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Annual Conference 2005 Abstracts
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FRIDAY 1:00PM – 3:00PM
AFTERNOON PANELS: SESSION IEmpire and Alternative Globalizations
Location: International House
Moderator: Lauren LangmanDoes Empire Matter?
by Jan Nederveen Pieterse, University of Illinois
Many books have come out on empire, but is empire really the central question? Is empire the main street of history, a side street, or a cul de sac? In relation to American domestic problems and America's economic standing, does empire matter? In relation to global problems, does empire matter? Does the American preoccupation with global primacy contribute to global stability or is it a destabilizing influence?Empire, Global Governance, and Global Democracy in the Twenty-first Century
by Dr. Ganesh Trichur, St. Lawrence University
This paper addresses prospects for global democracy in the context of the new contradictions of global governance in an imperial conjuncture. I argue that the current system-wide chaos in the world system arises out of the dissolution and transformation of Cold War Bretton Woods institutions, the disintegration of the Soviet Empire, the new wars of the 1990s, the alternative globalization movements, and the unilateralism of US power in the context of the war on terrorism. The uneven combinations of these components of systemic crisis reflect the uneven and contradictory development of plural regional configurations.Response to Hardt and Negri
by Abdul Alkalimat, Toledo University
[Abstract Not Available]Empire/Multitude in the Light of East Asia
by Steve Sherman
This paper will reopen the questions explored by Hardt and Negri through a consideration of the East Asian experience. Viewed through the optic of East Asia, emergent forms of sovereignty and struggle differ from those of the Euro-US ‘Empire/multitude’ in important aspects: there is a de-emphasis on a transcendent vantage point from which to assess the economic or substantive rationality of social relations in favor of embedded diasporas developing relations on a case-by-case basis; a shift from a focus on self-consciously ‘autonomous’ struggle to SULNAM (spontaneous, unorganized, leaderless, nonideological, autonomous, movement); states are not declining as transnational relations become stronger; the importance of regional autonomy based on cultural and economic commonalities, rather than globalism or bureaucratic political integration; the importance of mercantile, rather than intellectual or affective immaterial labor, and, as a goal, the importance of socialized markets, rather than the reclaiming of the commons.
The Wal-Mart Challenge
Location: International House
Moderator: Carl DavidsonWal-Mart, Challenge to the Social Contract on a Global Basis
by Ellen Rosen, Brandeis University
Wal-Mart is the largest company in the world. As of October 2004, Wal-Mart had 4,872 stores around the world, with sales of over $256 billion.(1) In this paper I propose to examine the role and power of Wal-Mart, as it leads the globalization of retailing and manufacturing, and challenges the power of the nation state to enforce the social contract in both developing and industrialized countries.Wal-Mart and the Campaign to Build a High Road Retail Sector in Chicago
by Dan Bianchi, Center for Labor and Community Research
Following an unsuccessful bid to keep Wal-Mart out of Chicago, a coalition of community development organizations and not-for-profits who form a part of the New Chicago School for Economic and Community Development (or the New Chicago School) have responded to the Wal-Mart threat by proposing their vision for the creation of a High Road retail sector in Chicago as wells as a High road retail store to compete against Wal-Mart. The New School has recognized that in order for such a project to be successful it must not only be able to create jobs and offer consumers low-cost retail goods and shopping options particularly in low-income communities it must be part of an over-all strategy for High Road retail development in the City of Chicago. Key to this strategy will be to bring community groups, organized labor, local government, as well as existing segments of the business and retail community around a vision for High Road retail development in Chicago. To this end the New School has assembled a national advisory board of experts in cooperative and community development to work with a local project board that will guide the development of this project.Global Alternatives to Wal-Mart
by Dan Swinney, Center for Labor and Community Research
The destructive character of globalization is widely understood among US activists—leading to active opposition in the streets and in academic and intellectual circles. What’s not understood is a compelling approach to economic development that’s consistent with a commitment to social justice. Swinney argues for High Road development that requires competition in the market as well as the state, building strategic alliances with sections of the business community to defeat the powerful and destructive Low Road sections, and requires a labor movement that seeks control of the economy at the micro level.
Struggles for Social Justice In the Third World
Location: International House
Moderator: Ligaya McGovernNeo-liberal reform and the re-emergence of mass social movements in the Latin America countryside
by Stuart Easterling, University of Pittsburgh
This paper will examine the recent history of social movements among peasants and native people in Latin America, focusing on Mexico, Ecuador, and Brazil, and discuss their role in shifting the political center of gravity in the region. In addition, it will attempt to address the following questions: Will urbanization, economic development and neoliberal reform lead to the disappearance of the peasantry in Latin America? What is the relationship of such movements to “urban politics”? What role does the national state play in this context, and is it capable of pursuing a sovereign path within the global economy? Lastly, what can replace the neoliberal model? The fate of millions of rural Latin Americans depends on how today’s social movements address these questions.Struggling for Social Justice in the Era of Globalization: The Cases of African-Americans, Oromos and Southern Sudanese
by Asafa Jalata, University of Tennessee
African Americans in the U.S., Oromos in Ethiopia, and Southern Sudanese in Sudan have been dominated and have struggled for social justice in the globalized world system by opposing and challenging racial and colonial policies and practices of those respective countries that have subjected them to the status of second-class citizenship by denying them self-determination and human and democratic rights. As African Americans suffered under American racial slavery and apartheid for almost three and a half centuries, Oromos and Southern Sudanese have been dominated and exploited by Ethiopian and Sudanese racial and colonial dictatorship respectively since the last decades of the nineteenth century. Although there have been differences among the struggles of these three ethnonational groups, this paper focuses on their respective similar efforts in pursuing the dream of achieving social justice.Food Production on New Terms: Lessons from the Cuban Experience for Agriculture Under Materializing Global Realities
by Evan Weissman, University of Tennessee
The case of Cuba, albeit fostered by political economic conditions and not emerging geophysical limitations, provides a model for the rest of the world. The collapse of the Soviet trade bloc in 1989 undermined Cuba’s agriculture sector, as former subsidies (particularly petroleum) were no longer available. To feed its population, Cuba initiated the largest organic agriculture effort in history. In doing so, Cuba successful thwarted potentially devastating hunger and possible famine. Although much has been written on Cuba’s success, often overlooked is urban agriculture and the unmistakable popular characteristic of the movement.A systematic examination of the Cuban case exemplifies the importance and feasibility of urban agriculture and provides a model for other nations. Degradation of the planet is inextricably linked to the degrading conditions of life for the majority of the world’s population. Cuba provides a model for simultaneously addressing the root of both.
Cold War Poetics: Themes of Global Conflict in Poetry by Cuban Women Writers
by Dawn Duke, University of Tennessee
Poets Nancy Morejón and Georgina Herrera are presented here as the two leading Afro-Cuban writers of today who are among the most valued voices of the post-1959 generation of writers. As products of the Cuban revolutionary experience, they continue to reside in Cuba and to produce works inspired on contexts and trends from the 1960s to date. This study dwells on a particular thematic concern that appears in their works, and that brings to the forefront the broader cultural implications of their poetry. An important feature of their writing is their literary configurations of forms of ideological resistance from behind the Iron Curtain.Given the characterization of their production as being from within the Marxist sphere, their interpretations of events such as the Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the Angolan struggle, and the Grenada Revolution set up an interesting dialogue that surges from within that local island space, and that contributes to the broader picture of the effects of Cold War politics, this time seen through the discourse of specific black female voicing. Of particular interest here is how this last phase of the Cold War conflict in which we now find ourselves affects interpretations and readings of their works. Finally, this discussion will touch on just how effective and valuable today is this voicing from within Cuba.
Radical Philosophy Looks at Repression, Justice and Liberation
Location: Hodges Library
Moderator: Bill PeltzTowards Democratic Communism: What is to be Done When All are Interpellated and “Embourgeoised” Capitalists
by Paul Mocombe, Florida Atlantic University
Recent debates in education theory have centered on the poststructural emphasis of the decentered (heterogeneous) subject within the cultural structure of schools. Emphasizing the dialogue, recent pedagogical practices have avowed, between constructed identities within schools, theorists of this poststructural persuasion attempt to demonstrate the resistance posed by constructed identities to integration into the capitalist structural logic of schools. This essay, on the contrary, argues that the observed resistance posed by constructed identities is in fact the result of contemporary capital reorganization. Thus Paulo Freire’s dialogical pedagogy, as contemporarily practiced in American post-industrial workplaces and schools, speaks to the continual role of education as an instrument that is used to facilitate integration, rather than as a liberating force against the partiality of capitalist ideology.Capitalist Theocracy and the New Prison
by Stephen Gallagher, Radical Philosophy Association
The US prison population hit a staggering 2 million people in 2002. The U.S. now locks up its citizens at a rate 5-8 times that of the industrialized nations to which it us most similar, Canada and Western Europe. There is obviously something more than just a side effect of a cowboy/gangster mythos at play here. As the reality of the US “prison industry” mutates out of control, we must take a cold look at how the discourse on the goal of the prison has mutated as well.Apropos of the new Bush Capitalist/Theocratic project, up pops Chuck Colson and his ilk, right on cue, with a new focus on an old mode of discourse: “penitence”, the prisoner as sinner. “Saved” vs. “sinner”. “Sane” vs. “ill”. “Human” vs. “meat”. “Saved” vs. “sinner”. Same as it ever was. The discourse is constantly (deliberately?) mutating, but the essential project remains the same after all these years. All are tools for the deployment of power and the increasingly naked exposure of a class/race structure that has been with us all along, and shows no sign of going away.
Conditions of Rightlessness: The Structural Conditions of Human Rights Violations
by Darren O’Byrne, Roehampton University, UK
This paper will take a theoretically-informed look at current human rights concerns in the UK and US. It will ask how we might best employ social theory to understand the broader implications of recent anti-terrorism legislation, incorporating Guantanamo Bay, Belmarsh, and the UK government’s recent attempts to defy both general human rights standards and the authority of an independent legislature by imposing detention without trial in different forms. To what extent might these and other examples signify the construction of what Hannah Arendt called ‘conditions of rightlessness’? Is it appropriate to draw parallels with or inspiration from Arendt’s analysis of the situation of refugees in post-war Europe, Bauman’s survey of the structural origins of the Holocaust, Elkins’s work on how the law served as a means of providing legitimacy for ante-bellum slavery in the US, or Cohen’s recent work on the stages through which torture is presented as acceptable to a liberal public in Israel? The paper will therefore present the case for the applicability and importance of the sociology of human rights.The Commodification of Everyday Life and Popular Culture
by Bill Peltz, Elgin College
This paper will discuss the ways that ever more global consumer society reduces human relations to relations between objects and deflects class-consciousness into "consumer consciousness."Women and the Struggle for the Commons in Africa
Location: To Be Announced
Moderator: Teresa TurnerGendered Class Struggle for the Commons Versus the Global Corporate Male Deal
By Terisa E. Turner, University of Guelph
I argue that in growing numbers of oil producing societies, alliances of specific women and men have challenged the complex of ‘male deals’ at the heart of corporate crime. Male deals bring together local men, state actors and capitalist interests to extract wealth, which is accumulated as corporate profit. The male deal is the social mechanism through which ‘values’ are channeled up from local environments and peoples to corporations. It is the masculinized relationship that facilitates the exploitation of many women, peasants and other peoples both waged and unwaged, and their environments for the benefit of capital. The double power of the unwaged, and especially of rural women, resides in their simultaneous participation in social relations of commoning for the sustenance of life and in social relations of global corporate structure, which organize, discipline and unite us all. Theory and practice, as well as ecological realities, suggest that alliances with the unwaged around their life-centered demands may very well accelerate dramatic shifts in power from capital to popular movements. A case study of the Niger Delta women’s protests against Big Oil illustrates this argument.Global Social Movements For the Gendered African Commons
By Leigh S. Brownhill, University of Toronto
In Kenya, as in Rwanda, 1990s imperial media constructed as ‘ethnic clashes’ what were in fact land clearances on behalf of international capital and its local collaborators. This propaganda tapped into subconscious reservoirs of racist fear. It delegitimized solidarity across borders. It justified militarism in the name of ‘humanitarian peacekeeping’. Beneath the imperial propaganda is the humanism of Kenyan social movements for land, food and freedom. These movements embody practical capacities to institute ‘commoning’ which is both local and international. These gendered Kenyan movements have merged with global social movements whose rise signals an immanent shift from global classes in themselves to global classes for themselves. The Kenyan case shows how the exploited have begun to seize the global relationships of capital and use them to build new relations of reciprocity, justice and the enhancement of life for all.
3:15PM – 5:00PM
AFTERNOON PANELS: SESSION IIImmigration and Globalization
Location: International House
Moderator: Ligaya McGovernFilipino Migrant Domestic Workers in Global Cities: Configurations of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Nationality and Class
by Ligaya McGovern, Indiana University
Although there is a growing body of literature on globalization, there are little studies that make visible the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, and class. Yet, with the current feminization of export labor and global migration, this intersection cannot be left on the wayside in critical studies on globalization. As a contribution to filling this intellectual gap, this paper examines how the experiences of Filipino migrant domestic workers in Vancouver, Chicago, and Rome configure the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, nationality, and class. Its focus on their experiences in these selected global cities provide insights into how the urban economy in these richer countries of the G-8 that control the globalization policies benefit more from the export of female labor from poorer countries --- thus perpetuating the social stratification of the world system. But the women are not presented as passive victims of this phenomenon. The paper examines as well the politics of the women’s resistance and responses in these global cities where fieldwork was conducted at different periods.Developing Trends of the Populist Right-Wing Parties in Western Europe
by Ridvan Peshkopia, University of Kentucky
What explains the dramatic rising of populist right-wing parties in Western Europe? Some authors point to ravaging unemployment in the old continent; others focus on fears caused by high numbers of foreigners living in these countries; still others to excessive welfare states that cause high taxation; others to lingering fascist nostalgia. I argue that rather, it is the relentless influx of illegal immigrants that fuels anxieties, uncertainty and anti-immigrant emotions in Western Europe. Yet these feelings would have remained loose without the presence of charismatic/maverick leaders that manage to harness them in political dissents and electoral votes.Search for identity, status and happiness: The silent struggles of Indian women in Nairobi
by Divya Sharma, Utica College
This paper presents a comparative analysis between the Kenyan Indian women and those who are born and brought up in India and married to Kenyan Indian men. Another important issue that the paper explores is that of Mujra that involves young girls from India who are brought to Nairobi to sing and dance on Indian film songs, while men throw money on them. It may appear as a toned down version of the strip clubs in the west or Europe but in the Indian socio-cultural context it has many repercussions that has led to a lot of friction between men and women.Migration and the Struggle for Mexican Liberation
by Ernesto Bustillos, Social Studies Teacher, Social Activist, and member of the Union del Barrio
I will present an edited version of the document that members of a delegation from Unión del Barrio (an pro Mexican self-determination organization based in California) presented at the International League of People’s Struggle, Second International Assembly, held Eindhoven, Netherlands, from Nov. 10-14, 2004. The primary objective will be to present the question of migration from the perspective of Mexican community, the most affected entity of this very important question. A perspective that being silenced by the mainstream media, academia, and government institutions.
Globalization’s Impact on the Southern U.S.
Location: International House
Moderator: Carl DavidsonLabor Organizing in the South: The White Worker – Race, Class & Gender Issues
by Steve Rutledge, AFSCME, West Virginia
This presentation is by a long-standing veteran of the civil rights and labor movement in the south detailing the critical link between narrow self-interest organizing around economic empowerment and the broader multi-national civil rights, women’s rights and international solidarity movements for social change. By way of positive example, the link between organizing union locals and district labor councils to support the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday marches and celebrations will be elaborated upon in terms of reciprocity and class-consciousness. By way of negative example, the glaring absence of a "southern strategy" in the AFL-CIO for militant aggressive, grass roots union organizing with community support will be addressed.Mexican Guestworkers in Carolina del Norte: Opportunities and Challenges for Transnational Organizing
by Fran Ansley, University Tennessee
My presentation will report on the transnational migrant-labor brokerage system known as “H-2A.” It was created and is regulated by the U.S. government in the service of U.S. agribusiness by allowing huge numbers of foreign workers to enter the agricultural labor market each year. I will also highlight what I believe are some especially exciting opportunities and especially difficult questions associated with this unprecedented new arrangement and the efforts of church groups, community organizations, legal aid lawyers, and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee to expose abuses in the H-2A program and to promote organizing among guest workers and other farm workers in the state of North Carolina.Southern Appalachian Refundamentacion: Radical voices and the Call for Renewal
by Jack Herranen, Rockefeller Humanities Fellow
From Aunt Molly Jackson (Ky.) and Ella Baker N.C.) to Myles Horton (Tn.) and Don West (Ga.), how do we remember and reintegrate the chorus of radical voices and visions of the south/ southern Appalachia? In the devastating context of imperialism and neoliberalism- advanced corporate driven globalization- how do we assist in regenerating a critical discourse, an alternative radicalism”(Fisher), shaping a rooted and creative praxis that is relevant to local dynamics, and conscious of international social and political movements for structural change? More catalyst for dialogue-and the raising of questions from outside of academia and professional social change circles- than presentation, [I aim/ folksinger-activist and Rockefeller Humanities Fellow Jack Herranen aims to offer up] thoughts/reflections based upon the work of establishing a transnational collective of artists, activists, and educators (PUENTES) rooted in southern Appalachia, Mexico, and Bolivia.Sí Se Puede in the Southeast: successful strategies for reaching across cultural and class barriers to achieve collective victory for farmworkers
by Laxmi Haynes, National Student Organizer for Students Action with Farmworkers, North Carolina
Farm labor campaigns based in the Southeast have met unprecedented success in the last 6 months as both FLOC’s Mt. Olive Pickle and CIW’s Taco Bell Boycotts ended. Is this a sign that the revolution is coming, or the result of successful strategies and hard work on the part of Farmworkers and advocates nationwide?Even huge successes don’t mean it’s time to rest and now is the best time to examine these victories and answer some important questions:
This presentation is intended to describe the particulars of these labor agreements, introduce the collective organizing strategies that led to these victories, and initiate dialogue about organizing in the Southeast US and how these victories can be repeated in future farmworker campaigns and other mobilizing efforts. Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) has actively supported these campaigns since their inception. Our organizing philosophy hinges on equitable relationships and collaborative work with student activists, labor unions and other small grassroots groups.
Globalization and the Third World
Location: International House
Moderator: Robina BhattiElite Stalemate and Workers’ Control in Nicaragua and Cuba
by Sean Herlihy, Texas Southern University
In Nicaragua and Cuba, the balance of elites allowed working people to control production. Fieldwork was conducted in both countries between 1990 and 1997 with observations of 48 production units and 150 in-depth interviews with scholars, government officials, and working people, to learn the extent of workers' control and how it was achieved. During the Nicaraguan Revolution, when neither the Sandinistas nor the Somocistas were in complete control, the Sandinistas allowed country people, to take over the land. Many landlords and managers fled, leaving workers to manage production for months before Sandinista administrators arrived. The Sandinistas, although sympathetic to worker participation, wanted to centralize agriculture. Peasant organizations and Contra fighters pressured the Sandinistas to turn over land to individuals and private cooperatives. When the Sandinistas fell, working people again exploited the hiatus between governments to take over workplaces. The new UNO regime tried to privatize industries to capitalists, but the Sandinista unions outstripped the demands of the Sandinista Party by taking over privatized industries. Ex-Sandinista and ex-contra fighters seized land, usually in conflict, but sometimes in concert putting pressure on the UNO to hand it over.Challenging Neoliberalism, Mass Movements, Populist Governments and the Reinvention of the Third World
by Mark Frezzo, Florida Atlantic University
In his speech at the Fifth World Social Forum, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva implored the countries of the Global South to bypass the “so-called developed world” in forging new economic, diplomatic, and cultural links with one another. A few days later, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez celebrated the progress of the “Bolivarian Revolution” and proposed to join Lula’s Brazil, Kirchner’s Argentina, and Vasquez’s Uruguay in “opening the path to realizing the dream of a united Latin America.” In the aftermath of these speeches, most analysts have explored the gap between the presidents’ populist rhetoric and the actual achievements of the Brazilian and Venezuelan governments. In contrast, this paper offers a symptomatic reading of the new “Third Worldism” (understood not only “negatively” as a rejection of US-supported neoliberalism, but also “positively” as an experiment in Fair Trade).Drawing on a historically-grounded analysis of the rise, decline, and resurgence of Third Worldism, this paper explores a series of questions. First, how have recent mobilizations against the neoliberal policies of the international financial institutions contributed to a renaissance of Third Worldist ideas? Second, how have Lula, Chavez, and other ostensible Third Worldists proposed to renovate an old set of policy prescriptions to meet the demands of contemporary conditions? Third, to what extent does the new Third Worldist ethos escape the pitfalls of the old developmentalism? Fourth, what are the prospects for Fair Trade arrangements across the Global South? In examining these questions, this paper aims to demonstrate that the new Third Worldism constitutes an important subject for historical social science.
Southern Perspectives and Global Political Economy
by Robina Bhatti, California State University at Monterey Bay
This paper reviews Global Political Economy (GPE) scholarship to examine the way the global South is depicted. Eurocentric analytic paradigms dominate and this paper begins by critiquing the effects of discursive colonization of GPE scholarship on the lives and struggle of marginalized South. It draws attention to what has been left out of theorizing, to what is unseen and under-theorized in the production of knowledge about globalization: the material complexity, reality, and agency of the majority of the world or Southern bodies and lives.The paper asserts that political economy of capitalism is an urgent locus of struggle for both the global North and global South. But we need an analytic framework that is attentive to, and anchored in, the experience of the lives of people of the majority of the world or the global South. This experiential and analytic anchor in the lives of socially excluded communities of Southern women and men provides the most inclusive paradigm for thinking about global political economy and of global social justice.
The Impact of Globalization on Indonesian Urban Civic Spaces
by Rita Padawangi, Loyola University, Chicago
Civil society consists of voluntary associations of society. Traditional identification of civil society emergence includes availability of physical urban spaces accessible by the public, such as urban squares or even privately owned establishments as public gathering places. This paper examines the development of urban civic spaces in Jakarta and Bandung under globalization. While researchers argue on weakening role of nation-states under globalization, the State’s traditional instruments are supposed to protect vulnerable groups and public provisions, in which global market competition becomes reasoning for depriving social expenditures.
Media and Religion in a Global Context
Location: Hodges Library
Moderator: Rachelle JacobsThis panel brings together three interdisciplinary scholars who work on aspects of contemporary religion in various parts of the world, and who are interested in the place of religious ideas and practices amid larger processes of cultural and political economic change. Each will present examples of religious ideas and images circulating within local and global flows of mass-mediated discourse, and place these examples in broader theoretical contexts.
Devil Bustin' Satellites: How Media Deregulation in Africa Generates Religious Conflict
by Rosalind I.J. Hackett, University of Tennessee
In this presentation Rosalind will discuss how media deregulation in various African countries impacts social conflicts that are religiously inflected and generates a climate of religious intolerance.Appropriation, Postmodern Play, and Cultural Critique in Recent Work by Madonna that Addresses Asia and the Middle East
by Mark Hulsether, University of Tennessee
In this presentation Mark will discuss Madonna’s recent interest in Asian religions and in critiquing US military policies in the Middle East, with attention both to problems of cultural appropriation and/or cultural imperialism and to her contribution to religious-inflected cultural critique.David Beckham as the New Face of Thai Buddhism? Consumption, Consumerism, and Debates over Thai Buddhist Identity
by Rachelle Jacobs, University of Tennessee
In this presentation Rachelle will begin by describing an image of David Beckham at a Thai temple, and use this as a springboard for analyzing issues of cultural consumption, Thai identity, and discourses about the commercialization of Buddhism.
The Mechanics of Global Capitalism
Location: Hodges Library
Moderator: Mel RothenbergThe Null Society
by Gregorio Morales, University of California at San Diego
The dangers of credit use and expansions have been suggested through the works of authors and playwrights for thousands of years. In sources ranging from the Christian Bible to more recent works such as David Harvey’s “The New Imperialism” these warnings about credit have been clearly stated. Countries participating in the global economy, even those with comparative skills, like technologies, and natural endowments enjoy different levels of access to world credit markets. These uneven conditions have been brought about by a new imperialist credit culture, which has taken root and is hidden in the imperfections of the once powerful capitalist economic system.Networks, Network Science and Globalization
by Jim Davis, Writer
"Network" is a popular metaphor for talking about globalization. For the most part, "network" has been just that -- a vague metaphor with many meanings. "Network science", a new cross-discipline offshoot of complexity theory, brings a formality to thinking about network structures. "Network science" concepts like "superconnectors", "preferential attachment", and "small-world effect" are universal in most real-world networks, whether they be ecological, social or economic. "Network science" explains both the strengths of globalized capitalism, and its weaknesses. Perhaps more importantly, it provides powerful insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the "network form" of organization, the emerging structure of resistance to globalization.Liberalism Then and Now: Towards a Polanyian Theory of the Contemporary Nation-State
by Cory Blad, University of Tennessee
This paper begins a research project of articulating a theory of the state based on the work of Karl Polanyi. Polanyi’s masterwork, The Great Transformation, has seen a resurgence in relation to the study of neoliberalism as well as studies of the welfare state. This project seeks to understand Polanyi’s work as a more generally applicable framework for understanding the nation-state and its role in the globalization era.The author argues that existing theories of the state and globalization are competing needlessly and working only to explain conceptually limited phenomena. A theoretical approach that stresses the interaction between the state and globalization processes would be more effective in broadly understanding how the nation-state and globalization forces exist and compete. The project will integrate the Polanyian concepts of the “double movement” and “embededness” to better understand the role of the state as well as the nature of globalization as it impacts the contemporary nation-state.
Globalization, Migration and Poverty: The Case of Bangladesh
by Mizanur Rahman, University of Singapore
Migration is not a new thing. People have always left their homes in search of better economic opportunities outside of their own homeland. But economic globalization has put a new spin on global migration, causing global uprootedness and human displacement on an unprecedented scale. Because economic globalization exacerbates the inequalities between nations, migration for many becomes not a choice, but an economic necessity. Bangladesh, a heavily indebted developing country, is not an exceptional case in this regard. This paper attempts to explore whether the movement of people across borders affect poverty scenario in developing countries through a case study of Bangladesh.In particular, the paper focuses on the role played by migrants’ remittances to their families in Bangladesh. Remittances worldwide grew steadily throughout the 1990s. According to the World Bank’s Global Development Finance 2003 report, in 2002 remittances reached 80 billion dollars and were second only to FDI as a source of foreign capital for developing countries. The report points out that remittance flows are less volatile than other private capital flows and might even be counter-cyclical. Bangladesh received around US$ 27 billion remittances from its migrant population between 1976 and 2003. The direct links of remittances to low-income migrant households make remittances a potentially important tool for alleviating poverty and raising living standards in Bangladesh. The data for this research comes from fieldwork conducted in Bangladesh in 2004.
Examining the Potential for Women’s Widespread Mobilization for Social Change: A Look at Globalization and Women’s Activism
by Kristen Van Hooreweghe, University of Tennessee
This paper examines the ways in which capitalist development impacts women’s conditions throughout the world and the ways these conditions actually work to inhibit, rather than promote, women’s means necessary for survival. By examining the literature on the impacts of globalization, specifically on the experiences of women, and the literature surrounding contemporary women’s activism, I will explore whether the intensified impacts of capitalism increase the possibility of women’s widespread mobilization for substantial structural change.Examining the reported instances of women’s activism and seeking out the patterns within these movements, as well as the various arenas for women’s activism, it will be possible to gain a coherent picture of the motivation, goals and scope of women’s activism and the inherent possibilities for substantial structural change.
6:30PM – 8:30PM
Keynote Speakers Presentation
Location: International House