What’s Next? Critical Political Economy at the End of Neoliberalism?

 CPERN mid-term workshop – Call for Papers HERE

Friday 19 – Saturday 20 June 2020

Zoom – and streamed to our Facebook page

THE WORKSHOP CAN NOW BE VIEWED IN FULL ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE HERE: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1395341100710919/

For some, the rise of a populist-nativist political turn represents the end of neoliberalism. Certainly, the period of neoliberal growth has come to an end. This raises the question: what’s next, and what will the (next) crisis of neoliberalism look like? This depends as much on current developments as it does on what has happened in the past. These crisis tendencies are many. Whilst economic growth in many Western countries has come to a standstill, climate disasters have intensified in large parts of the globe, geopolitical tensions have peaked, and millions of lives have been disrupted by everyday crises of social reproduction and racialised violence. These are not isolated events; they are interconnected and mutually reinforcing.

It is, therefore, a matter of urgency for Critical Political Economy to theorize and chart the current conjuncture of global capitalism as the neoliberal period appears to be coming to an end, to explain where we are headed and to point towards social, economic and ecological alternatives. In short, we need to understand what crises we are in, what crises are still ahead of us, and what we can do to resolve and pre-empt them. We need a critical political economy for the end of neoliberalism.

Itinerary

Friday 19 June

9.00                       Welcome and introductions

9.15 – 11.00        The end of neoliberalism?

• Jana Bacevic (University of Cambridge)

What was neoliberalism and what comes next? A political economy of predicting the end

• Galip L. Yalman (Middle East Technical University)

Crisis of What? Crisis in or of Neoliberalism? A Brief Encounter with the Debate on the Authoritarian Turn

• Muireann O’Dwyer (University of Warwick)

The Crisis of the Neoliberal Legitimacy Model? A Feminist Analysis

•  Sara Swerdlyk (Central European University)

Neoliberalism at the crossroads of class and citizenship: A view from East-Central Europe

• Ian Bruff (University of Manchester)

Methods for the End(s) of Neoliberalism

 BREAK

11.15 – 12.45      Neoliberal capitalism in flux

Panel 1:               

• Michael Tyrala (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

Rise of the Offshore-Industrial Complex and Its Impact on the Growing Squeeze on the Average Worldwide Rate of Profit

• Patrick Gallagher (National University of Ireland Maynooth)

Financialisation and Social Democracy: Mortgage Market Reform and its Unintended Outcomes 

• Gera Iraci (University of Buenos Aires)

Spatilities of Crisis in Argentina. Global Production Networks, Labour Process and the Critique of Capitalism

• Elma Demir

Global Labor

 

Panel 2:  

• Saori Shibata (Leiden University)

Digitization as a non-solution: exacerbating Japan’s dysfunctional wage-labor nexus

• Michael Byrne (University College Dublin)

The political economy of the private rental sector: conceptualizing the ‘residential rent relation’

• Dylan Cassar (University of Edinburgh)

Unintended consequences: Quantitative easing and central bank legitimacy

•  Vanessa Bilancetti (UniNettuno University)

How to study the commodification of social services following a gender perspectives

 

12.45-1.45           LUNCH BREAK

 

1.45-3.15              The production and reproduction of exclusions in neoliberalism

Panel 1:               

• Felix Hernandez-Fernandez (Queen Mary, University of London)

Ordoliberal Social Policy and the Reproduction of Moral Orders Through the Restoration of Property

• Paul Lewis (University of Birmingham)

Unpacking theories of wealth generation and distribution

• Bilge Serin (University of Glasgow)

Producing Exclusionary Urban Space as a Mainstream Neoliberal Practice: The Case of Private Neighbourhoods

• Stephen Gaffney (National University of Ireland, Galway)

Guaranteeing what? European youth unemployment policy during the Great Recession and its contestation in Ireland

 

Panel 2:               

• Yunus Arican (European University Institute)

Capitalism After Crisis:   Varieties of Recombinant Neoliberalism in Hungary and Turkey

• Paul McFadden (University of York)

Bodies predicated in the corporeal economy

• Magnus Ryner (Kings College London)

From Iron Cage to Universal Contradiction? The Political Economy of German Statecraft under Conditions of ‘Minimal’ American Hegemony

• Daniel Lopez (Brussels School of International Studies of the University of Kent)

Too much crises but not enough social transformation: an introduction of the hegemonic vehicles

•  Ricardo Noronha (Instituto de História Contemporânea)

Putting Socialism in a drawer: the ’77-80 Economic Plan’ and the first Stand-by Agreement with the IMF

 

3.30 – 5.00           Authoritarian neoliberalism at the end of neoliberalism?

Panel 1:               

• Aleksandra Piletić (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Theorizing urban authoritarian neoliberalisms

• Clara Camps Calvet (University of Barcelona) and Mònica Clua-Losada (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley)

Conceptualising institutional disobedience in a context of authoritarian neoliberalism: The Catalan case

• Tayfun Mertan (Bogazici University)

A Case of Authoritarian Neoliberal Ruling from Turkey: “Running the State as a Company”

• Jie Guo (Guangzhou Institute of Geography) and Hans Gebhardt (Heidelberg University)

Transformation of Old Industrial Cities under Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Tradition of Administrative Centralism, Lanzhou, China

 

Panel 2:               

• Adriano Cozzolino (Università della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli)

Authoritarianism and the crisis of the liberal order. Conceptual reflections

• Malte Laub (Kings College London)

The Simultaneous Policification of Welfare and Welfarisation of the Police

• Christina Gerantoni

Neoliberalism in Crisis: What are borders and police really here for?

 

5.15- 6.45            Roundtable: Critical political economy in a time of (too) many crises

Lead participants:

Owen Worth (University of Limerick)

Andy Storey (University College Dublin)

Clemence Fourton (Universite Paris-8)

Anouk Colombani

David Bailey (University of Birmingham)

Yuliya Yurchenko (University of Greenwich)

 

Saturday 20 June

9.30 – 11.00 A    Is the EU still neoliberal?

• Roy Cobby (Kings College London)

The Liberal Illusions of the European Union’s Competition and Digital Policy: The BayerMonsanto Merger

• Joerg Nowak and Roland Erne

Transnational Trade Union Action and the EU’s New Economic Governance Regime

• Vincenzo Maccarrone (University College Dublin)

The new European economic governance and its impact on industrial relations: the case of Ireland

• Gábor Scheiring (Bocconi University)

Varieties of dependency, varieties of illiberalism: the crisis of democracy in East-Central Europe

• Roland Erne, Darragh Golden, and Imre Szabó (University College Dublin)

Commodification of public services through the EU’s New Economic Governance regime: EU policy interventions in the water and transport sector in Germany, Italy, Ireland and Romania

 

9.30 – 11.00 B     Development, dependency, postcolonialism

• Sanja Petkovska

A dialogue between postcolonialism and postsocialism in relation to the theses on uneven and combined development

• Anwar Hossen (University of Dhaka)

Neoliberalism, Development, and Community Dispossession in Bangladesh

• Ilja Viktorov and  Alexander Abramov (Stockholm University)

State-led Financial Capitalism and Emergence of Collateralized Finance in Russia

• Swantje Hoeft (University of Vienna)

Re-imagining Capitalism through a new Social Contract? A corpus-linguistic Critical Discourse Analysis of Narrations of Taxation, Development and the future of Social Justice

 

BREAK

 

11.15 – 12.45      Conflict and care in neoliberal capitalism

Panel 1:                Conflict, militarisation, and illiberalism in the neoliberal era

• Jasmine Chorley Foster (University of Toronto)

Critical political economy of soldiering work

• William Muchono (Zimbabwe Ezekiel Guti University)

Streets as Conflict Zones in Urban Zimbabwe

• Davide Monaco (University of Manchester)

The rise of anti-establishment and far-right forces in Italy after the crisis: a postneoliberal trajectory?

• Reijer Hendrikse (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

The Rise of Neo-Illiberalism

 

Panel 2:                Does neoliberalism care?

• Costanza Galanti (University College Dublin)

Profiting and free-riding on health and social care across borders. Transnational pressures for commodification, de-familialisation and re-familialisation of care under European economic governance

• Stefano Ba’ (Leeds Trinity University)

Precarious work, gender and race: class struggle and care-work

• Irit Harboun and Irit Keynan (College of Management, Rishon LeZion)

Can neoliberal practices in education improve equality and civil status of minorities?

•  Vicky Kluzik (University of Aberdeen)

Beyond ‘Uberisation’: digital platforms and the crisis of care

 

12.45 – 1.45         LUNCH BREAK

 

1.45 – 3.15           Ecological harm in neoliberalism

Panel 1:               

• Chris Hesketh (Oxford Brookes University)

Indigenous environmentalism in the age of extractivism

• Yuliya Yurchenko (University of Greenwich)

Humans, nature, and dialectical materialism

• Johannes Jäger and Lukas Schmidt (University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna)

Neoliberal finance and socio-ecological transformation

• Ayse Sargin (University of Essex)

Political Economy of Hydropower Generation and Local Anti-Hydropower Resistance in Neoliberal Turkey

 

Panel 2:               

• Melahat Sahin-Dikmen (University of Westminster)

Gender and the ecological transformation of the built-environment

• Tom Haines-Doran (University of Leeds)

The Financialisation of Car Dependency

• Oscar Berglund (University of Brisol) and Daniel Schmidt

Extinction Rebellion: Breaking the Law to Save the World

 

BREAK

 

3.30 – 5.00           Resisting neoliberal crisis

Panel 1:

• Nicholas Kiersey (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley)

Neoliberal Rationalities, Capitalist Crises?: Revisiting Foucauldian Political Economy in the Context of European Austerity

• Bernd Bonfert (Radboud University and Roskilde University)

European housing activism: transnational organic intellectuals in the struggle for self-determined living space

• Madelaine Moore (Kassel University)

Liquid Gold? Understanding the contested materiality of water through social reproduction theory

• Mary Naughton (University College Dublin)

The 2019 nurses strike- politicisation of caring

 

Panel 2:

• Sebastian Möller (University of Bremen) & Maria Behrens (University of Wuppertal)

Social Protection vs. Progressive Couter-movements: Mapping Contestation in Trade and Finance

• Viktoriia Muliavka (Polish Academy of Sciences)

Protest Participation in Europe and Resistance to Neoliberalism: Complexity of Grievances, Resources and Opportunities

• Alona Liasheva

‘Silent’ protest in Ukrainian cities: observations of everyday class struggle

• Eleonore Perrin (University of Liverpool)

Worker co-operatives in Northern Ireland: beyond sectarianism and neoliberalism?

 

BREAK

 

5.15 – 6.45           Imagining utopia(s) after neoliberalism

• Marie Moran (University College Dublin)

An Equality Framework for 21st Century Socialism

• Damian McIlroy (Queen’s University)

Confronting Capitalism and Climate Breakdown: The Necessity of an Eco-Marxist Critical Theory for the 21st Century and the Shape of Radical Trade Union Agency for Just Transition

• Nicolas Dvoskin (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt)

Income redistribution, social policy and social utopias in 21st century Latin America

• Katharine I. Ransom (California Institute of Integral Studies)

An Economic Analysis of Matristic Societies as an Alternative Socio-Economic System to Current Capitalism: A Radical Contribution to Marxist Feminist Theory

6.45                        Thanks, reflections, goodbye (END)

The CPERN Board

David Bailey, Bernd Bonfert, Alona Lyasheva, Owen Worth, Yuliya Yurchenko

The Critical Political Economy Research Network is Research Network 06 of the European Sociological Association.