Tag: Conference

Upcoming @socialismglobal Conference: Historicizing “Whiteness” in Eastern Europe and Russia (Bucharest, June 25-26)

Published on by CIGH Exeter

Historicizing “Whiteness” in Eastern Europe and Russia

Venue:   Institute for Political Research, Spiru Haret street no 8, Bucharest, zip-code 010175

Date: 25-26 June 2019

Over the last decade, issues of migration both out of and into Eastern Europe have brought questions of “whiteness” and its “defence” into the public language of the region. Populists of different political stripes have presented their countries as protectors of traditional European whiteness against a multicultural West. This is in fact quite an unusual phenomenon: race in general and whiteness in particular have for the most part been hidden discourses, absent from mainstream political or cultural thinking about the area itself. At those moments when race did come to the fore, it was often externalised as a phenomenon which adhered only to the western and/or the capitalist imperialist other.

Yet, as some have argued, whiteness has been fundamental to Eastern European history and even the very conception of the region since the 19th century. Anikó Imre referred to Eastern European nationalisms ‘unspoken insistence on their whiteness’. Some have posited a regional identity based on the in-between-ness born of a fragile or frustrated whiteness: such an identity might be allied with the privileged whiteness produced by European imperialism and the global colour line to which it gave rise, whilst also being ambivalent towards, or sometimes excluded from, the projects and institutions from which the power of whiteness has stemmed. While critical theories of race and whiteness emphasise the idea that, in Charles W. Mills’s words, ‘white supremacy was global’, eastern Europeans’ ability to fully exploit being racialised as white has arguably been more conditional, as a result of the peripheralisation of the region itself.  Yet it was visits to Eastern Europe that prompted W.E.B. Du Bois to redefine his thinking about race. He observed ethnic relations in the region and understood that race problems were not only about colour.

Despite the growing number of critical histories of whiteness both on a regional and global level, there has been little academic engagement with such questions in the study of Eastern Europe, the Russian Empire and the USSR. This workshop seeks to explore the role that whiteness has played in the articulation of identities from a historical perspective – roughly from an age of high European imperialism in the mid-19th century until the present. We encourage contributions which explore the multiple conceptualisations of whiteness in national spaces, intercultural transfers and transnational impacts across the region, whether this be Central Europe, South- or North-Eastern Europe, Russia or what is now the “post-Soviet space”. Continue reading “Upcoming @socialismglobal Conference: Historicizing “Whiteness” in Eastern Europe and Russia (Bucharest, June 25-26)” →

Global Neoliberalisms: Lost and Found in Translation

Published on by CIGH Exeter

BRITISH ACADEMY, 10–11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH. Charing Cross / Piccadilly Circus Tube.

 This conference addresses questions about neoliberalism’s intellectual (and other) origins, and why it came to play such a powerful role across the globe. It will develop and extend new work which seeks to understand the rise of multiple neoliberalisms as ideology and practice.

FIND OUT MORE britishacademy.ac.uk/conferences

All welcome. Registration fee payable.

THURSDAY 7th JUNE

REGISTRATION, 8.45-9.15

INTRODUCTION 9.15-9.30 James Mark, Richard Toye, Tobias Rupprecht, Ljubica Spaskovska

9.30-11 CIRCULATIONS: THE COLD WAR AND AFTER

Chair: James Mark (Exeter)

Vanessa Ogle (UC Berkeley), Diplomat Capitalists, Spooks, and the spread of Free-Market Capitalism: Revisiting the Global Cold War, 1960s-1970s

Quinn Slobodian (Harvard/ Wellesley), White Supremacy and the Neoliberals: South Africa as Laboratory and Limit Case

REFRESHMENTS

11.15- 12.45 CIRCULATIONS: THE COLD WAR AND AFTER (2)

Tobias Rupprecht (Exeter), Pinochet in Prague: Latin American Neoliberalism and (Post-) Socialist Eastern Europe  

Richard Toye (Exeter) and Daisuke Ikemoto (Meiji Gakuin University), Contesting ‘economic miracles’: neoliberal exchange and resistance in the UK and Japan

LUNCH 12.45-1.45

1.45 – 3.15 LABOUR, GENDER AND NEOLIBERALISM

Chair: Matthew Eagleton-Pierce (SOAS)

 Pál Nyíri  (Amsterdam), “Culture talk,” spectres of socialism and neoliberal management techniques in a Chinese-run factory in Hungary

Artemy Kalinovsky (Amsterdam), Abandoning the Factory: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Soviet Central Asian Entrepreneur

REFRESHMENTS

3.30- 5.00 LABOUR, GENDER AND NEOLIBERALISM (2)

Pun Ngai (Hong Kong University), Neoliberalism in Crisis: Producing new subjects of Migrant Labour in China

Bernhard Rieger (Leiden), Making Homo Oeconomicus? Unemployment Policy Since the Sixties in Transatlantic Context

FRIDAY 8th JUNE

9-10.30 INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: BETWEEN THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

Chair: Ljubica Spaskovska (Exeter)

Alexander Kentikelenis (Oxford), The Making of Global Neoliberalism: The IMF, Structural Adjustment, and the Clandestine Politics of International Institutional Change

Jennifer Bair (Virginia), The Long 1970s: NIEO, Neoliberalism and the Right to Development

10.30 – 10.45 REFRSHMENTS

10.45- 12.15  INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: BETWEEN THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL (2)

Stephanie Decker (Aston Business School), The World Bank in Ghana, 1970-1985 – Neoliberalism and institutional voids

Jörg Wiegratz (Leeds), Embedding the neoliberal moral order: The political economy of moral change in Uganda

LUNCH 12.15-1.15

1.15-2.45 SOCIALISM/ POSTSOCIALISM AND THE RISE OF NEOLIBERALISM

Chair : Artemy Kalinovsky (Amsterdam)

Johanna Bockman (George Mason), Recovering the Socialisms in Neoliberalism: Anti-Colonial Banking, Anti-Capitalist Markets, and Revolutionary Structural Adjustment

Julian Gewirtz (Harvard Kennedy School), The Transnational Roots of China’s Socialist Market Economy

REFRESHMENTS 2.45 -3.00

3.00 – 4.30 SOCIALISM/ POSTSOCIALISM AND THE RISE OF NEOLIBERALISM (2)

Susan Bayly (Cambridge), Neoliberalisms in Asian global dialogue: The perspective from late-socialist Vietnam

David Priestland (Oxford), Embedding Neoliberalism: Politics, Markets and Morality in the Czech Republic and Russia

4.30 -5.00 CONCLUDING DISCUSSION

Call for Papers – Britain and the World Conference 2018 (Exeter, June 2018) #BATW2018

Published on by CIGH Exeter
Reed Hall, University of Exeter, where the 2018 conference will be held.

This serves as the Call for Papers for the 2018 Britain and the World Conference, Exeter, June 2018 (#BATW2018).

After our tenth anniversary conference in Austin in April 2017, Britain and the World returns to the UK for 2018: Thursday 21 to Saturday 23 June. It will be at Exeter University: the venue is Reed Hall and accommodation is at the neighbouring Holland Hall, and, as always, the conference is concerned with interactions within the ‘British world’ from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the present and will highlight the importance of transnational perspectives.

The Keynote Speaker will be Professor Richard Overy (Exeter), and the Plenary Speaker is Professor Audrey Horning (Queen’s University Belfast). There’ll be lunchtime roundtables on cinema and history, and on public history. Publishers present will include our journal publisher Edinburgh University Press, and our book series publisher Palgrave Macmillan, and the commissioning editor will be present throughout to discuss your publishing plans.

We accept both individual twenty-minute papers and complete panel submissions. Panels are expected to consist of three papers and should be submitted by one person who is willing to serve as the point of contact. Complete panels should also include a chair. In addition to abstracts for each individual paper, panel submissions should also include a 100-150 word introduction describing the panel’s main theme. The conference does not discriminate between panels and individual paper submissions, nor between graduate students and established academics.

As ever the conference icebreaker will be held on the Thursday evening, the Dinner Party on the Friday, and the outings downtown on the Saturday. These events will provide numerous opportunities for networking and more in the capital of Devon.

Exeter is two hours by direct train from London, and there is a direct National Express bus line from Heathrow Airport. Exeter also has its own international airport, and is one hour by train from Bristol.

Exeter Cathedral.

On campus is the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, home to one of the largest collections in Britain of material relating to film. The University’s special collections are noted for archives relating to twentieth-century South West Writing (and include the papers of Daphne du Maurier), literature and visual culture, Victorian culture and imperial endeavour, Arab and Islamic studies, and religious and parish book collections. In city centre there are Exeter Cathedral and archives, the Devon and Exeter Institute (which houses a large collection of local archival materials), Exeter Castle, and the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM). Continue reading “Call for Papers – Britain and the World Conference 2018 (Exeter, June 2018) #BATW2018” →

Confronting Change: Globalization, Migration and Precarious Labour in the Age of Brexit

Published on by CIGH Exeter2 Comments

precarious2

Gareth Curless
University of Exeter

On Wednesday 11 January 2017, the University of Exeter and the TUC’s European Union and International Relations Department will host a public conference at Congress House, London. To register for this event please visit the Eventbrite page for the conference. The event is free to attend and all are welcome but space is limited.

The EU referendum has brought to the fore debates concerning the effects of globalization, migration and casual or ‘precarious’ labour in twenty-first century Britain. These issues are not limited to the U.K., however. Over the course of the past three decades the dominance of neo-liberal economics, and the associated processes of privatisation and de-regulation, have contributed to widening inequality and a decline in formal sector employment across the globe. For organised labour movements these pressures have brought ever greater challenges, as trade unions have fought to resist the erosion of hard won labour rights and protect the living standards of their members. On these issues trade unions have won some notable victories but it is clear that further challenges lie ahead.

precarious

Indeed, for all neo-liberalism’s dominance over the past thirty years, the world finds itself at a crossroads. The 2008 financial crash; the debt and migration crises within Europe; the election of Donald Trump and rise of protectionism in the United States; and Brexit have all served to shake the foundations of the established global order. In turn, these events have led to a polarised debate between those who favour a renewed push for ever-greater levels of global inter-dependence and those that advocate a return to economic nationalism. For trade unions the challenge is not to allow this uncertainty to accelerate recent changes within the labour market, particularly with regard to the exploitation of migrants and undercutting of existing workforces, the rise of precarious labour and the imposition of stricter trade union laws. Instead trade unions should continue their active role in shaping debates about the deleterious effects of casualization and the infringement of labour rights by both states and employers.

The aim of this one day conference is to bring together academics, policymakers and trade union activists to reflect on the impact of globalization, migration and precarious labour and to consider the role of trade unions in the age of Brexit. The workshop will investigate the following questions: Continue reading “Confronting Change: Globalization, Migration and Precarious Labour in the Age of Brexit” →

Colonial Counterinsurgency in Comparative Perspective, Sept. 18-19

Published on by CIGH Exeter

Gareth Curless and Martin Thomas
Centre for War, State, and Society, University of Exeter

Palestine police poster (1)Online registration is now open for a two-day conference, ‘Colonial Counterinsurgency in Comparative Perspective’, to be held on 18 and 19 September 2014, the University of Exeter.

The recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have prompted renewed interest in Britain’s colonial experience of rebellion and state breakdown, while current French interventions in Mali and the Central African Republic have stirred controversy over French military actions in former colonial dependencies, promoting accusations of ‘imperialist humanitarianism’. Yet, in spite of increasing interest in the history of counterinsurgency and empire, we lack comparative studies of colonial responses to armed insurrection, civil disorder, anti-colonial paramilitaries and other irregular forces. The aim of the conference is to address this imbalance by drawing on examples from the British, Dutch, French, and Portuguese empires, as well as case studies from China and Southern Africa. Continue reading “Colonial Counterinsurgency in Comparative Perspective, Sept. 18-19” →

Reminder: Networks in Imperial and Global History Conference, University of Exeter (June 19-20)

Published on by CIGH Exeter

Gareth Curless

The Imperial and Global History Network for early career scholars will be holding its first conference on 19th and 20th June 2014 at the University of Exeter. The conference will bring together early career scholars from across the world, discussing a range of topics including America’s Drone Empire, the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, and Treaty Port China. Registration for the conference is now open and information about how to register can be found here.

Where: Reed Hall, University of Exeter

When: 19 and 20 June 2014

Program

Continue reading “Reminder: Networks in Imperial and Global History Conference, University of Exeter (June 19-20)” →

Exeter’s ‘The Rhetoric of Empire Conference’, 22-23 May

Published on by CIGH Exeter

Martin Thomas 

Announcing a two-day conference hosted by Exeter University’s Centre for War, State and Society, 22 – 23 May 2014

RhetoricofEmpireConpicWhy did imperialist language become so pervasive in Britain, France and elsewhere in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? What rhetorical devices did political and military leaders, administrators, investors and lobbyists use to justify colonial domination before domestic and foreign audiences? And how far did their colonial opponents mobilize a different rhetoric of rights and freedoms to challenge imperialist discourse? These are some of the questions that we hope to address during this two-day conference, which is funded under a three-year Leverhulme Trust research project led by Professors Martin Thomas and Richard Toye. Continue reading “Exeter’s ‘The Rhetoric of Empire Conference’, 22-23 May” →

Registration Open for ‘Postwar Decolonisation and Its Impact in Europe’, Exeter, December 2-3 2013

Published on by CIGH Exeter

The Centre for Imperial and Global History is delighted to announce that registration is open for the fast-approaching ‘Postwar decolonizationregistryDecolonisation and its Impact in Europe’ Conference, to be held at the University of Exeter, December 2-3, 2013.

The unravelling of European empires was foundational to the making of the modern world. An old imperial order was swept away, and a new age of nation states rapidly replaced it. Whilst decolonisation played a fundamental role in the shaping of post-war world, its repercussions for Europe itself, and its legacies in a host of political, social and cultural spheres, are still relatively little examined.This conference will examine how the global dynamics of decolonisation had an impact not only on the ‘western core’ of the continent, but also in state socialist eastern Europe, and in southern Europe, which have been hitherto little considered in this light. Continue reading “Registration Open for ‘Postwar Decolonisation and Its Impact in Europe’, Exeter, December 2-3 2013” →