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Call for Papers Theme: Social Movements and World-System Transformation Subtitle: Prospects and Challenges Type: 38th Conference of the Political Economy of the World-System Institution: University of Pittsburgh Location: Pittsburgh, PA (USA) Date: 10.–12.4.2014 Deadline: 21.1.2014 __________________________________________________ As the world faces unprecedented challenges caused by financial and ecological crises, social movements have been advancing increasingly developed proposals for alternatives to the programs and policies offered by elites. Nevertheless, they remain plagued by persistent challenges to building global solidarity. This conference looks at these emerging alternatives to the capitalist world-system and considers their strengths and limitations in addition to uncovering the factors affecting their prospects for realization. What knowledge can be gained from looking at the history of struggle against globalized capitalism and its effects? How do existing practices in social movements and in the wider society advance or obstruct efforts to envision and make possible alternative world-systems? This conference will be an international gathering of scholars from a diverse range of disciplines, together with political organizers with substantial experience in contemporary global activism to share ideas and generate new knowledge that can inform contemporary social movements and scholarship and public policy. An important innovation in this conference is that we recognize that world-systemic transformation requires new practices that consciously resist reproducing the boundaries, hierarchies, and exclusions of the existing order. Thus, this conference will model relationships and practices that might better advance knowledge and learning about the world-system and its transformation by including both scholars and social movement organizers in the workshop and by working to maximize the interdisciplinary content and international participation of the program. Keynote Speakers Boaventura de Sousa Santos Professor of Sociology at the School of Economics, University of Coimbra (Portugal), Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and Global Legal Scholar at the University of Warwick Sylvia Walby Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, UNESCO Chair in Gender Research Group. Professor Walby’s talk will address the theme “Feminism as Counter-Hegemonic” Immanuel Wallerstein Senior Research Scholar, Yale University, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University (SUNY), [Emeritus], Former Directeur d’études associé, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) The conference calls for papers under this general theme, Social Movements and World-System Transformation: Prospects and Challenges, and that qualify under the following interrelated sub-themes: 1. Roles of States and Movements in World-Systemic Transformation: - What role do states (both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic) and the inter-state system play in shaping struggles over the future of the world-system? - How have relations between movements and states/the inter-state system developed over time? - Do the projects and practices of contemporary movements suggest new arenas of contestation, outside the existing inter-state order, that might be shaping world-systemic transformation? - Does the rise of importance of networks fundamentally alter power relations between people and states? 2. Knowledge and Paradigms in Contestation: - What roles do prevailing systems of knowledge production, narratives, and modes of thought play in the perpetuation or transformation of the world-system? - How are the actions of movements, states, and others relevant to the struggle to define new paradigms? - Is there evidence of global paradigmatic shifts? - What factors appear to be shaping the prospects for advancing new, system-transformative, modes of thought and action? - How, specifically, should we conceive the role of academic inquiry and knowledge in supporting and advancing the work of social movements? - What is the role of the humanities and of cross-disciplinary work in developing new knowledge? 3. The Role of Peripheries in Contesting World-Systemic Hierarchies: - How has feminist activism and research informed antisystemic movements and analyses of capitalism and patriarchy? - How have indigenous people’s mobilizations informed and shaped contemporary antisystemic movements and/or their antecedents? - Do contemporary ecological and social crises fundamentally challenge the patriarchy and anthropocentrism of the modern world-system? - Have networks helped alter inequities and hierarchies between cores and peripheries? - How have increasing interdependence and transnational flows problematized or transformed the meanings of “core” and “periphery” in the contemporary world system? 4. Collective Identities and Democratic Transformation: - How does the ongoing transformation of the world system require the reconceptualization of democracy, and what alternative conceptions and/or systems could address challenges to democracy at local, national, and global scales? - How do movement actors’ struggles to democratize their own movements inform or shape the larger project of global democratization? - Do movements emphasizing collective identities advance or obstruct efforts to build a more inclusive, sustainable and just world-system? - How do network theories help us understand the operation of contemporary movements? - What challenges are evident, or what insights can be gained, from the work of movements operating within existing identity constructs such as nation, class, race, and gender while seeking to transform them? - How can work in the humanities advance new thinking on these themes? Please submit proposals electronically to Jackie Smith at: [email protected] (Please use the subject line PEWS Conference). Submissions should include a paper title and abstract (no more than one page) and full contact information for all authors by January 21, 2014. Authors of accepted papers will be asked to provide drafts of their papers by March 30, 2014 and papers will be considered for a planned edited volume. Meals and lodging for authors of accepted papers will be provided during the conference. Note to non-U.S. scholars: We expect to have a limited number of scholarships to partially defray travel costs for international authors whose papers have been selected for the program and who lack other sources of travel assistance. Please indicate if you wish to be considered for an international travel stipend. Conference Co-Organizers Michael Goodhart Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh Jules Lobel Bessie McKee Wathour Endowed Chair, University of Pittsburgh School of Law Patrick Manning Andrew W. Mellon Professor of World History and Director of World History Center, University of Pittsburgh John Markoff Distinguished University Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh Jackie Smith Professor of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh Conference Co-Sponsors The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, Department of History, Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology, School of Law, World History Center, Humanities Center, University Center for International Studies Hewlett International Grants Program, and the Global Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh Contact: Jackie Smith Department of Sociology University of Pittsburgh 2400 Posvar Hall, 230 Bouquet St. Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.sociology.pitt.edu/PEWSConference.htm __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
