Reconceptualising Politics: Power, Resources and Space
A one-day conference
17 March 2008
University of East Anglia
Organiser: Fiona Williamson
In the past decade historical thinking about politics in the early
modern Britain has built on the foundations of post revisionism and
incorporated new methodologies to uncover the past. The work of
anthropologists, for example, James C Scott, influenced writers such as
Michael Braddick, John Walter and Steve Hindle who reassessed the extent
of politicisation amongst the commons. Recent history has realised the
importance of ordinary people in political life and the public sphere
and their role in legitimating central and local government. It has
widened our understanding of the early modern state and conception of
what it meant to be ‘politicised’ . However, the latest studies on space
and power have added a new dimension to arguments regarding the level of
the politicisation of the people. Despite the auspicious start, recent
theory has begun reconsider ‘agency’ by analysing new dimensions of
space and power, away from Scott’s dualistic transcripts of commons v.
elite.
This conference aims to bring together some of the latest developments
in the field, to create a multi disciplinary analysis of popular power,
participation, the negotiation of authority and the extent of the
hegemonic state. Papers are welcomed on all aspects of recent political
theory, to examine the diversity of early modern political society and
better to understand the dynamics of power in the period.
Papers are to be no more than twenty minutes in length and abstracts to
be
submitted to f.williamson@uea.ac.uk by 12th December 2007.
