CPERN mid-term workshop
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”
Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cpern-mid-term-workshop-2023-tickets-587497088607
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.
The CPERN mid-term workshop is the mid-term workshop of the Critical Political Economy Research Network (RN06) of the European Sociological Association. More details: https://www.europeansociology.org/research-networks/rn06-critical-political-economy
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
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Thursday 8 June 3.30 – 5.30: Opening plenary (chair: David Bailey)
Palazzo Santa Maria Porta Coeli, Via Duomo no. 219 – directions
classroom 221
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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
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Panel discussion on publishing in critical political economy: hosted by members of the editorial boards of Capital & Class and Global Political Economy
Friday 9 June 9.00 – 10.30
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
Friday 9 June 8.30
Workshop meal: Scugnizzo social centre
Cost: €20 per person
Saturday 10 June 10.00 – 11.30
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
Critical Political Economy Research Network (RN06) 