Call for Papers – deadline: 15 February 2021

Abstract submission is OPEN!

Submit your abstract via ConfTool 2021: https://www.conftool.pro/esa2021/

The next Critical Political Economy Research Network (CPERN) event will be the CPERN (RN06) stream at the European Sociological Association Conference 2021.

Covid Capitalism: advancing critical political economy, accelerating progressive alternatives (RN06)

European Sociological Association (ESA) Conference in Barcelona, 31 August – 3 September 2021, Barcelona.

The contradictory and destructive tendencies of capitalism have landed the world in the Covid-19 pandemic and saddled it with the worst recession in living memory. More than ever, we need a critical political economy that can both ask questions of, and provide answers to, global capitalism’s doomed project for humanity; while also addressing the failure of conventional social sciences to grasp the complexity of our global crises.

This catastrophic fiasco of productivist capitalism is set against (and reinforces) the backdrop of our broken planetary metabolism.

Global capitalism’s contradictions are now evident to all. They already invoke political, social and economic reactions – albeit in sometimes contradictory forms. From proposals for a Green New Deal to Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter, and the Women’s Strike.

In academic and political spheres, alternative epistemologies and praxes are sought, with desperation, frustration and zeal. To transform (re)production processes, we require a rethinking of our economic models. We need alternative models of care to the racialized, sexed, gendered, and classed provisions that crumbled under the COVID context.

Overlapping forms of poverty and indebtedness – including of time, digital resources, fuel, transport, and finance – have combined with unemployment and a lack of healthcare to define a world that can be either won or lost. We see opportunities for both our empancipatory visions and for a far right politics of hate.

It is in this historic opportunity that we seek a critical political economy that will accelerate the momentum of progressive movements and contribute towards the production of an ecosocialist world built on principles of deep sustainability – economic, social and environmental. And in doing so, negate the productivism of capitalism and its intrinsically racialized, sexed and gendered discrimination.

We especially (but not exclusively) invite abstracts on:

• Theorising Covid capitalism
• Capitalism and the climate crises
• Are we there yet? The Greatest Recession to come?
• Understanding the financial rescue(s), the lack thereof, and the impact of “QE infinity”
• Alternative epistemologies for alternative political economies
• Dissent and resistance under Covid Capitalism
• Gender, sex, care and the household during and after “the lockdown”
• Isolation, psychological health crisis, cities/slums
• Transforming production and globalised exploitation
• Beyond a Global South and North

We are interested in all of the above plus more, and wish for the conference to cover a wide range of topics. As such, we seek contributions from scholars and activists with an interest in political economy research, regardless of their disciplinary affiliation and whether they are in academia or not. We also hope to attract a diverse range of participants, from a variety of countries and backgrounds.

Notes for contributors

Deadline for submissions: 15 February 2021

Abstract submission is OPEN!

Submit your abstract via ConfTool 2021: https://www.conftool.pro/esa2021/

If you have any questions regarding this Call, or the conference in general, feel free to contact d.j.bailey@bham.ac.uk or yy04@gre.ac.uk

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.

Thursday 18 June 2020 – Critical Political Economy early career scholar writing workshop

Supported by Conference of Socialist Economists/Capital and Class

University of Limerick

On the day before the 2020 CPERN 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 workshop is supported by the Conference of Socialist Economists, which publishes the journal, Capital and Class, and which can provide limited funding to support travel and accommodation. 

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 31 January 2020.

 

 

Unfortunately, we have had to make the decision to cancel the physical version of the CPERN mid-term workshop that was due to be held in Limerick (19-20 June 2020). We cannot predict what the situation will be in June.

Instead, and given that it seems even more pressing that we continue to discuss the end times of neoliberalism, we will move the entire workshop online.

More details to follows shortly.

 

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

 CPERN mid-term workshop – Call for Papers [now closed]

Friday 19 – Saturday 20 June 2020

University of Limerick, Ireland

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.

Conventional economics is unable to answer these questions. It has tried, and failed, to grasp the extent of capitalism and its crises, due largely to its inability (and often unwillingness) to consider or conceptualise capitalist relations in their fullest sense. Yet, capitalism cannot be understood without grasping the fundamental dynamics which constitute it: economic accumulation, social reproduction, environmental extraction, and forced dispossession based on gender, race and nationality (amongst other categories). The often compartmentalised ontologies, methodologies and resulting epistemologies of mainstream social sciences prevent scholars from capturing this complexity. We are left without an understanding of the causes, dynamics and implications of the multiple contemporary crises of capitalism.

We invite scholars and activists from across the field of critical political economy to contribute to the next CPERN mid-term workshop, where we will consider: What’s Next? Critical Political Economy at the End of Neoliberalism?

We are especially keen for papers that address the following themes:

• The crisis of neoliberalism: Are we seeing a crisis of (authoritarian) neoliberalism? What is driving this crisis? How should we conceptualise these crisis tendencies? What changes do they prompt? To what extent is this leading to a further erosion of democracy and a consolidation of authoritarianism? To what extent, and with what effect, are we witnessing the end of neoliberalism, and what is the post-neoliberal trajectory?
• Economic policy at the end of neoliberalism. ‘Normal’ economic policy seems to have ended. Ultra-loose monetary policy seemingly has no end in sight. Public debt is both problematised and accepted as necessary. New innovations in industrial policy, a Green New Deal, and suggestions of a return to redistribution, all appear to be on the agenda. All of this raises the question of what economic policy looks like at the end of neoliberalism.
• Environmental crisis: How does capitalism affect our planet? What are the implications of the destruction of our eco-systems? What do alternatives to unsustainable growth look like? Can environmental crises transcend capitalism?
• The role (and crisis) of social reproduction: How do we understand social reproduction in our current end times of neoliberalism? Critical political economy has often neglected the sphere of social reproduction, but lately has begun to pay great attention. Why? And how successful have we been?
• Exclusions/otherings: What are the gendered and racialized dimensions of contemporary global capitalism? How have neoliberal pressures towards individual competition and self-optimization altered people’s mental well-being? What impact does austerity have on the availability of care?
• Resistance and Alternatives: How, if at all, are both resistance and everyday struggles for survival putting neoliberalism at risk? How, if at all, can social struggle, resistance, and/or social movements play a part in shaping the post-neoliberal future?

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.

There is no fee for attending the workshop. The conference language will be English.

Abstracts of around 250 words should be submitted to cpern@criticalpoliticaleconomy.net by 31 January 2020.

We hope that you will find this Call interesting – please also share with colleagues and students who might not yet be part of the CPERN community!

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions regarding this Call, or the conference in general.

Many thanks,

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.

We live in dystopian times. The crisis of global capitalism is revealing itself in the most uncompromising fashion. Quantitative easing – the one ‘solution’ to the last crisis – has only re-inflated the global financial bubble, and created the prospect for the next impending crisis to be greater than witnessed heretofore. Government bonds across the industrialized world are either approaching, or already at, negative interest rates. Financial investors, aware of the next big recession, are betting against long term economic growth, for up to the next thirty years. Something is clearly amiss!

SEE THE FULL WRITE-UP OF OUR STREAM OF PANELS, WHICH TOOK PLACE IN MANCHESTER 2019, ON THE OPEN DEMOCRACY WEBSITE HERE

The next Critical European Studies Workshop, organised by the Critical Political Economy Research Network, will take place on 10-11 May 2019 in Lviv, Ukraine.

Details below, and on the Critical European Studies Workshop website:

CES Workshop 2019
Lviv, Ukraine
10-11 May 2019

Organising team: Christakis Georgiou, Daniel Keil, Aliona Lyasheva, Ana Podvršič, Yuliya Yurchenko

Synopsis: The frontiers and the state of the European – quo vadis?

Fifteen years since EU’s biggest enlargement being celebrated as a movement towards unification of European countries under the same vision for the future we see the region falling to the right wing rhetoric amidst the talks of disintegration. Increasing economic unevenness, Brexit, revision of the free movement of labour while deeper economic integration inside the EU and of the Union with its “outside” e.g. the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas, complex role in the refugee crisis, are seemingly contradictory; in many cases contrary to the founding principles and declared mission. Escalating geopolitical confrontations along Europe’s geographic boundary pose questions about the state of the region, its future and its self-appointed – yet often reluctant to take responsibility – hegemon, the EU. The armed conflict and economic crises in Ukraine, Transnistria, Abkhasia – unresolved; the climate change action despite the new elaborate frameworks – toothless; labour mobility is riddled with problems; human rights framework – impotent when applied to non-EU citizens; ‘wealth through growth’ is accumulated by translational capital while subsidized by the taxpayer, unwaged labour and increasingly low waged labour, backed by sweatshops, refugee labour camps and like conditions of migrant labour in global supply chains; responsibility for the unresolved economic recession – shouldered by the region’s most vulnerable. In this workshop we will discuss a number of those burning questions focusing on understanding the causes of the existing problems, assessing their frontiers and the frontier of struggles, the ongoing and the ones to come.

The workshop is open to all scholars and activists interested in critical perspectives on European issues, and is held free of charge.

Programme:

May 10

12:00-13:00 Round of Introductions

13:00-15:00 Session 1:  What is Europe beyond EU-N? Europe and beyond, geopolitics and epistemology

Core text: Stathis Kouvelakis: Borderland. New Left Review 110, March-April 2018.

Commentators: Angela Wigger, Niko Huke, Joachim Becker, Nataliya Rumyantseva, Ivo Georgiev (RLS), Aliona Liasheva

15:00-15:30 Refreshments break

15:30-17:30  Session 2: Fascicisation and crisis of ‘cosmopolitanism’

Core text:  Joachim Becker and Koen Smet, The Socio-Economic Programmes and Praxis of the Nationalist Right in the EU: the Core-Periphery Divide, Paper for the 24th Annual Conference on Alternative Economic Policy in Europe “10 Years into the crisis –What prospects for a popular political economy in Europe?”, Helsinki , 27-29 September 2018

Commentators: Volodymyr Ishchenko, Vika Mulyavka, Owen Worth, Ruth Cain, Yuliya Yurchenko, Daniel Keil

17:30-18:00 Refreshments break

18:00-19:30 Roundtable: left politics and activism in Ukraine

Speakers: Social Movement reps, women, human rights  and LBTQI activists, Ukrainian Christian Youth, trade union activists in Ukraine, Ecological Platform (local Lviv left/anarchist group)

20:00 Dinner 

May 11

10:00-12.00 Session 3: The crisis of work: we work more, we earn less, we pray for robots?

Core text: Moore, P. V. (2018). Tracking Affective Labour for Agility in the Quantified Workplace. Body & Society, 24(3), 39–67.

Commentators: Gunjan Sondhi, Oksana Dutchak, David Bailey, Nina Potarskaya, Artem Tidva, Christakis Georgiou

12.00-12.15 Break

12.15-14.15 Session 4: European division of labour and growth regimes

Core text: Angela Wigger (2019) The new EU industrial policy: authoritarian neoliberal structural adjustment and the case for alternatives, Globalizations, 16:3, 353-369

Commentators: Johannes Jaeger, Claude Serfati, Phoebe Moore, Denis Pilash, Julia Eder, Artem Tidva

14.15-15.30 Break

15.30-17.30 Session 5: Towards the ecological catastrophe or an opportunity to change the course? Rebalancing labour, state, and capital in climate politics

Core text: Joel Wainwright & Geoff Mann (2015), Climate Leviathan, Antipode, 45 (1), 1-22.

Commentators: Judith Dellheim, Richard Lane, Christina Plank, a representative from the EcoPlatform (Lviv)

17.30-18.00 Closing

Call for Papers – deadline extended to 15 Feb 2019

The next Critical Political Economy Research Network (CPERN) event will be the CPERN (RN06) stream at the European Sociological Association Conference 2019.

 

(Digital) capitalism, trade wars and bubble economies: Reclaiming critical political economy in dystopian times (RN06)

14th European Sociological Association (ESA) Conference, 20-23 August 2019, Manchester, UK.

Current times appear dystopian. The rise of the populist right and neo-fascist movements and parties seems to overshadow the prospect for progressive alternatives. The aftermath of the global economic crisis has brought with it prolonged neoliberal restructuring, authoritarianism and heightened inequality. Trade wars, nationalism and closed borders seem to generate more hope than visions of global solidarity. Natural resources continue to be exhausted and climate change proceeds unabated. Quantitative easing – the one ‘solution’ to the last crisis – has only re-inflated the global financial bubble, and created the prospect for the next impending crisis to be greater than witnessed heretofore. All this at a time when digital technologies should be offering a major advance in human capacity; but instead seem only to result in fear of a world without employment.

These dystopian times therefore demand a critical political economy that at once diagnoses the crises that we face, delineates the social structures which have produced them, but also points towards alternatives that are grounded in a utopian vision for making a better world possible.

We invite scholars and activists from the broad spectrum of critical political economy, including scholars with Marxist, feminist, ecologist, postcolonial, labour- and social-movement perspectives, as well as scholars with critical approaches to finance, trade and investment; to reclaim the field of critical political economy, and to advance a form of knowledge that can contribute towards the politicisation and acceleration of social struggles, and transformative praxis.

We especially (but not exclusively) invite abstracts on the following topics:

• Finance, debt, bubbles, and critical theories of money
• Theorising critical political economy: Beyond mainstream, heterodox and/or post-Keynesian economics?
• Rising trade protectionism: A welcome reversal of globalisation?
• Capitalist production and value chains in the digital age
• Authoritarian neoliberalism, coercion and the disciplining of labour
• The role of trade unions, social movements and new left political parties/platforms
• Anarchism, feminism, new materialism and Marxism – building alternatives from horizontalist escape-routes?
• The materialities of ecological challenges: The political economy of migration
• Damaged lives, intensified precarisation and the rise of inequalities
• The question of social reproduction: commodification, cooperation, or mutual aid?

We are interested in all of the above plus more, and wish for the conference to cover a wide range of topics. As such, we seek contributions from scholars and activists with an interest in political economy research, regardless of their disciplinary affiliation and whether they are in academia or not. We also hope to attract a diverse range of participants, from a variety of countries and backgrounds.

Notes for contributors

Deadline for submissions: extended to 15 February 2019

Abstracts should not exceed 275 words. Abstracts must be submitted online to the submission platform, see below. Abstracts sent by email cannot be accepted. Abstracts will be peer-reviewed and selected for presentation by the Research Network; the letter of notification will be sent by the conference software system in March 2019.

Abstract submission deadline: extended to 15 February 2019. Conference website and abstract submission platform:  https://www.europeansociology.org/abstract-submission-now-open

Make sure you submit to the correct stream: RN06.

If you have any questions regarding this Call, or the conference in general, feel free to contact a.wigger@fm.ru.nl or d.j.bailey@bham.ac.uk.