Introduction

This international workshop was the second part of a project initiated in September 2023 at the Center for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge on new perspectives and current challenges in social history. This first event helped to bring to the fore an issue that is now central to much social history work: the study of 'belonging.' Rogers Brubaker's and Frederick Cooper's proposal ('Beyond Identity', 2000) to disentangle the notion of 'identity,' by distinguishing the logic of identification and forms of belonging, or categories of analysis and categories of practice, is still relevant today. But it has to be said that identification practices - particularly those of states - have been more widely studied than forms of belonging. Returning to this notion seemed to us to be all the more relevant from a scientific point of view, given that political debates remain saturated with questions of identity.

Promoting dialogue between national historiographies, this meeting aimed to bring together contributions that propose to reflect on the tools, approaches, and methods used by historians to study the question of belonging in local, national, colonial, or imperial contexts, as diverse as Peru under Spanish domination, Franco's Spain, French prisons in the 20th century, the persecution of Jews in Poland, apprentices in the 19th century, or informal towns in Brazil. What did it mean to 'belong' to a place, a neighborhood, a people, a family, a religion, or a 'race?' How did individuals prove, display, demonstrate, experience, and sometimes conceal or dissimulate their 'belongings' or 'memberships?' How should we observe, measure, interpret, and address these aspects as historians? What theoretical frameworks can historians usefully apply to these issues? What are the contributions and limits of the various methodologies used by social historians (quantitative methods, biographical studies, family history, oral history, etc.)? And what contributions can social historians bring to these debates on identities?

This event was supported by the Joint Centre for History and Economics at Paris, Harvard and Cambridge, and the ERC Lubartworld (IHMC-CNRS/EHESS) and organized by Elsa Génard (Harvard University), Renaud Morieux (University of Cambridge), and Claire Zalc (CNRS-EHESS).