Critical Political Economy Research Network (RN06) @ the 12th Conference of European Sociological Association, Prague, 25-28 August 2015.
The programme for the CPERN sessions at the ESA conference in Prague is available. We’re delighted that the network has attracted such an exciting range of papers, and triggered such interesting discussions throughout the conference.
The CPERN business meeting also took place in Prague on Wednesday 26 August.
Crisis, Resistance and Rights: Critical Political Economy Perspectives
Thursday 11 September
Drinks from around 19.00 onwards at Cafe Kollektiv Gagarin (Garnisongasse 24, 1090 Vienna)
Friday 12 September
8.30
Welcome by local hosts and CPERN
Welcome by Ulrich Brand and Johannes Jäger on behalf of the local organizing team
Laura Horn on behalf of CPERN
9.00-10.30
Crisis, Resistance and Rights: Critical Political Economy Perspectives
12-13 September 2014, University of Vienna
The current crisis reveals one of capitalism’s key contradictions: the relationship between rights, the state and society. Giving primacy to austerity politics, governments appear unable to guarantee basic rights vis-à-vis market forces. These developments constitute fundamental challenges to social reproduction. Governments have for example been pro-active in protecting banks’ rights in foreclosures and housing evictions at the expense of people’s right to housing, or imposed labour reforms marking a retreat of labour rights and rights to decent work. Similar trends can be observed with respect to welfare rights, the right to education, the right to water or democratic rights that go beyond ballot boxes, such as the right to protest and claim public spaces. Of particular importance here is also the political ecology dimension, with a focus on the financialisation of nature, enclosure of commons, and the green economy as a new hegemonic project. Resistance movements and civil society organisations/groups increasingly challenge private property rights and demand collective socio-economic and human rights. Academic discussions of rights have long been a prerequisite of liberal political philosophy and received little attention from critical scholars. What can scholars in law, political economy, political science and sociology contribute to a critical understanding of rights? How does an emancipatory conception of rights look like? What are common rights, and/or rights to commons? How could such conceptions add to a critical understanding of crisis and resistance?
Critical Political Economy Research Network (RN06) 