Techno-Politics in the Age of the Great War 1900-1930
The capacity to mobilize and organize and, more so, to maximize the forces of destruction-what the Greeks called techne and what we call techno-politics-is the subject of this second conference in the IFK conference series "A Time for Destruction.
"The focus of the first day is on the mobilization for war at home and at the front as well as the kind of "frictions" an ever more comprehensive mobilization generated-as well as the evasions and resistances mobilization engendered. The focus of the second day is on the effort to harness and to tame the seemingly limitless capacity of destruction. Common soldiers everywhere suspected that techne, the capacity to maximize force, had become an end in itself that the "perfection of technology" (Friedrich Georg Jünger) had turned both into the end and the means of war. They had a point in blaming their generals. However, there was more purpose to destruction than met their eye, because the future of Europe depended on it. By the same token, there were extensive considerations and debates on how to tame or channel violence. Peace-making and law-making, in other words, were integral parts of mobilizing for and fighting war. We might want to doubt the success of containing violence and bringing the Great War to a conclusion. However, the struggles were as important as the outcomes, because they set the tone and the agenda for the rest of the century.
Conference Venue: IFK, Reichsratstraße 17, 1010 Wien
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Thursday, 11 October 2012:
09.00 Address of Welcome/ Introduction
Helmut Lethen
Michael Geyer
09.30 MOBILIZING FOR WAR
Chair: Anatol Schmied-Kowarzik
Manfried Rauchensteiner Austria-Hungary and the unleashing of WW I
10.30 Coffee Break
11.00
Michael Geyer The Imperative of Organization: Revisiting the Debate on "Organized Capitalism"
12.00
Adam Tooze The Making of Democratic Capitalist Hegemony: Trans-Atlantic War Finance 1914-1929
13.00 Lunch Break
14.30 MOBILIZING FOR COMBAT
CHAIR: Lutz Musner
Alex Watson Making Soldiers Fight: a New Approach to the Patriotism / Primary Group Debate
15.30
Gene Tempest Nations to horse! The mobilization of France and Britain's War Animals
16.30 Coffee Break
17.00 BUREAUCRACY AND TECHNOCRACY
CHAIR: Lutz Musner
Laura Engelstein Running Wartime Russia: State and Civil Society
18.00 End
Friday, 12 October 2012
09.30 WAR AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
Chair: Peter Becker
Isabel Hull International Law and the Great War
10.30 Coffee Break
11.00
Peter Holquist The Origins of "Crimes against Humanity": The Russian Empire, International Law, and the 1915 Note on the Armenian Genocide
12.00 Lunch Break
13.30 PEACE MAKING
CHAIR: Helmut Konrad
Hew Strachan Frictions in war: civil-military relations and the formation of strategy
14.30
Laurie Cohen Peace advocacy and action
15.30 Coffee Break
16.00
Birgitta Bader-Zaar War and Citizenship
17.00
Jay Winter Mobilizing for peace: the Veterans' Movement
18.00 End
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Kontakt:
Ingrid Söllner-Pötz
IFK Reichsratstraße 17,
1010 Wien