CFP: Oil and Energy in Contemporary History, Sept. 2013

Oil and Energy as Challenges to Contemporary History – Reassessing the Oil
Crises of the 1970s

Conference at the Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam, September
26-28, 2013
Conveners: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch (Potsdam), Dr. Rüdiger Graf (Bochum)

Securing energy supplies has been an essential political, economic, and
social challenge for several decades. While the economic boom of the 1950s
and 1960s was based not least on cheap and abundant energy supplies, the
oil crises of the 1970s brought energy issues to the foreground of
scientific, political, and public discourses. Oil, above all, has been
regarded as an essential resource of power affecting international
relations, even causing crises and wars, while the oil price influences
rates of economic growth and inflation globally. The first oil crisis of
1973/74 appears as a watershed in these discourses although political
transformations in the field of energy had started earlier in Western
Europe and the United States and not before the end of the 1970s in other
regions. Attitudes towards energy and its use have been ambivalent ever
since: consumer societies have flourished alongside conservation efforts
and the enhancement of global strategies of resource development has
accompanied new ecological considerations. Questions of energy production
and consumption are not to be answered solely by economists and natural
scientists. Rather, the very production of this expert knowledge must be
scrutinized and historicized.

This conference tries to assess the importance of oil and the accompanying
energy questions for contemporary history forty years after the first oil
crisis. It asks how contemporaries viewed the oil and energy issue and
aims at determining the scientific, political, economic and social
consequences of these perceptions. Starting from the oil crises, the
conference examines both the transformations of energy policies and the
importance of energy production and consumption for contemporary history.
Were the oil crises of the 1970s crucial turning points and do we still
experience their effects or were they of minor importance within a
continuous historical development? The conference addresses a neuralgic
point of contemporary history as the 1970s are now commonly conceived as
an epochal transformation in Western industrialized nations if not in the
world as a whole. As most constructions of the 1970s as a historical
caesura point to the oil crises and the transformations in the energy
sector, examining them in detail may lead to a review and differentiation
of this now dominant narrative.

The conference pursues two goals: it examines and historicizes the oil
crises and the subsequent transformations of energy policies while also
determining the importance of oil and energy for research in contemporary
history. Papers may address both or only one of these aspects. Although
oil will be at the center of our discussions, we welcome papers concerning
other forms of energy (coal, gas, atomic, regenerative energies). The
conference will not focus on a particular region but try to foster the
exchange of research concerning the producing and the Western consuming
countries as well as Eastern Europe and the so-called Third World.
Particularly welcome are papers addressing one of the following areas:

1.) Energy and the History of Politics: How did energy emerge as an
autonomous field of policy? How do we explain similarities and differences
of national energy policies? What effect has energy had on international
relations and conflict geographies (Cold War/resource wars, embargoes and
sanctions, developmental policies)?

2.) Economic History of Energy: What are the peculiarities of energy
industries? How do state and management strategies influence the
development of certain energy regimes? How do multinational oil companies
relate to governments? What was the effect of energy transformations on
other parts of the economy (e.g. automobile and chemical industries) and
macro-economics (e.g. currencies, growth)?

3) Social and Cultural History of Energy and Energy Consumption: How did
the use of certain forms of energy affect the „natural“ and man-made
environment? How did changes in the economy of energy influence energy
consumption and conservation? How has public and scientific knowledge
about energy changed over time?

4) Environmental History as a History of Energy: What is the role of
energy within an environmental history that treats changing human-nature
interactions? What was the importance of changing energy regimes or
certain energy projects for the emergence of environmental movements, for
example in the cases of atomic energy, oil production and climate change?

In order to address these questions in an international and global
perspective we seek contributions of a medium range that relate case
studies to the broader issues outlined above. Please send your paper
proposal of no more than 300 words along with a short CV to Frank Bösch
(boesch ) and Rüdiger Graf (ruediger.graf ). The deadline
is September 30, 2012. The conference language will be English. Provided
we secure funding, the organizers will cover travel expenses to
Berlin/Potsdam and accommodation.

Dr. Rüdiger Graf
Fakultät für Geschichtswissenschaft
Ruhr-University Bochum
Universitätsstr. 150
44780 Bochum
Germany

Email: ruediger.graf

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