ rights struggles and the struggles for gender equality. All these recognition struggles demand recognition and redistribution (see the famous controversy between Fraser and Honneth 2003; see also the opening chapters of this volume by Gosewinkel and Rucht) as they address various and intertwined elements of social and historical justice. Strategic cross-movement relationship building therefore made it possible for domestic workers to achieve something that appeared impossible: namely, for a group of female workers in precarious jobs in the informal sector to sit at the negotiating table in Geneva and gain moral, political and legal recognition.

Notes  1. Among the provisions of ILO Convention 189 are the following: domestic workers need to be informed about the terms and conditions of their employment (article 7); they should enjoy standards ‘like workers in general’ (this provision is repeated in several articles); domestic workers should have a weekly rest period of at least 24 consecutive hours (article 10(2)); domestic workers should enjoy minimum wage coverage ‘where such coverage exists’ (article 11); domestic workers are entitled to affordable and easy access to dispute settlement (article 16); ILO member states should consult the organizations most representative of employers and workers (this provision is repeated in several articles).   2. A word of caution is called for on the use of the term ‘movement’ in this case. It may be more accurate to speak of a transnational campaign that is carried by different groups and movements. Given the rather short period under analysis, we will undoubtedly have to see how these processes develop in the future (see the conclusion of this chapter).   3. ‘To the extent that Europe is becoming an integrated polity, European integration might be creating an opportunity structure for the formation of transnational social movements’ (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 8).   4. The IUF is a federation that brings together 388 trade unions in 124 countries, representing a membership of over twelve million workers.  5. CONLACTRAHO is the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Household Workers.   6. Federatie Nederlandse Vakverenigingen (FNV) Bondgenoten is the Allied Dutch Trade Union Federation. It is the largest trade union in the Netherlands, with over 470,000 members in the retail, services, industrial, metal, agricultural, technology, temporary work, and transport sectors.   7. Information given to the author in informal conversations with Rebeca Pabon, organizer in the FNV Bondgenoten, in April 2012.   8. This was the case in 2011. In the first round of negotiations in 2010, however, the speaker of the employers’ group argued decisively against any extended rights for domestic workers as a matter of principle, not because his constituents’ interests were in danger (fieldwork observation).

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 9. On the contrary, as leading trade unionists in many countries also employ domestic workers, they, maybe for the first time, experience being an employer. This explains why even some trade unionists hesitate to give domestic workers more rights.

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Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion. Lanham, MD and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Heimeshoff, L.-M., and H. Schwenken. 2010. ‘Domestic Workers Worldwide. Summary of Available Statistical Data and Estimates’. International Labour Conference, 99th Session, June 2010. International Domestic Workers’ Network (IDWN), The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF), Geneva. (last accessed January 2014). Hobden, C. 2010. ‘Winning Fair Labour Standards for Domestic Workers: Lessons Learned from the Campaign for a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights in New York State’. GURN Discussion Paper No. 14. International Labour Organization (ILO), Global Union Research Network (GURN), Geneva. (last accessed January 2014). Honneth, A. 1992. Kampf um Anerkennung: zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hyman, R. 1994. ‘Changing Trade Union Identities and Strategies’, in R. Hyman and A. Ferner (eds), New Frontiers in European Industrial Relations. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 108–39. IDWN, International Domestic Workers’ Network. 2012. ‘NDWA Said It Was Shocked as the California Governor Vetoed the DWs Bill of Rights’, 2 October 2012. (last accessed January 2014). ILO, International Labour Organization. 2011. Domestic Workers Convention, No. 189, ‘Decent work for domestic workers’. (Adoption 16 June 2011; entry into force 5 September 2013). Geneva. (last accessed January 2014). ———. 2013. ‘Bringing Domestic Workers into the Formal Economy: Implementing ILO Convention No. 189’. A background paper for the Informal Meeting of Ministers of Labour and Social Affairs hosted by the Irish EU Presidency during the 102nd Session of the International Labour Conference, 18 June 2013, Geneva. (last accessed January 2014). Imig, D., and S. Tarrow. 2001. ‘Studying Contention in an Emerging Polity’, in D. Imig and S. Tarrow (eds), Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in an Emerging Polity. Lanham MD, Boulder, CO, New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 3–26. ITUC, International Trade Union Confederation. 2012. List of ‘12 by 12’ national partners in 89 countries, and international partners. (last accessed January 2014). Keck, M.E., and K. Sikkink. 1999. ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks in International and Regional Politics’, International Social Science Journal 51(159): 89–101. McAdam, D., and S. Tarrow. 2011. ‘Introduction: Dynamics of Contention Ten Years On’, Mobilization 16(1): 1–10. McAdam, D., S. Tarrow and C. Tilly. 2001. Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCammon, H.J., and N. Van Dyke. 2010. ‘Applying Qualitative Comparative Analysis to Empirical Studies of Social Movement Coalition Formation’, in N. Van Dyke and H.J. McCammon (eds), Strategic Alliances: Coalition Building and Social Movements. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 292–315. Nuriyati, D., and R. Pabon. 2009. ‘Migrant Domestic Workers Movement: Domestic Workers Groups and Trade Union Relations in the Case of Hong Kong and Amsterdam’, Master’s thesis. Kassel and Berlin: Global Labour University, University of Kassel and Berlin School of Economics and Law. Penninx, R., and J. Roosblad. 2000. ‘Introduction’, in R. Penninx and J. Roosblad (eds), Trade Unions, Immigration and Immigrants in Europe 1960–1993. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–19. Prügl, E. 1999. ‘What Is a Worker? Gender, Global Restructuring, and the ILO Convention on Homework’, in M.K. Meyer and E. Prügl (eds), Gender Politics in Global Governance. Lanham, MD and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 197–209. Raissiguier, C. 2010. Reinventing the Republic: Gender, Migration, and Citizenship in France. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Reese, E., C. Petit and D.S. Meyer. 2010. ‘Sudden Mobilization: Movement Crossovers, Threats, and the Surprising Rise of the U.S. Antiwar Movement’, in N. Van Dyke and H.J. McCammon (eds), Strategic Alliances: Coalition Building and Social Movements. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 266–91. Rose, F. 2000. Coalitions across the Class Divide: Lessons from the Labor, Peace, and Environmental Movements. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Schmitter, P.C., and W. Streeck. 1999. ‘The Organization of Business Interests: Studying the Associative Action of Business in Advanced Industrial Societies’, MPIfG Discussion Paper 99/1. Cologne: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. Schwenken, H. 2006. Rechtlos, aber nicht ohne Stimme. Politische Mobilisierungen um irreguläre Migration in die Europäische Union. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

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———. 2013. ‘Speedy Latin America, Slow Europe? – Regional Implementation Processes of the ILO Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers’. Paper presented at the UNRISD Conference, ‘Regional Governance of Migration and Socio-Political Rights: Institutions, Actors and Processes’, 14–15 January 2013, Palais des Nations, Geneva (unpublished manuscript). Schwenken, H., and R. Pabon. 2011. ‘Roundtable Conversation of Domestic Workers’ Activists on the ILO Convention’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 13(3): 444–50. Smith, P.R. 2000. ‘Organizing the Unorganizable: Private Paid Household Workers and Approaches to Employee Representation’, North Carolina Law Review 79: 45–110. Tarrow, S.G. 1996. ‘States and Opportunities: The Political Structuring of Social Movements’, in D. McAdam, J.D. McCarthy and M.N. Zald (eds), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 41–61. ———. (1994) 2011. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, revised and updated 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomson, M. 2009. ‘Workers Not Maids – Organising Household Workers in Mexico’, Gender and Development 17(2): 281–93. Van Dyke, N., and H.J. McCammon (eds). 2010. Strategic Alliances: Coalition Building and Social Movements. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press. Waldinger, R., and M.L. Lichter. 2003. How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Wright, E.O. 2000. ‘Working-Class Power, Capitalist-Class Interests, and Class Compromise’, American Journal of Sociology 105(4): 957–1002.

Helen Schwenken is Professor of Migration and Society at the University of Osnabrück’s Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS). She is also co-ordinator of the Research Network for Domestic Workers’ Rights (RN-DWR). Her main interests are the study of weak interests and social movements, in particular those of migrants and women, labour migration more in general and the genderedness of knowledge production. In 2015 she co-edited a special issue of the journal Peripherie on ‘Dis-Placement: Flüchtlinge zwischen Orten’ (Refugees in between Spaces).

Part III Enlarging the Scope

Chapter 8

Peace Movements and the Politics of Recognition in the Cold War

Holger Nehring

This chapter explores what an approach that highlights the politics of recognition might tell us about peace movements, and what, conversely, the example of peace movements might have to say for our conceptualization of a politics of recognition. At first sight, peace movements appear to be ideal candidates for examination under the rubric of a politics of recognition. As social movements, they stress specific moral norms that undergird the mainstream political process; they also offer an ideal example of an approach that moves beyond an interestbased explanation and that emphasizes the ‘moral grammar of social conflicts’, to use Axel Honneth’s phrase (Honneth 1994: 7). As social movements concerned with achieving peace, peace movements are also engaged in establishing mutual respect between states in the international system, as well as between persons in the realm of domestic politics, through the norms of civility and non-violence (Nehring 2013). They therefore offer good case studies for an analysis that seeks to highlight how norms and values that transcend the scope of the nation matter, and how to ‘allow for political action without an exclusive political identity and a territorially defined state’ (Thaa 2001: 504). At the same time, however, the building of a community of protesters may entail processes of exclusion. In other words, the peace activists’ proposal for a politics of recognition was itself highly ambiguous: their framing of recognition often harked back to national or other group-

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specific references without reflecting on the implications of this for the intersubjective transformation of social life that the politics of recognition implies. They therefore reflected what Elizabeth Povinelli has called ‘the cunning of recognition’ – namely, the fact that policies and politics of diversity and mutual understanding may lead, through the backdoor, to the reintroduction of locally or nationally specific norms (Povinelli 2002: 268). A particular problem for peace movements was that their members did not reflect on the role of national patterns of understanding, and moved straight from the personal to the global, which meant that national frames of references lingered in the background, without being open to discussion. This chapter seeks to bring out these ambiguities on the basis of examples from post-1945 peace activism in Britain and West Germany.1 The concluding section offers some more general thoughts on conceptualizing the politics of recognition. Against Jürgen Habermas’s and Axel Honneth’s conceptualization of recognition as based on transhistorical and self-evident norms of rational discourse (Habermas) and natural value (Honneth), I emphasize the fact that not only was the assertion of recognition itself subject to contestation and struggle, but also that the very definition of recognition was controversial, constructed, and open to debate. This means that historians and social scientists alike should engage with the historicity and specific temporal location of the politics of recognition.2 I trace these developments in a number of chronological and thematic steps that are meant to highlight the historicity – as opposed to the essentialized character – of the politics of recognition with regard to peace movements. I conclude with a number of conceptual remarks.

Recognition of Humanity: Peace Activism in the 1950s and 1960s Peace protesters’ visions of a politics of recognition were not simply out there. They had to be created in a dialogue with their opponents. Activists’ subjectivities developed in constant dialogue (and in a constant dialectic) with the society and political system they opposed. The extent to which activists did not regard their activism per se as the assertion of recognition is striking. Instead, they stressed the temporality of the politics of recognition and emphasized that recognition could only be realized in the future as a consequence of creating peace. Anti-nuclear protests in postwar Europe were facilitated by frames – that is, shared perceptions of the reality of a society – which, from the perspective of

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those who shared them, led to the unmanageable dangers of nuclear armament (Benford and Snow 2000). The movement’s frames expressed its respective renderings of the politics of recognition, and these renderings tell us something about the contemporary context in which the activists were operating. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the most important frame for anti-nuclear protests in Western Europe was a humanist rhetoric that carried idealistic undertones. There were many different versions and implications of this rhetoric. As Andrew Oppenheimer (2004: 371) and Benjamin Ziemann (2009: 372) have shown, some German pacifists such as Fritz von Unruh, formerly an officer in the Imperial German Army, quoted Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ and its declaration that ‘All men will be brothers’ to develop Christian humanism as the basis for world peace. Remembering National Socialism, West German Easter Marchers were motivated by guilty conscience. Consequently, they framed their protest against the bomb as ‘a commitment to human rights’, which should henceforth define German national identity.3 Activists in the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), by contrast, while referring to global humanist traditions, harked back to the rhetoric of non-conformist Protestantism to describe ‘the bomb as the symbol of the break-up of community into alienated human beings’ (Ziemann 2009: 373).4 Their response was to argue for the rebuilding of a genuinely British morality as a contribution to global humanism (Hughes 2008). This could come in two different incarnations, one stressing individual responsibility towards ‘the world’, the other linking these individual responsibilities to a national frame of reference.5 Similarly, in a popular campaign song from the early 1960s, CND claimed to represent the ‘Family of Man’. It thus conjured up a global form of kinship, ‘the biggest on earth’. The song claimed that it transcended social, geographical and religious divisions, and thus connected ‘the miner in Rhondda, the coolie in Peking, men across the world who reap and plough and spin’. People all over the world were united in this family, ‘whatever the creed, or the colour of the skin’, and they would join ranks in their anger and moral revulsion against nuclear weapons and against ‘the men of war who want to kill’. Written in 1962, the song expressed ‘a vision of a peaceful world society’ that was connected through ‘solidarity’.6 This song expressed what Christina Klein has called a ‘global imaginary of integration’. It harked back to the 1955 ‘Family of Man’ exhibitions that were set up by the US government to highlight the tolerance and freedom of ‘Western’ societies, while underscoring the oppression of ‘totalitarian’ forms of government (Klein 2003: 23).7 Ironically, activists who sang this song thus also wrote themselves into the discourse common

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at the time that pitted a beleaguered ‘man’ against the rise of ‘the masses’ in an anonymous society – although by some contemporary observers they would themselves have been regarded as the very representation of mass society.8 Paradoxically, therefore, CND supporters deployed a hegemonic Cold War language of recognition in voicing their fundamental critique of some of the parameters of Cold War international politics. However, they never questioned the fact that the organizing framework of the exhibition was a worldview that generally ignored racial discrimination in the Western world, and one that did not necessarily regard a common humanity as the fulfilment of a lived pluralism, but was essentially the expression of a pluralism whose terms were set by the United States and other developed countries. These paradoxes of CND’s politics of recognition also found expression in the metaphors used. Activists expressed their visions of ‘global connectedness’ with metaphors that invoked ‘notions of intimacy and face-to-face interaction’, in particular, the family (which was, incidentally, also at the heart of the philosophies of those who have written about the politics of recognition ever since Hegel): ‘The whole wide world is dad and mother to me’. But CND’s transnational, global rhetoric was only one important element of its public appeal (Ziemann 2009: 355). At the same time, the campaigners presented their ‘quest for … unilateral nuclear disarmament as an attempt … to restore the moral authority’ and ‘political leadership of Britain’ in the world after the demise of its colonial Empire (ibid.: 356).9 The global rendering of the politics of recognition was therefore not simply an expression of a global community of protesters that grew quasi-organically out of the transnational networks in which the activists were engaged.10 Instead, ‘globalness’ was directly connected to national, if not local, ways of engaging with the dangers of the Cold War arms race. ‘Global’ was loaded with a number of specific assumptions about who was – and who was not – a member of the legitimate community of protesters. In the Federal Republic of Germany, debates focused primarily on establishing West German activists as legitimate members of international society, who had shed all of the elements of Germany’s National Socialist past and who could vouch for West Germany’s alleged transition from total war to total peace. Many West German protesters regarded it as Germany’s national mission to shed all allegiance to national policies. They argued in favour of a policy that ‘did not serve the interests of one side or the other in a country, but that served a new, worldwide security policy’.11 West German protesters sang songs, often imported from Britain, which pointed out that they marched neither against the

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West nor the East, but for the world.12 They thereby perpetuated a view that regarded Germany as the centre of global politics and the Cold War.13 But even if West German protesters looked towards supranational solutions to the German question, they maintained a commitment to national self-determination premised on humanist values (Andres 1958: 302). They now expressed nationhood in terms of democratic rights and national culture (Oppenheimer 2004: 371).14 In Britain, arguments for global humanity developed by transnational protest groups served to maintain the liberal discourse of empire that had gained special prominence through the rendering of the Second World War as a ‘people’s war’ in which the mother country had a special political and moral responsibility to establish civility around the world (Nehring 2005). ‘Lift up your heads and be proud’, a group of waiting supporters proclaimed through a loudspeaker on the first Aldermaston March in 1958, ‘the lead has been given to the English people. Britain must take up that lead in the world. “England, arise, the long, long night is over.”’15 A unilateral British foreign policy would restore Britain’s ‘greatness in the moral sense’.16 British unilateral nuclear disarmament would allow the British nation to utilize its special relationship to the Commonwealth and thus play a leading role in Third World development: ‘A Britain that publicly told a world, still aware of her resounding history, that she was siding at least with the forces of sense, and reason, and right, would rally behind her thousands of people from the non-communist world’.17 Most CND supporters linked their demands for a reinvigorated national community to a demand to bring morality back into politics, primarily by strengthening the British public sphere and civil society: ‘The people of Britain today badly need a sense of purpose’.18 This political vision emphasized the moral strength and decency of the British population, which would provide the basis for Britain’s leadership in the struggle for equality and fairness both at home and in international relations (Howe 2000). British protesters thus linked their demands to a positive endorsement of their nation’s past, specifically the colonial heritage; for them, the CND meant a reassertion of ‘world influence’ as the manifestation of the right kind of nationalism.19 From this perspective, the transnational politics of recognition in the British and West German peace movements is no longer self-evident. Rather, we have to analyse it in the context of national and local debates.20

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Recognition through Exclusion: Victims and Perpetrators This idealist and humanist framing of the politics of recognition, which highlighted the importance of transcending national boundaries while drawing on national tropes, gave way to more tangible interpretations during the revival of the protests against nuclear weapons in the late 1970s and 1980s. Instead of focusing on visions of a global community that was anchored in local traditions, activists now highlighted the seemingly national character of the weapons that they opposed; they emphasized the fact that the cruise missiles that were to be stationed in various European countries were American weapons and that US politicians were the principal advocates of their deployment.21 Critics focused on Ronald Reagan, who took office in January 1981, and his Secretary of State, the former general, Alexander Haig. Their critics linked the argument of Reagan and Haig, that the stationing of the missiles was a necessary reaction to the increasing number of Soviet SS-20 missiles, to a ‘militaristic’ US policy after the end of the Vietnam War.22 Thus, although many West European politicians had argued in favour of stationing missiles since the late 1970s, the West German peace movement merely framed them as ‘supporting actors’, as Ziemann has shown (Ziemann 2008: 249–50).23 Such interventions highlight a central ambiguity in the West German peace protesters’ politics of recognition. They often appealed to proponents of national neutralism, if not of racist and ethnocentric forms of nationalism; but they also tapped into notions of ‘the people’ as an expression of popular sovereignty that had been prominent among the liberal and democratic Left in Germany since the nineteenth century. However, both framings assumed that the national ordering of regimes of political sovereignty was a given, and was not fundamentally questioned (Ziemann 2009: 377–78).24 The framing of the politics of peace from such a perspective, underscoring the recognition of popular sovereignty, thus sutured the politics of recognition of individual survival with the language of national sovereignty. Conversely and problematically, however, such interventions demonstrate how ‘the transfer of civil society discourse’ to transnational themes bypasses the ‘spatial borders of democracy’ by ignoring the institutional parameters of democratic rule. Thus the transnational politics of recognition appears primarily in terms of morality and community, and therefore represents what Winfried Thaa has called ‘lean citizenship’ (Thaa 2013: 511): transnational recognition, it seems, can only be had at the expense of losing some mechanisms of civic participation (ibid.: 512).

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This problem is also evident in the fact that the politics of recognition in 1980s German peace activism was driven by the desire to establish personal security and assert personal desires for security vis-à-vis national security policies. Whereas both governments defined ‘security’ in terms of an equilibrium of forces between East and West, which made the stationing of new weapons necessary, protesters argued for an ‘alternative’ form of security that emphasized personal needs. The West German population was already highly sensitive to their own security as well as to environmental issues that transcended national boundaries (Engels 2006; Meyer and Kirchhof 2014). This blurring of the boundaries between public and private, personal and political, was itself a political and public act and statement: the boundary between public and private had collapsed in the wake of the protests around ‘1968’, with significant consequences for how the space of the politics of recognition was measured out (Reichardt 2014). Activists expressed their desire for recognition by referring to their status as victims of a possible (if not probable) future nuclear war – something that reminded them of the Second World War. Benjamin Ziemann has shown in his important article on the imagery of the West German peace movement how 1980’s peace activists attempted to establish a link between the war of annihilation instigated by the Germans and the subsequent Allied bombings of German cities, on the one hand, and nuclear war, on the other. This link can be established especially well from a poster advertising the Second Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in Berlin in 1982, cited by Ziemann. The poster depicts a medic in a bloody and torn white overall, apparently dead, lying in a devastated landscape. In the middle of the picture, just slightly to the left, and slightly veiled in the settling dust, we can see the ruins of the Emperor William Memorial Church in Berlin, which came to be the one of the most important symbols of the bombing war (Ziemann 2008: 250–52). The way in which peace movement leaflets and flyers represented a possible nuclear apocalypse made the discourse of ‘victimization’ even more explicit: they connected nuclear armaments to the United States as the dominant occupying power in Germany and the main perpetrator of potential thermonuclear holocaust, but only indirectly relating the nuclear arsenal situated on German soil and its planned expansion to the actions of German politicians. This discourse was often gendered, emphasizing the helpless Germans, often characterized as female or children, as the victims of the ‘macho’ policies of the ‘cowboy Reagan’ (Ziemann 2008: 249).25

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Through such images of destruction, as Ziemann has shown, peace movement activists not only tapped into and perpetuated the German victimization discourse, they also constructed their fears as the only appropriate way of dealing with what they conceived as a ‘pre-war situation’ (Ziemann 2008). Ziemann stresses the specific temporality that characterized the activists’ rendering of the politics of recognition in the 1980s. They shared an interpretation with their counterparts in the 1950s and early 1960s that made German postwar memories constitutive elements of the Cold War as a perpetual pre-war. Accordingly, many images, symbols and texts used by peace activists showed the world as it appeared before the portended nuclear strike in order to highlight what it was that they sought to protect (ibid.: 254).26 Yet movement activists in the 1980s went further: they no longer regarded recognition as an outcome in the future that would result from creating ‘peace’, however defined. Instead, they connected their understanding of German victimhood with a politics of recognition that regarded activism itself as a way to create peace and recognition for their goals in the present. Their community thus became a way of living peace, then and there. Protests therefore appeared less as a means to an end than as an end in itself: hence, ‘peace requires movement’ was a popular slogan in 1982 (Ziemann 2008: 256).27 These earlier images of peace activism expressed the aims of overcoming fear and creating security. Protesting for peace itself became the realization of the end of fear (ibid.: 254).28 Thus, inwardness and emotionality were at the core of the movement’s politics of recognition: inner experiences and fears stood against external societal woes and environmental disasters. Creating ‘peace’ became not only a political demand, but also a precondition for maintaining sanity and humaneness. This not only redefined activism, but also raised the question of political representation. ‘Fear is going round the Federal Republic’, a contemporary movement publication declared: ‘Will there be an atomic war? … Will the people’s fears reach the rulers? What do ‘those up there’ [our policymakers/rulers] think and feel? … The people have awoken, and the rulers are sensing their alarm’.29 Acknowledging and publicizing fears thus became a form of personal and societal healing: ‘Politicians’, the activist, intellectual, and television presenter Franz Alt exclaimed, ‘want to talk us out of fear. Fear, they tell us, is not a good tool for the future. It depends on whether we have reason to fear. Unfounded fears cause illness. Well-founded fears are healthy. Fears of an atomic holocaust are well founded’.30 The ‘emotional regime’ that characterized peace movement discourses in 1980s West Germany thus transformed the passive situation of possible (if not probable) victimhood in a nuclear war into a form of political

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activism, because it helped to make the political opponent visible as someone who did not take these fears seriously.31 ‘We want to live in peace,’ an activist declared, ‘and we don’t want to live in perpetual fear of atomic war’.32 And a poster, modifying the visual theme of the 1981 Protestant Church convention, exclaimed: ‘Thou shalt not fear – defend yourselves’.33

Recognition as Individuality: Pluralism and Feminism This interplay between inclusion and exclusion, moving towards the future and memories of the past, in the peace movement’s politics of recognition becomes particularly apparent when we consider women’s peace camps. Women peace protesters were able to overcome national frames of reference, and found a transnational language of protest. In practice, however, it was, as Belinda Davis has shown, problematic for the recognition of their policies in politics and society more generally that they chose as the reservoir of political concepts a field in which inequalities were at the time directly obvious: the issue of gender and political power (Davis 2009; Ziemann 2009: 380–81). In September 1981, a number of women from Wales, linked to the group ‘Women for Life on Earth’, marched from Cardiff to Greenham Common, Berkshire. Greenham Common was the site of a Royal Air Force base, now used by the US Air Force and earmarked for the deployment of cruise missiles (Ziemann 2009: 382–83).34 The women were influenced by reports about a walk from Copenhagen to Paris that was organized by women peace activists from Scandinavian countries. After their arrival, the Welsh women decided to set up a peace camp outside the base. After substantial controversy, the women decided to turn the camp into a women-only protest, and in February 1982 asked the few remaining men to leave. As Benjamin Ziemann has stressed, this decision highlighted the divisive nature of the politics of recognition at work among female British peace activists at the time. It also exposed the activists to hostile coverage of their camp by British mass media, which portrayed them derogatorily as ‘lesbians with unshaved legs’ (Ziemann 2009: 383).35 To these stereotypes, the women responded ironically by calling themselves ‘brazen hussies’ (ibid.).36 Unlike female peace activists in the 1950s and 1960s, Greenham activists’ politics of recognition no longer made reference to a substantive form of ‘femininity’ and feminism embodied in motherhood (ibid.).37 Instead, as Ziemann, following Sasha Roseneil, has argued, their framing of recognition was characterized by the activists’ explicit refusal to draw

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on such essentialized notions. Activists rejected ‘traditional labels and gender roles, also with regard to the vicious cycle that had left women in bereavement at the loss of their sons and husbands killed in the First and Second World Wars (ibid.: 383–84). While, as Ziemann points out, earlier press releases had announced the march to Greenham ‘in terms of women’s roles as carers and nurturers’, some activists had already begun to frame their protest in the context of a ‘feminist discourse about women’s exclusion from political life’ with ‘materialist’ arguments.38 This materialist argumentation harked back to earlier forms of anti-militarism, and stressed the financial and economic costs of the nuclear arms race: ‘We can’t afford medication or proper education, but we must pay, a million a day, so that Britain can disappear’ (Ziemann 2009: 383).39 Thus, peace protesters at Greenham sought to frame their campaign for the recognition of women’s roles and material interests within the context of established British society. Accordingly, Anne Pettitt, one of the original organizers of the march from Cardiff to the Greenham Common airbase, explained her desire to protest as fundamental dissatisfaction with political leaders who ‘squander vast sums of money and human resources on weapons of mass destruction while we can hear in our hearts the millions of human beings throughout the world whose needs cry out to be met’ (ibid.; Pettitt 2006: 76). Thus, as Ziemann and Roseneil have highlighted, overall the Greenham Common peace camp was about sustaining a community of women that was based precisely not on essentialist versions of recognizing its politics of womanhood (Ziemann 2009: 384; Roseneil 1995). Instead, these women advocated a ‘non-essentialist feminism’, which accommodated ‘a wide variety of possible personal and sexual orientations’. At the same time, as Ziemann has argued, Greenham Common activists rejected what they regarded as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s short-sighted focus on nuclear weapons in isolation as well as characteristically ‘male’ bureaucratic or technocratic governmental decision making. The power of this double critique of these ‘masculine’ forms of political engagement rested precisely on the understanding that the women’s own political engagement was characterized by the ‘diversity’ of female roles and identities. It recalled earlier attempts to explore the notions of ‘the political’ in personal life, which was prevalent in feminist movements in Britain and elsewhere from the late 1960s onwards (Ziemann 2009: 384).40 For Greenham activists, political action was therefore primarily about asserting the recognition of what activists defined as the ‘autonomy’ of personal choices and political decisions. This autonomy, they argued, could best be achieved not through mass media communication, but

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through direct, face-to-face interaction in groups that resembled and fulfilled the function of the family. They regarded these meetings as therapeutic – both for themselves and for the polity.41 Thus, feminist peace activists sought to gain recognition for their personhood against arguments of technocratic necessity, and bureaucratic rationality more generally. They therefore established a framing of anti-nuclear weapons activism that was potentially at odds with those interpretations by more mainstream groups who sought to establish recognition for the dangers of nuclear armaments by drawing precisely on arguments of scientific expertise and technocratic rationality. While mainstream activists engaged governmental defence planners on their own terms critically, using statistical calculations, graphs, and other models of the nuclear arms race, such arguments that stressed ‘objectivity’ found little support among Greenham Common activists. The latter deliberately framed their resistance as one carried out by non-experts, and emphasized the importance of ‘express[ing] themselves and their feelings’. In stressing the plurality and diversity of their own feelings, the activists at the same time established a new boundary between ‘male’ instrumental rationality and power politics, and ‘female’ emotions.42

Reconceptualizing the Politics of Recognition In asserting their own agency and requesting recognition for their activism, peace movements challenged their governments’ ‘geopolitical privacy’ (Mann 1988: 33). Although they were operating in fundamentally different areas, peace movements and government supporters criticized a specific form of ‘democracy’ that had emerged after 1945 and was based on governmental, bureaucratic, and party-political rule, and relegated issues of national security to the governmental and bureaucratic apparatuses (Conway 2004). Governments and their supporters tended to stress the stability of the arms race, while admitting manageable risks; protesters voiced a different interpretation of the Cold War and the arms race, stressing the real and present dangers posed by nuclear weapons, thus creating an alternative understanding of the Cold War reality. To this end, peace movement activists drew attention to violence that went beyond the injury of human bodies, highlighting the psychosomatic impact of fear as a much deeper and fundamental form of violence (Biess 2009: 215–43; Nehring 2007a: 343–71). These discussions often combined arguments about the dangers of the nuclear arms race with arguments about the dangers of environmental pollution, so much so that contemporaries frequently labelled this approach ‘eco-pacifism’ (Linse 1988; Mende

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2011). Accordingly, rather than looking for governmental solutions to address these concerns, movement activists sought to transform society by transforming themselves; in so doing, they emphasized such notions as reconciliation, tolerance and solidarity (Davis et al. 2010). Paradoxically, however, through their opposition, German peace activists continued to mirror, rather than transcend, Cold War politics. In other words, we cannot simply read the peace movement’s politics of recognition as a more authentic representation than governmental expressions of a moral economy in German society. Axel Honneth’s work suggests just this in connection with his discussion of solidarity movements (Honneth 1994: 148–210 and 259). Jürgen Habermas’s distinction between (technocratic) systems and (authentic) realms of experience – lifeworlds – that must be preserved is quite close to this essentialist interpretation, although Habermas allows for the discursive construction of authenticity through autonomous discourses rather than, as Honneth proposes, assuming quasi-natural and essentialist forms of social interaction that must be protected (Habermas 1981: vol. 1, p. 107 and vol. 2, p. 192). As these case studies of peace activism in post-1945 Western Europe have shown, this distinction between the authentic morality of the protesters and the technocratic vocabulary of the political decision makers was itself a result of the political debate over the politics of recognition. Historians and social scientists would do well to acknowledge the historicity of such forms of interactions.43 Studying peace movements under the rubric of the politics of recognition not only highlights the historicity of activists’ claims and the forms in which they expressed them; it also reveals the ambivalent contents of the politics of recognition that Axel Honneth does not discuss. Honneth and others used the concept initially to develop a ‘normative theory of the social’, without fully considering the dialectical and dialogical character of that idea or the processes of exclusion at work. However, peace movement activism is not merely a struggle for recognition; it is also a struggle over recognition, in which different claims to different forms of recognition clash. This is briefly mentioned in Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s excursus on the topic in the work they did during the 1980s (Laclau and Mouffe 1991: 164). Thus, contrary to what Honneth and others seem to imply, the shape of the political and the moral community that was at stake and that grounded these claims was by no means given (Honneth 1994: 207). Rather, it is best seen as a constantly moving target, itself constructed through the politics of recognition. Individual subjectivities and communal claims were dialectically related in the politics of recognition, as the example of female peace activism shows especially well. In particular, there is an

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unresolved ambiguity over whether peace movement activists themselves needed to have suffered from a lack of recognition in establishing ‘peace’ and policies, or whether the question is not one that emphasizes the importance of imagining a potential threat to individual survival in the future. In other words, ‘futurizing’ the moral claim and, more generally, its temporality are the keys to understanding the kind of politics of recognition that peace movement activists have propagated. Temporality is an important aspect that Honneth and others have neglected, but it is one that is especially important for peace movements (Kater and Kümmel 2003; Ziemann 2008). While Honneth claims that his normative theory takes the intersubjective character of the politics of recognition into account (i.e. that recognition means that both parties change in the process), his potentially essentialist definition of what it is that can be recognized makes this transformation, in practice, improbable if not impossible (Honneth 1994: 276). Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, peace movements underscore one crucial element that was present in Gottfried Wilhelm Hegel’s work on recognition in the early nineteenth century, but that appears only very remotely in Honneth’s rendering of the problem: namely, the importance of experiences and memories related to ‘manmade mass death’ for the emergence of the politics of recognition (Wyschogrod 1985), and the complicated and dialectic interplay between citizenship and the competing demands of states for national security, even at times against their own citizens (Geyer 2001). Honneth follows Andreas Wildt’s suggestion to read Hegel’s interpretation of a ‘fight for recognition’ metaphorically, so that violence in Hegel becomes (as it does with Pierre Bourdieu) ‘symbolic violence’ (Wildt 1982; Bourdieu 1989). This move, however, omits a key aspect of the ambiguity of the politics of recognition that conjoins claims for civility directly with experiences and memories of real physical violence. In other words, if we follow Hegel’s original suggestion literally, we are able to glimpse how peace movements can bring to light the connections between ‘pain and prosperity’ in twentieth-century European history,44 and the fractured nature of the politics of recognition that arises from this. Thus, reading the temporality of the politics of recognition together with its anchoring of twentieth-century mass violence, the experience of the Cold War and the memories of mass death in the Second World War appeared to constitute a single phenomenon. This was true for West German activists in particular. Paradoxically, activists adopted and furthered the discourse of victimization that characterized more mainstream memories of the Second World War: they sought recognition as victims. Michael Geyer has argued that not only this link but also

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its meaning had special repercussions in West Germany, creating a specifically German Cold War Angst (Geyer 2001). It was the protesters’ emphasis on healing and therapy that, over the last few years of the Cold War, allowed for normalization of the Cold War arms race in West German politics, especially after large-scale activism stopped once the Pershing II missiles had been deployed in the winter of 1983/84.

Conclusions It is apposite to use these empirical findings to offer a critique of the normative claims inherent in the interpretation of the politics of recognition put forward by Honneth and others. Not only are the claims regarding a community of morality far from straightforward, the demands issuing from such communities are directly tied to experiences of death and loss. The politics of recognition in the twentieth-century European context was possible against the backdrop of experiences of mass violence; civility and claims to non-violence were dialectically tied to experiences and memories of mass death. Claims to peace making were born out of the experience of war making. This brought with it its own exclusionary practices: in West Germany, in particular, the problematic rendering of the Germans as victims of past and future ‘Allied bombings’ (Ziemann, 2008 and 2009); in Britain, the revival of colonial tropes of a global community. Thus, peace activists were dialectically tied to the contemporary context in which they emerged; their protests against a world that they rejected also helped to re-create that very same world. The peace movement activists’ politics of recognition was therefore not only dialogical with regard to its opponents (state authorities), it was also characterized by a constant dialogue with the past, which was often imagined primarily as a national community of values. This temporality of dialogue is another important element of the politics of recognition that an examination of peace movement activism brings to light. Paradoxically, it is probably primarily because of the importance of social movement activism in German political culture (and perhaps also West European and transatlantic political culture) that we are able to discuss this question today. The link between social–scientific concepts and historical actors, and the problems it poses for historical-critical investigation, is another aspect on which light can be shed by considering peace movements within the framework of politics of recognition. This might imply that no direct conceptual implications for a markedly ‘transnational’ politics of recognition can or will emerge from this examination, because the fundamental element undergirding the peace

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activists’ politics of recognition is global moral claims making; and this has had very specific national and local resonance. It was precisely through metaphors of globality/globalness that peace movement activists were able to transcend the regime of territoriality that was structured around nation-states. They conceived of communities, interests and phenomena as ‘global’ in order to go beyond the order and boundaries of nation-states in post-1945 West European history. At the same time, however, peace movement activists continued to be deeply embedded in local and national frames of reference and, in particular, they replicated the world order as a global order that was created from the threat of thermonuclear holocaust (Eley 2007). In that sense, peace activists’ politics circumvented the vexing question of the recognition of pluralism and equality in international politics – their direct move from local-national to global politics meant that they now had and nurtured direct awareness of the problem. Their scepticism towards the war-making power of states – in West Germany in the form of ‘injured citizenship’ (Michael Geyer) – meant that they also bypassed the problem of how to translate the moral discussions in their social movements into the broader and fundamental question of how such mutual recognition within the movements related to the broader issue of creating authority and legitimacy for such a politics of recognition, namely in the context of institutions (Geyer 2001: 385–86). This is also, as Winfried Thaa has argued, one of the problematic blind spots of theories of global civil society, as developed by Jürgen Habermas, David Held and others (Thaa 2001). The very feature that made peace activists an especially good case study for a transnational politics of recognition – their loose organization and their emphasis on the morality of decision making – is at the same time responsible for the limitations and weaknesses of these models. For the peace activists examined in this chapter, the boundaries between the local, the national and the global were fluid and direct; peace activists completely subverted the kind of thinking behind the term ‘transnational’, despite their emphasis on the importance of the British or German national experience. In other words, ‘transnationalization’ might not per se be relevant for conceptualizing the history of peace activists’ politics of recognition. By taking the global metaphors of social movements’ transnational recognition as read, empirical and theoretical research has also implicitly adopted some of the activists’ assumptions about morality and politics. It may, therefore, not be very well equipped to analyse one of the key challenges in a transnational politics of recognition: namely, how the political promise of equality sits with the social reality of inequality, and how the perception of global patterns sits with the structures of local differences (Thaa 2001; Zürn, Binder and Ecker-Ehrhardt 2012).45

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Notes  1. I owe a great intellectual debt to conversations over the years with Professor Benjamin Ziemann (University of Sheffield). Relying, in particular, on Ziemann’s (2008) innovative work on the visual framing of peace activism in post-1945 West Germany and his work on national framings (2009).   2. This is the point emphasized by van Rahden (2011).   3. For this and what follows (including the examples provided), see Ziemann (2009: esp. 372–73), following Oppenheimer (2004, 2007). See also Slobodian (2008).   4. Quotation: Ziemann (2009: 373), following Nehring (2005: 567–68).   5. Arrowsmith (1981) cited after Ziemann (2009: 373 and 355).  6. Ziemann (2009): 355. See Nehring (2013: chapter 4). For the song, see Fred Dallas, ‘The Family of Man’ (ca. 1962), quoted in Nehring (2004: 34–35).   7. On the exhibition’s radical potentials, see Turner (2012).   8. On the background, see Greif (2015).   9. See also Hinton (1989), Nehring (2007b) and Burkett (2010). 10. See the arguments in Iriye (2004) and Wittner (2009). 11. Oppenheimer (2004: 360): Informationen zur Abrüstung, no. 3, September 1963, 6: Federal Archives Koblenz [BAK] ZSg. 1-262/3. See also ‘Scheidung der Geister und Wege’. Hamburg n.d.: BAK Zsg. 1-214/1, 4. 12. ‘Unser Marsch ist eine gute Sache’ (1963), quoted in Baier (2002: 132). 13. Flyer, ‘Aufruf zum Ostermarsch 1964 (Kurzfassung)’ [Call to the Easter March 1964 (short version)], Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Special Collection: ‘Protest, Resistance and Utopia in the Federal Republic of Germany’, Gertrud Wolferts Collection, SBe 540, folder ‘Friedensbewegung 50er und 60er Jahre’ [Peace Movements of the 1950s and 1960s]. 14. Andrew Oppenheimer (2004: 371). 15. Peace News, 11 April 1958, p. 8. 16. The Bishop of Llandaff at a CND meeting in Central Hall, Westminster, 1965, quoted in ‘Give Us Our Independence’, Sanity, October 1965, p. 3. See also ‘War in Vietnam’, Peace News, 10 May 1963, p. 1. 17. Sanity, December 1961, p. 2; CND Manifesto (1962), Sanity, March 1962, p. 1; Sanity, January 1963, p. 4. 18. Frank Beswick in Sanity, December 1961, p. 2. 19. See Sanity, August 1963, p. 10. See, more generally, Burkett (2010). 20. For an excellent account of how West German protesters’ politics of recognition was transformed in the light of an engagement with the structures of the global Cold War, see Slobodian (2012). 21. Again, what follows is indebted to Ziemann (2009: 373–74). 22. As a contemporary voice, cf. Diner (1996). 23. Cited from Ziemann (2008: 249–250): ‘Ein Mann geht über Leichen’ [literally, ‘a man walks over corpses’, meaning ‘a man will stop at nothing’] poster, Socialist German Workers Youth, 1982, Archiv der sozialen Demokratie (AdsD), 6/ PLKA006334), and Ziemann (2009: 374). 24. See also Brandt and Groh (1992). 25. See also Davis (2004).

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26. Cited from Ziemann (2008: 254): Die Grünen [The Green Party], ‘Ein bewaffneter Friede ist die Ruhe vor dem Sturm’ [Armed Peace Is the Calm Before the Storm] 1983, AdsD, 6/PLKA020920. 27. Cited from Ziemann (2008: 256): ‘Frieden braucht Bewegung’, Koordinierungsausschuß der Friedensbewegung [Peace Movement Coordinating Committee], 1986, AdsD, 6/PLKA030472. 28. Cited from Ziemann (2008: 254): Komitee für Frieden, Abrüstung und Zusammenarbeit [Committee for Peace, Disarmament and Cooperation], 1980: AdsD, 6/PLUA001863. See, more generally, Schregel (2011: esp. 137–84). 29. Author’s translation; see Luber (1983: 16). 30. Author’s translation; see Alt (1983: 59). 31. On the notion of ‘emotional regime’, see Reddy (2001). On the background and historicization, see Biess and Gross (2014). 32. Author’s translation; cf. Die Zeit, 19 June 1981, p. 52. 33. Ibid. 34. See also Roseneil (1995, 1999). 35. See also Jolly (2003). 36. Cited from Ziemann (2009: 383): From the song ‘Brazen Hussies’, reprinted in The Danish Peace Academy, Documentation: Greenham Common Peace Camp Songbook, Working paper 2, p. 54, available from (last accessed 9 November 2011). See Roseneil (1995: 39–40). 37. For that transnational discourse, cf. Irene Stoehr (2002). 38. For this and the following, see the argument and sources in Ziemann (2009: 383) and Roseneil (1995: 34). 39. Cited from Ziemann (2009: 383): From the song ‘Trident, Trident’ (Greenham Common Peace Camp Songbook) – see note 36 above. 40. For a fascinating study on the emergence of this thinking, cf. Rowbotham (2000); for the background, see Cook (2013) and Setch (2002). 41. On the links between therapy and group work since the 1970s, see Ziemann (2006). 42. Cited from Ziemann (2009: 384). 43. This is also highlighted in Nina Verheyen’s (2010) brilliant study on forms of communication in the Federal Republic Germany. 44. See Betts and Eghigian (2003), as well as Nehring and Pharo (2008). 45. On the general pattern: Schmitt (2004); Rosanvallon (2013).

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Baier, Frank. 2002. ‘Ruhrgebiet—Leben, Kämpfen, Solidarisieren’, in Robert von Zahn (ed.), Folk und Liedermacher an Rhein und Ruhr. Münster: agenda-Verlag, pp. 129–93. Benford, Robert D., and David A. Snow. 2000. ‘Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment’, Annual Review of Sociology 26: 611–39. Betts, Paul, and Greg Eghigian (eds). 2003. Pain and Prosperity: Reconsidering Twentieth-Century German History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Biess, Frank. 2009. ‘“Everybody has a Chance”: Nuclear Angst, Civil Defence, and the History of Emotions in Postwar West Germany’, German History 27(2): 215–43. Biess, Frank, and Daniel M. Gross. 2014. ‘Introduction: Emotional Returns’, in Science and Emotions after 1945. Chicago: Chicago University Press, pp. 1–38. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1989. ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, Sociological Theory 7(1): 14–25. Brandt, Peter, and Dieter Groh. 1992. ‘Vaterlandslose Gesellen’. Sozialdemokratie und Nation 1860–1990. Munich: C.H. Beck. Burkett, Jodi. 2010. ‘Re-defining British Morality: “Britishness” and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 1958–68’, Twentieth Century British History 21(2): 184–205. Conway, Martin. 2004. ‘The Rise and Fall of Western Europe’s Democratic Age, 1945–1973’, Contemporary European History 13(1): 67–88. Cook, Matt. 2013. ‘“Gay Times”: Identity, Locality, Memory, and the Brixton Squats in 1970’s London’, Twentieth Century British History 24(1): 84–109. Davis, Belinda. 2004. ‘The Gender of War and Peace: Rhetoric in the West German Peace Movement of the Early 1980s’, Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen 32: 99–130. ———. 2009. ‘Europe is a Peaceful Woman, America is a War-Mongering Man? The 1980s Peace Movement in NATO-Allied Europe’, Themenportal Europäische Geschichte (2009). http://www.europa.clio-online.de/site/lang__de/ ItemID__409/mid__11428/40208214/default.aspx (last accessed 9 November 2011). Davis, Belinda, et al. (eds). 2010. Changing the World, Changing Oneself: Political Protest and Collective Identities in West Germany and the U.S. in the 1960s/70s. London and New York: Berghahn Books. Diner, Dan. 1996. America in the Eyes of the Germans: An Essay on Anti-Americanism. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. Eley, Geoff. 2007. ‘Historicizing the Global, Politicizing Capital: Giving the Present a Name’, History Workshop Journal 63(1): 154–88. Engels, Jens-Ivo. 2006. Naturpolitik in der Bundesrepublik. Ideenwelt und politische Verhaltensstile in Naturschutz und Umweltbewegung 1950–1980. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag. Geyer, Michael. 2001. ‘Cold War Angst: The Case of West German Opposition to Rearmament and Nuclear Weapons’, in Hanna Schissler (ed.), The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 376–408. Greif, Michael. 2015. The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933–1973. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, in two volumes (volume 1: Handlungsrationalität und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung; volume 2: Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernunft). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hinton, James. 1989. Protests and Visions: Peace Politics in Twentieth-Century Britain. London: Hutchinson Radius. Honneth, Axel. 1994. Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Howe, Stephen. 2000. ‘Labour and International Affairs’, in Duncan Tanner, Pat Thane and Nick Tiratsoo (eds), Labour’s First Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 119–50. Hughes, Michael. 2008. Conscience and Conflict: Methodism, Peace and War in the Twentieth Century. London: Epworth Press. Iriye, Akira. 2004. Global Commmunity: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jolly, Margaretta. 2003. ‘“We are the Web”. Letter Writing and the 1980s Women’s Peace Movement’, Prose Studies 26(1–2): 196–218. Kater, Thomas, and Albert Kümmel (eds). 2003. Der verweigerte Friede. Der Verlust der Friedensbildlichkeit in der Moderne. Bremen: Donat-Verlag. Klein, Christina. 2003. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961. Berkeley: University of California Press. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1991. Hegemonie und radikale Demokratie. Zur Dekonstruktion des Marxismus. Vienna: Passagen Verlag. Linse, Ulrich. 1988. Ökopax und Anarchie. Eine Geschichte der ökologischen Bewegungen in Deutschland. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag. Luber, Burkhard. 1983. Bedrohungsatlas Bundesrepublik Deutschland (with a preface by Robert Jungk). Wuppertal: Jugenddienst Verlag. Mann, Michael. 1988. States, War and Capitalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Mende, Silke. 2011. ‘Nicht rechts, nicht links, sondern vorn’. Eine Geschichte der Gründungsgrünen. Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag. Meyer, Jan-Henrik and Astrid Mignon Kirchhof (eds). 2014. ‘Global Protest against Nuclear Power: Transfer and Transnational Exchange in the 1970s and 1980s’, Historical Social Research 39(1), theme issue. Nehring, Holger. 2004. ‘Gewalt, Frieden und soziale Bewegungen nach 1945’. Studienbrief der Fernuniversität Hagen zum Thema Begriff und Probleme des Friedens – Beiträge der historischen Friedensforschung. ———. 2005. ‘National Internationalists: Transnational Relations and the British and West German protests against Nuclear Weapons, 1957–1964’, Contemporary European History 14(4): 559–82. ———. 2007a. ‘The Era of Non-Violence: “Terrorism” and the Emergence of Conceptions of Non-Violent Statehood in Western Europe, 1967–1983’, European Review of History 14(3): 343–71. ———. 2007b. ‘Pacifist Imperialists? Anti-Colonialism and the Protests against Nuclear Weapons in Britain and West Germany, 1957–1964’, Socialist History 31: 8–39. ———. 2013. Politics of Security: The British and West German protests against Nuclear Weapons and the Early Cold War, 1945–1970 (Oxford Historical Monographs). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Nehring, Holger, and Helge Pharo. 2008. ‘A Peaceful Europe? Negotiating Peace in the Twentieth Century’, Contemporary European History 17(3): 277–99. Oppenheimer, Andrew. 2004. ‘West German Pacifism and the Ambivalence of Human Solidarity, 1945–1968’, Peace & Change 29(3–4): 353–89. ———. 2007. ‘By Any Means Necessary? West German Pacifism and the Politics of Solidarity, 1945–1974’, in Benjamin Ziemann (ed.), Peace Movements in Western Europe and Japan during the Cold War. Essen: Klartext, pp. 41–60. Pettitt, Ann. 2006. Walking to Greenham: How the Peace Camp Began and the Cold War Ended. Aberystwyth: Honno. Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2002. The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Rahden, Till van. 2011. ‘Clumsy Democrats: Moral Passions in the Federal Republic’, German History 29(3): 485–504. Reddy, William M. 2001. The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reichardt, Sven. 2014. Authentizität und Gemeinschaft – Linksalternatives Leben in den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Rosanvallon, Pierre. 2013. The Society of Equals, trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Roseneil, Sasha. 1995. Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham. Buckingham: Open University Press. ———. 1999. Common Women, Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham. London: Cassel. Rowbotham, Sheila. 2000. Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties. London: Allen Lane. Schmitt, Lars. 2004. ‘Kritische Wissenschaft und Friedensbewegung. Soziologische Selbstreflexion zur Stärkung der Bewegung’, Wissenschaft und Frieden 3. http:// www.wissenschaft-und-frieden.de/seite.php?artikelID=0330 (accessed 9 November 2011). Schregel, Susanne. 2011. Der Atomkrieg vor der Wohnungstür. Eine Politikgeschichte der neuen Friedensbewegung in der Bundesrepublik 1970–1985. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag. Setch, Eve. 2002. ‘The Face of Metropolitan Feminism: The London Women’s Liberation Workshop, 1969–79’, Twentieth Century British History 13(2): 171–90. Slobodian, Quinn. 2008. ‘Dissident Guests: Afro-Asian Students and Transnational Activism in the West German Protest Movement’, in Wendy Pojmann (ed.), Migration and Activism in Europe since 1945. New York: Palgrave, pp. 33–55. ———. 2012. Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Stoehr, Irene. 2002. ‘Kalter Krieg und Geschlecht. Überlegungen zu einer friedenshistorischen Forschungslücke’, in Benjamin Ziemann (ed.), Perspektiven der Historischen Friedensforschung (Frieden und Krieg: Beiträge zur Historischen Friedensforschung, Bd. 1). Essen: Klartext, pp. 133–45. Thaa, Winfried. 2001. ‘“Lean Citizenship”: The Fading Away of the Political in Transnational Democracy’, European Journal of International Relations 7(4): 503–23.

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Turner, Fred. 2012. ‘The Family of Man and the Politics of Attention in Cold War America’, Public Culture 24(1): 55–84. Verheyen, Nina. 2010. Diskussionslust. Eine Kulturgeschichte des ‘besseren Arguments’ in Westdeutschland. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Wildt, Andreas. 1982. Autonomie und Anerkennung: Hegels Moralitätskritik im Lichte seiner Fichte-Rezeption (Deutscher Idealismus, Band 7). Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Wittner, Lawrence S. 2009. Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmaments Movement. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Wyschogrod, Edith. 1985. Spirit in Ashes: Hegel, Heidegger and Man-Made Mass Death. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ziemann, Benjamin. 2006. ‘The Gospel of Psychology: Therapeutic Concepts and the Scientification of Pastoral Care in the West German Catholic Church, 1945–1980’, Central European History 39(1): 79–106. ———. 2008. ‘The Code of Protest: Images of Peace in the West German Peace Movements, 1945–1990’, Contemporary European History 17(2): 237–61. ———. 2009. ‘A Quantum of Solace? European Peace Movements during the Cold War and their Elective Affinities’. Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 49: 351–89. Zürn, Michael, Martin Binder and Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt. 2012. ‘International Authority and its Politicization’, International Theory 4(1): 69–106.

Holger Nehring is Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Stirling and co-director of the Centre for Policy, Conflict and Co-Operation Research (CPCCR) there. He has published widely on peace history, the history of social movements more generally and Cold War history. His most recent monograph is Politics of Security (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Chapter 9

Recognition across Difference Conceptual Considerations against an Indian Background

Martin Fuchs

The discussion of social recognition in recent years has largely focused on civil and political society and on institutionalized behaviour. However, the interpersonal dimension, the level of actual individual face-to-face interactions, does not receive sufficient attention in this context. In this essay, I address some general aspects of social recognition; in so doing, I shift between immediate-situational and institutionally solidified levels of interaction, and I refer to the experiences and struggles of Indian Dalits, especially their efforts to gain respect and recognition from others. I do not discuss details of the Dalit case here; rather, the issues that Dalits face inform my approach to theoretical problems, and help to clarify certain aspects that otherwise tend to be neglected in discussions of social recognition because they typically start from cases ‘closer to home’ for most Europeans, and the West in general. My main contention is that it is not sufficient to think about social recognition in terms of equality between formally autonomous social actors, but that we have to acknowledge the reciprocal character of recognition much more than is often done. We have to focus more sharply on the significance of cultural – especially value – differences when discussing recognition, including differences in the way in which recognition is articulated. ‘Dalit’ is the self-coined, now generic designation of India’s former ‘untouchables’; the term translates roughly as ‘broken people’. For many Dalits the struggle for recognition is of paramount importance; to a

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significant extent it involves a struggle over difference – that is, the right to be different as well as the experience of imposed difference, exclusion and marginalization (Fuchs 1999, chapter 4). To begin, I provide a brief background to the issues facing Dalits. In the second section of the chapter I turn to the most influential work on social recognition of recent years, that of Axel Honneth, to point out some core fortes of his approach as well as to raise some critical questions of a general kind (but largely leaving aside Charles Taylor’s ideas on recognition).1 In the third section I pursue in greater depth (although my analysis is far from exhaustive) two aspects of this discussion: the reciprocity of recognition and the modal diversities of recognition. In the final section, because of the importance of recognition as a universal prerequisite for human social life, I conclude with summary remarks on difference and universalism(s).

The Case of Indian Dalits Dalits do not represent a unified or even a well-defined social category. The problems start with the very attempt at labelling. Not only have terminologies changed, but, in some important sense, the actual references of these terms have changed as well. Other terms – some just exclusionist, some paternalistic, some quite discriminatory, but all coined from a non- or anti-Dalit perspective – include those of scheduled castes, harijans, avarna, panchama, and achut. All of these were in place but never universally employed before ‘Dalit’ came into common usage. On closer inspection, one can see that the specific constellations – that is, the exact form of discrimination and the modes and stages of assertion – in which different Dalit groups or castes find themselves are varied and continuously evolving. In fact, one encounters a wide range of positional as well as regional differences and varied genealogies among the many Dalit castes in India. The term ‘Dalit’ remains contested among the groups concerned;2 it is actually meant to index a basic mode of discrimination and its attitudinal dimension, which have persisted or reappeared and developed in various ways and to varying degrees over roughly two millennia of Indian history, sociopolitical changes and ruptures notwithstanding. Discrimination of Dalits ranges from the structural level of differential power among social actors to the most intimate dimensions of relationships between humans. Discrimination is expressed economically through the systematic exclusion from resources and, routinely combined with this, the exploitation of someone’s labour power, or the imposition of the harshest physical tasks on a particular group, right up to forms of bonded

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labour. Discrimination is expressed politically through the systematic exclusion from decision-making processes, or the imposition of decisions on people and the suppression of alternative voices. And discrimination is expressed socially through the exclusion from core circles of interaction and from (membership in) core institutions, or the denial of equal rights and of equal access to institutions. But the discrimination of Dalits can also be expressed ideologically, religiously or, as it is often termed in the Indian context, ‘ritually’ – that is, the stigmatizing of a particular group as ‘polluting’ or contaminating, thus ‘justifying’ their exclusion not only from entering certain sacred spaces (prominent ones like temples as well as more intimate ones), but also from access to water sources used by those of higher rank, from food exchange (because food that has been touched by ‘untouchables’ is often not accepted by members of other castes), and more generally exclusion from spaces frequented by upper castes.3 These are not uniform practices, however, but can be more or less rigid, depending on context. Ritual stigmatization can mean being forced to do unclean or polluting tasks scorned by others, like cleaning toilets, sewers or streets; or like handling carcasses, tanning hides or processing leather. On top of all this, even when an individual or group no longer performs tasks considered ‘polluting’, the stigma usually remains. In fact, the stigma is considered to be embodied in those individuals traditionally connected to such trades – transmittable, like a bodily substance or a genetic trait, to the next generation. It does not matter so much here how this ‘ritual’ stigmatization of other human beings is legitimized, whether through mythology or metaphysically; what concerns us here is the attitude of social actors with respect to the state of others whom they consider to be unclean or polluting. More often than not, discrimination in the areas mentioned – economic, political, social and religious/ritual – manifest themselves all at once, making denigration and exclusion appear over-determined. Not mentioned so far is another dimension of discrimination, namely, the frequent sexual abuse of Dalit women by upper caste men, as well as the general physical abuse of Dalits of both genders. Significantly, these kinds of offences actually controvert the fear of coming into contact with people of Dalit origin. The system is nevertheless not watertight. Discrimination operates differently in different localities and contexts, and not every person of higher rank or caste actively discriminates or denies humanness to people categorized as ‘untouchables’ or ‘ex-untouchables’, or as ‘polluted/ polluting’. Concerning institutions, support structures for Dalits were established in independent India. Affirmative action programmes and a policy that has been labelled ‘positive discrimination’4 were adopted and

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constitutionally confirmed in the form of especially reserved seats in the Indian parliament and other public bodies, as well as the reservation of positions in state service and the education system; the quota of seats and positions held in reserve for Dalits (under the label of Scheduled Castes) is usually 15 per cent. To these, reservations for members of other socialadministrative categories such as Scheduled Tribes or Denotified Tribes have to be added. These and later changes (whose drawback is that, contrary to intention, they have tended to uphold the discrepancies between groups) are the fruit of the political struggles and social movements of the Dalits, which gained momentum in the nineteenth century and increased further after the First World War. Babasaheb (Bhimrao) Ambedkar, the most prominent of Dalit intellectuals and politicians, had a decisive role in this struggle, in sharp dispute with Mahatma Gandhi. Ambedkar became the major architect of the Indian Constitution of 1950, which formally ‘abolished untouchability’, outlawed caste discrimination, and instituted reservation in India. In 1956 he promoted a new movement to opt out of Hinduism and revive Buddhism, providing his own reading of Buddhism in which he emphasized its ethical message and its rational character. Ambedkar chose Buddhism as part of his project to provide a new social ethics for Indian society in general, if not for the whole of humankind. Among all the other values important for him – including, of course, equality, liberty and equity – fraternity and compassion, karuna, with its emphasis on the human bond (‘the brotherhood of man’) and the creation of a new ‘moral community’, is central. As Ambedkar termed it, what Buddhism teaches is the ‘necessity of man to love man’ (Ambedkar 1974: 226 and 231, my emphasis; cf. Fuchs 2001). Ambedkar addressed his appeal to everyone; today, however, in large parts of mainland India, allegiance to Buddhism is largely associated with (certain sections of) Dalits. While the systematic discrimination of Dalits has meanwhile decreased or has at least been defused to some extent in a number of sectors of Indian society, humiliation and exclusion of Dalits is still a regular feature of daily life. In fact, abuse and atrocities committed against Dalits have intensified – in rural areas especially, where some of the higher, in particular land-owning, castes fear the forfeiture of their privileges, the loss of control over Dalit labour power, and the weakening of Dalit subservience. It is the aspect of continuous discrimination, stigmatization and humiliation that makes it appear as though all Dalits belong to one category. The belief held by people of higher rank is that ascribed features of a negative or precarious nature are transmitted through descent and work, like a substance or inherited trait.5 This is traditionally expressed by

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the idiom of ‘purity–impurity’ (or ‘pollution’); the assumption is deeply engrained in dominant discursive practice and it is hard to suppress. One may call the ascription of impurity a shared identity, but this would be the identity of victims. Stigmatization can only become the people’s own positive identity trait if they can turn it around and start to use it proactively and assertively, as was done with the promotion of the term ‘Dalit’ in the 1970s (comparable to the promotion of the term ‘Black’ in the late 1960s by African Americans).6 Like the mode of discrimination, the struggle for recognition and respect thus represents a social process of generalization (abstraction) and category building, changing in the process the very self-understanding of the actors concerned. This process of generalization is a slow one, however, in the Dalit case, and remains incomplete. Only in specific contexts, most pronounced on the level of political rhetoric, do social actors appeal to the unity and sameness of all Dalits. The groundwork for such wider, overarching sociopolitical categorization was laid during the struggle for Indian independence, the process of nation building, and the drawing up of the Indian Constitution. Developments in Indian society over the last century or more have led to the culturalization and essentialization of group identities. Usually – and this still holds today – individual Dalit castes or local Dalit groups lead scattered struggles for recognition, while also being targeted separately. The issues that face the various Dalit groups, even if comparable or of a general kind, remain caught in their contextual specificities. Actual experiences of discrimination individualize people. On the other hand, the experience of recognition itself requires specificity.

Axel Honneth and the Requirement of Social Recognition As expressed to me in many formal and informal talks and interviews by Dalits from all walks of life – from the urban poor to metropolitan academics and administrators – the main concern for most of them is basic: gaining ‘full respect’ as human beings. What Dalits seek above all are not abstract rights or rights per se, but humane treatment, equal opportunities, and acceptance by others, especially from those who have oppressed them in the past, who represent dominant social and political forces locally – and, secondarily, from the wider Indian society, and the world beyond that. It is the ‘relational’ aspect that stands in the foreground. Social recognition, while it involves universalistic principles, must refer to the entire human being and his or her social relationships, if it is to be meaningful. It must therefore include respect for another individual’s specific difference(s). While this may appear paradoxical,

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it describes a constitutive tension. Any position that claims to be universally valid will have to face the conflict between abstract formal generality and the necessity to acknowledge the dignity of each human being individually and specifically as he or she is, as he or she sees himself or herself, or as he or she wishes to develop. Social recognition denotes a basic requirement of social life, something human beings cannot do without in order to carry on and survive. Social recognition underlies human ontogenesis and individualization. Based on studies by G.W.F. Hegel and George Herbert Mead, Axel Honneth brought this issue back onto the social science agenda with his seminal work, Kampf um Anerkennung [The Struggle for Recognition], published in 1992 (English translation 1996). The underlying assumption of Honneth’s work is that human subjects can relate to themselves in a positive manner and assure themselves of their identity only if they experience themselves as fully accepted by others. The fact that this requires a second party with whom to interact not only emphasizes the primary sociality of humans (Joas 1992: 270ff.; cf. Honneth 1992: 159; 1996: 98) and people’s dependence on others, it also makes human existence precarious. The danger constantly looming is that social recognition can be withheld or withdrawn. People may be excluded, or worse, marginalized and stigmatized. As each human enters, or better perhaps, is drawn into a wide range of social relationships, denial of social recognition is usually not absolute; nor, conversely, is extending social recognition to someone ever complete. What is of significance – at least for the social contexts discussed here – are those conditions in which social recognition is withheld or withdrawn systematically for protracted periods, even on moral grounds, by the dominant societal forces. Social recognition thus becomes both a sociological and a socialphilosophical issue. This brings in an interesting difference, as we will see in a moment. It is obvious that social scientists, informed by George Herbert Mead, can go out and analyse particular social contexts with respect to the mechanisms of recognition and, even more pertinent here, mechanisms of non-recognition. The Dalit cases are clear examples. The attraction of Axel Honneth’s conceptualization of the struggle for recognition in his 1992 book has actually been that he undertakes to integrate social philosophy with social research (or what, in German, is called Gesellschaftsanalyse). Instead of just discussing moral principles, he claims to tie in with empirical research on forms of social recognition (Honneth 1992: 112, 150, 152; 1996: 69, 93, 95; cf. Honneth 2011: 9, 14, 18).7 Axel Honneth has undertaken the most systematic and conceptually sophisticated attempt to analyse the forms and dimensions of social recognition. He redirects our perspective and tries to develop

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an argument for social recognition against a backdrop of experiences of denial or revocation of recognition: humiliation, violation, debasement, indignity and exclusion. We can all relate to such experiences in some ways, however elusive they may be; what makes Honneth’s theory so attractive is the fact that these experiences are brought onto centre stage. The starting point is not the successful operation of society, but its dysfunction, seen from a moral viewpoint (in a purely technical sense, such societies might actually function successfully). Moreover, it seems, we may have finally found a way to bridge the experiential-psychological with the structural levels of social understanding and analysis. However, Honneth has a broader agenda going beyond the scope of social analysis proper; here the differences between the social sciences and a particular type of social philosophy come in. Honneth combines his analysis with a Hegelian evolutionist argument of the progressive unfolding of human capacities on both the individual and collective levels, a Bildungsprozess or ‘formation process’ of ethical rationalization (Honneth 1992: 112; 1996: 69), for which he employs the differentiation model from Habermas’s theory of evolution.8 The three forms or patterns of social recognition distinguished by Honneth are ‘love’ or ‘affective attention or care’ (affektive Zuwendung), law or ‘legal or cognitive recognition’, and ‘social esteem’ or ‘solidarity’ (soziale Wertschätzung, Solidarität). Starting with an ‘archaic group morality’ (archaische Binnenmoral), which saw the three forms or patterns of recognition as still ‘intertwined in an undifferentiated manner’ (noch ungeschieden ineinander verschränkt) (Honneth 1992: 271; 1996: 169), their differentiation allowed progressively higher degrees of autonomy and a positive self-relationship (Honneth 1992: 111, 151; 1996: 69, 94). In connection with the progressive differentiation of forms of recognition, the structures intrinsic to each of the forms became, or rather were made, explicit (Herausarbeitung ihrer eigensinnigen Strukturen) (Honneth 1992: 272; 1996: 169).9 Besides, each of the three forms also ends up representing a different social level (Niveau) in Honneth’s view. Love or affective recognition allows subjects to reciprocally develop ‘basic confidence in themselves’ (Honneth 1992: 172; 1996: 107). Legal or cognitive recognition means seeing each other as mutual legal subjects (Rechtssubjekte) following the same set of laws and having the same rights (Honneth 1992: 174ff.; 1996: 108ff.). Social esteem refers to the intersubjective recognition of each person’s specific abilities and proficiencies. Recognition in the full sense, involving all three levels, according to Honneth, can only be accomplished in today’s modern societies; implicitly meant in this interpretation is Western society in particular, and that recognition must be achieved by way of social

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struggles and movements of those people who are denied dignity. He considers this to be a stepwise historical-evolutionary process, with new movements building on the achievements of earlier ones. With respect to the domain of ‘legal’ or cognitive recognition, Honneth emphasizes the abstract character of this form. Legal rules supporting the recognition of social actors do so without regard for, or in abstraction from, the specific traits or qualities that distinguish one person from another (Honneth 1992: 84, 129; 1996: 50, 80). Such legal rules also ignore existing social or material inequalities between people (Honneth 1992: 177; 1996: 109). Thus at certain points Honneth himself acknowledges that the abstract recognition of a person would have to be ‘amplified’ (erweitert) with ‘material contents’ (materiale Gehalte)10 (Honneth 1992: 84, 283); he concedes that in fact the application of abstract recognition is situation-sensitive (anwendungsbezogene Situationsdeutung) (Honneth 1992: 183, 185ff.; 1996: 113, 114ff.). With respect to relationships of social esteem, Honneth observes a process of increasing ‘pluralization’ of social values (Honneth 1992: 203, 205; 1996: 125, 126). He starts from the notion of particular (homogenous) norm structures or particular value communities, but then attempts to universalize the appreciation of achievements representing heterogeneous value schemes – the way in which relationships of social esteem could or should function under conditions of cultural and social diversity. Honneth wants to accommodate the possibility that all types of tasks and achievements encountered in a society be appreciated in so far as they are ‘valuable’ for society as a whole (Honneth 1992: 210; 1996: 130). This implies a shift towards the structural aspect of social esteem in the form of recognition of different – though, in a formal sense, equivalent – proficiencies or achievements (Leistungen) of individuals (Honneth 1992: 178–81, 209f. and 276; 1996: 110–12, 129f. and 172). All such differences – that is, these individual human achievements or proficiencies – must become equally, and thereby indifferently, valid (‘gleich-gültig’, to play with the German terminology); but to do so requires conditions of symmetrical esteem between subjects. The difficulties that Honneth tends to run into with social esteem are similar to those that he experiences with legal or cognitive recognition. Not only does his concept of social esteem disregard normative, evaluative or cultural – i.e. qualitative – specificities and social or material inequalities; he also wants universal moral principles to be represented by the norms of a confined value community (Wertgemeinschaft) or by the specific ‘common good’ that in his view defines or delineates a particular community or society (Honneth 1992: 276; 1996: 172f.). To phrase it differently, Honneth wants to fuse Kantian moral universalism with communitarianism. The

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tensions between universal(ist) morals and the particular(ist) value base of a specific society, between a plea or a claim and those values that actually guide people in a specific social context (and inspire the proficiencies and achievements of Honneth’s scheme), remain unresolved. Honneth is captive to his notion of bounded communities or societies. What is important to highlight in this regard is the inescapability of the tensions between the necessarily particularist character of each value and notion of the common good, and the universalization of moral principles, which – and this we tend to forget – always occurs contextually, and therefore inevitably requires context-sensitivity. Honneth faces the problem of how to reconcile the notion of a value community with the observation of value difference. He sees social esteem (and solidarity growing out of this) based on ‘a shared conception of the good life’ (Honneth 1992: 147; 1996: 91; my emphasis). On the other hand, he starts from the observation of an increasing pluralization of social values within one society. This points to unresolved questions in his conceptualization of (modern) society, but the question is actually more than just a conceptual one. The empirical basis of Honneth’s approach seems to be too narrow. He overlooks the fact that the pluralization of social values is not limited to modern societies; it was already in place and the focus of reflection in various non-Western societies much earlier on, under markedly different social and political circumstances. Honneth’s call for an empirically grounded approach that allows us to integrate social philosophy with social research would require him to broaden his perspective and also consider the modes of interaction and modes of conceptualization across value and cultural differences found in other contexts. The other ‘casualty’ of this failure to integrate social research is the detailed social analysis of different constellations of humiliation, debasement or exclusion that could inform social philosophy/theory. Honneth has taken the question of social recognition out of the social-psychological corner and has diversified it into several dimensions and spread it into different arenas. It is obvious that I am grappling with Honneth’s approach, particularly with his Hegelian-evolutionist style of argument, with the way he endorses processes of abstraction and formalization of relationships, as well as with his reification of the collective or value community (Gemeinwesen and Wertegemeinschaft respectively), and thus ultimately with the applicability of his approach to the sociological analysis of actual social contexts. I will come back to these points. Here I want to emphasize another difficulty: what we end up with in philosophical disquisitions like Honneth’s is a twofold or two-level universalism. Social recognition defines a basic and thus universal premise of human existence. At the same time it is assumed

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that humankind requires the achievements of modern Western social philosophy and modern-type states, combining liberalism and, ironically, collective (national?) identity, to be able to establish a universalistic pattern that allows humans to actually accomplish full-fledged recognition. Honneth’s explicit presupposition is that we can legitimately draw a parallel between phylo- and ontogenesis (Honneth 1992: 112; 1996: 69), an argument made prominent in the social sciences by Jürgen Habermas (who draws on Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg; see Habermas 1979 and 1984; for a critical assessment, cf. Linkenbach 1986). We see this kind of problem haunting Honneth in an even sharper form: if love and friendship, or what he calls more abstractly ‘affective attention or care’, represent the basic and most intense form of social recognition, then this must be available to all humans in all forms of society. Moral and ethical social development may add to and expand on this form of social recognition, and may introduce abstract universalistic principles as critical yardsticks and guidelines. They may also initiate abstract and general rules of coexistence; but moral and ethical social development cannot and should not be conflated with the experience of social recognition.

Reciprocity and Diversity: Enhancing the Postulate of Recognition Can we, then, legitimately extend a basically intersubjective, face-to-face relationship like social recognition to encompass social conditions at large, as Honneth wants to imply? Would recognition on the institutional and structural levels – abstract and formal recognition – not require that it always be thoroughly grounded in intersubjective appreciation? How do values and community interlink, and what value differences does recognition allow for? With Honneth’s conceptions in the background, I want to elaborate a bit more on (but without attempting to provide a final answer to) these questions under two headings: (1) the reciprocity of recognition; and (2) recognition in the midst of cultural and evaluative diversities.

Reciprocity of Recognition Honneth himself strongly points to the inherently reciprocal character of social recognition (Honneth 1992: 64, 73, 114; 1996: 37, 43). This would mean that recognition proper cannot be unilaterally granted. One-sided

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recognition would just be paternalism. To be meaningful, recognition requires mutual respect. Purely formal recognition of another individual by an autonomous actor able to act responsibly in principle can actually (and this is not uncommon) go together with an attitude of indifference to this other person’s life chances and the conditions in which he or she finds him- or herself. Formal recognition can be granted by an individual who nevertheless shows a clear lack of concern or compassion for, and feels no personal obligation towards, these others – that is, one who demonstrates disinterest in otherness, cultural or otherwise. Abstract or formal recognition, even if mutual, therefore fades into non-recognition. The granting of formal rights and formal legal equality must not necessarily lead to substantive equality, nor – and this is the main point here – must it necessarily lead to higher or better recognition of others. As regards social esteem, Honneth is also unable to prove that all human proficiencies and achievements in a particular social context receive the same degree of recognition. There is no equality among values. Beyond the Dalit case, this observation is of special relevance in the context of today’s multicultural, socially heterogeneous societies.11 Questions of social recognition, moreover, cannot be disentangled from questions of distributive justice, as Nancy Fraser argued against Axel Honneth (Fraser and Honneth 2003). Honneth tried to take this point into consideration with his new concept of ‘social freedom’, propounded in his recent book Das Recht der Freiheit (Honneth 2011; engl. transl. 2014).12 In the Dalit case, dimensions of exploitation and recognition are closely intertwined, with economic discrimination building on the refusal to recognize others as equal human beings with their own specific traits and outlooks on life. Relations of recognition, as well as those of rejection and refusal of recognition, are context sensitive.13 All of this means that what matters in the end is how people actually treat one another, how they relate to the other as another subject and human being. This also shows the difficulty of the Dalit struggle, as with so many other social struggles: social recognition, other than formal rights, cannot be enforced; social recognition requires a change of attitude on the part of one’s opponents, a willingness to cooperate and engage in meaningful reciprocity. And this must occur on an individual level – success of the Dalits politically, in so far as it is achievable and has been achieved up to now, is insufficient. Over and over again, the struggles of Dalits become stalled at the very point when ‘meaningful reciprocity’ should start. Even with institutional frameworks (prohibiting discrimination and promoting affirmative action) set in force by the Indian Constitution,14 many people in more privileged positions continue

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to reject any serious change in attitude vis-à-vis those whom they have always looked down on, and thus decline real social recognition. This results in problems affecting the format of struggle. The postulate that recognition has to be reciprocal entails that every struggle for recognition is to be addressed to a specific adversary – another concrete, not just abstract or general, other who is to respond. It also means that the struggle itself becomes particularized. The struggles that the Dalits must engage in include: their efforts to combat specific instances of humiliation, stigmatization, sexual abuse, and other atrocities; gaining access to various economic and political resources; and obtaining equal access to education and jobs – or, regarding the informal sector, in which most Dalits are employed, securing reliable conditions for their livelihood and adequate housing (buzzword: ‘slum rehabilitation’).15 Dalit struggles are dispersed; they must battle on several fronts simultaneously. Moreover, as the focus of their struggle shifts, so, too, do their antagonists. What proves to be as difficult as defining and uniting Dalits, it seems, is seeking to pinpoint unequivocally their opponents or the addressees of their grievances. In each context there is a different opponent to whom a specific grievance is addressed, in the same way that in every context there is another aspect of the Dalit identity and concerns that is at stake. This gets even thornier when it comes to the public arena. Public debate and public policy tend to treat social issues – for example, land and other resource issues, occupation, education, health issues – as separate matters. Unfortunately, this compartmentalizing of issues is replicated in the standard issue-oriented modes of social analysis. In most sociological studies, more often than not the issues facing Dalits as well as others in Indian society appear essentially as economic or class issues; attention is thus diverted away from the relevant cross-cutting causes. Those constituting ‘the others’ for Dalits tend to elude them in the sphere of modern public discourse. Alternatively, those pursuing a Dalit agenda, or sympathetic to Dalits, tend to use provocative but nevertheless imprecise designations for their adversaries when talking in the public realm. Reference is often made to ‘Brahmins’ and ‘Brahmanism’, or to all ‘upper castes’ in general; or speakers evoke as the ‘enemy’ what has come to be regarded as the Brahmin socioreligious worldview – sometimes termed ‘Manuwadi’16 – or the caste system or Hinduism per se.17 Conversely, non-Dalits in public discourse regard Dalits as just another (new) political or ethnic block. This reciprocal ascription of identities leaves no space for attitudinal differences among members of the different caste categories. Nor can the fact be completely overlooked that there are a growing number of non-Dalits who acknowledge the issues Dalits are faced with, just as there is an increasing number of examples of interpersonal relationships

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between individuals from both sides. Addressing the question of Dalit recognition as primarily a relationship between collectives also evades the problem that collective struggles generally tend to miss, namely, the subjectivity of the other. Collective struggles in a modern public arena become mired all too easily in political identity-mongering. A struggle for recognition that cannot directly engage with one’s immediate other is doomed to lose focus and fail; it will miss its target of a truly meaningful, non-oppressive relationship. On the level of face-to-face relations, the other, while having a generic dimension, is always specific. Using the concept of recognition for all kinds of formal appreciation, as Axel Honneth suggests, or applying the term ‘recognition’ predominantly to the relationship between collective categories, as Taylor (1994) proposes, threatens to dilute or obscure the core ethical issue for which the postulate of recognition and the notion of a struggle for recognition stand.

Recognition and Evaluative Diversity There is another reason why we should avoid too formal or abstract a notion of social recognition, or too strong a focus on the formal or abstract aspects of it. Recognition, as a basically intersubjective relationship, is inevitably modulated by the way in which it is articulated. In each society, or within each social context, one finds specific modes of, or discursive practices for, expressing respect and appreciation of fellow human beings, as well as specific modes of discoursing about the very issue of recognition itself. Both of these dimensions tend to escape purely philosophical or purely theoretical debates about recognition. If recognition is something that preoccupies and affects all humans, this must be something that had already been of major concern to people in everyday life before and beyond its philosophical ‘discovery’. The disposition for abstraction in philosophical debates should not distract from the fact that we always use specific language or idioms or semantics to express our ideas and relate our experiences. In the remainder of this section, I proceed in three steps. I start by examining the idiomatic specificities of articulating recognition; I then consider various constellations in which different idioms coexist and inevitably relate to each other; I end with a brief discussion of what happens in those cases where one of the available idioms signifies opposition to (or rejection of) recognition of certain others in society. In India, among Dalits as well as non-Dalits, one comes across various concepts of recognition, each of them specific in certain respects. One finds such ideas expressed in bhakti, in Buddhism, as well as in Christian

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and Islamic teachings and beliefs, and perhaps in other religious forms; but they emerge in non-religious contexts and modes of expression as well. Historically, from what we can still reconstruct, bhakti and Buddhism were two major channels for articulating ideas about individual and social existence detached from, and often in opposition to, hierarchical and holistic models of relationship. What is of interest here regarding bhakti in both of its forms, saguna and nirguna,18 is that God or the Absolute is included in the network of relationships of recognition. For people who received no recognition from others (excluding their own family, caste, or immediate peers) in wider society, the chance to receive and experience recognition from God implied a significant opportunity for confirmation of themselves and their identities, affirmation of their individuality, and the formation of new intersubjectivities (i.e. with others sharing the religion). Bhakti has manifested itself in many different forms over its long history, sometimes overlapping with other religious practices. It still continues to undergo constant renewal today. It allows everyone to have direct communication with God and to hope for God’s grace, without the interference of priests (Pechilis 2011; Fuchs, forthcoming). Bhakti is thus a preferred mode of Indian religious practice, and it provides an idiom that allows social actors, and among them those otherwise marginalized and oppressed, to articulate their experiences, concerns and claims in their own particular ways, and differently from everyday discourse: bhakti allows a process of translation into a (universalistic) language that others can relate to, a translation meant to reach out to others – or what I have elsewhere called a ‘third idiom’ (Fuchs 2009: 30–35). Modes of social critique grew out of bhakti contexts in several instances. The focus of recent scholarship has been in particular on the ways women and ‘untouchables’ have addressed their situation. Such critique was more individually formulated in the case of women who opposed the social roles expected of them; it was more community-focused in the case of lower castes and groups who opposed the authority of the Vedas and the Brahmins (cf. Hess and Singh 1983; Chakravarty 1989; Zelliot and Mokashi-Punekar 2005). The act of reaching out and the deployment of a third idiom appears to be even more explicit in the case of Buddhism, in the shape given to it by Ambedkar.19 We have seen above what emphasis he placed on compassion, sympathy and responsibility for others. This should suffice to illustrate my point; I will not go into the other religious and nonreligious options here. It should be obvious by now that there are various possibilities to articulate recognition; they are sometimes available within the same context and can help to establish relationships of mutual trust. New local congregations cutting across social (especially caste)

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boundaries were founded at different points in time, and in many cases this implied the recognition of others as co-members, irrespective of their way of life (and livelihood). While there have always been mechanisms in place to reconfine such open congregations, to convert them into new, separate caste-like groups, or to reintroduce old caste distinctions, the desire for recognition has continued to resurface. What does it mean, then, to say that the desire for, and the experience of, recognition is articulated in, or translated into, various culturally specific but universalizing idioms, and that, in the Indian case at least, the different idioms even occur coevally, sharing a social context?20 I would like to emphasize three aspects. First, there is not just one general language of recognition. People articulate recognition in their own particular and evernew ways. Recognition always has some special shape; we cannot reduce it to just one form.21 While universalistic in its ambition, the struggle for recognition must not be universal in its form. Secondly, the struggle for recognition is just as much a struggle for a particular way of life and mode of articulation as a struggle for personal acknowledgement. Lastly, it is not one’s abstract being that is to be recognized, but one’s particular being. To ridicule or deride others because they have not attained some philosophically assumed state of abstract universal individualization, as the Indian scenario seems to suggest,22 is useless and misses the point: it is particularly the difficulty of acknowledging the diversity of proficiencies, achievements, practices, and ways of life that is at issue in our debates about recognition; and it is this difficulty that shows up in Honneth’s third recognition modality, the pattern of social esteem. The common denominator for all of the particular idioms of recognition is respect for one’s fellow human beings. To this extent we can find a universal element in each idiom of recognition. To talk in terms of recognition signifies the philosophical abstraction of all of those specific languages. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that recognition in social life is possible only through a particular (symbolic) language. In Europe this has been and often still is some variant of Christian language, or forms of Enlightenment or secularist discourse, frequently without acknowledging that even their respective universalistic content is presented in particularist garb. And, considering the fact that secularism is neither the natural nor the ultimate state of affairs, secularist idioms, including major philosophical tenets, are therefore not expressions of the universal in its pure or naked state either. These idioms, too, are particularist, regardless of the extent to which they may buttress universalistic beliefs. The question of recognition represents only one aspect among a wider set of values, or what has been called an ethical or value system

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(without necessarily taking the term ‘system’ in too strict or too holistic a sense). The dynamics between different idioms of recognition are thus bound to the dynamics between competing ethical, value or belief systems. These include deep-level assumptions about self and sociality/society. This becomes even more complex if we introduce a concept like ‘culture’ or ‘Wertegemeinschaft’. Honneth’s notion of value community and community ethics is totally inadequate for the task. Of course, his use of the concept does not constitute a special flaw in his approach alone: in this respect, Honneth represents a wider consensus (and reveals an important blind spot) of our times that views humans in terms of more or less all-encompassing, holistic cultures that determine everyone’s outlook and values, respectively. Of course this condition can be overcome (‘transcended’), but only by a knowledgeable individual who is not bound to any culture in particular, at least in so far as he or she argues philosophically and represents (or strives for) that which is universal. Nor does the notion of a Gemeinwesen or Wertegemeinschaft – community or value community – represent actual societal conditions adequately. In most social contexts uniform values and a homogenous sense of community do not exist. Instead, we find diverse sets of values and a variety of communities. What is important in this regard is that these values and communities overlap: they are not exclusive and they are not completely cut off from one another. Moreover, as the above examples of bhakti and Buddhism have shown, we encounter in various contexts processes of translation that suggest ways to transcend the limits of, and reach out beyond the boundaries between, different value sets and idioms. The universal does not represent some state beyond cultures; rather, a plurality of universalisms grows out of, and then feeds back into, cultural contexts (Fuchs 2000). Spatial constraints prevent my being able to address the matter of interlacing idioms of recognition, value systems, and cultural contexts in any detail here, not even limiting such consideration to just the Indian case. On the one hand, the issue is one of finding ways – a procedural language and accompanying institutions – that allow us to bridge and negotiate differences between languages and value systems. Liberalism, the parliamentary system, and the juridical system are among the mediums meant to provide such channels. On the other hand, since even procedural languages are not neutral, but rather represent a specific social model,23 we have to deal with modes of unmediated polyphony and heteroglossia (to apply concepts suggested by Mikhail Bakhtin [1934] 1982). One well-known option would be to use John Rawls’ model of the ‘overlapping consensus’ (Rawls 1999: 340). Another would be to accept not just otherness per se, but also the merits of models and concepts other

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than one’s own, in particular those with a universalistic potential.24 And, of course, the issue is a political one of establishing conditions that would allow or promote the overcoming of attitudinal resistance and obstacles to accepting others by engaging with their otherness and their claims to universal validity (which does not mean that we must necessarily accept the values, ideas and practices of others uncritically). The Indian case is one of cultural and value pluralities, and of a plurality of life forms. This has been, to use a paradoxical expression, an essential characteristic of Indian civilization since ‘time immemorial’; at the same time, this condition is also an accurate reflection of what is going on globally today. The various value systems and cultural forms co-present in a context are not equivalent, either with regard to power, or with regard to the kind of values each of these systems advocates, including their respective universalist claims. On the other hand, these value systems and cultures are not closed. Some value systems put stronger emphasis on interpersonal recognition than others, and there are some, like those that distinguish categorically as well as categorially between kinds of humans (i.e. between different social dharmas), which reject comprehensive recognition beyond one’s own reference group. In the Indian context we can observe how values of recognition work themselves into the purity–pollution value system, or ‘graded inequality’, as it was termed by Ambedkar ([1917] 1989; cf. Herrenschmidt 1996). India has a long history of struggle between value systems. Bhakti ideas were usually integrated with other ideas, and their thrust thus diluted; only a few oppositional strands remain, and these have again been marginalized and re-adapted (like the Ravidasi, Shivnarayani, Kabirpanthi sampradayas or denominations). In the case of pre-Ambedkarite Buddhism, where the emphasis was not always on basic human values, integration was only partial. Historically, Buddhism was violently opposed and finally defeated in India. Today, the struggle is ongoing, not just between idioms of equality and recognition at one end, and values or value systems of hierarchy at the other, but on a wider and deeper level, between a traditional culturalist frame of reinvented inclusivist Hinduism on one side, and the liberal frame of the Indian constitution and basic human rights on the other. Currently, the Hindu or Hindutva frame has had to accept amendments to include inter alia the language of equality and recognition, even if only for reasons of political correctness and expediency and in order not to upset too many voters. Although these changes reflect the deeper concerns of larger sections of Indian society, it nevertheless remains difficult to translate human rights adaptations on the political or rhetorical general public level into intersubjective relationships on the level of person-to-person interaction.

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Value systems are not just ideas, they concern practices as well. Besides, they are involved in wider cultural networks of beliefs and practices. The current situation is one of contradictory practices and ideas, and this leads to a number of paradoxical or ambivalent situations.25

Summary and Conclusion Dalits force us to turn to their universalisms. The Dalits’ social struggle is not simply a struggle for further moral universalization; it is a struggle for a social order that is more universalistic in the sense that it acknowledges and respects different modes of interpersonal relations, and allows social actors not just to articulate but also to pursue a path towards full recognition. This requires recognition of collective differences in a new sense (and not just according to Charles Taylor’s views). What is required is not only a shift to universalistic principles that accept the cultural other as one’s contextual other, but also a universalism that acknowledges universalistic plurality. To make this clearer, I would suggest, as a kind of conclusion, that we distinguish between three levels of difference, at least in the context discussed here: 1. specific, individual characteristics and proficiencies of a person, and thus individuals’ different projects of self-realization or self-fulfilment (Selbstverwirklichung), expressly included in Honneth’s scheme (Honneth 1992: 43, 254, 281, 284; 1996: 23, 158, 175, 178); 2. different normative and/or value orders, value horizons, and notions of the common good (Sittlichkeiten) shared by a group of people at a certain point in time. However it is not required that these values be shared by all individuals considered to be members of a specific culture or particular society; rather, in contrast to Honneth’s assumptions, value orders may be contested and oppositional value systems can be pursued within a shared context. Thus notions of the common good may be diverse as well as contested within a specific social constellation or society;26 3. different (ethical) universalisms – i.e. universalisms formulated in specific contexts (lifeworlds) and cultural idioms (see Bernhard Waldenfels’ (1993: 63) concept of Universalisierung im Plural; cf. Fuchs 2000). Such universalistic concepts do not necessarily have to be shared by all who participate in a particular lifeworld. At the same time, all universalisms have their own biases and limitations; the idea of a plurality of universalisms goes beyond the confines of Honneth’s model.

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It is not so much the case that universalisms inherent in value communities take on a momentum of their own and quasi-automatically force communities as a whole to upgrade to more and more abstract and generalized forms of conceptualization. This would actually imply either that a community or society would discard its particularity entirely once a universalistic discourse becomes dominant, or otherwise that, by accepting universalism in any one of its respective forms, one would buy into the entire value system that this universalism is supposed to be a product of – the model underlying both the colonial and post-colonial agendas of Westernization in the name of universalization (globalization). Rather, it is the case that universalisms grow out of particularist value communities, with a strong inclination to transcend them, but without being able to completely shed their more parochial contextual links. Ideas taken up by others in other contexts – an appropriation again guided by the specificities of place, time and people – have to prove their universal (or at least their trans-local) validity, but ideas and practices may also have just been taken up for reasons of convenience or opportunity, as fashionable expressions, or simply for lack of other options. Tensions between particularity and universalization are inherent in every community. Recognizing each other’s ethical universalism requires intersubjective and intercultural recognition and reciprocity.

Notes  1. Taylor’s ideas on recognition are less developed than Honneth’s. Taylor shares various core aspects of Honneth’s interpretation, but puts more emphasis on identity and on the collective politics of recognition, the question of cultural survival.  2. Even with regard to the term ‘Dalit’ there are still groups among the exuntouchables, who, for different reasons, decline to apply this term to themselves.   3. In certain rural regions especially, Dalits are still not served properly in restaurants or tea stalls, and are not allowed to use the same glasses and dishes that are used by others. Traditionally, they were habitually excluded from inter-caste meals and had to accept leftovers from those of higher rank.   4. ‘Positive discrimination’ is one of the terms used to label policies intended to balance discrimination. Although, by acknowledging discrimination, the social and cultural differences between groups are also acknowledged, there seem to be differences of opinion regarding what this implies. For a long time, non-Dalit politicians and administrators held the official position that these policies were meant not only to compensate, but also to ultimately annul these differences. Most Dalits, on the other hand, have never believed that these differences would be overcome any time soon. Moreover, many Dalits want to keep a separate

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identity. The policy of positive discrimination has helped to confirm the otherness of the groups that are being supported.   5. In the context of the preparation and the follow-up to the UN ‘World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance’, held in Durban in 2001, a new category of human rights violation was introduced: ‘discrimination on the basis of work and descent’ – see Bob (2007); Hardtmann (2009).   6. This comparison was made by Dalits themselves; most prominent in this regard was the establishment of a Dalit Panther movement in Mumbai in 1972, following the example of the Black Panthers in the United States.  7. References are to Honneth (1992) and (1996), the German original and the English translation of his work. Where I find the English translation inadequate, I provide my own.  8. ‘To this extent, the species-historical process of individualization presupposes an expansion of the relations of mutual recognition … an empirical hypothesis, according to which, in the sequence of the three forms of recognition, the person’s relation-to-self gradually becomes increasingly positive’ (Honneth 1996: 93, 94). The original German text reads as follows: ‘Insofern ist der gattungsgeschichtliche Prozess der Individuierung an die Voraussetzung einer gleichzeitigen Erweiterung der Verhältnisse wechselseitiger Anerkennung gebunden … eine(r) empirische(n) Hypothese …, derzufolge sich in der Abfolge der drei Anerkennungsformen der Grad der positiven Beziehung der Person auf sich selber schrittweise steigert’ (Honneth 1992: 149, 151).   9. In this case the translation given in Honneth (1996) seems inadequate. 10. Translated as ‘substantive meaning’ and ‘substantive components’ respectively (Honneth 1996: 50, 177). 11. As regards the Dalit case, it suffices here to point to the failure of Mahatma Gandhi – strongly disliked by many Dalit activists – to convince others of the dignity and social value of toilet cleaning. Gandhi’s efforts were intended to demonstrate that sanitation work, although intrinsically different from other kinds of work, nevertheless had the same social value and importance as more prestigious tasks, including the work of intellectuals. Gandhi’s efforts in this respect had little impact on Indian society or social ethics, and they did not translate into greater recognition of those Dalits who work essentially as ‘scavengers’. 12. In this book, Honneth stresses the necessity to provide the appropriate social, economic and political preconditions for people to be able to actually assert their formally given autonomy and rights; he includes this provision under the label ‘soziale Freiheit’ (social freedom). However, Honneth has become increasingly more pessimistic about whether these conditions can be really be secured for the majority of people in the long run; he has also delinked this question from the discussion of social recognition. In fact, recognition plays a remarkably subordinate role in this recent work. 13. The term ‘context sensitive’ was introduced by Ramanujan (1990). 14. These constitutionally established affirmative action frameworks are binding for institutions but not for individual members of society; even individuals who staff these institutions often appear to be unconcerned about anti-discrimination. Individuals can be prosecuted for discriminatory behaviour and practice, not infrequently involving violence; but positional power disequilibrium between

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members of different castes means that, in practice, this happens only very rarely. See, e.g., the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989, http://tribal.nic.in/WriteReadData/CMS/Documents/20130313103949310546 8poaact989E422 7472861.pdf (last accessed March 2014); see also the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, Government of India, http://ncsc.nic.in/ (last accessed March 2014). 15. This whole scenario may look complex, but it illustrates well, I think, the diversity of struggles for recognition, including struggles for livelihoods and decent lives, and it shows the extent to which the settings and strategies of opposing sides matter. Even if we allow for a wide degree of overlap between the various adversaries of the Dalits and between the issues (of recognition) fought over, each of the struggles still follows its own rules and has its own rationale. The multifaceted character of struggle (and thus the multifaceted character of the opponents and addressees) increases the difficulties even further of convincing those in privileged positions to recognize those struggling for recognition. The multifaceted nature of the struggle can dilute the focus and disperse the energies of those who, like Dalits, lead struggles for recognition. In other words, can we even still talk in terms of one Dalit struggle with different dimensions, or should we instead assume that we are dealing with different struggles that are interlinked? 16. This term is used by many Dalits when referring to the caste and pollution ideology as manifest in the Manusmriti, the most important of the Brahmanical dharmashastras or ‘law books’, probably composed between 200 bce and 200 ce. 17. As elsewhere, in this case, too, ‘the State’ is often taken as a proxy. 18. In saguna bhakti, God or the Supreme is experienced ‘with attributes’, often represented in iconic form, but in nirguna as being ‘without attributes’ or ‘formless’. 19. I have discussed the Buddhist example, as well as its limitations, in more detail in Fuchs (2009). 20. Here I leave aside forms of recognition found in close social circles or in institutions based on enduring cooperation, like the army. 21. Hegel also developed his argument regarding recognition in a particular context, namely, that of the emerging bourgeois civil society. 22. This is debatable in itself. Assumptions about generalized individualization as a particularly modern achievement tend to mix up principles and practices, and such assumptions deliberately overlook processes of individualization in earlier periods and in non-Western contexts. Regarding comparative research on diverse forms of (religious) individualization in different historical and cultural contexts, see Fuchs (2015); Fuchs and Rüpke (2015). 23. Apart from power differentials among political players and social forces. 24. A plea I have come across several times among Dalits in Dharavi (the large slum in the heart of Mumbai). Among them I found an appreciation of the four religious options, Buddhism (as reintroduced by Ambedkar), Christianity, Islam and sant bhakti (i.e. nirguna bhakti), all considered to represent universalist values. Many interlocutors followed one of these options or sometimes swapped them. What was interesting was that interlocutors clearly articulated the limitations of each particular universalistic religion, which they saw as representing or supporting a different dimension of human existence, emphasizing charity, or solidarity, or

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equality (among men) or reason, respectively. Each universalism, including one’s own, has its own biases and limitations in the view of these interlocutors. Many of them regarded each moral universalism as just one element on the way towards a higher, more comprehensive, more tolerant, and wider universalism. 25. Hindu Dalits try in various ways to maintain the Hindu frame (of discrimination between castes and caste dharmas), while injecting a larger degree of equality and elements of recognition into it. These endeavours range from attempts to emulate practices and ideas of the higher castes to demands to be treated on a par with them. Strategies include the appropriation of symbols of higher caste status (e.g. changing to a vegetarian diet, or operating one’s own temple of a high Hindu deity and employing a Brahmin priest, thus becoming his patron), joining Hindu and Hindutva (Hindu political) organizations as individual members, or volunteering as fighters for the ‘Hindu cause’ in violent attacks on non-Hindu third parties, especially Muslims, in ‘communalist’ pogroms. I encountered instances of all of these strategies during my fieldwork in Dharavi, Mumbai, between 1999 and 2007. In their conversations with me, Dalits who wanted to remain Hindu repeatedly claimed equality for their caste and their mode of life, regardless of changes in practice or of their place on the traditional pollution scale. At the same time, Dalits who pursued one of these strategies repeatedly expressed their frustration about the fact that none of them had actually succeeded and that, in the end, they continued to be sidelined. By taking the higher castes as the measure of all things and appealing to them as arbitrators, Dalits (inadvertently) affirmed the pre-eminence of those castes and thus underscored the non-reciprocity in their relationship to them. The strategies mentioned seem to represent changes in the line of action among Hindu Dalits, not yet adequately theorized. Not so long ago, right up to the 1970s and 1980s, discussions about discontent and change within the caste system considered the struggle for a rise in rank within the caste order as the only option available to castes at the lower end of the social scale. By thus confirming the very order of hierarchy and degradation in their struggle, full equality and therefore proper recognition remained unattainable for Dalits. On the other hand, M.N. Srinivas, the main proponent of the concept of ‘Sanskritization’ – the concept used to depict this ‘Indian model of social change’ – was also forced to acknowledge the emergence of processes within Hindu society that do not fit the scheme: namely, processes of ‘homogenization’, the intrusion of ideas of equality, and even processes of ‘de-Sanskritization’. These phenomena have an earlier history, and Srinivas was unable to integrate them theoretically (cf. Fuchs 1999: 200ff.). 26. Honneth, following Hegel, keeps insisting on the holistic character of social or cultural entities – that is, of a ‘value order’ shared by the whole society (Honneth 1992: 201; 1996: 124). He moves from a ‘shared orientation to values’ (gemeinsame Orientierung an Werten) or an ‘intersubjectively shared value horizon’ (intersubjektiv geteilte[r] Werthorizont[es]), to a society’s ‘cultural self-understanding’ (das kulturelle Selbstverständnis einer Gesellschaft), the ‘orientation towards shared conceptions of … goals’ through which people ‘form a community of value’ (gemeinsame[n] Zielvorstellungen einer Wertgemeinschaft), and ‘the societal value system’ (die gesellschaftliche Wertordnung) (Honneth 1996: 94, 121, 122, 124, 178; see Honneth 1992: 152, 196, 198, 201, 284). His own

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insights into the existence of ‘counterculture(s)’, of ‘compensatory respect’ – quoting the term introduced by Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb ([1972] 1993) – and ‘value pluralism’ (Wertpluralismus) accompanied by value conflicts (Honneth 1996: 124–26; 1992: 200, 203–5) have little impact on his basic uniformist societal model. For a slightly different take on this, see my earlier critique of Honneth in Fuchs (1999: 317–27).

Bibliography Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji. (1957) 1974. The Buddha and His Dhamma. Bombay: Siddharth Publications. ———. (1917) 1989. ‘Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development’, in Vasant Moon (ed.), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, Volume 1. Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, pp. 3–22. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1934–1941) 1982. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (University of Texas Press Slavic Series), edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bob, Clifford. 2007. ‘“Dalit Rights are Human Rights”: Caste Discrimination, International Activism, and the Construction of a New Human Rights Issue’, Human Rights Quarterly 29(1): 167–93. Chakravarty, Uma. 1989. ‘The World of the Bhaktin in South Indian Traditions: The Body and Beyond’, Manushi 50–52: 18–29. Fraser, Nancy, and Axel Honneth. 2003. Umverteilung oder Anerkennung? Eine politisch- philosophische Kontroverse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Fuchs, Martin. 1999. Kampf um Differenz. Repräsentation, Subjektivität und soziale Bewegungen – Das Beispiel Indien. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 2000. ‘Universality of Culture: Reflection, Interaction and the Logic of Identity’, Thesis Eleven 60: 11–22. ———. 2001. ‘A Religion for Civil Society? Ambedkar’s Buddhism, the Dalit Issue and the Imagination of Emergent Possibilities’, in Vasudha Dalmia, Angelika Malinar and Martin Christof (eds), Charisma and Canon: Essays on the Religious History of the Indian Subcontinent. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 250–73. ———. 2009. ‘Reaching Out; or, Nobody Exists in One Context Only: Society as Translation’, Translation Studies 2(1): 21–40. ———. 2015. ‘Processes of Religious Individualization: Stocktaking and Issues for the Future’, Religion 45(3): 330–43. ———. Forthcoming. ‘Indian Imbroglios: Bhakti Neglected, Or: the Missed Opportunities for a New Approach to a Comparative Analysis of Civilizational Diversity’, in Johann Arnason and Chris Hann (eds), Anthropology and Civilizational Analysis. Eurasian Explorations. Fuchs, Martin, and Jörg Rüpke. 2015. ‘Religious Individualization in Historical Perspective’, Religion 45(3) (special issue on Religious Individualization; guest editors Martin Fuchs and Jörg Rüpke): 323–29. Habermas, Jürgen. 1979. Communication and the Evolution of Society, translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press.

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———. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume One, Reason and the Rationalization of Society, translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. Hardtmann, Eva-Maria. 2009. The Dalit Movement in India: Local Practices, Global Connections. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Herrenschmidt, Olivier. 1996. ‘“L’inégalité graduée” ou la pire des inégalités. L’analyse de la société hindoue par Ambedkar’, Archives européennes de sociologie 37(1): 3–32. Hess, Linda, and Shukdev Singh. 1983. The Bījak of Kabir. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Honneth, Axel. 1992. Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1996. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2011. Das Recht der Freiheit. Grundriß einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit. Berlin: Suhrkamp. ———. 2014. Freedom’s Right. The Social Foundations of Democratic Life. Cambridge: Polity Press. Joas, Hans. 1992. Die Kreativität des Handelns. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Linkenbach, Antje. 1986. Opake Gestalten des Denkens. Jürgen Habermas und die Rationalität fremder Lebensformen. Munich: Fink. Pechilis, Karen. 2011. ‘Bhakti Traditions’, in Jessica Frazier (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Hindu Studies. London: Continuum, pp. 107–22. Ramanujan, A.K. 1990. ‘Is There an Indian Way of Thinking? An Informal Essay’, in McKim Marriott (ed.), India through Hindu Categories. New Delhi: Sage, pp. 41–58.
 Rawls, John. 1999. A Theory of Justice, revised edition. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Sennett, Richard, and Jonathan Cobb. (1972) 1993. The Hidden Injuries of Class, reprint edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Taylor, Charles. 1994. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, edited by Amy Gutmann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 1993. ‘Verschränkung von Heimwelt und Fremdwelt’, in Ram Adhar Mall and Dieter Lohmar (eds), Philosophische Grundlagen der Interkulturalität. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 53–65. Zelliot, Eleanor, and Rohini Mokashi-Punekar (eds). 2005. Untouchable Saints: An Indian Phenomenon. New Delhi: Manohar.

Martin Fuchs holds the Professorship for Indian Religious History at the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany. Trained in both Anthropology and Sociology he has taught at universities in Germany, Switzerland, Hungary and New Zealand. His research interests include cultural and social theory, urban anthropology, social movements, religious individualization; his regional focus is on India. Among his book publications are Kultur, soziale Praxis, Text. Die Krise der ethnographischen Repräsentation, co-edited with

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Eberhard Berg (Suhrkamp, 1993), Kampf um Differenz. Repräsentation, Subjektivität und soziale Bewegungen – Das Beispiel Indien (Suhrkamp, 1999), Konfigurationen der Moderne. Diskurse zu Indien, co-edited with Antje Linkenbach and Shalini Randeria (Nomos, 2004), Individualisierung durch christliche Mission?, co-edited with Antje Linkenbach and Wolfgang Reinhard (Harrossowitz, 2015) and ‘Religious Individualisation’, a special issue of the journal Religion (2015), guest edited with Jörg Rüpke.

Chapter 10

Injustice Symbols and Global Solidarity

Thomas Olesen

Introduction There are close affinities between global struggles for recognition and global solidarity activism (see also individual contributions to this volume by Gosewinkel, Rucht, and Heins): first, both involve the mobilization of globally dispersed actors and audiences; second, they rest on a moralpolitical recognition of the humanness and rights-bearing qualities of (distant) others; and, third, both indicate how the notion of ‘society’ must increasingly be theorized through a global lens. There already is an extensive body of work on global solidarity activism (e.g. Keck and Sikkink 1998; Waterman 1998; Baglioni 2001; Eterovic and Smith 2001; Bob 2005; Olesen 2005; Thörn 2006; Reitan 2007; Smith 2008). I consider large tracts of this literature to suffer from a sociological deficit (in the conclusion I offer additional observations on limitations in the extant literature). In particular, I find it consistently undertheorized how solidarity activists contribute to the formation of what we might call a global society (Thörn 2006 is the most notable exception; see also Olesen 2015a for an extended discussion along the lines laid out in this chapter). There are evidently many ways to address this question. The contribution of this chapter lies in the introduction of a new concept for the sociological study of globality: global injustice symbols. Initially defined, global injustice symbols are carriers and repositories of collective norms and values about right and wrong in human political

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behaviour. The basic claim and premise of the chapter is that global solidarity activists are centrally involved in the formation of such symbols. For example, apartheid, which I consider to be among the most prominent global injustice symbols, was to a significant extent formed by solidarity activists (Thörn 2006; Olesen 2015b). These activities have left behind a set of injustice symbols that continue to resonate globally beyond the historical context of the anti-apartheid movement: Nelson Mandela, Robben Island, Sharpeville, to mention just a few. Their continued resonance and visibility indicate how the apartheid experience has undergone a process of universalization in which it now embodies core notions of solidarity, justice and injustice. Seen from this perspective, global solidarity activists are key contributors to the formation of globally shared norms and values and, thus, to a global society. The chapter’s main objective is to develop and theorize the concept of global injustice symbols to support this position. I believe that a discussion along these lines has central relevance for the guiding theme of the volume: global struggles of recognition. I address this aspect in the concluding section. The chapter has three sections. In the first I develop the concept of global solidarity activism in a theoretical dialogue with Jeffrey Alexander’s work on the civil sphere. In the second I connect these discussions with the concept of global injustice symbols. In the concluding section I return to the theme of global society as well as outline some theoretical and empirical problems and limitations in the relationship between global solidarity, injustice symbols, and global society.

Solidarity In The Civil Sphere, Jeffrey Alexander (2006) offers a rethinking of the concept of civil society, which could be fruitfully linked to global solidarity activism, and, as we shall see in the next section, global injustice symbols. Traditionally, civil society has been defined negatively as a nonstate sphere, with scholars variably emphasizing the family, capitalist entrepreneurs, and activists as its key actors and categories. Alexander shifts the focus from the actors to a complex of certain social and political values, including solidarity and universality, that he considers to be anchored in civil society: ‘I would like to suggest that civil society should be conceived as a solidary sphere, in which a certain kind of universalizing community comes to be culturally defined and to some degree institutionally enforced’ (Alexander 2006: 31). This sphere ‘can never exist as such; it can only be sustained to one degree or another. It is always limited by, and interpenetrated with, the boundary relations of

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other, non-civil spheres’ (ibid.). The implications for students of political activism are obvious. While the civil sphere, as noted earlier, cannot be reduced to specific actors, Alexander grants activism a central role in its development and defence. His analysis of the American civil rights movement, for example, conceives of this movement as an attempt to expand civil sphere values already present in American society to encompass the black population. He thus explains the movement’s ability to generate resonance throughout American society by emphasizing its combination of ‘Christian narratives of sacrifice and exodus, and the justice rhetorics of American civil society’ (Alexander 2006: 295; see McAdam 2000: 126 for a related argument). This is a view of activism that places the question of communication, in its broadest sense, at centre stage. At stake in this communication is a ‘translation’ between the particular and the universal (Alexander 2006: 231). To achieve wider resonance for their particular problems, activists universalize them, turning them into a problem not only for the movement and its immediate constituents, but for society at large (see also Olesen 2005, 2015a). Activists, in drawing on existing norms and values, ‘strike up a conversation with society’ (Alexander 2006: 231). In this process they not only invoke and utilize cultural-political values; they also create and recreate them (Williams 1995). Or, more forcefully: activists not only reflect society, they also construct and reconstruct it (I return to this core theme in the next main section). Solidarity activists, I would argue, offer a particularly useful prism for appreciating this dialectical point. Solidarity activism can be defined as collective moral-political activities aimed at publicizing and ameliorating/ending the suffering of collective others (the notion of otherness is elaborated in the following section). By ‘collective others’ I primarily mean groups of people with shared social, cultural and/or political identities and characteristics that differ (on at least some of these parameters) from those of the activists. This also partly explains my preference above to speak of such as activities as simultaneously political and moral. Solidarity activists, in other words, cannot expect to accrue personal benefits from the actions – at least not in the narrow sense of ‘interests’ (Rucht 2000: 78). Rather, solidarity action is based on an indignation caused by observing the unjust suffering of others. What is important here for a sociological approach is that this indignation has social (as opposed to primarily individual and psychological) roots: it draws on values anchored at a social-cultural level, or, in Alexander’s terminology, in the structure of the civil sphere. Alexander has primarily developed the concept of the civil sphere on the basis of national society, in particular the United States. The question

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I wish to pursue now is whether it can be meaningfully extended to the global level. Alexander (2007: 379) suggests as much when he speaks of a nascent global civil sphere. He does, however, only offer a rough sketch of what this term might imply. And, furthermore, I wish to be slightly bolder and claim that a global or global civil sphere already exists in observable form. Many globalization scholars have been concerned with the compression of time and space as expressed in increasingly rapid and border-crossing trade, travel and communication patterns (Held et al. 1999). Others, such as Robertson (1992), have opted for a sociological approach, emphasizing how globalization is characterized also by a growing ‘global consciousness’, which Alexander (2007: 372) has referred to as ‘a compression of meaning’: ‘There exist not only new technologies of movement and communication but more condensed and transcendent cultural logics, such as democracy and human rights that spread common understandings and structures of feeling more widely than before’. Any theoretical attempt to identify the contours of a global civil sphere needs to start here: with the analysis of moral and political meanings and values available on a global scale and embraced by globally dispersed audiences. Terms like ‘global consciousness’ and ‘compression of meaning’ are admittedly vague. But the notion of global solidarity activism offers a particularly promising opportunity to give them more conceptual and theoretical shape. As stated earlier, solidarity involves moral and political relationships with collective others. It is important to note that solidarity activities can occur at various spatial levels from the local to the global. For example, the constructors of Nordic welfare states in the post-Second World War period actively invoked the concept of solidarity (Stjernø 2004: 179–80) to foster chains of responsibility between social groups and classes. What marks the difference between solidarity at the national and global level is that in the latter case the collective others to whom solidarity activities are directed are ‘distant others’; that is, the recipients of solidarity not only differ from activists in terms of social, cultural and/or political identities and characteristics, but also in terms of their physical location.1 The term ‘distant others’ is, however, in some sense misleading, as it focuses quite strongly on difference. It is true that a solidary relationship is always a relationship between collectives with different identities and characteristics. Yet the act of solidarity is simultaneously inclusive: ‘Members of collectivities define their solidary relationships in ways that, in principle, allow them to share the sufferings of others. Is the suffering of others also our own? In thinking that it might be, societies expand the circle of the we’ (Alexander 2004a: 1). In important ways this understanding also highlights the difference between solidarity

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and bordering phenomena such as charity and pity. These latter terms indicate an unequal relationship between ‘providers’ and ‘recipients’ of sympathy and support: those requiring help are in a state of weakness and helplessness that in turn reflects a fundamental lack of capacities and resources. In straightforward terms: ‘They need help because they are not like us’ (i.e. not as smart or resourceful). Solidarity, in contrast, also springs from observing the suffering of others, but is motivated by a different dynamic: ‘They need and deserve help because they are like us’. It is when this logic of action is systematically at play on a global level that a global extension of the ‘we’ (see the quote from Alexander above) may be said to occur. Solidarity recipients and givers may be separated by physical distance, but solidarity relationships simultaneously imply and construct a moral-political proximity. The construction of moralpolitical proximity is not an automatic historical force. It requires agency. This agency in turn draws on and invokes a political cultural value and meaning structure with global extension – a global civil sphere in other words. These two aspects are theoretically related in a dialectical manner where structure is both enabling and constraining for social and political action (Giddens 1985; Sewell 1992). Or formulated in a different way: Global solidarity action is enabled by the presence of a global civil sphere, but this sphere is in turn enacted, created and maintained in and through solidarity action.

Global Injustice Symbols There are several routes to elaborating the argument above, but the study of global injustice symbols is particularly fruitful for pursuing this agenda. Let me begin by offering a definition: Global injustice symbols are formed on the basis of ‘objects’ such as events/situations and individuals that involve or otherwise refer to human suffering and over time are infused with injustice and justice meanings that point beyond their particularity; these processes are mediated, involve actors from various national settings, and are played out before and in interaction with globally dispersed audiences; global injustice symbols are shared by actors and audiences from several national settings in the sense that they have attained similar or relatively similar meanings across space (as will be discussed, this does not imply global interpretive homogeneity). Reflecting the dialectical points introduced earlier, I argue that global injustice symbols are constructed with ideational materials located in the global civil sphere. Yet at the same time, once constructed, they come to function as cultural-political carriers of global civil sphere values across

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time and space. To advance this perspective I start with a typology of the background ‘objects’ (events/situations and individuals) that may be transformed into global injustice symbols. I then develop a theoretical sketch for understanding the dynamics involved in the transformation from object to symbol (i.e. the meaning infusion process referred to above).

Background Objects Events and situations refer to political occurrences and conditions involving perceived instances of suffering and injustice as well as moral and political claims regarding blame, responsibility and victimhood. This is a broad category with at least three subcategories: massacres; genocides; and systematic repression. Massacres in this context are defined as occurrences where a relatively large group of people related to each other through shared social, cultural and political identities and characteristics are killed for political reasons by identifiable perpetrators over a short period and in a single locality. Examples of massacres that fit this definition and have attained global injustice symbol status would include the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968, the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon in 1982, and the massacre at Tiananmen Square in China in 1989. Genocides also involve the politically motivated killing of people with shared identities, but, in contrast to massacres, these are of a much larger scale in terms of both geography and the number of people killed, are more systematic, and last longer. Core examples here are the Holocaust and the 1994 Rwanda genocide (Olesen 2012, 2015a). Systematic repression does not necessarily involve the killing or wounding of groups or individuals (although in reality it often does). Rather it refers to situations where a group with shared identities and characteristics is systematically repressed and controlled by a state actor or other collective agent in ways that significantly limit their social, cultural or political freedom. Examples in this category are South African apartheid and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Prisons are another element in this category: for example, the Guantanamo Bay detention centre (Olesen 2011, 2015a), and Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated from 1964 to 1982. Some individuals attain iconic or symbolic status through being associated with certain political and moral values and accomplishments. Of primary interest for this chapter are individuals/icons related to social, cultural and political struggles over democracy, human rights,

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and recognition. Key examples are individuals such as Nelson Mandela (Olesen 2015a, 2015b), Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama, Malala Yousafzai (Olesen forthcoming) and, in a wider historical perspective, Gandhi and Martin Luther King. In the case of individual icons, the notions of justice and injustice clearly intersect. While these icons owe their global visibility and resonance to their active opposition to political and social conditions widely considered unjust, they have simultaneously become globally recognized carriers of the moral-political values they have espoused in their struggles.

The Meaning Infusion Process The following elaborates theoretically on three core aspects of the meaning infusion process that transforms an object into a global injustice symbol: universalization and agency; contested injustice; and audiences and resonance. The aspects considered here do not exhaust the range of theoretical elements, but were selected on the basis of their relevance for the concluding discussion of global society and global struggles for recognition.

Universalization and Agency A symbol, in the words of Elder and Cobb (1983: 28–29), is ‘any object used by human beings to index meanings that are not inherent in, nor discernible from, the object itself’. What Cobb and Elder’s definition suggests is that a symbol always in some sense points beyond itself; that the particularity of the background object has acquired a surplus of meaning, as it were. The acquisition of meaning surplus is a process of universalization. For example, the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam in 1968, despite already attaining symbolic status in its own time, continues to figure prominently in American and global collective memory. This was evidenced in relation to the Haditha massacre in Iraq in 2005, which gave rise to (often contested) comparisons and assessments of the moral-political implications of the two events. In its own historical context My Lai became a symbol for anti-war protestors of unacceptable civilian suffering. In the contemporary perspective it is still associated with Vietnam, but, as suggested by the Haditha example, it has attained extended and universal meaning as a symbol of the injustices befalling civilians in all wars. These considerations indicate that universalization can occur in both the short and long term. The most powerful and most strongly universalized symbols are those that endure outside their immediate historical context

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and have, in a sense, ‘detached’ themselves from their background event or situation. This is evident in the case of apartheid (Olesen 2015a, 2015b). The system of racial domination in South Africa that the term refers to no longer exists. Yet ‘apartheid’ continues to be employed in a range of contexts considered to bear some resemblance to the original situation. For example, Israeli politics towards Palestine is often described as a form of apartheid; and critics of social and economic inequalities worldwide speak of ‘global apartheid’. When symbols become detached from the original events or situations in the manner described above they may also be considered injustice ‘memories’. Injustice memories are involved in two types of social and political processes. First, they channel remembrance and mourning over past unjust events/situations and their victims. Second, and this is what is central here, past events/situations may be activated in and analogically bridged (Alexander 2004b: 247) with the present in order to amplify the injustice of contemporary events/ situations. For example, at the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide in 2004, the world joined to remember its victims, but the occasion was not just about commemorating past injustices; it was also widely used to denounce the crisis in Darfur and to advocate for intervention to avoid ‘another Rwanda’ (Olesen 2012, 2015a). Universalization is not automatic: it requires agency. Agency must be appreciated through the dialectical lens introduced earlier. On the one hand, we may view injustice symbols as outcomes of political agency; it is because social and political actors infuse an object with universalizing injustice or justice meaning that it eventually crystallizes into a symbol. On the other hand, when this process has reached a level of maturity and universalization, the symbol enters into political culture; it becomes a cultural-political resource that can be employed and invoked by subsequent political actors to garner public attention and legitimize actions, or in Gamson’s (1995) terminology, to create ‘cultural resonance’ (see also Alexander 2006). In other words: actors produce symbols and symbols enable action. There can be no clear-cut theoretical answer to the question: who constructs or produces global injustice symbols? This is an open empirical question. The chapter is premised on the assertion that global solidarity activists play a crucial role in this process; yet they never do so in isolation. Mandela’s transformation to symbol/icon, for example, grew out of a socially and politically diverse anti-apartheid movement consisting not only of activists in a narrow sense, but also political parties, politicians, media, and cultural personalities and activities (e.g. the Mandela concerts) (Thörn 2006; Olesen 2015a, 2015b).

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Contested Injustice The preceding sections have emphasized how injustice symbols are social constructs infused with meaning by social and political actors. What has not so far been highlighted is how such processes often involve contestation and blame allocation at various levels. In the case of Palestine as a global injustice symbol, for example, Israeli politics towards the occupied territories involve documented instances and conditions of suffering. Claims identifying these as unjust are widespread, but also paired with significant counter-claims that portray the situation as an unavoidable consequence of the security threat posed by Palestinian militants to the state of Israel. Similarly, defenders of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre hold this to be a necessary component in the war against terror, while critics claim that it represents an unacceptable erosion of core democratic and legal values and traditions. Invocations of injustice thus revolve around two moral-political aspects in particular: whether the victims of a certain action are considered to be innocent or not, and whether the action leading to suffering can be legitimated as an instance of self-defence or as otherwise ‘unavoidable’. In other cases the allocation of blame and moral responsibility is shifted from the parties involved to third parties. The Rwanda genocide, for example, does not involve substantial conflicts over the legitimacy of the suffering; the injustice of the suffering is, in other words, more or less uncontested. Instead the issue of injustice has been transposed and directed to Western states and the UN, who were aware of the atrocities but chose not to intervene with sufficient force (Olesen 2012, 2015a). These examples illuminate how notions and claims about injustice are inseparable from those about justice; injustice claims explicitly or implicitly contain claims about justice too. These can take various forms: in the case of injustices that have already occurred, justice claims will centre on how to avoid similar injustices in the future – core elements are commemoration, reparation and reconciliation; whereas in the case of presently occurring injustices, claims will revolve around strategies to ameliorate or halt the suffering, which will typically include calls for action and intervention from third parties; such calls are, in turn, often issued by solidarity activists.

Audiences and Resonance Several of the arguments above have a general character and might often also apply to national symbols. As stated in the definition earlier, the main difference between national and global injustice symbols is that the latter involve actors from various national settings and are constructed before and in interaction with globally dispersed audiences. The conceptual and

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theoretical complexity of the global audience concept cannot be given full attention here. In the following I thus highlight three aspects that all address the limits and potentials of global audience resonance. In reality global visibility and resonance is quite heterogeneous. In the case of the Rwanda genocide, for example, responsibility and blame was for various reasons mainly directed at the United States, France and Belgium. For that reason it is plausible to expect the Rwanda memory to be more firmly anchored in these national settings (Olesen 2012, 2015a). In sum, the concept of global injustice symbols does not contain appending claims about more or less equal distribution on a global scale. Regional/national differences are also relevant in the case of injustice symbols, such as Palestine. Given the Arab/Muslim identity of those affected by Israeli occupation and the appropriation of Palestine by Islamic political actors, it is expectable that this injustice symbol has deeper social anchoring in Arab/Muslim regions of the world (see also Olesen 2011).2 Earlier I argued how the formation of global injustice symbols require agency. Yet the extent to which the agency of global solidarity activism results in the formation of global injustice symbols is at least partly dependent on political context. Consider, for example, the formation of democratic icons such as Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela (Olesen 2015a, 2015b, forthcoming). All three attained global symbolic status during the late 1980s and early 1990s (reflected, among other things, in the fact that they all received the Nobel Peace Prize within a span of four years in the early 1990s). The period from the late 1980s and well into the 1990s was a period of worldwide transition as the Cold War system gradually came apart. These developments heralded a renewed focus on democracy and human rights, driven by a combination of states, international institutions, media, and global activists (Shaw 2000; Olesen 2005). Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela all gradually came to embody and symbolize this new spirit. Yet of particular interest here is how these icons have endured beyond their formative phase. In fact, this consistency is what justifies employing the term ‘icon’ in the first place; the Dalai Lama, Suu Kyi and Mandela thus continue to occupy a central position as carriers of global civil sphere values. Photographs of suffering and injustice play a crucial role in the symbolic process as they facilitate global resonance. This is so because photographs provide what might be termed emotional knowledge (Olesen 2013, 2015a). Abstract communication consists of information and analysis in the form of numbers and causal assumptions, and is typically conveyed in writing or speech, this aspect of activist communication is dominant

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in social movement framing research). Emotional communication, in contrast, bypasses the in-built rationality of language to directly impact the viewer’s moral senses. Photographs of bodily suffering are central in this regard, and may help to generate what Jasper and Poulsen (1995) call ‘moral shocks’ in an audience. It is one thing to hear or read about atrocity and another to be visually exposed to its consequences on specific human bodies. Viewing bodily suffering is so powerful because ‘[t]he body is our primary truth, our inescapable fate’ (Linfield 2010: 39). Bodily vulnerability, Linfield goes on, ‘is something that every human being shares; the cruelty is something that shatters our very sense of what it means to be human’. Sontag (2003: 23) has thus argued that photographs, in contrast to speech and writing, speak only one ‘language’. This universal character, which stems largely from their emotional power discussed above, gives photographs of bodily suffering significant crossnational diffusion potential.

Concluding Remarks on Global Society I began the chapter by suggesting a relationship between four concepts: global solidarity activism, injustice symbols, the civil sphere, and society. I also argued that the discussion of these concepts is relevant for the theme of the present volume: global struggles for recognition. In these concluding remarks I briefly relate the concepts to each other in order to assess the way global solidarity activism shapes global society. The discussion also includes a focus on limitation and conflict. The concepts of global injustice symbols and solidarity activism offer potentially novel ways to address a core question in the sociology of globalization: is there a global society? In the experience and political theory of Western modernity (and increasingly in other parts of the world) the notion of ‘society’ is closely interlinked with two other concepts: civil society and the public sphere (Cohen and Arato 1992). These have similarly been equipped with the adjective ‘global’ to stimulate sociological debate over the degree and character of the globalization process. The concept of global civil society, in particular, has inspired a spate of works (e.g. Kaldor 2003; Keane 2003; and the yearly issues since 2001 of the Global Civil Society Yearbook). The main concerns in this literature seem to fall into three interrelated categories: first, scholars focus on what might be termed the informational infrastructure of global civil society (Crack 2008); second, they address the international institutional set-up that facilitates and shapes global civil society action (Tarrow 2005; Smith 2008); and third, they invest energies in analysing,

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describing and mapping civil society organizations (Anheier, Glasius and Kaldor 2001; Sikkink and Smith 2002). The symbolic approach adopted in this chapter provides a different and, in my view, underappreciated way of theorizing global civil society. Surely, information, institutions and organizations are central components of any vibrant civil society. What they all tend to eschew, however, is the role of political culture in constituting a global civil society. A cultural approach enables us to appreciate how civil society is also a social value reservoir or complex (Alexander 2006). This is the essence of the concept of the civil sphere, which I have tentatively sought to theorize in a global direction in this chapter. The notion of a global civil sphere is complex, and remains to be further developed and theorized. This chapter has suggested one approach centred round the concept of global injustice symbols. The value complex of the civil sphere, I have thus argued, is to a significant extent embodied in and enacted through cultural-political artefacts. I consider global injustice symbols to be key cultural-political artefacts with the capacity of ‘carrying’ certain values across time and space. The value complex of the (global) civil sphere cannot, of course, be reduced to any one value. In the context of this chapter and volume I have chosen to emphasize that of solidarity: the moral obligation to recognize and aid (distant) others in their struggles against injustice. Several global injustice symbols are thus, at least partly, the ‘product’ of global solidarity activism. For example, the cases of Mandela and apartheid discussed earlier are outcomes of the global anti-apartheid activism of, in particular, the 1980s. What is interesting about them from the cultural-political point of view presented above is the fact that they maintain resonance in the contemporary situation: they continue to mean something (but not necessarily the same thing) to people all over the world. As the end of apartheid was at least partly an outcome of global solidarity activism (Thörn 2006), Mandela and apartheid have an interesting double meaning. First, they both refer back to injustices that were perceived by actors all around the world to be morally and politically unacceptable. Second, the very dissolution of apartheid and the freeing of Mandela remain as testaments to the power of global solidarity activism, and, thus, in a sense, to the fact that justice is possible (Olesen 2015a, 2015b). So where does this leave us in regard to the concept and notion of global society? If we accept Alexander’s (and Durkheim’s in 1912) core point that the notion of society requires a shared set of values and norms institutionally anchored in the civil sphere as well as the argument that global injustice symbols reflect such norms and values at a global level, there are sound reasons to defend the existence of a global society. For

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the sociologically inclined student of activism this is a vital point since global activists are among the main contributors to the formation of such symbols. This tentative conclusion is not a functionalist argument about global homogeneity or harmony. First, as noted earlier, the meanings of global injustice symbols may have significant cross-national variation. Second, some global injustice symbols carry much more contested, conflictive, and potentially divisive meanings than, for example, the Mandela and apartheid symbols, whose meaning is relatively uncontested. Let me mention just one example in the contemporary situation: global Jihadism. Al-Qaeda communiqués recurrently emphasize notions of global solidarity, of how Muslims are morally and politically united across borders and obliged to react to each other’s suffering (Olesen 2011). This type of rhetoric simultaneously feeds on and constructs global injustice symbols such as the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, the Abu Ghraib images, and the Muhammad cartoons published by a Danish newspaper in 2005 (Olesen 2015a). Finally, how are the arguments of the chapter relevant for the theme of this volume: global struggles for recognition? Several relevant points could be raised, but in the context of the present discussion I wish to relate the concept mainly to that of global society. According to Rucht (2011), recognition of ‘the other’ is a core element in what he calls civility; a concept that I in turn would argue is closely related to that of the civil sphere. Recognition of ‘the other’ essentially entails recognition at two levels: first, a moral level at which the other is recognized as essentially human, able to make reasonable and morally informed decisions and to feel and express human feelings such as grief, happiness and love; and second, a political level at which the other qua the above characteristics is entitled to certain core rights. In Honneth’s ([1992] 2006) analysis of recognition, this development is identified primarily at the national level. Yet, as testified by the present volume, such struggles have in the last fifty years increasingly occurred also at the global level. What is particularly notable in the discussion of global society is that the recognition of distant others, in my view, is constitutive of society. As also shown in Honneth’s historical sociological work, recognition implied a gradual extension of the individuals and groups granted full moral and political rights and recognition and, as such, full inclusion in society. The civil sphere is similarly premised on a universalizing logic. I would argue, consequently, that global struggles for recognition draw on a value and norm reservoir of a global civil sphere, and that they, echoing the dialectical argument put forward earlier, both shape and expand this sphere through their struggles. This latter point more than suggests that studies of global recognition struggles and global solidarity activism

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are closely related in terms of their objects of study and, not least, that recognition and civil sphere theory hold significant potential for crossfertilization and future scholarly debate and exchange.

Notes   1. I wish to thank Dieter Rucht for a set of very insightful comments on the first draft of this chapter, and also to express my gratitude to the Danish Council for Independent Research, Social Sciences (FSE), whose grant supported parts of my research. The solidarity value set at the heart of the global civil sphere draws on and reflects several ideational and historical sources. Ideas of solidarity and interconnectedness extending beyond the local and national may be found in ancient Greece, in the Cynics and Stoics movements and their notion of cosmopolitanism (Brown 2006), in Christian ideas of brotherliness (Brunkhorst 2005: ch. 2), in the French Revolution’s early stress on (human) rights (ibid.: ch. 3), in Marxian ideas of global class solidarity (Stjernø 2004: ch. 2), in the foreign aid regime after the Second World War (Lumsdaine 1993), and in the UN human rights complex developed in the wake of the Holocaust (Shaw 2000). These varied ideational sources more than suggest that global solidarity is not the monopoly of activists. What I will argue, however, is that global solidarity activists historically have been central to institutionalizing these ideas at a global level. I use the term ‘institutional’ in a decidedly sociological manner to denote how solidarity values have become an integral part of a global cultural-political structure or global civil sphere.  2. This is not to say that Palestine is not resonant outside these regions; in fact, Palestine has been a core injustice symbol in Western-based solidarity activities since at least the 1960s.

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———. 2012. ‘Global Injustice Memories: The Case of Rwanda’, International Political Sociology 6(4): 373–89. ———. 2013. ‘“We Are All Khaled Said”: On Visual Injustice Symbols’, Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change 35: 3–25. ———. 2015a. Global Injustice Symbols and Social Movements (Cultural Sociology Series). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2015b. ‘Global Political Iconography: The Making of Nelson Mandela’, American Journal of Cultural Sociology 3(1): 34–64. ———. Forthcoming. ‘Malala and the Politics of Global Iconicity’, British Journal of Sociology. Reitan, R. 2007. Global Activism. Oxon: Routledge. Robertson, R. 1992. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage. Rucht, D. 2000. ‘Distant Issue Movements in Germany: Empirical Description and Theoretical Reflections’, in J.A. Guidry, M.D. Kennedy and M.N. Zald (eds), Globalizations and Social Movements: Culture, Power, and the Global Public Sphere. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, pp. 76–105. ———. 2011. ‘Civil Society and Civility in Twentieth-Century Theorising’, European Review of History 18(3): 387–407. Sewell, Jr., W.H. 1992. ‘A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation’, American Journal of Sociology 98(1): 1–29. Shaw, M. 2000. Theory of the Global State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sikkink, K., and J. Smith. 2002. ‘Infrastructures for Change: Global Organizations, 1953–93’, in S. Khagram, J.V. Riker and K. Sikkink (eds), Restructring World Politics: Global Social Movements, Networks, and Norms. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 24–44. Smith, J. 2008. Social Movements for Global Democracy. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Sontag, S. 2003. At betragte andres lidelser. København: Tiderne Skifter. Stjernø, S. 2004. Solidarity in Europe: The History of an Idea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarrow, S. 2005. The New Transnational Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thörn, H. 2006. Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Waterman, P. 1998. Globalization, Social Movements and the New Internationalisms. London and Washington: Mansell. Williams, R.H. 1995. ‘Constructing the Public Good: Social Movements and Cultural Resources’, Social Problems 42(1): 124–44.

Thomas Olesen is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. His current research focuses on activism, solidarity, and symbols in global contexts. Recent publications include Global Injustice Symbols and Social Movements (Palgrave Macmillan’s Cultural Sociology Series) and, with Lasse Lindekilde, Politisk protest: Dynamikker, forklaringer og konsekvenser, published by Hans Reitzel.

Index

A Abortion. See women Abu Ghraib (prison, Iraq), 280 Achut, 253. See also Dalits Afghanistan, 57 Affirmative action, 64, 254, 262, 271 Africa, 57, 59, 91–92, 210 African Americans 91, 256  North Africa 106, 110–116, 123  South Africa, 284  South African, apartheid 282 Sub-saharian, Africa 214 Agonistic pluralism, 73, 81. See also Mouffe, Chantal Agudat Yisrael, 144 Alderman, Geoffrey, 109 Aldermaston March, 235 Alexander, Gregory, 32 Alexander, Jeffrey, 95–96, 278–281, 284, 288 Algeria, 111, 120 Alinsky, Saul, 58 Rules for Radicals, 58 Alliance Israélite Universelle, (AIU) 24, 104, 107–108, 123 Ally, Shireen, 216 Alt, Frantz, 238 Alter, Wiktor, 161, 163, 176 Ambedkar, Babasahed (Bhimrao), 255 Buddhism, 255, 268, 272 Constitution, 255 Graded inequality, 268 Social movement of the Dalits, 255 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), 145

Amnesty International, 20, 58 America American colonists, 2 American Revolution, 54 American values, 60 George H. Mead’s theory of American pragmatism, 14 North America, 2 South America, 29 White American ethnocentrism, 60 See also United States Amsterdam, 108, 211 Ancien Régime, 2 Anglo-Jewish Association (AJA), 24–25, 104, 108 Anglo-Palestine bank, 137 Anhut, Reimund, 71–73 Anti-colonial movement, 14 Anti-nuclear protests, 33, 232–233 Anti-Semitism 9, 26–27, 73, 103, 123, 134–135, 137, 140, 143–147, 165, 166, 170–171 Combat against, 123, 137, 140  German anti-Semitism, 143  Polish anti-Semitism, 27, 143  Anti-Semitic regimes, 138 State-sponsored economic, 145 Violence 26, 73 Apartheid, 278, 282, 284, 288–289 Anti-apartheid movement, 284, 288 Global apartheid (social and economic inequalities), 184 Global injustice symbols, 278, 288 Injustice memories, 284

294 • Index

Israeli politics towards the Palestinians, 284 Nelson Mandela, 284, 288–289 Racial domination in South Africa, 284 Systematic repression, 282 Arab Spring, 85 Arbetsmenshn, 178 Arijans, 253 Aristotelianism, 88 Arndt, Agnes, 192 Asia, 210, 212, 215 Atlantic Revolution, 2 Aung San Suu Kyi, 283, 286 Australia, 210 Austria, 27, 177, 178 Austrian Marxists, 172 Austrian socialists, 173 Austrian social democratic party, 173 Austrian workers uprising, 172–173 Austro-Hungarian Empire Jewish life, 144 Polish women, 27 Avarna, 253. See also Dalits B Baghdad, 113–114 Balkans, 111, 116, 123 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 267 Barcelona, 176 Battle of Kosovo, 96 Bauer, Otto, 172 Beethoven, Ludwig van (Ode to Joy), 233 Belgium, 286 Bene Israel Benevolent Society, 113–114 Benisch, Avraham, 109 Berkshire, 239. See also Greenham Common Berlin, 108, 237 Bernecker, Walther, 175–176 Bernheim Petition, 136, 146, 150, 157 Bey, 119

Bhakti (indian religious practice), 265, 267–268 Nirguna, 265 Saguna, 265, 272 Bialystok, 169 Bildungsprozess, 258 Bispinck, Reinhard, 218 Board of Deputies of British Jews, 106, 109, 111–112, 121 Bolivia, 212 Boltanski, Luc, 90 Bombay, 113–114 Bourdieu, Pierre, 243 Bourgeois Society, 3 Brahmins / Brahmanism (Indian upper class), 263, 265 Brazil, 212, 216 Brighton, 109 Brisbane, 109 Britain. See United Kingdom British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmement, 233–236 British Isles, 108–109 Brown, Jerry, 221 Buddhism, 31, 255, 264–265, 267–268, 272 Ambedkar, 255, 265 Bhakti, 264–265 Dalits, 255 Pre-Ambedkarite, 268 Bund (the General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia), 26–27, 144, 161–179 Bundist ideology of class solidarity, 144 Concept of national-cultural autonomy, 165 Eynser (moderate party majority), 164 Galician Bund, 164 History of the Bund in Poland, 162–165 Khavershaft (comradeship), 164 May Day parades, 168–172 Meshpokhedikeyt (family), 27, 164 Opposition of the Polish Bund to Zionism, 144, 155

Index • 295

Pluriethnicity, 161–162 Regional distribution in Poland, 164 Relations with the DSAP, 168 Relations with the PPS, 166–168 Relations with the Socialist International, 27, 172–178 Secular yiddish cultural movement, 165 Sotsyalistische Kinder Farband, 173 Struggle against antisemitism, 166–168 Tsukunft (youth organization), 173, 175 Tsveyer (boisterous left wing), 164, 169, 175 Working class milieu, 162 Burgess, Guy, 67 Burrows, Matthew, 120 C Caballero, Largo, 174, 176 Calcutta, 114 California, 213, 221 California Assembly, 221 State Senate, 221 Camapanys, Luis, 177 Cape Town, 109 Cardiff, 239–240 Caribbean, 210, 212, 214 Catholicism, 287 Chederim, 155–116 Chetrit, Joseph, 110–111 Chile, 212, 216 China, 35, 57, 282 Tibbetan monks, 57 Tienanmen Square, 282 Christianity, 272 Christian 31, 96 Christian beliefs, 265 Christian humanism, 233 Christian ideas of brotherliness, 290 Christian language, 266 Christian narratives of sacrifices and exodus, 279

Civility, 30, 231, 235, 241, 243. See also Global civil sphere and Global civil society Civil rights, 27, 59, 61, 91, 137, 145, 187, 279 American civil rights movement, 59–61, 91, 279 German Jewry, 137 Polish Jewry, 145 Polish women, 27, 187 Port-Huton statement, 61 Second Polish Republic, 27 Civil society, 9, 15, 21, 28, 33, 57, 134, 185, 193, 194–196, 197– 198, 231, 235–236, 278–279. See also Global Civil society Classless society, 4 Cobb, Jonathan, 274 Cobb, Williamson Robert, 283 Cold War, 1, 29–30, 60, 189, 193, 233–245 Angst, 244 Arms race, 60, 234, 240, 241, 244 End of, 286 Experience of, 243 German post-war memories, 238–239 History of the, 189 Language of recognition, 234 Peace movements, 231–245 Politics, 242 Post Cold-War era, 193 Collective action, 52, 63–64, 70 Theories of collective actions, 52 Collective protest, 53, 91 Colonalism. See under Europe, European colonialism, European colonization Comité des délégations juives, 135, 137, 150, 152 Comité national de secours, 140 Comintern, 172, 174–176 Commonwealth, 56, 235 Communism, 28, 189, 193 End of/Fall of, 28, 193 Theoreticians, 189

296 • Index

Communist Party of Poland (CPP), 170 Communitarianism, 259 Confederacion Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Trabajadoras del Hogar (CONLACTRAHO), 212 Conference on security and cooperation in Europe,195. See also Helsinki Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), 237 Consistoire Central (Central Consistory), 106, 112 Constantinople, 116 Copenhagen, 239 Cosmopolitanism, 90, 107, 290–291 Conceptions of moral cosmopolitanism, 90 Hellenistic, 290–291 Jewish, 107 Costa Rica, 212 Crémieux, Adolphe, 106–108, 111, 117 Cremieux Decree, 111 Cultural approaches, 63 Cyprus, 114 Czapinski, Kazimierz, 168 Czechoslovakia, 173 D Dabrowski, XIIIth Brigade, 175 Dalai Lama, 283, 286 Dalits, 28, 31, 206, 252–256, 264, 269–273 Achut, 253 Ambedkar, 255 Avarna, 253 Discrimination, 253–256, 262, 270 Harijans, 253 Labour power, 253, 255 Panchama, 253 Quotas of seats held in reserve, 255 Scheduled class, 255, 272 Subservience, 255 Damascus Affair, 106

Daniel, Abraham, 113 Darfur, 284 Das Gupta, Monisha, 205 Davis, Belinda, 239 Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachussets, 58. See also Voting Rights Dedalus, Stephen, 90 Deutsch, Julius, 176 Dharmas, 268, 272–273. See also Brahmins/Brahmanism Dhimmis, 111 Diaspora, 7, 26, 105, 135, 141, 148 Diaspora studies, 133 Ethonational diaspora, 26, 134 Distributive justice, 262. See also Nancy Fraser Domestic workers’ movement, 29, 208–209, 212, 220, 223 Doyres Bundistn (Generation of Bundists), 175 Dreiklassenwahlrecht (Prussian threeclass franchise system), 54. See also Voting rights DSAP (Deutsche Sozialistische Arbeitspartei in Polen – German Socialist Labour Party in Poland), 167–168 Durkheim, Emile, 32–33, 288 E Easter March, 233 Ecole Normale Israélite Orientale (ENIO), 114–115 Eco-pacifism, 241 Ecuador, 212 Elder, Charles D., 283 Enlightenment, 12, 55, 110, 116, 266 Enlightenment Discourse, 266 Ideas of the Enlightenment, 55 Jewish Enlightenment, 110 Late Enlightenment, 12 Equal respect, 2–8, 178 Achievement, of 2

Index • 297

Demands for, 3–4 Equality, 3 Lack of, 3 Social norms, 2 Struggle for 2, 5–8, 178 Violation of, 2 Erlich, Henryk, 167 Essen, 54 Eugene, Emmanuel, 107 Europe, 1–2 Central Europe, 19, 103, 194 Colonial heritage, 235 East Central Europe, 190, 196 Eastern Europe, 20–21, 24–26, 28, 105–106, 111, 135–143 European civil war, 1 European colonialism, 3, 18 European colonization, 5 European constitutions, 4 Western Europe, 20, 27, 94, 143, 189–191, 233, 242 European Congress of National Minorities, 135 European Union, 185, 210, 214–215, 219 European Women’s Lobby, 21 Eyerman, Ron, 91–92, 95 F Fanon, Frantz, 14, 23, 88 Federal Republic of Germany, 30, 234 Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV), 211, 213 Folkstsaytung, 174 Forverts, 171. See also New York France, 2, 6, 8, 22, 26, 51, 75, 80, 106, 108, 110, 112, 115, 119, 122, 139–141, 175, 177, 206, 286 and Atlantic Revolution, 2 Revolutionary France, 110 Universalism, 110 Franco-Judaism, 107 Fraser, Nancy, 10–11, 16, 26–31, 65, 69–73, 78, 88, 148, 184, 192, 222–224, 262 Freedom Summer campaign, 59

Friedman, Thomas, 85 French Revolution, 12, 15, 30, 54–56, 229 G Galicia (Poland) 144, 164 Galician Bund, 164 Gamson, William Anthony, 64, 74, 284 Gegenwartsarbeit, 141 Gender and differences, 2 Ascriptions, 198 As a challenge to general history, 184 Gender blindness of research in regard to the concept of civil society, 196 Gender concept, 194 Gender and equal rights, 186–187 Gender issues, 47, 196 Gender order, 28, 187, 188, 191–192, 195–196 Gender justice, 27, 28 Gender-neutral exclusion, 194 Gender problem, 28 Gender quotas, 70 Gender relations, 185, 187–192 Gender-specific disrespect, 15 Gendered assumptions, 185 Gendered subordination in the private sphere, 187, 196 and Germans victimization discourse, 237 Civil society as a ‘gendered’ concept, 28, 197 Traditional gender order, 187, 191, 196 Transgender persons, 51 Genocide, 282, 284–286 German Rhineland area, 54 Germany, 6, 8, 9, 22, 27, 30 Nazi Germany, 30, 97, 135, 137, 140, 143, 147, 151–152, 154– 155, 159–160. See also Nazism Weimar Germany, 94 Geyer, Michael, 7, 243–245

298 • Index

Ghandi, Mahatma, 255, 271, 283 Dalits, 271 Dispute with Ambedkar, 255 Glick Schiller, Nina 104 Global civil society, 19, 32, 245, 287 Political culture, 284 Symbolic approach, 284, 288 Global civil sphere, 32, 288–290 Agency, 281, 283–284, 286 Compression of meaning, 280 Compression of time and space, 280 “Distant others”, 32, 277, 280, 288–289 Moral political proximity, 281 Global injustice symbols, 277–278, 281, 282, 284–289 Global Jihadism, 289 Global North, 58–59 Global Solidarity Activism, 32–33, 277–278, 280, 286–289 Global South, 58–59 Globalization, 5, 17–18, 69–70, 148, 270, 280, 287–288 Goldmann, Nahum, 138, 151–157 Goldsmid, Sir Francis, 109 Goldstone, Jack A., 207–209, 213, 215, 218, 220, 223 Gosewinkel, Dieter, 66–67, 76, 149, 195 Gramsci, Antonio, 78 Great-Britain, See United Kingdom Great Depression, 140, 144 Greece, 57, 290 Greenham Common, 239–241 Airbase, 239–240 Peace activists, 240–241 Griessinger, Andreas, 67 Gruppenbezogene Menschen­feind­ lichkeit, 73 Guantanamo Bay, 282, 285, 289 Guatemala, 212 H Habermas, Jürgen, 30, 68, 77–78, 81, 232, 242, 245, 258, 261

Haig, Alexander, 236 Halévy Joseph, 112 Harijans (Dalit), 253 Hashomer Hatsair (The Youth Guard), 175 Hassan I, Sultan, 121 Hayden, Tom, 61 Hegel, G. W. F., 12–16, 30, 54, 66, 69, 92, 234, 243 Heery, Edmund, 213 Heitmeyer Wilhelm, 71–74 Held, David, 245 Helsinki, 195. See also Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Hilferding, Rudolf, 177 Hilfsverein der deutscher Juden, 109, 121–122 Hinduism, 255, 263, 268, 273 History Comparative history, 19 Global history, 18 Modern European history, 134 Transnational history, 18, 161, 184–185 Hitler, Adolf, 136, 140, 143 Hobbes, Thomas, 13, 86 Hobson, Barbara, 64–65, 71 Holocaust, 9, 135, 178, 188, 237–238, 245, 282, 290 Thermonuclear holocaust, 237, 245 Holy Roman Empire, 12 Honneth, Axel, 10–16, 23–24, 30–31, 66–78, 85–97, 147, 208, 214, 224, 231–232, 242–244, 253–270, 289 Human rights, 14, 17, 20, 28, 32, 57–58, 69, 76, 92, 133, 149, 190, 192, 195, 233, 271, 280, 282, 286, 290 Analyses of central and East European societies, 195 Dissidence in Eastern Europe, 28, 192 Global North, 58 Helsinki process, 195 Icons of, 282 India, 268

Index • 299

Jewish diplomacy of the interwar period, 133 Malcolm X, 92 Nancy Fraser, 76 Policy domain, 20 Renaissance of, 16–17, 149 Solidarity activists, 32 Tibetan monks in China, 57 Transcendent cultural logics, 280 Universality, 195 West German Framing, 233 Human trafficking, 58, 214 Hyman, Richard, 222 I Identity model, 65, 71, 79. See also Nancy Fraser Identity politics, 65, 71, 79 Imig, Doug, 210 Imperialism, 104 Anti-imperialist community, 189 Anglo-Jewish-Association’s imperial agenda, 113, 115 Borders, 119 British, 106 European, 110 French imperial policy, 113 German Army, 233 Western Jewish organizations, 115 India, 28, 31, 113, 206, 252–276 Constitution, 255–256, 262, 268 Independence, 265 International Brigades, 175–177 International Council of Women 21, 186 International Domestic Worker’s Network (IDWN), 211–212, 214–215, 221 International Labour Conference, 205, 209, 215, 221 International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention, 189 Concerning decent work for Domestic Workers, 28–29, 205, 209, 211–212, 217–224

International Trade Union Confederation, 223 International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, 211 International Women’s Day, 223 International Worker’s Day, 167–168, 171. See also Bund International Women’s Decade, 21, 28–29, 58, 178, 205, 208, 215, 220, International Women’s Suffrage Alliance, 21 Inter-Parliamentary Union, 135 Iron Curtain, 27, 188–190, 193 Islam, 31 Anti-Islamic sentiment, 73 Islamic teachings and beliefs, 265 Islamic political actors, 286 Nation of Islam and Malcolm X, 92 Israelitische Allianz, 109 Italy, 57 J Jaffa, 108, 113 Japan, 190 Jasper, James M., 63–64 Jewish Chronicle, 109 Jews, Jewish American Jews, 26, 135, 141–142, 147 Baghdadi Jews, 114 Of castilian descent, 117 Diplomacy, 106, 133–135, 149 East European Jews, 143, 146 French Jewish history, 107 French Jewry, 110, 139 German Jewry, 25, 136–137, 140, 150 History, 7, 24, 103–105 Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, 221 Jewish Agency for Palestine, 135, 141, 145 Jewish World, 123

300 • Index

Landrat (district authority, Poland), 175, 177 Levantine Jewish communities, 112,116 NGOs, 25 North African Jewish communities, 112 Organizations, 7, 24–26, 104, 111–112, 115, 117, 137, 143 Polish Jewish combatants in Spain, 175 Polish Jews, 142–144, 164, 168 Reform movement in England, 109 Russian Jews, 122–123 Struggle for recognition, 22 Struggles for social and cultural rights, 22 Syrian Jews, 106 Tunisian Jews, 122, 124 Turkish Jews, 118 Women’s associations, 22 Joint Foreign Committee of British Jews, 136 Johnpoll, Bernard, 177 Jubilee 2000 network, 59 Jubilee South, 59 K Kabirpanthi sampradayas (denomination, India), 268 Kahn, Zadoc (Grand Rabbin of France), 122 Kant, Immanuel, 77, 97, 259 Karuna (brotherhood of man), 255 Keck, Margaret E., 15, 20–21, 146, 148, 210, 218, 277 Kegn Shtrom (Against the Current), 172 Kehillot (Polish Jewry), 144 Keynesian-Westphalian frame, 69–70 Khavershaft (comradeship), 164 (see also Bund) Klein, Christina, 233 Koselleck, Reinhart, 56 Kosovo, Battle of. See Battle of Kosovo Krakow, 164

Krupp, Alfred, 54 L Labour movement, 3 European labour movement, 4 International labour movement, 29 Landsmannschaften, 105 Laskier, David, 119 Latin America, 210, 212, 214 League of Nations, 26, 134–139, 146–148 Lebanon, 282. See also Sabra and Shatila Lestchinsky, Jacob, 145, 171 Levant, 110, 115, 117, 123 Leven, Narcisse, 107–108, 110, 115, 118 Lichtenstein, Israel, 167 Ligue internationale contre le fascisme et l’antisémitisme (LICA), 140 Linz, 173 Liverpool, 109 Livshits, Beniek, 175 Locke, John, 55 Lodz, 164 London, 109–110, 112–114, 116, 119, 123, 143 Lopez, Sylvia, 221 Löwy, Albert, 108–109, 113 Lublin, 164 Lustiger, Arno, 175, 181–182 Lviv, 164 M Madagascar, 145 Madrid, 121 Malcolm X, 24, 91–92 Malino, Frances, 115 Manchester, 109 Mandela, Nelson, 272, 284, 286, 288–289 (see also Apartheid and Robben Island) Manuwadi (Brahmin socio-religious worldview), 263 Marable, Manning, 91–92

Index • 301

Market economy, 193 Marshall, Thomas H., 15 Martin Luther King, 91, 283 Marx, Karl, 13–16, 67–68, 90 Austro-Marxists, 172 Marxist theory, 16–17, 90 Revolutionary Marxist party, 72 Maskilim (Enlightened Jews), 110 Mass death, 243–244 May Day demonstrations, 162, 168–169 Mead, George H., 14, 257 Theory of American pragmatism, 14 Media Mass media, 4 Visual media, 32 Mediterranean, 24, 104, 111–112, 118, 120 Eastern, 111 Mellah, 112, 117. See also Tetuan Jewish Boy’s school Meshpokhedikeyt (family), 27, 164. See also Bund Mexico, 212 Mexican labor legislation, 220 Middle East, 57, 92, 111, 119 Migrant Forum Asia (MFA), 212 Migration studies, 133 Mikveh Israel, 113 Minority treaties, 146, 149 Mira Marody, 193 Mission civilisatrice, 120 Mission civilisatrice juive, 124–125 Mississippi, 59 Moccata, Fredric D., 116 Modernity Achievement of, 12 and autonomy, 10 and social welfare and equality 189 Different conceptions of, 112 Transition to, 11 Western modernity, 187 Montefiore, Moses, 106–107 Moorish Empire, 121 Morocco, 111–112, 114–115, 118–119, 121, Motzkin, Leo, 135, 150, 152, 159

Mouffe, Chantal, 73, 81 Agonistic pluralism, 73, 81 Mueller, Carol, 65 Muhammad cartoons, 289 Multiculturalism, 15, 65, 178 Multiethnicity, 15, 27 My Lai massacre, 282–283. See also Vietnam Mysl Socjalistyczna (The Socialist idea), 174 N Nahon, Moses, 120 Nasza Walka (Our Struggle), 169 Nation-state, 8–9, 24, 26–27, 70, 103, 105–106, 124, 134, 148, 162, 168, 178, 184–186, 189, 197–198, 219, 245, Centralized, 140 Closed, 17 Constitutionalized, 134 European, 17, 124, 168 Formation of, 9 Polish, 162, 178, 189 Sovereign, 185 National minority interests, 5 National minority rights, 5 Nationalization, 18, 103–104, 134, 185 Renationalization, 25 National security, 237, 241, 243 Natural law, 57, 76, 79 Naye Folkstsaytung (New People’s Daily), 167 Nazism, 143, 156 Nazi law, 150 Nazi movement, 94 Nazi officials, 136 Nazi regime, 151 Negrin, Juan, 176 Négritude, 124 Neidsteuer, 56 Netter, Charles, 107, 113 New South Wales, 109 New York, 59, 221 Forverts, 171 New York City, 59, 21

302 • Index

New York Bill of Rights for Domestic Workers, 221 New York Times, 85 Niedzialkowski, Mieczyslaw, 167 Nineteenth century, 2–5 Nirguna, 265. See also Bhakti Non–conformist protestantism, 233 Non-governmental organizations, 19, 20, 25, 58, 96, 105, 120, 133– 134, 208, 210–211, 214, 216, 222–223 Jewish, 25 Labor-friendly, 222–223 Progressive, 58 North Africa 106, 100–11 North America, 2, 105, 210 and Atlantic Revolution, 2 Nowe Zycie (newspaper), 161, 167 Nuclear arms race, 240–241 Nuclear disarmement, 233–235, 240 Nuclear threat, 30 Nuclear weapons, 233, 236, 240–241 O Oler, Leon, 175 Opp, Karl-Dieter, 62, 64 Oppenheimer, Andrew, 233, 235 Organic intellectuals, 23, 78 Orient, 115, 119–120, 122 Oriental Jews, 110–112 Ottoman Empire, 96, 106, 114, 116, 118 P Pacific, 210 Palestine, 135, 137, 141–144, 165, 170, 284–286, 290 Anglo-Palestine Bank, 137 Arab population, 144 British Mandate, 149 British policy on Palestine, 165 As injustice symbol, 285–286 Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, 282, 286 Israeli politics towards Palestine, 284

Jewish Agency for Palestine, 135, 137 Jewish distress, 141 Jewish emigration to, 137, 144 Polish Bundist leaders, 154–155 United Palestine Appeal, 142 Warsaw Central Committe of the Jewish Trade Unions, 170 Zionist leadership, 143 Palmerston, 3rd Viscount of – Henry John Temple, 106 Panchama, 253. See also Dalits Park, Robert E., 67 Paris Alliance Israélite Universelle, 104, 107–109, 115, 117 Comité des délégations Juives, 151–156 Consistoire Central, 112 Pat, Jakob, 174 Peace movement, 6, 30, 230, 231– 232, 237–239, 241–245 Activists 238, 241, 243–245 Emotional regime, 238, 247 Struggles for recognition, 30 West European peace movement, 29 West German peace movement, 235–237 Women and peace movement, 30 Peking, 233 Pershing II missiles, 244 Persia, 114 Pettenkofer, Andreas, 89–90, 93 Pettit, Anne, 240 Philipps, Anne 65 Piaget, Jean, 261 Picciotto, James, 112 Pilsudski, Joseph (Marshal), 145 Plach, Eva, 188 Poale-Zion party (Poland), 145. See also Zionism Poland, 6, 8, 9, 19, 22, 26 Catholicism, 187–188 Congress Poland, 144 Constitution, 186–187 History, 27, 185, 198 People’s Republic of Poland, 189

Index • 303

Polish Second Republic, 27, 162–163, 178 Sejm, 144 Social movement, 162, 192 Polish independence, 27, 188–193 Polish socialist party, 144, 162–171, 173, 176, 208 Polish socialist Republic, 27 Political opportunity structure (POS), 28, 217, 219–220 Macro-oriented political opportunity structure approach, 207 Political process theory (PPT), 207 Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 59–61 Postcolonialism, 104 Postcolonial emancipatory movements (Africa), 91 Postcolonial movements and struggles for independence, 124 Postcolonial resistance (Around the Mediterranean), 104 Post-cold War era, 193 Poulsen, Jane D., 287 POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista – Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification), 174–176 Povinelli, Elisabeth, 232 Preussischer Landtag, 54 Pries, Ludger, 19 Prostitution, 21, 58 Forced prostitution, 58 Protégé system/ protégés question, 121 Protest groups, 4–23 Protestantism, 233. See also Nonconformist Protestantism 1981 Protestant Church Convention, 239 Prussia, 24, 54, 108 Franco-Prussian War, 24, 108 Prussian voting rights, 54 Public sphere 7, 21, 186, 187, 194–197, 235, 287 Habermas, 186

Jewish public sphere, 136 Nancy Fraser’s writings about the civil sphere, 184 Public sphere research, 33 Recognition (in the public sphere), 134 Pyrenees, 177 Q Quai d’Orsay, 119 R Raissiguier, Catherine, 206 Rational choice theory, 62–62 Ravidasi sampradaya (denomination, India), 268 Rawls, John, 73, 81, 267 Consensus, 81, 267 and Habermas, 81 Reagan, Ronald, 236–237 Recognition. See also Struggle for As analytical category, 8, 10, 22 Comprehensive concept, of 16 Critical theory of 23, 85–88, 147 Ethical universalism, 32, 269–270 Idioms of recognition, 266–267 Intercultural recognition, 32, 270 Intersubjectivity, 11, 14 Legal recognition, 11, 31, 218, 224 Normative monism of, 16 Reciprocity, 1, 11–12, 14–15, 31–32, 66, 80, 94, 253, 261, 270, 273 Social esteem, 59, 258–260, 262, 266 Social recognition, 11, 31, 252–253, 256–258, 260–264 Specific female identity, 7 Struggle for a particular way of life, 266 Struggle for personal acknowledegment, 266 Theory of 10–17, 23–33 Redistribution struggles, 16 Red Vienna Initiative, 162

304 • Index

Régénération, 110–111, 115, 119 Reicher, Gustaw, 176 Renner, Karl, 172 Resource mobilization approaches, 63 Robben Island, 278, 282 Robertson, Roland, 280 Roseinel, Sasha, 239–240 Rothschild, Lionel de, 107 Romania, 106, 115, 143, 147 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 87 Russia, 18, 26–27, 106, 109, 122–123 Russian Empire, 144 Tsarist Empire, 18, 106, 122, 165 Rwanda, 282, 284–286 S Sabra and Shatila massacres, 282 Saguna, 265, 272. See also Bhakti Sans-papiers, 206 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 14, 67 Sassoon (family), 114 Scheduled class, 255, 272. See also Dalits Scheidemann, Philipp, 177 Schroeter, Daniel J., 110–111. Schulten, Thorsten, 218 Schutzbund (a paramilitary organization of the Austrian Social Democratic Party), 173 Second Empire, 107 Second Polish Republic, 27, 162–163, 178, 185–187, 197 Secularism, 266 Sejm, 144. See also Poland Selbstverwirklichung (self-realization, self-fulfilment), 247. See also Honneth Sennett, Richard, 274 Sephard, 110 loussaovrial (enligthened) , 116 khavarial (obscurantist), 116 Sephardim, 109 Senate Califorian State senate, 221 Polish senate, 144 Sergeant Salenzo. See Livshits, Beniek

Sheffield, 109 Sherifian Empire, 106 Shi’a Muslim identity, 92 Shilo, Margalit, 117 Shivnarayani sampradaya (denomination, India), 268 Shmeruk, Chone, 165 Shoah, 22 Shtetl, 163 Sierra Leone, 109 Sikkink, Kathryn, 15, 20–21, 146, 148, 210, 218, 277, 288 Sittlichkeiten (notions of the common good), 269 Slavery, 29, 86, 91, 95, 97, 105, 222 Slum rehabilitation, 263 Smyrna, 113 Social movement, 4, 8, 12, 14, 16, 19, 23 and struggles for recognition, 5 Movement careers, 223 (Neo-Hegelian) teleogical conception of, 92 Protest cycles, 223, Social movement scholars, 23, 66, 74, 78 Social movement studies, 64, 209, 211, 214, 223 Social movement theory, 207 Socialist International, 26–27, 162, 166–169, 172–179 Social rights, 4 Social sciences, 9, 18–19, 52, 62, 104, 189, 196, 257–261 Convergence theory, 189 Social struggles, 5, 7, 15, 28 Solidarity activism, 32–33, 277–280, 286–289 Solidarnosc, 195 Sontag, Susan, 287 Sorel, Georges, 13–14, 67 Sotsyalistische Kinder Farband, 173. See also Bund South Africa, 210, 282, 284. See also Apartheid South America, 29 Soviet Bloc, 185, 189

Index • 305

Soviet SS 20 Missiles, 236 Soviet Union, 163, 174 Spain, 27, 57, 162, 173–177, 182 Spanish civil war, 172–178 Spanish revolution, 174 Stalin, Joseph, 172, 174, 191 Stalinist reconstruction, 191 Status model, 65, 71, 79 Struggle Global struggles for recognition, 283, 287, 289 Struggle for recognition, 2, 6, 8, 13, 22, 27, 29, 33, 66, 67, 75, 78, 86–89, 94–95, 97, 161–165, 178, 207, 220–222, 242, 252, 256–257, 263–264, 266. Struggles for equal respect, 5 Struggles for redistribution, 8, 29 Struggles for self-determination, 2 Struggle over recognition, 242 Suu Kyi, Aung San, 283, 286 Switzerland, 75 Symbolic interactionism, 63 T Talmudei Torah, 115–116 Tangier, 118–120 Tarrow, 209–210, 219 Taylor, Charles, 11–12, 64, 68, 253, 269 Tenbruck, Friedrich, 56 Tettuan, 112–117 Jewish boy’s school, 112, 117 Thaa, Winfried, 236 Lean citizenship, 236 Thälmann, Ernst, 177 Thessaloniki, 113 Thompson, Edward P., 67 Third Estate, 2 Third Reich, 136 Third World, 235 Tiananmen Square, 282 Tibetan monks, 57 Tilly, Charles, 223 Transnational global community, 230

Transnationalism, 27–28, 104–106, 124, 134, 148–149, 185, 189 Transnationality, 8, 17–18, Transnationalization, 1, 6–10, 17–33 of struggles for recognition, 6, 23, 25, 27, 144, 160 Transterritorialism, 133–134 Triestch, Davis, 122 Trotskyism/Trotskyists, 174, 177 Tsarist Russia, 18, 106 Tsukunft (youth organization), 173. See also Bund Tully, James, 91 Tunis, 111, 119 Tunisia, 111, 119, 122, 124. Turkey, 57, 118 Twentieth century, 1–10, 14–18, 22– 25, 27, 114, 123, 133–134, 164, 185, 194–195, 198, 243–244 Europe, 1 “Short twentieth century”, 2 U Uminska Keff, Bozena, 198 United Kingdom, 30, 75, 106–108, 122–123, 136, 149, 216, 232, 234–235, 240, 244. See also Britain Colonial regime, 2 United Nations, 21, 205 United Palestine Appeal, 142 United States, 26, 59, 74, 86, 91–93, 136, 138, 141–142, 189, 210, 215, 234, 279, 286 Upper castes, 254, 263. See also Brahmins/Brahmanism. Uruguay, 210, 212 V Vald, B., 174. See also Folkstsaytung Vedas (upper caste India), 265 Versailles (treaty of), 94, 135–136, 146 Vienna, 109, 162, 172–173 Vietnam, 236, 282–283

306 • Index

My Lay Massacre, 282–283 Vietnam War, 236 Vinter, Yankev, 174 Von Unruh, Fritz, 233 Voting rights, 54–55, 80 Jacob Burckhardt, 80 Prussia, 54–55 W Wagner, Jan, 174 War Cold War, 1 First World War, 4, 17, 18, 27 Second World War, 14, 21, 95, 170, 188, 190–191, 194, 235, 237, 240, 243, 280 World Wars, 1 Warsaw, 145, 164, 168–171, 173, 175–176 Ghetto uprising, 163 Theater square, 169 Weber, Max, 88 Weberian concepts 90 Welfare state, 4, 192, 280 Wertgemeinschaft, 259, 273 Westminster Jews’ Free School, 108 Wildt, Andreas, 243 Wise, Stephen Samuel, 141–142, 151–152, 160 Women. See also gender Abortion, 22, 74, 198 East European woman, 193 Feminism, 15, 81, 192–195, 198, 239–240 Parity of participation, 192 Perspectival dualism, 192 Political and civil rights, 187 Second wave of feminism, 192, 194 Struggles for recognition, 21–22, 27–28, 198 Universal feminism, 193 Women’s peace camps, 239 Women in the Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), 211

Women’s associations, 22, 29, 212 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 21 Workers’ movement 27, 29, 206, 208, 209, 220, 223 World Federation of League of Nations Societies, 136 World Jewish Congress (WJC) 25–26, 133–148 Wright, Erik Olin, 219 Y Yidishe gas (Yiddisch/Jewish community), 162, 172, 178 Yousafzai, Malala, 283 Z Zaremba, Zygmunt, 166 Zdanowski, Antoni, 168, 176 Zerbe, Emile, 168 Ziemann, Benjamin, 233, 234, 236–237, 240, 243, 246 Zionism, 36, 43, 103, 141, 155, 157–159, 171, 188 American, 141 Bourgeois, 144 East European Zionism, 141 French Zionists, 146 German Zionists, 26, 137 Left-wing, 144 Poale-Zion party (Workers of Zion, Poland), 145, 170 Polish Zionist movement, 143 Right-wing Zionist-nationalist 27 West European Zionism, 141 Zionist movement, 26, 105, 134–135, 141–143, 148 Zimmermann, Susan, 185–186 Zinoviev, Grigory, 178 Zulawski, Zygmunt, 168