65 Years after Belgrade. New Perspectives on the History and Historiography of Non-Alignment

The first conference of non-aligned states took place 65 years ago in Belgrade in 1961. Since then, and particularly in the 1970s, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) emerged as an important voice for the Global South in world politics. Today the NAM is a loosely conceived international organization, which currently has 120 member states and 17 observer countries. Nearly all Asian, African, and South American countries, as well as some European countries, have joined together in the NAM. The movement’s summit conferences were nodal points at which key 20th-century developments converged and simultaneously influenced international politics – particularly during the North-South conflict. Scholarly interest in the NAM has mainly centered around the question of when and why it was established, thereby offering insights into the importance of international organizations for the history of decolonization, postcolonial state-building and the global Cold War in the 20th century. In more recent studies the focus has shifted from diplomatic history, ‘high politics’ and a top-down approach examining the non-aligned summitry to investigating the histories of non-alignment from below. These studies have analyzed technical and cultural mobilities beyond official state diplomacy, such as news and information networks, student exchange programs, films, museum exhibitions, and architecture. Further impulses have also come from studies that have asked about the role of gender, ‘race’, and identity within the NAM and in relations between different non-aligned societies. As a result, it is becoming increasingly clear that the NAM has been not only a political project led by heads of state to change the international world order, but also a framework that laid the foundation for networks of solidarity of various social groups between non-aligned states. Against this background, the panel will undertake a comprehensive analysis of the history and historiography of Non-Alignment and the Non-Aligned Movement, focusing on the 65-year period since the first conference of non-aligned states in socialist Yugoslavia’s capital Belgrade. The panel will engage in a discussion of new sources and methodologies for analyzing and narrating the history of the NAM, as well as historiographic trends and new perspectives on non-alignment. From a more abstract perspective, the panel raises the issue of what a decolonial historiography of the 20th century might entail.

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65 Years after Belgrade. New Perspectives on the History and Historiography of Non-Alignment

Abstract

Convenor

Panelists

Papers

Introduction – 65 Years after Belgrade. New Perspectives on the History and Historiography of Non-Alignment

The Business of Solidarity: self-reliance and economic relations in the NAM

Non-alignment from below: Yugoslav citizens and non-alignment practices

Afterlives of Non-Alignment: counter-histories in the archive

Beyond Yugocentrism? for a multi-nodal conjunctural historiography of NAM

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