Conference Dates: September 5-6, 2025
The conference is free, but pre-registration is required to enter the conference venue.
Please fill out the pre-registration form here.
Conference Theme: “Strikes and Social Conflicts in Hostile Environments”
While workers and other subordinate groups are always operating under conditions that limit their range of action—that is, circumscribing the kinds of protest demands or action repertoires that are considered normative or acceptable—there are historical periods and geographical spaces in which the environment is especially hostile to collective action from below.
Our premise is that we have entered one of these especially hostile periods on a global scale. As such, there is an urgent need to examine and draw lessons from instances in which subordinated groups navigated through, organized in, protested against, and at times, successfully transformed the “hostile environments” in which they were embedded.
Important lessons can be drawn from examining both historical and contemporary instances. Historically, the first half of the twentieth century can be seen as a period of widening/deepening “hostility” on a global scale, with the spread of fascist movements and labor repressive colonial regimes. Likewise, the current global resurgence of fascist and far right regimes and movements in new forms can be understood as marking another period of widening/deepening hostility.
Hostile environments are not limited to these two time periods. Indeed, spatial-temporal unevenness has been a central feature of historical capitalism. For example, in the decades after the Second World War, the apartheid regime in South Africa and military dictatorships in Latin America and East Asia existed at the same time that the right of workers to strike and form independent trade unions were at their height in many core countries. Equally important, workers in the same location (e.g., within the same country, city, workplace) are regularly divided between those who are ruled through consent and those who feel the brunt of the hostile environment—with distinctions drawn along lines of gender, migration/citizenship, race/ethnicity, urban/rural, etc
Finally, and importantly, even in the darkest periods in world history, there have been local pockets of hope in which successful mobilizations around (and advances of) labor rights and social justice have prevailed. Here, as examples, we might think of the settlements established by enslaved people who had escaped from bondage (marronage); or Rojava, the autonomous polyethnic socialist regime established in northeast Syria in the midst of the Syrian Civil War; or strikes and strike waves under military dictatorships or even those under hostile neoliberal environments.
Conference Program
The conference will take place over the course of two days (Friday, September 5 and Saturday, September 6) beginning at 9 am. Formal sessions will end at 5:30 pm followed by a reception on both days. The conference program includes three plenary sessions, twenty paper panels organized across five concurrent sessions (approximately 65 research presentations), and social events/receptions at the end of each day.
The program shell is as follows:
- Friday, September 5
- 8:30-9:30 am Breakfast and Registration
- 9:00-9:20 am Welcome Session
- 9:30-11 am Concurrent Sessions I
- 11-11:15 am Coffee Break
- 11:15-12:45 Concurrent Sessions II
- 12:45-1:45 pm Lunch (on site)
- 1:45-3:15 pm Concurrent Sessions III
- 3:15-3:30 pm Coffee Break
- 3:30-5 pm Plenary Session I
- 5 pm Buffet Dinner (on site)
- Saturday, September 6
- 8:30-9:30 am Breakfast and Registration
- 9:30-11 am Concurrent Sessions IV
- 11-11:15 am Coffee Break
- 11:15-12:45 Plenary Session II
- 12:45-1:45 pm Lunch (on site)
- 12:45-1:45 pm IASCC business meeting, open to everyone
- 1:45-3:15 pm Concurrent Sessions V
- 3:15-3:30 pm Coffee Break
- 3:30-5:30 pm Plenary Session III
- 5:30 pm Buffet Dinner and and Reception (on site)
Conference Logistics
Conference Venue: The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, 8th Floor Conference Center, 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC (USA)
Directions to Conference Venue by Train, Metro, Bus etc: https://washingtondc.jhu.edu/about/maps-directions/
Pre-registration: There is no registration fee for conference attendees. However, you must preregister in advance to be able to enter the conference venue.
Please fill out the pre-registration form here.
Contact email for conference queries: [email protected]
The 7th Conference of the International Association of Strikes and Social Conflict is organized by:
- The Arrighi Center for Global Studies, Johns Hopkins University and the
- International Association of Strikes and Social Conflicts (IASSC)
Co-sponsorships: We would like to acknowledge financial support from donors to the Arrighi Center Gift Fund, as well as from the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute (JHU), the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (New York), Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration and Colonialism (JHU), and the Program in Latin American, Caribbean & Latinx Studies (JHU).