International Hybrid Workshop, Naples (Italy) and online, 5–6 December 2024

Organisers:

• NextGenerationEU Project ‘Ondine’ (Dep. History, Humanities and Society – Tor Vergata University of Rome);
• Institute of History of Mediterranean Europe of the Italian National Research Council (ISEM-CNR).
  Dates and location: Naples, 5–6 December 2024 at Fondazione Banco di Napoli, and remotely
  Languages: English and Italian

The analytical tools for studying everyday life are manifold. What all approaches and methodologies have in common is that they operate as critiques of everyday life. In other words, all possible approaches have to analyse the ‘structures of the everyday’ (Braudel 1967, 1979) and/or how it was experienced and produced over time more than the everyday itself (Olson 2011).

The first to introduce the concept of everyday – precisely the notions of routine and repetition – into historiography was Braudel (1967, 1979), who through his ‘historical imagination’ emphasised what he called ‘material civilisation’, i.e. the ways that women and men had of producing, exchanging, eating, living, and reproducing at the dawn of capitalism. Braudel’s approach found inspiration in Lefebvre’s Critique de la vie quotidienne, vol. I (1947) and Matérialisme dialectique (1949), the works in which the French philosopher recognised daily life as the place par excellence of production – of a material, social and cultural nature – and appropriation. In this sense, everyday life becomes the battleground – or mediation ground – among nature, capitalism and human beings. It is also where individuals articulate (i.e. appropriate) themselves (Lefebvre 1947, 1949, 1961).During the 1980s in West Germany, the historiographical investigation of everyday life experienced a new impetus. The Alltagsgeschichte (Lüdtke, Medick) sprouted from the will to analyse the lives and survival strategies of the ‘nameless’ multitudes, the aspirations and everyday struggles of the kleine Leute (little/ordinary people) (Lüdtke 1989), the ‘peoples without history’ (Wolf 1982) or those ‘left behind’.This specific approach of ‘history from below’ principally aims to harmonise the micro and the macro levels of analysis by relating the everyday experiences of ordinary people with the major configurations/transformations of a political, economic, and social nature. On those bases, Alltagsgeschichte interprets human practices and experiences as inseparable from the context in which they originated. Moreover, since the everyday is the space of individuals’ articulation, any aspect of human practice in the everyday is a cultural matter.

Moreover, we would particularly welcome:

• Proposals based on ‘non-official’ historiographic sources (e.g. paintings, photographs, comics, films, songs, etc.);
• Proposals that focus on gender, economic and cultural practices in imperial/colonial city-ports;
• Proposals from scholars from disciplines other than history (e.g. anthropology, sociology, economics).

Please send your 20-minute presentation proposal to Erica Mezzoli at everyday.naples2024@gmail.com by 15 September 2024. The proposal should include:

• max 300-word abstract in English;
• max 250-word bio profile in English with affiliation, position and contact information;
• the language the proponent would prefer to communicate: Italian or English;
• the modality the proponent would prefer to communicate: in person in Naples or remotely.

The workshop is organised in the framework of the NextGenerationEU Project ‘Ondine. Women’s Labour and Everyday Life on the Upper and Eastern Adriatic Waterfronts, mid-19th century–mid-20th century’ (Funded by EU; CUP E53C22002420001) hosted by the Department of History, Humanities and Society of the Tor Vergata University of Rome.

More details and information are in the call for papers