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GSA North American Conference: Dystopia and Global RebellionUniversity of Victoria,
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Sponsored by: The Global Studies Association of North America; and University of Victoria Vice President of Research, Dean of Social Sciences, and Centre for Global Studies
Social crisis shakes Europe and the US, racist motivated violence shocks Norway, nuclear meltdown radiates Japan, while spreading drought and floods are billboards for global warming. It seems the future has arrived and it doesn't look good.
Yet democratic movements spread like wildfire throughout the Middle East, youth movements come alive in the UK, France and Spain, rebellion takes to the streets in Greece, and the US working class wakes up in Wisconsin. Dystopia and global rebellion indeed. The 2012 conference theme focuses our attention on the problems and alternatives we face in our struggle for a just and better world.
Keynote speakers include:
Abstracts of 100 words should be sent by April 7, 2012 to Jerry Harris at gharris234@comcast.net.
Globalizing cultures and identities - Sport, lifestyle, heritage
GSA 2012 UK Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
July 5th–7th, 2012
The conference will be held at Manchester Metropolitan University – where the GSA was first established in 2000 – in conjunction with the Department of Sociology.
The association has invited three keynote speakers who have an internationally recognized expertise in fields relating to our main theme. All have agreed to come. These are as follows:
- Professor Richard Giulianotti, The University of
Loughborough
- Professor David Inglis, The University of Aberdeen
- Professor Sharon MacDonald, The University of Manchester
We are also organizing panels led by other leading scholars in this
area.
We invite scholars, postgraduates and other interested lay-persons to
submit abstracts by March 31st, 2012 at the latest. We are approaching
a publisher with a view to producing at least one reader incorporating
the most interesting papers from the conference.
Read more about the GSA/UK Conference >>
Capitalizing Power - The Qualities and Quantities of Accumulation
A Conference of the Forum on Capital as Power
September 28-30, 2012, York University, Toronto
Abstract Submission Deadline: June 30, 2012
With the global crisis lingering, many now wonder how capital has become so powerful, and what should be done about it. Although we are eager to provide answers, the problem starts with the question itself: what exactly do we mean by 'capital', and what does it mean to say that capital is 'powerful'? The difficulty lies in the fractured nature of modern social science - both its conventional division into numerous disciplines, including economics, politics, sociology, international relations, and culture, and the habitual bifurcation of the economy itself into real and nominal spheres. These fractures create conceptual rifts: they place most aspects of power outside the economic process, and they portray capitalization as a fictitious mirror of an economic reality located in production.
The theory of Capital as Power removes these fissures by abolishing the disciplinary divisions between economics, politics, and other disciplines, as well as the economic bifurcation of the real and nominal. In doing so, the theory puts power at the centre of analysis and examines finance as the main algorithm of capitalist power. The goal is to decipher the conversion of qualities to quantities: to theorize and research how the qualities of power - the multifaceted interactions of command and obedience, force and submission, violence and resistance - are universalized and discounted to the quantities of capitalization.
We are calling for theoretical, empirical, and historical papers to engage critically with questions such as the following. How does power bear on accumulation, and how does it get capitalized? How has capitalization evolved and mutated? What are the qualitative forms of power in capitalism, and how do they compare to those that characterized earlier modes of power? What are the historical roots of capital as power? Do these roots alter the way we understand the origins of capitalism? How does capitalism convert qualities into quantities? What are the limits of capitalized power? How is capitalized power resisted and opposed? Can it be reformed or overthrown? Can these questions be addressed by mainstream and heterodox theories of capitalism - and if so, how do their answers differ from those offered by the theory of capital as power?
We are also interested in concrete areas of inquiry related to these broader questions. Suggested topics include:
- Capitalist power and labour - from proletarianization and wages to productivity and organization;
- International and regional relations and the capitalization of power;
- Capitalist and democratic accounting, including the history of discounting and its possible alternatives;
- Power and price formation - from local to global markets;
- The state as a locus of capitalization - from taxes and the law to ideology and violence;
- The role of capitalist power in contemporary crises;
- Capitalized power and nature - from genetic engineering, to energy, to the biosphere;
- Comparative modes of power: ancient and feudal, communist and fascist, capitalist and beyond;
- Capital as Power versus 'primitive accumulation' - dispossession, co-option and genocide;
- The power dimensions of 'immaterial' capitalism - from leisure and fear to knowledge and ideology;
- The psychology of capitalist power;
- Alternative visions for a de-capitalized society.
The conference will comprise two parts: public presentations open to all (day one), followed by a closed workshop for the conference participants (days two and three). The workshop will consist of longer presentations, allowing more time for debate, discussion and contemplation. Participants should be prepared to present in either part, depending on the allocation made by the organizers.
Please email abstracts of 250 words to: casp.york@gmail.com. The deadline for abstract submissions is June 30, 2012.
Insurgency and Resistance
The 34th Annual North American Labor History Conference
October 18-20, 2012
Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan
The Program Committee of the North American Labor History Conference invites proposals for sessions, papers, and roundtables on “Insurgency and Resistance” for our thirty-fourth annual meeting.
Throughout history, workers have engaged in insurgency and resistance from factories to fields, from plantations to plants, from mines to mills, and in cities and in the countryside. Power and authority have been contested on a variety of terrains, both inside and outside of traditional labor structures. More recently, conflicts have erupted in Latin America, the Arab world, southern Europe, China, and across North America.
The program committee encourages submissions from international, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspectives. We welcome the integration of public historians with community and labor activists, using a variety of formats (workshops, roundtable discussions, book talks, and multimedia presentations). We encourage thematic sessions that cross borders, both disciplinary and geographical, especially those dealing with race, gender, class, and empire.
Please submit papers and panel proposals (including a 1 paragraph abstract and a brief vita or biographical statement for all participants) by March 23, 2012, to:
Professor Francis Shor, Coordinator
North American Labor History Conference
Department of History
Wayne State University
3094 Faculty Administration Building
Detroit, MI 48202
Phone: 313-577-2525; Fax: 313-577-6987
Email: nalhc@wayne.edu
Embeddedness and Beyond: Do Sociological Theories Meet Economic Realities?
National Research University Higher School of Economics
Moscow, Russia
October 25-28, 2012
Over the last quarter century, new economic sociology emerged and evolved, by and large, within the broad theoretical framework of social embeddedness of economic action. While being initially rooted in the structural social networks perspective, the framework gradually expanded to integrate institutional and cultural arguments and to overcome the analytical separation between economic and social. More recently, it was complemented by the performativity approaches, which challenge traditional inquiries into the socially constructed nature of markets by focusing instead on their role in constructing (performing) societies. These developments show that the concept of social embeddedness has inspired a large number of insightful sociological theories and empirical studies of economic phenomena which, taken together, constitute a mature field of inquiry with its distinctive questions, arguments, and contributions. Yet, today's rapidly evolving and highly uncertain economic realities put these theories to a challenging test. Are they up to the task of thorough understanding market transitions in postcommunist and third-world countries, the continuing global financial crisis, or the new modern forms of calculability, governance, and social control? Given a rather static view of social embeddedness, how much can we say about the emergence, reproduction, and dissolution of networks, markets, and institutions, in other words, the dynamic nature of socio-economic reality? Or, on the contrary, about the stubborn resistance to change of old patterns of inequality and forms of governance? Does the proliferation of online purchases and Internet social networking sites radically alter the very notion of embeddedness? Overall, do our theories have enough "give" and can be slightly adjusted to answer such questions, or do we need a completely new toolkit to tackle them? The conference brings together the leading experts in the field who will concretize and explore these questions with regard to their own areas of research and theoretical approaches.
Read more about this conference and register >>
PAST GSA NORTH AMERICA CONFERENCES
2011: Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois
The Global Crisis: Through the Lens of Class, Race and Gender
Download Detailed Conference Schedule
2010: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Global Crises and Beyond
Date: May 7 - 9, 2010
Download the Conference Program.
Download the Conference Abstracts.
2009: Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Globalization and the Struggle for Peace and Human Rights
Date: May 8 - 10, 2009
Download the Conference Program.
Download the Conference Abstracts.
The Nation in the Global Era: Nationalism and Globalization in Conflict and Transition
Date: June 6 - 8, 2008
Download the Conference Program.
Download the Conference Abstracts.
2007: University of California, Irvine
The Contested Terrains of Globalization
Date: May 17 - 20, 2007
Download the Conference Program.
Download the Conference Abstracts.
Download the conference poster (11"x17").
Download the conference poster (8.5"x13").
2006: DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois
Alternative Globalizations
Date: May 12 - 14, 2006
Read the Alternative Globalizations Conference Abstracts
See the Alternative Globalizations Conference Schedule
2005: University of Tennessee - Knoxville
Crosscurrents of Global Social Justice: Class, Gender and Race
Date: May 13 - 15, 2005
Download this conference poster.(PDF:993kB)
2004: Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts
Globalization, Empire and Resistance
Date: April 23 - 25, 2004
In 2004 Brandeis University hosted the third North American GSA conference on Globalization, Empire and Resistance. It was a progressive conference embracing a variety of critical, and radical perspectives on globalization. Many leading scholars from all over the world explored the many effects of globalization-as well as alternative visions. Featured speakers included:
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Seymour Melman
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Leo Panitch
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Sam Gindin
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William Tabb
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Jose Maria Sison
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Leslie Sklair
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Edna Bonacich
One of America’s most respected scholars on capitalism and U.S. militarism from Columbia University spoke on “The Permanent War Economy”
Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy at York University, Toronto, co-editor of the Socialist Register, and co-author of Global Capitalism and American Empire spoke on “Global Capitalism and American Empire”
Packer visiting Chair in Social Justice at York University, Toronto, former head of research and assistant to the President, Canadian Auto Workers’ Union, and co-author of Global Capitalism and American Empire spoke on “Labor Resistance in the Era of Globalization"
Professor of economics at Queens College, New York, Monthly Review contributor and author of "The Amoral Elephant" spoke on "The Global State and Economic Institutions"
Former senior research fellow and professor at the University of the Philippines, co-founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines spoke via video satellite from Holland on “War, Imperialism, and Resistance from Below”
From the London School of Economics, and author of "The Transnational Capitalist Class" spoke on “Globalization, Imperialism and the International System”
Professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author of "Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Apparel Industry" spoke on “Labor, Immigration and Global Production”
2003: University of California - Santa Barbara
Towards a Critical Globalization Studies: Continued Debates, New Directions, and Neglected Topics
Date: May 1 - 4, 2003
See images from the conference.
Some one hundred scholars, public intellectuals, and global justice activists from around the world gathered at UCSB on May 1 through 4, 2003 to discuss the future of globalization. Participants came from Armenia, Canada, Ecuador, France, Holland, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay, among other countries.
The "Towards a Critical Globalization Studies: Continued Debates, New Directions, and Neglected Topics" conference successfully examined the development of global studies in the academy and explored the bridges between global studies and the global justice movement.
2002: Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois
Globalisation and Social Justice
Date: May 10 - 11, 2002
In May of 2002 the very first annual conference of the North American GSA was held at Loyola University in Chicago. Jointly sponsored by the GSA and the department of sociology at Loyola University, the conference theme was ‘Globalisation and Social Justice’. It proved to be a highly successful event with over fifty papers and workshops, covering a broad spectrum of themes concerning issues of global social justice. The keynote speakers were also excellent and included Leslie Sklair, one of GSA/UK’s vice presidents, who played a prominent role at the conference as a whole.
The quality of the papers was extremely high and they generated many hours of intensive and exciting discussion and argument. Academics from an impressively wide range of disciplines and research areas came from far and wide across the United States. However, there were also a number of speakers and participants who were political activists, such as current or former trade union organizers or people presently involved in various fair trade campaigns linked partly to student protests around the campuses of the US.
Despite the clearly focused sense of realism among the conference participants concerning the vast problems of social division, social exclusion and conflict that are currently only too evident in the world at the present time and the anxieties about the quality of world political – and especially American – leadership, an encouraging atmosphere of guarded optimism in relation to the real possibility of increasingly effective alliances and political struggles against global poverty was also quite evident.
It was gratifying to encounter quite a number of GSA members who managed to attend the Chicago conference including three from Britain, one from Canada and three from the USA. One of the key events scheduled at the conference was the inauguration of the North American chapter of the GSA. The first GSA branch or chapter to be established outside the UK. More than twenty people attended this special meeting and after some discussion the new branch was duly set-up. What was particularly encouraging was the number of postgraduate students who were prepared to become involved in helping to establish the new North American branch of the USA and, moreover, presence among these postgraduates and other participants who were people living in the USA but who had strong links with countries in Central America and South East Asia. They quite rightly insisted that right from the outset the new branch must concern itself as deeply as possible with the problems and themes of Southern peoples and countries if be a truly global association are to have any meaning.
From the Global Studies Association Newsletter, Issue 2, July 2002
Paul Kennedy, GSA Secretary