Tom Haines-Doran is a political economist specialising in transport systems, infrastructure and social movements. He currently works at the University of Leeds, leading research on transport decarbonisation. He previously worked as a researcher for the Urban Transport Group, authoring research documents for high-level decision makers in local and national government.
Discussants:
Andrea Brock, Lecturer in International Relations at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex
David Bailey, Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham
Why don’t trains run on time? Why are fares so expensive? Why are there so many strikes?
Few would disagree that Britain’s railways are broken, and have been for a long time.
This insightful new book calls for a radical rethink of how we view the railways, and explains the problems we face and how to fix them. Haines-Doran argues that the railways should be seen as a social good and an indispensable feature of the national economy. With passengers and railway workers holding governments to account, we could then move past the incessant debates on whether our railways are an unavoidably loss-making business failure. An alternative vision is both possible and affordable, enabling the railways to play an instrumental role in decreasing social inequalities, strengthening the economy and supporting a transition to a sustainable future.
The global political economy is experiencing a rapidly spreading “cost of living crisis” – but which is far better understood as a “costs of capitalism crisis”. These costs of capitalism go far beyond rising energy prices, rising inflation, and disruption to supply chains. Rather than a merely technical supply-chain problem or a disruption to trade relations and diplomacy, instead, we are experiencing a global, interconnected and multi-form crisis, the effects of which are being materially, corporeally and socially felt ever more urgently, in a way that is inescapable for any section of the global population. In our next CPERN mid-term workshop, we seek to better understand these interconnected ‘costs of capitalism’. Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war have exacerbated the unaffordability of basic goods and services and accelerated climate change and ecocide; in the long term, it is capitalism that we cannot afford.
We aim to delineate, explain, and understand the multiple elements of the current ‘costs of capitalism’ crisis, and to develop a scholarship that works with those social forces with the capacity to disrupt, resist, transform and transcend the current, and to build a better world beyond capitalism and its never-ending crises.
Workshop format: All paper-givers should prepare to present their paper in 15 minutes. If you want to circulate your papers in advance please feel free to do so (email: d.j.bailey@bham.ac.uk). It will be possible to use powerpoint. The papers will be presented in the order on the itinerary, followed by Q&As for the remaining time for each session.
We look forward to seeing you at the workshop!
Itinerary
VENUE – note that we are in 3 different locations:
Thursday (day 1): Palazzo Santa Maria Porta Coeli, Via Duomo no. 219 – directions Friday (day 2): Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Saturday (day 3): Palazzo del Mediterraneo, Via Nuova Marina 59 – directions
Thursday 8 June 3.15pm
Welcome and introductions Palazzo Santa Maria Porta Coeli, Via Duomo no. 219 – directions classroom 221 zoom link
Thursday 8 June 3.30 – 5.30: Opening plenary (chair: David Bailey) Palazzo Santa Maria Porta Coeli, Via Duomo no. 219 – directions classroom 221 zoom link
Mònica Clua-Losada and Clara Camps (Universitat de Barcelona) Critical state theory from the peripheries: rethinking sovereignties in catastrophic times
Tiago Vieira (European University Institute), Phoebe Moore (Essex University) and Robert Donoghue (Bath University) The machine that wore no clothes: Insights into the algorithmic employment relationship
Adriano Cozzolino (University of Campania “L. Vanvitelli”) Between technocratic dirigisme and austerity in disguise: the case of Next Generation EU and its national ramifications
Johannes Jäger (University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna) and Angela Wigger (Radboud University) Rentier’s capitalism beyond financialization: Theorizing the root causes of housing price inflation from a historical materialist perspective
Christoph Sorg (Roskilde University / Humboldt University Berlin) Theorizing economic planning in capitalism and communism (ONLINE)
Thursday 8 June 5.45 – 6.30
Meet the journal editors roundtable Palazzo Santa Maria Porta Coeli, Via Duomo no. 219 – directions classroom 221 zoom link
panel 1: Critical political economy for the digital age (chair: Phoebe Moore) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T2
Jakob Heyer (University of Jena) Progress in the debate on a democratic planned economy? Prerequisites, basic problems, productive lines of conflict
Aleksandra Piletić (University of Amsterdam) Platforms and the changing morphology of the state
Ahlem Faraoun (University of Sussex) Hegemonic Despotism in the South Korean Platform Economy: A Study of Worker Control in the Digital Content Industry
Mark Howard (University of California, Santa Cruz) The Rapacious Ambivalence of VC Investment: Venture Capital, Value Capture, and the Valorization of Crisis
panel 2: Neoliberal governance and alternative governing rationalities (chair: Adriano Cozzolino) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T3
Daniela Caterina (Huazhong University of Science and Technology) The weak link: Italy’s techno-sovereignism between (costs of) capitalism and geo-political rivalries
Idil Yildiz (Geneva Graduate Institute) Circumventing the policy debate through the “evidence-based” research making: The case study of IMF
Niklas Holzhauer (Radboud University Nijmegen and Roskilde University) A Single, Green Market for Capital? A critical political economy perspective on the completion of the Capital Markets Union
Peter Kerr (University of Birmingham) and Emma Foster (University of Birmingham) The cis-hetero-normativity of an Ecocidal Capitalism: The promise of queer-trans economies
Panel 3: Alternatives and resistance (1) (chair: Bernd Bonfert) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T4 zoom link
Julia Loginovich (University of Manchester) Beyond the Parallel Crises: Reframing Subjectivity and Articulating a Solidarity-Based Approach to Global Economy through Ubuntu and Buen Vivir
Martina Locorotondo (De Montfort University) Resistance and alternatives to the “tourist city”: the network of the Commons in Naples
Thomas Da Costa Vieira (LSE) The Capitalist State and Alternatives to Capitalism: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and the Political Economy of Discontent Management in Britain
Yannick Rumpala (Université Côte d’Azur) Fictional varieties of post-capitalism and imaginaries of systemic transformation: Mapping alternatives in science fiction and making use of their heuristic potential
Friday 9 June 10.30 – 12.00
Panel 1: Capitalism and the managed disorganisation of labour? (chair: Davide Monaco) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T2
Ellen Russell (Wilfrid Laurier University) Blaming workers for the cost of living crisis: central bank arguments concerning wages and inflation
Debolina Majumder (University of Cambridge) Unpaid labour as a site of resilience/expropriation? Reconstructing life in the face of everyday crises of social reproduction in contemporary Delhi
Nicolò Deiana (Scuola Normale Superiore) The Vietnamese Hokhau System and its consequences on labor governance and workers’ livelihoods
Marco Perolini (Goldsmiths University of London) Overcoming divisions? Migrant organising in the current cost of living crisis
Panel 2: Alternatives and resistance (2) (chair: Gemma Gasseau) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T3
Bradley Ward (University of Birmingham), Marco Guglielmo (Royal Holloway University of London) and Nathan Critch (University of Birmingham) The evolution of progressive politics in the post-pandemic era: from populist neoliberalism to popular socialism
Andreas Bieler (University of Nottingham) Struggles over the future of ‘free trade’: Italian labour movements and the emergence of a split within the core of global capitalism
Andrea Bonfanti (Tsinghua University) Comic resistance: Political economy, nationalism and dissidence in contemporary Chinese comics
Laurie Parsons (Royal Holloway, University of London) Carbon Colonialism: History, Power and Economy in the Construction of the Climate Crisis
Panel 3: Extractivism, expropriation and super-exploitation (chair: Yuliya Yurchenko) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T4 zoom link
Gianella Jiménez (University of Antwerp) Mining and the threats to the locals, water sources, and life
Franco Galdini (University of Manchester) Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Crisis in the Age of Climate Change: Insights from ‘Resource-Rich’ Uzbekistan
Janina Puder (Universität Duisburg-Essen) Superexploitation in the wake of capitalist crisis
Lorenzo Feltrin (University of Birmingham) and Gabriela Julio Medel (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) Noxious deindustrialisation and extractivism: Chile in the international division of labour and noxiousness
Friday 9 June 1.00 – 2.30
Panel 1: Climate devastation, resistance, and future-making (1) (chair: Mònica Clua-Losada) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T2
Claudia Horn (LSE) Rural Labor vs. Rentiers: The Political Economy of Payments for Ecosystem Services
David Karas (CEU) The Costs of Decarbonizing Europe: Antinomies of European Green Industrial Policy
Stefan Zylinski (University of Bristol) Capitalism, finance & climate crisis: How are different types of financial systems contributing to the climate crisis?
Ewan Kerr (Glasgow Caledonian University) Explaining Contentious Trade Union Environmentalism
Panel 2: critical political economy, Gramsci and critical theory (chair: Owen Worth, University of Limerick) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T3
Francesco Pontarelli (University of Johannesburg) Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution in South African: reclaiming its value for organisational perspectives
Davide Monaco (University of Manchester) Narratives in (critical) political economy: a Gramscian approach
Claire Berger (Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington) Competing Countergehemonies: Intellectual Blocs on the US Left
Gianmarco Fifi (LSE) Quo vadis Critical Theory? Or, on the need to move beyond top-down frameworks in the study of IPE
Panel 3: the (absent) politics of financialisation? (chair: Johannes Jäger) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T4 zoom link
Paula Schwevers (University of Birmingham) The violent imposition of capital in 1980s Britain: the management of labour and money under Thatcher
Adam Blanden (Kings College London) ‘A Sense of the Systemic’: The Bank of England as an Ethico-Political Actor
Giorgos Gouzoulis (University of Bristol) EU-induced Financialisation and Its Impact on the Greek Wage Share, 1999-2021
Friday 9 June 2.30 – 4.00
Panel 1: Climate devastation, resistance, and future-making (2) (chair: Yuliya Yurchenko) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T2
Mattias Hjort (University of Birmingham) Forest-based carbon offsetting schemes and Indigenous Peoples’ struggles over land rights
Bernd Bonfert (Aarhus University) ‘We like the idea of sharing energy but currently there’s no advantage to do it.’ Transformative opportunities and limitations of Local Energy Communities
Viktor Skyrman (Stockholm School of Economics) The Financialized Political Economy of Sweden – How We Got there and the Way Forward
Marta Vallvé i Navarro (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) Socio-Ecological Conflicts and Metabolism: A Marxist Perspective
Panel 2: Alternatives and resistance (3) (chair: David Bailey) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T4 zoom link
Dario Di Conzo (Scuola Normale Superiore) Labour unrest in China: toward a ‘flawed’ institutionalisation?
Daniel López Pérez (University of Kent) Where has been the Conflict in Historical Materialism? A Reconstruction of a Concept for Critique and Transformation
Eugene Nulman (Birmingham City University/ Research Fellow, Scuola Normale Superiore) Is the European climate movement growing more anti-capitalist?
Gokce Yeniev (University of Bristol) Exploring Social Justice Implications of Mitigation Policies: Positions of Climate Action Advocates in Turkey
Panel 3: (Post-)Pandemic Crisis (chair: Clémence Fourton) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T3
Joe Greener (University of Liverpool in Singapore) COVID-19 Deaths in Older People’s Care Homes in England: A Case of Necrocapitalist Accumulation in the Regulative State
Mohan Kumar Bera (Birla Institute of Technology) Vulnerability of unorganised sector labour force in India: A study of impact of Pandemic
Ewan Kerr (Glasgow Caledonian University) and James Foley (Glasgow Caledonian University) From Covid to the Energy Crisis: Devolved State Governance and the Depoliticisation of Social Movement Mobilisations
Alp Kayserilioğlu (Tubingen University) Authoritarian Hybris at Its Apex: The Political Economy of Coronavirus Pandemic in Turkey
Friday 9 June 4.15 – 6.00
Panel 1: Where next for financialisation? (chair: Phoebe Moore) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T2 ADD ZOOM LINK
Vitor Gurgel (University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”) and Juliana Teixeira Esteves (Federal University of Pernambuco) Public and private debt for the virtual expansion of capitalism (ONLINE)
Barbora Cernusakova (Goldsmiths, University of London) Debt as a disciplining mechanism over racialised labour
Anissa Bougrea (University of Ghent) The European Investment Bank in sub-Saharan Africa: Managing credit risk
Robin Jaspert (Goethe University Frankfurt) Towards an Intersectional Theory of Critical Macro-Finance
Frederic Heine (Johannes Kepler University Linz) ‘The most important issue is to learn self-restraint’. Monetary policy and masculinities in the governance of the Eurozone crisis
Panel 2: conceptualising capitalism (chair: David Bailey) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T4 zoom link
Jaime Aznar Erasun (University of Kent) and Clémence Fourton (Sciences Po Lille) Looking beyond institutions: labour time in the care sector in contemporary capitalism
Francesco Laruffa (Universität Bremen) The costs of what? Should we still use the concept of capitalism? And, if yes, can capitalism internalize its costs?
Giannis Ninos (National University of Athens) Rethinking class and social reproduction in contemporary capitalism (ONLINE)
Paul Lewis (University of Birmingham) How is surplus created? Revisiting some theoretical underpinnings of CPE
Evan Sedgwick (Birkbeck University of London) (ONLINE) Diagnostic Reification: A Marxist View
Panel 3: Austerity and (managing) the end of the welfare state (chair: Andreas Bieler) Palazzo Corigliano, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore civ. 12 – directions Room T3
Maria Clara Oliveira (CoLABOR & FEUC – Portugal) Social Security in times of Multiple Crises: The Portuguese experience (2010-2023)
Pablo Cañete Pérez (European University Institute) Cultures of austerity: Post-crisis management in Iberian countries
Kate Cherry (University of Sussex) The Making of Neoliberal Families: Social Conservatism and the Privatisation of Housing In Britain
Darcy Luke (University of Birmingham) Inflation, wages and the crisis of the Keynesian Welfare State: The imposition of cash limits on public expenditure in the UK
Eve Yeo (University of Liverpool) Appealing to ‘crisis’: Post-political welfare and technocratic state power in Singapore
Friday 9 June 7.00-8.00
An informal discussion with activists from the Scugnizzo social centre and other activists of Napoli – on alternative practices and organising in the city of Napoli. Directions
Panel 1: authoritarianism and the continued rise of fascism? (chair: Owen Worth, University of Limerick) Palazzo del Mediterraneo, Via Nuova Marina 59 Classroom T1 – directions zoom link
Luciano Santander (Freie Universität Berlin) Cracks in the neoliberal consensus and new social divisions analysis of the emergence and positioning of the far right in Chile (ONLINE)
Galip Yalman, Çoşku Çelik and Aylin Topal (Middle East Technical University) From Containment of Labour to Containment of Solidarity of People for Survival: Authoritarian State’s Responses to Covid19 Pandemic and 2023 Earthquake in Turkey (ONLINE)
Kristóf Nagy (Central European University) In the Belly of a Fascist State Apparatus – Ideology and Materiality after Neoliberalism
Vladimir Bortun (University of Oxford) By the people, for the people? The class origins and allegiance of right-wing populists in Europe
Panel 2: the critical political economy of the EU (chair: Davide Monaco) Palazzo del Mediterraneo, Via Nuova Marina 59 Classroom T2 – directions
Gemma Gasseau (Scuola Normale Superiore) Transnational political contention in the EU and its impact: the case of the right to water
Darragh Golden (University College Dublin) and Roland Erne (University College Dublin) The Commodification of Local Public Services under the EU’s New Economic Governance Regime: The Case of Italy
Angela Wigger (Radboud University) Understanding the new EU industrial policy in the context of the next big costs of capitalism’ crisis: Why socialising the investment risks for financial capital is untenable
Laura Porak (Johannes Kepler Universität Linz) Better, Faster, Stronger? Sketching the historic development of the European competitiveness discourse (2000-2022)
Saturday 10 June 11.45 – 1.15
Panel 1: the critical political economy of (mis)management (chair: Laura Giovinazzi) Palazzo del Mediterraneo, Via Nuova Marina 59 Classroom T1 – directions zoom link
Laura Giovinazzi (SPS Università di Milano) Who are the managers in new public management? A research agenda for studying managerial governance
Andrea Terlizzi (Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa) and Giovanni Esposito (Free University of Brussels and University of Liège) The Panopticon reloaded: A critical analysis of performance management systems in the Trans-European Transport Network (ONLINE)
Giorgia Trasciani (Tiresia, Politecnico di Milano and LEST, AMU Aix-Marseille Université) The evaluation of the French associations: an historical perspective on the construction of the field (ONLINE)
Panel 2: Examining Rightward Turns: The Intersections of Class, Race, and Whiteness (chair: Ashwini Tambe) Palazzo del Mediterraneo, Via Nuova Marina 59 Classroom T2 – directions
Ashwini Tambe (George Washington University, Washington DC) Indian American Long-Distance Nationalism and Transnational Working-Class Resistance
Enakshi Dua (York University, Toronto) Right Wing Groups, Anti-Racist Policies and Fascist Politics
Londiwe Gamedze (University of Cape Town) and Francesco Pontarelli (University of Johannesburg) Racial capitalism and emergent forms of race in South Africa: a case study of Operation Dudula
Saturday 10 June 2.30 – 4.00
Panel 1: Neoliberalism, subordination, precarity – and responses (2) (chair: Mònica Clua-Losada) Palazzo del Mediterraneo, Via Nuova Marina 59 Classroom T1 – directions zoom link
Roberto Roccu (Kings College London) Regimes of Subordination: A Critical Political Economy of the Democratic Crisis in Tunisia
Jokubas Salyga (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) From Vilnius to Hillsdale (and Back Again) The Provenances of Neoliberalism in Lithuania
Ana Uhia Perez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) Authoritarian neoliberalism and the housing problem in Spain: between the reactionary channelling of social harm and the construction of new frameworks of struggle within the non-owning classes
Bianca Griffani (Goldsmiths College, University of London) Life After Love: divorce, precarity and the welfare state in post-Fordist Italy
Panel 2: Production, investment, work: a critique (chair: Yuliya Yurchenko) Palazzo del Mediterraneo, Via Nuova Marina 59 Classroom T2 – directions
Sabina Lawreniuk (University of Nottingham) Entropy Capitalism: Fragmented production and invisible work in Cambodia’s “shadow” garment industry
Christian May (Goethe University Frankfurt) Global Misery Chains: Accounting for the externalised costs of capitalist production
Bakou Mertens (Ghent University) Ratchet behaviour and sticky payouts: the praxis of shareholder primacy and the consequences for investments
Kiran Mirchandani (University of Toronto) and Hongxia Shan (University of British Columbia) Costs of Capitalism for Youth: A Feminist Political Economy of Working Students in Hostile Work
Saturday 10 June 4.15 – 6.00
Closing plenary (chair: Adriano Cozzolino) Palazzo del Mediterraneo, Via Nuova Marina 59 Classroom T1 – directions zoom link
Vincenzo Maccarrone (Scuola Normale Superiore) Global Governance of Labour: an integrated approach
Tine Haubner (Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena) Rethinking Social Reproduction in the ‘Regime of Informality’
Ioana Cerasella Chis (University of Birmingham) The Centrality of Disablement Subjectivation to the Reproduction of Capitalist Social Relations: Considerations for Critical and Global Political Economy
Paul Cammack (University of Manchester) The Inevitability of Permanent Crisis in Social Reproduction (ONLINE)
Yuliya Yurchenko (University of Greenwich) Social reproduction and foundations of democratic eco-socialism through the prism of the Russo-Ukrainian (post)war economy
Saturday 10 June 6.00
Workshop closes
——–
The CPERN mid-term workshop 2023 organising committee
David Bailey, Bernd Bonfert, Adriano Cozzolino, Phoebe Moore, Owen Worth, Yuliya Yurchenko, Gemma Gasseau, Davide Monaco, Pietro Masina
Oleksandr Svitych is an Associate Professor of Political Science at O.P. Jindal Global University, School of International Affairs. His main research interest is the relationship between markets and social stability, spanning the fields of political economy, political philosophy, and political sociology. Additionally, he is interested in martial arts studies.
Discussants:
Yuliya Yurchenko, Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Greenwich, International Business and Economics Department
Gareth Dale, Reader in Political Economy at Brunel University London, Department of Social and Political Sciences
Abstract: The talk will adopt a critical political economic perspective to explain the rise of populist nationalism across the globe. It will draw on Karl Polanyi’s theory of “double movement” to understand neo-nationalism as a societal protective reaction against the pro-market transformation of the state. It will emphasize the link between free market reforms, declining state legitimacy, and identity-based mobilization. Furthermore, it will advance the argument that voters embrace identity-based solutions – often in exclusivist and scapegoating forms – to harness their anxieties and insecurities triggered by the state restructuring. Overall, the talk will contribute to our understanding of the inter-related nature of state, capital, and identity politicization through a broader social theoretical perspective.
Critical Political Economy early career scholar writing workshop
Thursday 8 June 2023 University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Naples, Italy
Application deadline: Friday 10 March
On the morning ahead of this year’s CPERN mid-term workshop we will be holding a writing workshop for early career scholars (PhD students and recently completed PhDs). This will be an opportunity for those working on attempts to secure their first publication. Participants will be paired with a more established scholar in the field of critical political economy, in order to receive detailed feedback with the goal of facilitating the writing and publication process. The Early Career Scholar Writing Workshop is timed so that participants can also stay to participate in the CPERN mid-term workshop and join that wider network.
This is the third time we’ve run the early career scholar writing workshop – the last one went well and provided an opportunity for detailed feedback on papers being prepared for publication. We’re confident that this year’s workshop will be equally constructive.
If you are interested in attending, please send a brief note detailing the paper you are currently working on (1 paragraph), outlining what stage in your academic career you are currently in (1 paragraph max), and what publications (if any) you already have to date.
Email to: cpern@criticalpoliticaleconomy.net by 10 March 2023.
Jokubas Salyga is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His work focuses on the historical sociology and political economy of capitalist development in East-Central Europe, and he is particularly interested in post-communist transformations in the Baltic states, forms of resistance against neoliberal restructuring of East-Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union as well as analytical concepts in historical materialism.
Discussants:
Yuliya Yurchenko, Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Greenwich, International Business and Economics Department. Owen Worth, Professor at the University of Limerick, Department of Politics and Public Administration
This article approaches the electoral success of Estonia’s Conservative People’s Party (EKRE) from a Critical Political Economy perspective. It explores immediate and longer-term factors conducive to the surge in the support of this far-right party. After situating the radical rightist reaction in Estonia within the wider continuum of far-right morphologies across Europe, the article attributes the immediate factors explaining EKRE’s ascendence to the conjuncture of the 2008 economic crisis and its resolution. It is contended that the authoritarian neoliberal (post-)crisis environments engendered a surveillance-based imposition of fiscal restraint at the European level and recalibrated the repertories of state interventionism at the national spatial scale. In Estonia, this served to (re-)produce the vocabularies of crisis in line with the far-right’s sensibilities and eroded the public’s trust in the parties of the political mainstream. The analysis of immediate factors behind the rise of the far-right is then supplemented with a forensic examination of popular disenfranchisement with the outcomes of post-communist transformation, the party’s ambiguous relationship with neoliberalism and EKRE’s class-constituted support base. As will be demonstrated, the far-right has attracted the votes of working-class segments residing in the peripheries of the country as well as poverty-stricken pensioners, youths and the disenchanted sections of the middle class. The article concludes by evaluating the claim that EKRE’s inclusion in the coalition government from April 2020 to January 2021 amounted to a break from neoliberalism.
Data agency in surveillance capitalism: empowering citizens in CryptoParties
Prof Dr Sigrid Kannengiesser
While citizens are more and more disempowered and exploited in surveillance capitalism, there are initaitives that reflect on the problems and challenges of current datafication and try to empower users of digital media technologies and online communication to put them into the position to decide for themselves if and with whom they share their data and develop skills of data protection. Using the concept of „data agency“ the talk presents results from a study in which CryptoParties have been analyzed as an examples of initiatives in which these empowering practices take place: activsists from diverse backgrounds share their expertice in encryption practices to enable citizens who try to learn these practices to protect their privacy in processes of online communication. While the presentation discusses the possibilities and potentials of data agency in CryptoParties, also constraints and ambivalences that can be identified in these practices are revealed.
Data subjects as strangers
Prof Dr Phoebe V Moore
Progress has been predicted by privacy activists for people who are also known as ‘data subjects’ by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) because we, as data subjects, technically have more rights to access and control data about ourselves based on this legislation. However, there is not enough clear discussion about the data subject herself in intrinsic, ontological ways not only in recent regulation but in the everyday lives of (deep) mediatisation. The GDPR’s definition refers to an ‘identifiable natural person’. Digging deeper we see that the subject is referenced against two very different ‘selves’: one, a consumer; and two, a worker. These identifiers cannot be conflated, given the opposite social positions that workers and consumers possess, and in particular, the social relations of alienation depending on which transaction we conduct. Data construction of subjects, subjectification and subjectivation must be problematised and Althusser’s theory of interpellation revived. Subjects are potentially so abstracted we become strangers to our’selves’. Indeed, what happens to our subjectivities in the process of datafication? Who now has the right to ‘enunciation’, or the right to formate the self, the right to subjectivity?
CPERN mid-term workshop – Call for Papers (deadline 28 February 2023).
Thursday 8 – Saturday 10 June 2023
University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Naples, Italy
With support of the Department of Political Sciences of the University of Campania “L. Vanvitelli”
The global political economy is experiencing a rapidly spreading “cost of living crisis” – but which is far better understood as a “costs of capitalism crisis”. These costs of capitalism go far beyond rising energy prices, rising inflation, and disruption to supply chains. Rather than a merely technical supply-chain problem or a disruption to trade relations and diplomacy, instead, we are experiencing a global, interconnected and multi-form crisis, the effects of which are being materially, corporeally and socially felt ever more urgently, in a way that is inescapable for any section of the global population. In our next CPERN mid-term workshop, we seek to better understand these interconnected ‘costs of capitalism’. Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war have exacerbated the unaffordability of basic goods and services and accelerated climate change and ecocide; in the long term, it is capitalism that we cannot afford.
We see a decline in real wages and loss of livelihoods for the global working class as a whole. This sits alongside devastating climate change and mass displacement, accumulation by dispossession, collapsing public services and public health systems, the ongoing tightening of restrictions on democratic rights, a further breakdown of international cooperation, exacerbation of population surveillance with implications for workplaces and movement across borders, and the continued election to office of far-right and neo-fascist parties. The political elites and corporate media search incessantly for scapegoats to blame – be it foreigners, the ignorant working class, or asylum seekers and migrants. Rather than playing a blame game which pitches people against one another, we instead seek dialogue that can apply an analysis of the current crisis that reveals the causes and costs of capitalism.
These “costs of capitalism” require an intellectual, analytical and conceptual framework through which to understand and explain; in order to change it. This is the role of critical political economy, which we seek in our next mid-term workshop to develop, explore, and apply to the current crisis.
We invite scholars and activists from across the field of critical political economy to contribute to the next CPERN mid-term workshop, to delineate, explain, understand the multiple elements of the current ‘costs of capitalism’ crisis, and to develop a scholarship that works with those social forces with the capacity to disrupt, resist, transform and transcend the current, and to build a better world beyond capitalism and its never-ending crises.
We are especially keen for papers that address the following themes:
The materiality of the crisis of neoliberal ideology. The unaffordable ‘cost of living’ on planet earth experienced by a rapidly growing number of increasingly vulnerable populations is the material symptom of neoliberal ideology and its ecocidal productivist fetishism. How do those materialities manifest themselves? How are they embodied?
The crisis of public health in the wake of the pandemic. The pandemic has accelerated existing health inequalities globally, from vaccine apartheids, including the inability of governments to remove vaccine patents, to the increased threats on public health systems around the world. The creeping in of privatisation together with an expansion of for-profit healthcare investors is forcing many healthcare workers to strike.
The continued rise of fascism? Fascism globally is on the rise; it is at its most overt since WWII and it is taking on new forms. What is behind those phenomena? How can we understand them, describe them, combat them? Especially in the context of reinvigorated nationalism and regionalism, and the normalisation of authoritarianism?
Where next for financialisation? There is a mountain of debt upon which the global political economy rests. Now that interest rates are rising, and the austerity agenda is once again on the table, there is a very real risk that these are highly shaky foundations. What next? Will we see a repeat of the global financial crisis? Is there a space for a global debt justice moment?
Workers and the costs of capitalism. How are workers impacted by the multiple contemporary global crises faced? The tensions within a global division of labour is exacerbated by tightening migration restrictions, supply chain issues around intensified race-to-the-bottom corporate manoeuvres, restructures and mass layoffs, the collapse of big tech companies, blatant labour arbitrage in platform and digitalised work environments, and a dramatic and rapid rise in worker monitoring and surveillance in all sectors after the pandemic has normalised these patterns. How has the rise in working from home (WfH) impacted people’s livelihoods? What protections are there for digitalised workers? What psychosocial and safety and health risks do workers face as they continue to bear the brunt of the costs of capitalism?
Alternatives and resistance. Is the so-called cost of living crisis being met by a new wave of class struggle and non-capitalist experiments? What are the chances of success? Are trade unions back with a bang, or a whimper? Can prefigurative solidarity economies create meaningful alternatives to the capitalist market? What forms and networks of international solidarity are emerging? Are digital solidarity networks the solution for the advancements of far right authoritarian pursuits?
De-coupling as a cost of capitalism? There is plenty of talk these days about ‘decoupling’ as global supply chains are affected by growing tensions in trade and post-pandemic disruption. Are we witnessing a resurgence of national protectionism in this new phase of global capitalism? What are the effects and implications of this? And where can we see struggles for economic sovereignty that reject and transcend regressive notions of decoupling in favour of international solidarity?
The Costs of Capitalism in the Global South. How are the divisions, and relations, between the Global North and South affected and changing during the post-pandemic period? What are the deep intersectional dynamics of those divisions and relations?
Intersectional struggles of capital and labour. How do (changing) struggles, expressed along class, race, colonial, sexed, and gendered lines, intersect with each other, and within the global political economy? Are there emerging areas of intensification of racism and discrimination emerging within the symptoms of the costs of capitalism?
Social reproduction. How are the already-strained means of social reproduction changing? How does social reproduction interact with the constitutive inequalities of capitalism and what sources of hope, if any, do they offer?
Climate devastation, resistance, and future-making What is the space for solidarity and internationalism in the fight against ecocidal capitalism and its costs? How do and how can we resist the latter? What alternative economic and social models shall be built? What space is there for a noospheric world to emerge?
The critical political economy of geo-politics and militarism. The geo-political tensions that continue to destabilise our world are often neglected by political economy analyses. Yet capitalism and geo-political rivalries are interconnected and require a critical political economy analysis. What recent, historically rooted manifestations of that interconnectedness can help us better understand those rivalries and do away with them?
We are interested in all of the above, and more, and wish for the workshop to cover a wide range of topics. We welcome scholars and activists with an interest in critical political economy, from a variety of countries, social backgrounds, and disciplinary affiliations, regardless of whether they are in academia or not. We are particularly committed to promoting the participation of PhD students, early career scholars, and activists. Limited funds will be available for scholars and activists in precarious situations (who cannot get other sources of funding) to support travel and accommodation costs. Please inform us if you may require help with funding when you send us your abstract.
The workshop is planned for in-person attendance, as far as that is possible. If you are unable to attend in-person, let us know and we will try to facilitate online participation.
As a result of our links to the new journal Global Political Economy we also welcome, and will gladly facilitate, panel submissions where the intention is for the panel to result in a special issue proposal for the journal.
We will be able to provide workshop invitation letters for those needing a visa.
There will be a small fee for attending the workshop, to cover the costs of tea/coffee. The conference language will be English.
Abstracts of around 250 words should be submitted to: cpern@criticalpoliticaleconomy.net by 28 February 2023.
Many thanks,
The CPERN mid-term workshop 2023 organising committee
David Bailey, Bernd Bonfert, Adriano Cozzolino, Phoebe Moore, Owen Worth, Yuliya Yurchenko, Gemma Gasseau, Davide Monaco, Pietro Masina
The Critical Political Economy Research Network is Research Network 06 of the European Sociological Association.
Critical Political Economy Research Network (RN06) 