CFP Transnational Japan as History: Empire, Migration and Grass-Roots Movements (working title), edited volume, reminder Call for Contributuons (x-post)

(x-post from H-ASIA)

Editor's note: deadline in two weeks

Call for Contributions (Edited Volume): Transnational Japan as History: Empire, Migration and Grass-Roots Movements (working title)

Over the last two decades transnational approaches have been fruitfully applied to a wide variety of historical fields. These transnational histories have focused not only on relations between nations-states, but also on elements which transcend national state projects, including relations with and between non-governmental organisations and the flows of ideas, people, capital, technologies, information, goods, practices, disease and pollution which transcend the bounded national community.

This volume will bring a transnational perspective to the history of Japan. It seeks to explore how factors beyond Japan's national borders have contributed to the formation of transnational social spaces which have significance for our understanding of Japanese history and of historical methods more widely. The construction of social spaces between interconnected communities problematizes the supremacy of national narratives by incorporating new territories (both literal and figurative) into consideration. We thus believe that a transnational history approach to Japan's modern and contemporary history can only enrich our understanding of the processes that have occurred in Japan during the Twentieth Century. This volume will combine papers from three different areas of transnational history: empire, migration and grass-roots movements. Firstly, empires are axiomatically transnational polities. A transnational perspective on the Japanese Empire, thus, adds to our understanding of both intra-imperial relations and the place of the Empire within the wider international order. The international migrant is the clearest embodiment of the transnational experience and the study of the movement of people across borders is one of the most representative subjects of the transnational history approach. In particular, this volume will focus on the trajectories of migrants, with an understanding of the historical processes in the sending nations as well as in the receiving societies. Finally, this volume will explore recent cases of grass-roots movements. This type of social movement is characterised not only as a reactive marginal force against the centre of statehood but also as a kind of social activism that is practiced to create connectivity between different socio-cultural contexts. This volume will look at the trajectories of Japanese grass-roots movements in their connection with transnational spaces in their formation and development.

We are calling for contributions for an edited volume focusing on one or more of these themes that also take an explicitly transnational history perspective. We envision this volume will include approximately 12 chapters. We are in discussion with ANU Press for the publishing rights to this volume. If you are interested in contributing to this project, please send us an abstract of between 500-1000 words, and a brief bio or C.V. to danton.leary@anu.edu.au by 20 March, 2014. Selected contributors will be informed by 25 March, 2014 and will have 5 months to produce a draft paper which will go through a peer review process.

Danton Leary

ANU