Heterodox Economics Newsletter

Issue 322 January 28, 2024 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory

Economic models are powerful tools in many ways. As all scientific models these tools can be used for various purposes. Classic accounts in philosophy of science would emphasize the trias explanation, prediction and design, which can be easily represented by simple deductive-nomological models. Such models are helpful as they allow for illustrating basic concepts, like law-like mechanisms, the derivation of a testable prediction or how to apply some theory to reach a certain goal (i.e. "design").

However, economic models also employ political power that goes beyond the mere application of models for narrow design-purposes as captured by deductive-nomological models. Rather, economic models typically come with a certain normative purpose focusing on efficiency, employment, stability or some other, implicit or explicit, target variable. Also knowledge on economic models conveys specific form of policy expertise in public discourse, the assumptions and notions buried in such models coin our perspective on economic issues and economic models can be employed as blueprints on which to project certain ideological visions, like unregulated markets or perfect social planning. Indeed, it has been noted long ago that "analytical ideal types" may "turn all too easily into political ideals" (Myrdal, 1954 [1932], The Poltical Element in the Development of Economic Theory, p. 104).

Moreover, research on the performativity of economic models (see here, here or here for examples) puts an emphasis on economic models that are directly employed as core blueprints and/or informational devices for making policy-decisions and operationalizing these. It has documented that these models exert power in formal and informal ways, that often come with adverse consequences. Against this backdrop, I found the initiative by Camille Souffron and Pierre Jacques aimed at influencing the EU Commission towards using models from heterodox economics especially noteworthy and important. You can sign their call for a change in modeling practices by adding your name here and, of course, read up more details on their agenda below.

Best,

Jakob

© public domain

Table of contents

Call for Papers

Review of International Political Economy: Special Issue on "The politics and political economy of infrastructure failure"

Special Issue: The politics and political economy of infrastructure failure

The REDEFINE project at The Open University invites full paper manuscripts for submission to a Special Issue in Review of International Political Economy (RIPE) where members of the REDEFINE project will act as Guest Editors. The SI submission deadline is 30th September 2024 with publication anticipated for 2025. To prepare for this, we require submissions be sent to samuel.rogers@open.ac.uk with the submission deadline for full papers 1st July 2024. This will provide us enough time to select appropriate papers for the best chance of acceptance by RIPE.

The study of infrastructure failure is typically limited. Often, contributions have tended to focus on physical infrastructure failures such as collapsed bridges or burst pipelines (Graham and Marvin 2009) rather than when and why projects fail and the consequences that ensue. Currently, we lack knowledge of what such failures mean for a broad range of factors such as capital investment, labour relations, and sectoral development amongst many others, exposing lacunae in understanding such as ‘what [infrastructure project failure] signifies, how it is structured, and what consequences it bears’ (Venugopal 2018, 244).

Shaped by largescale infrastructure umbrella programmes such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), investment in infrastructure projects whether through private or state capital, financing or funding initiatives, has grown rapidly since the 2010s. Just over a decade ago these moves were relatively lowkey, but the launch of the BRI in 2013 marked a gear shift, whereby massive investments in infrastructure – estimated to total $1.3tn by 2027 – aim to create a ‘new Silk Road’, with digital, maritime, road, and rail dimensions. In turn, ostensibly ‘rival’ global programmes have been proposed and are at various stages of development such as the EU’s Global Gateway or have been aimed at the national level such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 or Thailand 4.0 or have emerged out of geopolitical blocs such as the New Development Bank. Sectorally, investments range from flagship nuclear projects, airport upgrades, inland and seaport development, waste management facilities, 5G installations, and transnational railway corridors, each replete with tensions concerning their overall cost, debt-repayment timetables, imperialist undertones, labour issues, and environmental impact, and often set against the backdrop of an increasingly complex Sino-US rivalry.

Globally, there have been multiple occasions of infrastructure failure. Three varied examples illustrate this: (1) a light railway transport project in the Kazakh capital Astana was halted mid-construction when the China Development Bank was alerted to widespread misuse of its loan that had financed the development; (2) the Texcoco airport development in Mexico was cancelled mid-way through its construction phase in 2018 by newly elected President Andrés Manuel López Obrador who cited its high costs and corruption levels, and; (3) announcements of coal phase-outs in multiple South Asian countries have led to a significant level of project cancellations, with only 1 from 52 projects announced since 2014 being realized.

These examples constitute ‘infrastructure failures’: projects that for various reasons were unable to deliver their original plan. Many proposals that are tabled are not realised: some never go past the drawing board, some emerge only as MoUs, some are cancelled during the construction phase, some may be completed but become white elephants. Indeed, in contravention of Albert Hirschman’s classic ‘hiding hand’ approach that glorifies ignorance as a benign force in design and implementation, ‘the average project is in fact undermined by a double whammy of substantial cost overruns compounded by substantial benefit shortfalls’ (Flyvberg 2016, 176).

Presently, too little is understood about when or why infrastructure investments fail with the ‘when’ here identified as the temporal/spatial ‘point-of-failure’ within the project: at the pre-planning, pre-construction, construction, decommissioning phases or beyond. This SI has a global focus to move beyond much scholarly output that has used the BRI as a main unit of analysis. Exploring when and why infrastructure projects fail is critical for how we understand some of the most important tangible and intangible aspects of our daily lives. Multiple interconnected institutional frameworks, state- socialist legacies, environmental breakdown, geopolitical tensions, sectoral diversity, and infrastructure requirements impact relations between the economy and society in multifaceted ways. Investigating these dimensions will instil a deeper comprehension of the global infrastructure ‘story’, illuminating the often overlooked aspect of project failure, an outcome of equal importance to project success.

To address this shortfall in knowledge, this SI seeks to understand the politics and political economy of ‘infrastructure failure’ (as defined above). We encourage interested contributors to provide analysis across scholarly boundaries, and as such submissions engaging with literature within the disciplines of development studies, economic sociology, human geography, political economy, politics, post-colonial studies, and cognate fields of inquiry are welcomed. We also encourage submissions that provide either empirically informed theorisations or new empirical analyses using qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods.

Themes for submissions include but are not limited to the following:

Submission deadline: 1 July 2024

13th annual Conference of the French Association of Political Economy (Montpellier, July 2024)

2-5 July 2024 | Montpellier, France

The FAPE (French Association of Political Economy) is holding its 13th annual Conference in Montpellier from the 2nd to the 5th of July 2024.

“Is planning possible in the face of crises?”

FAPE is a general scientific association which objective is to promote pluralism in economics. The annual FAPE conference is an important moment for the association and for the community of French economists. It allows the pluralism of theories, methods and objects to come alive. Beyond that, the conference encourages dialogue and interdisciplinarity within the humanities and social sciences. This is why proposals for papers other than economics (sociology, management, anthropology, geography, regional planning, political science, history, philosophy, law, etc.) are welcome and encouraged.

In the spirit of openness that characterises the pluralist approach promoted by AFEP, the conference remains open to all themes and approaches. Therefore, proposals that do not explicitly address the theme of the conference are welcome and will be considered by the scientific committee. Proposals for thematic workshops (open or closed) will also be highly appreciated.

AFEP considers that the promotion of academic pluralism in economics (ideas, themes, methods) requires the promotion of pluralism of points of view. It therefore promotes the inclusion and equal treatment of all people. This diversity of demographic characteristics and geographical origins is also required for reasons of justice”. (complete charter here).

Here is the full call for contributions.

Deadline for submitting proposals for papers or thematic workshops (approx. 2 pages): February 2024, 27. July 2 is reserved for PhD student presentations and will be the subject of a specific call. For more information: doctorants@assoeconomiepolitique.org. The conference will combine plenary sessions with parallel themed workshops. To encourage exchanges with non-French-speaking colleagues, communications in English are welcome.

Submission Deadline: 27 February 2024

26th Annual Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) (Bristol, July 2024)

10-12 July 2024 | Bristol, England

Conference Theme: "Heterodox Alternatives for a World of Multiple Crises"

In collaboration with Bristol Research in Economics and the College of Business and Law at the University of the West of England in Bristol

We invite submissions for the 26th Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics, taking place on July 10-12, 2024 at the University of the West of England (Frenchay Campus), in Bristol (UK) and online. This is an event organised in collaboration with Bristol Research in Economics at UWE College of Business and Law.

This year's theme, "Heterodox Alternatives for a World of Multiple Crises", seeks to explore innovative and diverse perspectives to address the complex challenges facing our global economy. In the midst of unprecedented crises, including environmental degradation, economic inequality, and political instability, we believe that heterodox approaches hold the key to unlocking new solutions. We welcome submissions that challenge conventional economic paradigms, offer alternative frameworks for understanding and navigating our multifaceted crises and actively work towards social change.

Submissions may cover a wide range of approaches and sub-topics, including but not limited to:

Join us in fostering a vibrant intellectual exchange that transcends traditional boundaries. Let's collectively explore heterodox alternatives and contribute to building a more resilient, sustainable, and equitable world. Submit your abstracts for papers (max 300 words) by 15 February 2024 by filling in this form and be a part of the dialogue shaping the future of heterodox economics. Submissions for panel proposals are welcome via this link and close on 15 February 2024 by filling in this form.

We particularly encourage applications from underrepresented groups in the economics discipline including, but not limited to women, people of colour, scholars from the Global South.

Limited travel support is available for selected early career scholars from the Global North and South. Early career scholars include PhD students as well as those who received their PhD no more than 2 years prior to the date of the conference and are not currently in a full-time, tenured position. When submitting your abstract, please indicate if you would like to be considered for the bursaries.

Fred Lee Prize: If you are an early career researcher and interested in having your paper considered for the Fred Lee Early Career Prize, please indicate this on the paper submission form. You will be asked to send your full paper by June 1st, 2024 with the subject line “Early career prize submission” at heteconevents@gmail.com. Eligible scholars for the prize include PhD students as well as those who received their PhD no more than 2 years prior to the date of the conference and are not currently in a full-time, tenured position.

Submission Deadline: 15 February 2024

27th Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (Graz, May 2024)

9-11 May 2024 | Graz, Austria

ConferenceTheme: "Economics and Policy Making: From Art and Craft to Welfare Optimization and Evidence Based Policies"

The 27 Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET) will take place in Graz from 9 – 11 May 2024. Proposals for papers or sessions on all aspects of the history of economic thought are welcome.

As observed by A.C. Pigou in the opening pages of Economics of Welfare, the object of any inquiry “may be either light or fruit”. According to Pigou, economics belongs to those sciences where the latter is bound to play a major role: “If it were not for the hope that a scientific study of social actions may lead, not necessarily directly or immediately, but at some time and in some way, to practical results in social improvement, not a few students of these actions would regard the time devoted to their study as time misspent. That is true of all social sciences, but especially true of economics.”

This may appear obvious. However, since Adam Smith’s more qualified than assertive Science of the legislator, the development of economic thought and scientific economics was accompanied by changing mental models regarding the transfer from theory to politics and to practical policy making. Donald Winch summarized post-Smithian vicissitudes as follows: “Much of Smith’s science of the legislator died with him, and any account of the branch of it that constitutes political economy must take account of that fact”.

The 19century saw developments in classical economics that Alfred Marshall later criticized as “dogmatic”, including the tendency to “suppress even such conditioning and qualifying clauses as they had in their own mind”. National traditions such as the German Historical School developed a particular style of organizing scientific foundations for politics in the form of the Verein für Socialpolitik. John Stuart Mill re-invigorated an approach closer to Adam Smith’s carefully qualified conclusions and policy recommendations, based on his conception of tendency laws, operating “in a certain manner unless counteracted; but we can never be assured to what extent or amount it will so operate, or affirm with certainty that it will not be counteracted; because we can seldom know even approximately, all the agencies which may co-exist with it, and still less calculate the collective result of so many combined elements”. An important tradition in the wake of such reasoning understood economic policy as the “art and craft” of combining scientific tendency laws with complementary knowledge of the scope and power of “counteracting, co-existing agencies”. In contrast, 20 century developments of normative economics (“Social Welfare Functions”) as well as improvements of empirical tools were and are (claimed to be) conducive to a “more scientific” and rigorous approach to policy making, conceiving of economic policy as applied economics, envisaging welfare maximization, “evidence-based policies”, and sometimes even “policies without alternative”. While there are good reasons for highlighting problems of such developments (as suggested by David Colander and Craig Freedman), historians of economic thought are in a position to deal with pertinent questions at various levels, including

Submission Process

An abstract of about 400 words for a paper and 600 words for a session should be submitted on the conference website no later than 31 January 2024. Please note that in case of a session proposal the submission must be done individually: the title of the session should be mentioned either in the title of the paper or in the abstract. Decisions will be notified by 12 February 2024.

Note that: a) published papers are not eligible for submission; b) only one conference presentation is allowed per person (but more than one submission may be accepted, if involving co-authors who are also presenting); c) session proposals must conform with standard format (3 papers, 90 minutes). For more information please visit the official website.

Submission Deadline:31 January 2024

51st Annual Meeting of the History of Economics Society (Santiago de Chile, July 2024)

14-18 July 2024 | Santiago, Chile

The History of Economics Society will hold its 51st meeting (and 50th anniversary of the founding of the Society) from July 14 to 18, 2024 at the Universidad del Desarrollo, in Santiago, Chile.

The Annual Conference of the History of Economics Society is one of the most important international gatherings of historians of economics. The conference provides an opportunity to meet with friends and colleagues, to learn about new research in the field, and to talk with journal and book editors and bloggers.

This will be the first time the History of Economics Society hosts its annual meeting in Latin America! We are excited about it. Santiago is easily connected to most European and American cities. Please remember it will be winter in the Southern Hemisphere, but temperatures usually range between 5-10C (40-50F). Chile is home to the Atacama Desert, Torre del Paine in Patagonia, and Easter Island, as well as many other natural and cultural attractions.

We are also happy to announce our 2024 plenary speakers: Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Morehead-Cain Alumni Distinguished Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and director of the PPE Society) and a celebration of Adam Smith at 301 with Sandra Peart (University of Richmond), Maria Alejandra Carrasco (Universidad de los Andes-Chile), and Leonidas Montes (director of Centro de Estudios Públicos and Professor at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez).

An early bird registration fee of $150 will be available until May 31, 2024 midnight US Central time. The fee for regular attendants registering after this date will be $200. We are glad to offer discounted registration fees for students (early bird: $50/regular: $100) and scholars with insufficient institutional support (early bird: $100/regular: $150).

The Society has secured a preferential rate with the InterContinental Santiago hotel. Rooms will be available for conference participants from $120/night, breakfast included. A free shuttle service will be provided to transport participants between the hotel and the main conference site. The reception and banquet will be held at the InterContinental Santiago.

The opening reception will be on Sunday July 14 at a cost of $30. Scholars with insufficient institutional support can purchase tickets for $20, and students for $10. The award banquet will be on Tuesday July 16 at a cost of $70. Scholars with insufficient institutional support can purchase tickets for $50, and students for $30. On Thursday July 18, we will offer a wine tour in a wonderful vineyard near Santiago. Prices will be announced soon. There will be childcare facilities available upon request. For information, please contact Juan Pablo Couyoumdjian at jpc@udd.cl no later than May 31, 2024.

YOUNG SCHOLARS

The HES provides support for several Warren J. and Sylvia J. Samuels Young Scholars to present papers at the conference, in the form of free registration, banquet and reception tickets, three nights lodging at the conference hotel, and a year's membership in the society. A Young Scholar must be a current PhD candidate or have been awarded a PhD in 2020 or later. Those interested in having their paper considered for the Young Scholars program will be able to indicate this when submitting their paper proposal through the conference website and will be contacted subsequently with more details about the program.

We invite individual paper and session submissions through this link. For more information and upcoming news about the conference, please visit our website.

Deadline for submissions: 1 March 2024

Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) South American Conference (Curitiba, May 2024)

22-24 May 2024 | Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil

The Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) South American Conference is a 3-day event hosted by the Federal University of Paraná (Curitiba, Brazil), taking place on May 22nd-24th 2024, with a combination of workshops (22nd May) and paper presentations (23rd-24th May).

The conference theme is “Understanding economic challenges from original institutionalist and post Keynesian perspectives”. We encourage submission of papers discussing: (1) the use of Original institutionalism and post Keynesianism as lenses to understand economic and social issues, notably within Latin America, 2) potential cross-fertilizations between original institutionalism and post Keynesianism from a historical and/or methodological view, and (3) diversifying original institutionalism and post Keynesianism from the perspective of identity, gender, and location.

The conference will be free of charge. Young scholars selected for the workshop may receive funding (full or partial) to support their travel costs to attend. Academics who do not qualify as early-career researchers (5 years after their PhD completion) are also welcomed and encouraged to submit, but will not be eligible for funding.

Application Process

Submission of extended abstracts (maximum of 1,000 words) will be open until January 31st (extended deadline) via the link.

Submission Deadline: 31 January 2024

Conference on "Fair Wages, an Acheviable Implementation?" (Paris, May 2024)

16-17 May 2024 | Catholic Institute of Paris, Paris, France

This event is part of a series of conferences (France, Morocco, Uruguay, Russia, Romania, Netherlands, Malaysia, United States, Japan etc.) carried out by an international research network, founded in 2015 and counting around forty teacher-researchers (in around twenty countries), entitled WAGE for Wage Analysis in a Globalizing Environment. Our work focuses on the evolution of wages in the world since 1950 and their link with globalization (increase or not of inequalities?). In 2024, we are publishing a general work on Wages and Globalisation, first Results, nourished by communications at the 2015, 2018 and 2022 sessions of the World Economic History Congress and, at a similar timing, another work on African Wages since 1960.

Wages are important and form 40% of global GDP. In advanced countries, they represent 50% of GDP, two-thirds of companies' added value and about as much of gross primary household income. They are increasing with economic development and on the planet, the importance of employees is increasing and reflects the gradual institutionalization of the labour market. In the choice of a profession for young people, the salary represents one of the elements of the decision, even if the latter considers other components such as the regional training offer, the cultural habits of the family, the conditions of work. etc. Salaries and wages, which concern 80 to 90% of working people in advanced countries and 30 to 40% of those in emerging countries, are very diversified and generally organized in established or implicit salary grids with numerous classifications according to qualification, seniority and responsibilities; it is generally accepted that engineers, for example, are paid more than unskilled workers. However, this dispersion is increasingly questioned: between the upper and lower deciles (D9/D1) or percentiles (C99/C10), between juniors and seniors, and especially between men and women (gender gap from 5% to 35% depending on the country). Although a large part of the gaps can be explained by differences in diplomas, jobs or working hours, this diversity questions the intellectual world and the society since the 19th century and the industrial revolution (Ricardo, Marx) as well as than the contemporary public in its relationship to equality. In fact, is it a statistical dispersion with classic and identifiable biases or real and factual inequalities? The treatment and evaluation of this subject are not neutral and can direct societies towards turbulent dissatisfaction in the event of worsening inequalities or prepare the ground for a certain social appeasement in the case of wage remediation policy.

Can a fair compensation system be both a solution to the feeling of growing pay inequality and to more balanced growth? A fair wage would be a wage that satisfies four requirements at the same time: social justice and equity, economic performance and productivity, the agreement of the parties concerned (employer, employees, union and public authorities) and a decent standard of living. Assigned to an employee, it must be able to apply to all employees in the same situation. The fair wage does not exclude the hierarchy of wages in relation to qualifications and responsibilities. In this case, fair wages are diversified: a minimum wage for an unskilled worker, an average wage for a skilled worker or a ceiling wage for a higher management salary. The problem of a fair wage concerns a fair remuneration system rather than a salary taken in isolation and requires considering the monetary wage as much as the salary package. Historically since the 1950s, we can cite companies that have practiced a dynamic social policy intended to support direct wages (Renault, Siemens, Michelin, IKEA, Unilever, Astra), States that have sought to operate redistribution through taxation or public expenditure in situations of potentially significant wage gap (Scandinavian countries, Canada) or authoritarian political regimes which have endeavoured to reduce the wage scale sharply (socialist economies 1917-1991) with fairly negative collateral effects. Since the 2000s, a general demand for equity (trade, work, products) has spread in public opinion and networks of actors promoting work and fair wages have developed. The rapid development of emerging countries, led by China, raises questions on this subject from a global perspective. What is the historical importance of these systems, their impact and can we draw up a form of balance sheet? Or are they very specific situations, difficult to reproduce and transpose?

Among the very many aspects that could be studied, we will mainly retain four axes that could each constitute a half-day for conference.

This conference is resolutely multidisciplinary. Proposals from economists, historians, sociologists, political scientists, and philosophers are welcome.

Submissions

Proposals should take the form of an abstract of between 400 and 600 words, with 3 keywords and a short bibliographical reference. Abstracts must be sent with a short CV before January 31th, 2024 to the following email addresses: mpierre.chelini@univ-artois.fr, muriel.perisse@univ-artois.fr, ciprian.panzaru@e-uvt.ro, ph.rojas@icp.fr. Submissions can be written either in English or French.

Submission Deadline: 31 January 2024

Expressions of Interest: Book chapter on Decolonising Economics

I’m seeking expressions of interest in contributing a book chapter on Decolonising Economics to the forthcoming second edition of the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Heterodox Economics (Edward Elgar). The original edition circulated quite widely in hardback, paperback and electronic editions and has reached a strong audience of early career heterodox economists. Edward Elgar are keen to continue to support the heterodox community with a contemporary revision.

The idea of the chapter is to supplement the existing philosophical discussion in the first part of the handbook on how critical realism and plurality provides a pathway to better research. The chapter would make a valuable extension of this argument to address questions of power. These chapters are:

Part I: Philosophical Foundation and Research Strategy

I’d welcome expressions of interest in contributing a chapter on this topic, of approximately 8,000 words, by September 2024, with view to publication in early 2025.

Kind regards

Bruce Cronin MA MSc PhD SFHEA

Professor in Economic Sociology, Co-Director Networks and Urban Systems Centre, Greenwich Business School

Email: B.Cronin@greenwich.ac.uk

Historical Materialism Istanbul (Istanbul, 2024)

5-7 April 2024 | Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkiye

As the deadline for HM Istanbul 2024 paper and panel submissions approaches, we would like to draw your attention to the sub-topics we call Streams. These special topics are semi-autonomous from our main call for papers but have been selected among the issues that complement our main theme to support you in expressing your work more originally. We would also like to remind you again that we would be happy to include papers on other topics within the scope of historical materialism, apart from the sub-topics you can find links to below and our main topic 'Rethinking Rationalities and Irrationalities within the Times of Crises and Radical Transformations'.

The links are as follows:

1- Marxism and Islam: Revisiting Rodinson-and moving onward

With this CfP, we intend to start the preparations for a collective work (a journal special issue or an edited book) in the occasion of celebrating the 60th anniversary of great Marxist historian Maxime Rodinson’s groundbreaking work Islam et capitalisme, first published in French in 1966. The book itself was a frontal attack on Weberian historiography and the modernization theories prevalent in the previous decades. Equating human progress with capitalist industrialization with colonialist and class-blind biases, this anti-Marxist mainstream held that Islam as an organized religion was an obstacle to capitalist industrialization precisely because the organizing principles of the religion were formulations of some holy scripts forging a Muslim ethics ex-ante their application in real world. If Christianity reformed itself through the thoroughly-challenged Catholic dogma with Protestantism, which immediately yielded economic results because of a renewed ethics, Islam was never able to accomplish a parallel reform, which explained the backwardness of the Muslim world. Rodinson argued otherwise: the underdevelopment of the Muslim world was to be found not in the Muslim ethics, but in the unequal global capitalist relations—North and South, core and periphery, and industrial and non-industrial parts of the world. Even for Rodinson, Islam was born and later developed into a very vivid capitalistic sector based on long-distance trade before the advent of commercial capitalism in Europe.

Rodinson’s work concerned not only the history of Islam but also the future of Muslims. Many events in world history since the second half of the twentieth century, including the Iranian Revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 9/11 attacks, ISIS attacks in the name of Islam, the Danish cartoon crisis, the Charlie Hebdo attack and many more, continue to be discussed as evidence of the backwardness of Muslim-majority societies. The October 7 reignition of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the resulting war in Gaza, leading to the tragic deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians, is attributed predominantly to the radical Islamism of Hamas; however, there is a notable absence of attempts to provide a materialist integrative perspective that causally links this conflict to the inherent contradictions of capitalism, which shows that Rodinson’s work is still needed today. On the one hand, the precarity, poverty, and deepening class conflicts driven by neoliberal strategies have given rise to religious organizations, transforming them into solidarity networks. On the other hand, there are inferences that gender inequalities, rooted in the production and reproduction of human beings and the reproduction of labor power—fundamental conditions for the existence of the capitalist system—are “naturalized” in the Muslim world due to Islamic tenets. In order to produce a Marxist policy against these mainstream perspectives, a comprehensive analysis is needed.

This stream invites submissions that delve into the intersections of Marxism and Islam, exploring key debates within Marxist literature regarding the relationship between capitalism and Islam, emphasizing their rationality/irrationality. However, any submissions addressing issues arising from the context of Marxism and Islam are welcome.

2- Ecology, Food, and Agriculture

We are witnessing the commodity relations across the entire planet, bringing destructive effects on both human and nature. Without a doubt, food and agriculture stand out as one of the most significant spots where the appropriation of nature, the unlimited extractivist logic of capitalism, and the co-evolving and deepening exploitation of labour in rural and urban areas crystallize. The unrestrained exploitation of nature to ensure the continuity of capital accumulation presents a crisis dynamic irresolvable within capitalism. This is exacerbated by strategies such as the enclosure of environmental commons and the commodification of land. These strategies render the nutrition required to sustain physical life, which is essential for the social reproduction of labour, inaccessible.

Today, we observe the rise of an understanding of ecology that has gained popularity across various fields, from mainstream economic growth theories to nature conservationism, from urbanization theories to the pursuit of radical social change. Unfortunately, this hegemonic reading tends to reduce the conflict to a war between human beings and nature. In the face of this post-political reading of ecology, which overshadows its intersectionality with all relations of exploitation and power in the fields of race, class, ethnicity, and gender, our aim is to reopen the discussion on ecology. We view it as the socio-metabolic relationship of human beings with their human and non-human environment and seek to explore what Marxism can and has to say on this issue.

We intend to evaluate the field of agriculture and food, where we find the most direct reflections of the commodification of land and labour. These reflections are critical in both fostering and hindering capitalist relations. By approaching ecology within its historical and class-based context, we aim to invert the prevailing reading of the ecological crisis that renders inequalities and relations of exploitation invisible and “natural” within catastrophic and alarmist discourses. In this context, we invite all scholars, activists, and researchers interested in the topic, especially those from the global South, which is disproportionately affected by this exploitation.

3- Breaking the spell: Marxism and Technology

There is a hype i.e technology fetishism in AI applications and “immense accumulation” of data extracted by capitalist Hi-Tech corporations. Foundation models, Such as Large Language Models (LLM), especially generative AI models are believed to mimic Human brain. On the one side, computational technologies like AI and machine learning models are important as productive forces of collective labour, and for planning and shortening human labour. On the other side, while plundered and commodified data increase the wealth of hi-tec capitalism, ecological cost is huge and socialized. Days to remember Marx again: “In our days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it. …The new-fangled sources of wealth, by some strange, weird spell, are turned into sources of want… All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.”

This panel invites papers to develop a critical, Marxian understanding of today’s technological hype and relations of production in the perspective of class struggles. It also welcomes the discussions about the transition of the labour processes, the compositional increasement of affective labour, and also booming up of the so-called bullshit jobs. How the technological developments change our everyday life and alters our understanding of life and pleasure is also among the themes we would like to open up for discussion. Lastly, digital commons is an additional topic that needs further attention of Marxists these days.

Our stream will include the following themes (but not limited to them):

4- Gender and Sexuality

To believe the orthodox view of the development of gendered and sexual rights, this is a story of slow progress and rationality in respecting difference and choice amongst gendered and sexual identities. This progress is uneven, marked by an unfinished application of enlightenment and modernist values and a politics of recognition and rights in the ‘advanced West’. Conventional claims are for this ‘superior position’ to hierarchically stretch down the societies who have yet to ‘develop’ such values and ideas. Alternatively, this hierarchical conception may misconceive the local sexual cultures of those in the global south. Yet such a narrative suit both orthodox political narratives and the political narratives of equality of opportunity and identity politics that prevail in the West. What it overlooks is the political temporality and dialectical nature of continual struggles on gender and sexuality.

Trans is currently the subject of harsh gender-critical attacks silently supported by a waning of the barest advances in recognition and public services. Whilst there is a superficial degree of cultural equality and recognition, there remain harsh gendered inequalities in relation to economic assets, salaries, and political power (except those who play the ‘masculine’ game) violence and cultural stereotypical representations. Gay rights, and to a lesser extent lesbian rights, have degrees of equality and recognition contained within a subservient homonormativity, with some symbolic equalities such as civil partnerships in some countries. Moreover, a pathological approach to bi and diverse sexualities manifest itself as absolute marginalisation where political economic priorities are concerned (such as with world cups!) or the commercialization of kink (such as Hollywood’s’ ‘Fifty Shades). It is clear that in many parts of the world, in the face of increasing authoritarianism, these degrees of equality and recognition are still important areas of struggle. Hence, feminist, and queer interventions are preoccupied with the gendered, classed, and racialised component of structural violence and their ultimate unfolding at the global stage. This stream welcomes any current work exploring gender and sexuality issues, and important debates such as social reproduction within Marxist literature. It seeks to rethink the relations between hetero-capitalist patriarchy and its rationality/irrationality through a re-engagement with Marxist theory and ideas. Papers that explore particular contemporary political struggles that stress the conditionality and partiality of advances and the real tensions and issues raised by political struggles are welcome.

5- Revisiting Marxist Theories of Fascism and Authoritarianism

The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear,” these famous words of Antonio Gramsci from almost a century ago is today relevant more than ever. In war scenes such as Palestine and Ukraine, and consistently in many countries from Poland to India, in spectacular or ordinary forms, as part of ruling blocs or social movements, different forms of authoritarian, radical nationalist, fascist, or post-fascist politics are on the rise and have not lost their force.

This panel invites papers to develop a critical, non-reductive, Marxian understanding of today’s “morbid symptoms” and forces from a socially and historically grounded, internationalist perspective. To this extent, we wish to revisit the classical Marxist theories of fascism and the theories from the global South. That is why, the theories of microfascism and subjection, interpellation, and desire are among the themes we look forward to discussing. It can be seen that all of the authoritarian tendencies mentioned above rest on various kinds of affective politics. Many irrational elements, like masculinity, xenophobia, and hatred against queer individuals, can be traced within this contentment of class subjectivity. We also seek to understand not only the logic and fantasies of authoritarian rules, wars, and colonial and imperialist violence, but also the ways in which international anti-colonial or decolonial, and anti-capitalist solidarity and peace can be envisioned and put into practice.

We wish to invite our friends from Latin America to discuss the experience derived from rising authoritarianisms and left alternatives. We also desire to open these authoritarian themes from Balkans and the Middle East regions to debate. The papers discussing the future of Western ‘democracies’ are also welcome.

Thus conceived, we invite papers that engage the following themes and examples:

We are, as always, open to multiplying the themes with your contributions.

6- Critical Political Economy: Financialisation, Debt, Planning

While ‘credit’ and ‘debt’ have a longer history than capitalism, the power of credit money over the shoulders of the laboring classes is a relatively new phenomenon in the current phase of capital accumulation. Emerging in the Global North in the 1970s, financialized capitalism acquired a distinct character with the inclusion of the Global South in financial circuits during the 1990s, further shaped by the expanded financial inclusion of households in both the Global South and North in the 2000s. The economic crisis that began in the centers of the global financial system in 2008, spreading in 2009 and resulting in one of the largest international financial crises in history, added a new dimension to discussions on financialization and household indebtedness, manifested in the form of mortgages, student loans, consumer credits, payday loans, and more. We are currently witnessing an era marked by the escalating influence of financial actors, markets, practices, measurements, and narratives at various scales. This has led to a structural transformation affecting economies, firms (including financial institutions), states, and households as well as gendered relations of social reproduction.

This largely one-sided strategy on financialization, however, poses great obstacles to impoverished masses around the world—regular workers, but also large number of those who cannot easily and sustainably integrate into capitalist economies, along with rising figures of urban poor and the dispossessed in Global North and South. Capitalist ruling class’s lack of a clear strategy of both growth-with-jobs and its catastrophic ecological impact on the widening metabolic rift, not only requires but also pushes us for radical possible alternatives for rational economy. In other words, this brings forth the table for a renewed discussion on planning for a post-capitalist world. Reclaiming the business of statecraft, what can Marxists offer to respond the socio-economic requirements of a green transition, how can they take account of the stark geographical differences between global North and South, and how can they strategize—at national, local, and international levels—for a political transformation so drastic that can tame the power of finance through its democratization and ensure progressive social change?

This stream welcomes any current work exploring financialization, the crisis of financialized capitalism, dependent financialization in the Global South, changing financial roles of the capitalist state, and the political economy of household indebtedness in various forms. We also look forward to receiving papers on post-capitalist and socialist planning.

You can also access the general call of our conference from the following link: https://historicalmaterialismistanbul2024.net/call-for-papers-2/

For your questions: hmistanbul2024@gmail.com

Submission Deadline: 31 January 2024

Historical Materialism and Institute for the Radical Imagination Conference (New York, May-June 2024)

31 May - 2 June 2024 | Long Island University, Brooklyn - New York, USA

The ongoing proliferation of violent conflicts and antagonisms has once again brought the question of warfare to the forefront. Unfortunately, the dominant discourse that has accompanied these antagonisms is simplistic moralism; war as a matter of good and evil. Relatedly, anti-war movements in the United States and beyond have waned, the fight against 'evil' overcoming all else. The startling lack of critical perspectives on and mass social movements against these recent and ongoing wars (from Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza and the West Bank, to Yemen, Sudan, and beyond) as well as increasingly possible future wars (China, Russia) is a direct consequence of the Manichean perspective that has dominated the understanding of the many (including some on the left). Equally worryingly, the broader disruptions and impact of these wars, from rising poverty in the global south to the displacement of tens of millions of people, has not been adequately understood as one of the consequences of these ongoing antagonisms.

It is against this backdrop that a return to a more analytical and rigorous understanding of conflict and war is needed. More precisely, a class analysis of conflict and antagonism is necessary for understanding the complexity of these conflicts and the social conditions that engender them. The analysis of class is always concurrently an analysis of movement and struggle, there is no class without war and there is no war without class. Thus, a class analysis of war also makes visible the deeper social agencies and stakes of these conflicts, highlighting the importance of anti-war movements as well as the necessity of class struggles from below. Similarly, a class analysis shows which conflicts extend and deepen the control and interests of the capitalist classes and which conflicts combat capitalism and benefit the working and other subaltern classes.

As in the past, the conference ethos is strictly egalitarian. This means everyone is invited to contribute in a comradely spirit, the conference is open to all currents of critical Marxist theory and we expect all presenters to attend the entire conference, not just their own session (with no ‘cameo appearances’). We also expect all speakers to make themselves available for the whole period of the conference for their sessions (with only completely immutable circumstances constituting exceptions), as tailoring a conference of this size around individuals’ preferences and desires is not feasible or desirable. The conference is an important part of the broader Historical Materialism project – including the journal, the book series, and the global network of HM conferences – and we want to encourage all conference participants to get involved with these different elements, for example by subscribing to the journal and submitting their conference paper to us for consideration. The Institute for the Radical Imagination is based in New York City and sponsors various seminars and classes through the year, including a yearly Marxist Summer School. It also publishes the journal Situations.

In line with the central theme of this year’s conference, we particularly want to invite contributions on the following non-exclusive questions:

  1. Refugees, migration, and the violence of borders
  2. The paradox of the pro-war left
  3. Accumulation by dispossession
  4. Libidinal displacement and violence
  5. The violence of economic sanctions
  6. Sabotaging the war machine
  7. War and spectacle
  8. Ecological destruction as class war
  9. Religion, liberalism, and the dangers of just war theory
  10. Labor, the general intellect, and the automation of war
  11. Orientalism, feminism, racism, and imperialism
  12. Opportunities for international solidarity in a multipolar world

Decisions on early submissions will be available for those who need extra time for arranging their travel or for applying for institutional support. The organizational committee of Historical Materialism New York 2024 can be reached at:HM.IRI.NYC@gmail.com

Please note that individual papers and panels should include:

  1. Names of participants with e-mails and affiliations, and clear indication of a corresponding author where there is more than one participant.
  2. Title of paper or panel – In the case of a paper an abstract of no longer than 300 words. In the case of panels, an overarching description of 300 words and as relevant, abstracts for individual papers.

Deadline for submissions: 1 March 2024

IIPPE Conference: Extended Submission Deadline

The IIPPE Conference Committee has announced that the closing of the proposal window for the IIPPE Conference 2024 will be moved from February 1 (it says February 2 in another place) to Sunday night February 18.

The full call for the conference can be found in the HEN 320 (see here).

Please do not all take a 2 week break from working on this, but rather proceed to get proposals in as soon as you can.

Extended Submission Deadline: 18 February 2024

Imaginaries and Strategies for Good Care and Good Housing in Times of Transformation (Vienna, May 2024)

23-24 May 2024 | Vienna, Austria

This is a conference of DOC-team 114 „The Contested Provisioning of Care and Housing“, funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Johannes Kepler University Linz and the WU Vienna.

This conference aims at discussing contested developments in the fields of care and housing and envisioning future perspectives. Imaginaries are necessary to identify desirable futures of how societies can re-organise the foundations of our social, economic, and ecological systems. Aiming at a good life for all within planetary boundaries, including good care and good housing, is a widespread, but ambitious objective for ongoing transformations. The community shift and tendencies toward communitisation, within care regimes, aims at prefigurative forms of such provisioning. Community-oriented arrangements can be based on reciprocity and redistribution, that facilitate human flourishing, even under adverse framework conditions of financialization and austerity. However, these community initiatives are strongly interrelated with the welfare state and different modes of care and housing provision, with professional, and lay work etc. They facilitate desirable practices of doing care and housing in niches of the given provisioning of social services and beyond and are more or less able to change “the rules of the game”. Multiple strategies are necessary to identify the potential for actors to change these framework conditions, be it institutions (e.g., social infrastructures, legal and fiscal systems) or structures (e.g., gender relations) to transform contemporary financialised capitalism. Currently, economic and social policies are still subordinating the reproductive sphere to the sphere of production, commodification and finance, and short-term consumer wishes to long-term needs of sustaining the social and ecological background conditions of our civilisation. Actualizing visions of a care-ful future will, therefore, only be possible if the always-contested relations between the productive and the reproductive sphere are re-organised – at the expense of the former. Such re-organisations will be conflict-prone, often negotiated in uneven relations and on multiple levels simultaneously –from the home and the neighbourhood to the region, the nation, and the EU.

Against this background, the conference “Imaginaries and Strategies to Transform Care and Housing in Times of Transformations” seeks to problematise these transformations and their diverse manifestations to envision imaginaries and strategies that foster socially just and ecologically sustainable ways of living together. Of particular interest is research that relates transformations in the provisioning of care and housing to other provisioning systems, for example mobility or health services, as well as to society-nature relations that facilitate remaining within planetary boundaries.

The conference is organized in three tracks: 1.) transformative imaginaries for good care and good housing; 2.) transformative strategies for a good life within planetary boundaries; 3.) a transdisciplinary track on ‘Wirtschaft neu denken [Re-thinking the economy]’ (in German). Academic contributions are invited to all tracks, practitioners to the third track.

Track A: Transformative imaginaries for good care and good housing:

Track B: Transformative strategies for good care and good housing: How can desirable alternatives become feasible futures?

Track C: ‘Wirtschaft Neu Denken [Re-thinking the Economy]’: transdisciplinary dialogue on imaginaries and strategies to embed the market
into society-nature relations that strengthen reproductive systems and
foundational goods, services, and infrastructures to enable a good life for all
within planetary boundaries.

We invite researchers and practitioners to submit an abstract (250-300 words and full affiliation of the author/s) by 17th February 2024 and will inform you about acceptance by 1st March 2024. Please send your submissions to contestedcareandhousing@wu.ac.at. Conference Tracks A and B will be in English, Track C will be in German. Travel and accommodation costs will not be covered by the organisers; there are no conference fees.

Deadline for abstract submissions: 1 March 2024

Review of Radical Political Economics: Special Issue on "Anti-Capitalist Pedagogies and Teaching Radical Economics"

The Review of Radical Political Economics (RRPE) calls for submissions for a special Issue on

Anti-Capitalist Pedagogies and Teaching Radical Economics

Pedagogy has long been a central concern for radical political economists. While questions of pedagogy are crucial in their own right, critical scholars have noted how different pedagogical practices may also lend themselves to different approaches to economics. The role of pedagogy in promoting critical thinking minds versus reproducing oppressive structures has also been a key topic of debate. For many years, the RRPE published an occasional section on pedagogy, but this section has not appeared in recent issues. At the same time, the drastic transformation of the educational landscape in the past few years, and a greater cognizance of the deepening inequalities within and outside the classroom in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, necessitate fresh reckoning and reflection on the teaching practices and pedagogical approaches that radical political economists have experimented with and employed in their classrooms. To this end, we are looking for articles that discuss pedagogical questions, approaches, innovations, and teaching practices in radical political economics.

The following are some themes of interest for this special issue, although any submission that is related to the topic is welcome.

We welcome submissions of various types and lengths. Submissions can be conventionally longer articles that explore a particular pedagogical issue, assess student learning outcomes, or address other teaching issues related to radical political economics. We also warmly welcome shorter contributions (1500-3000 words) that consist of descriptions of classroom exercises, the application of particular pedagogies (e.g., collaborative learning, service learning, active learning, web based interactive exercises), or reflective case-studies of teaching practice in radical political economics. We are open to considering teaching and pedagogical practices holistically and deeply intertwined with structural considerations around teaching infrastructure and labor in the neoliberal university.

Articles should clearly relate to radical political economics, with an emphasis on how the approach can advance economic education in a radical tradition. Where appropriate, articles should document the effectiveness of the teaching approach described in the article. Thus, authors should make sure to include documentation of their assessment of the teaching exercises they discuss, although we are open to non-traditional forms of assessment.

Submission Process

Please submit your manuscript to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rrpe by the extended deadline of April 1, 2024.

When the submission link asks what “type” of manuscript you are submitting, please check the box that says “Anti-Capitalist Pedagogies and Teaching Radical Economics.”

For questions, or if you are planning to submit a paper for the special issue, please contact Smita Ramnarain as soon as possible, sramnarain@uri.edu.

All submissions undergo RRPE ’s regular peer review procedures and must not be under review with any other publication. Submissions must conform to the Instructions to Contributors listed on the RRPE website or available from the Managing Editor, editor.rrpe@urpe.org

Submission Deadline: 1 April 2024

Review of Radical Political Economics: Special Issue on "Climate Change and Capitalism"

The Review of Radical Political Economics (RRPE) calls for submissions for a special Issue on

Climate Change and Capitalism

Climate change poses an existential threat to the flourishing of all life on earth. While addressing environmental crises has been an urgent task of the left for decades, there appears to be little agreement on either the root causes of climate catastrophe or the best approaches to mitigate environmental destruction.

As RRPE is a radical and pluralist journal, the Special Issue Collective is looking for manuscripts that provide a range of critical political economic perspectives on capitalism and the environment, as well as a range of methods, approaches, and geographic focuses. We would especially like to encourage submissions from climate activists, scholars in the Global South, early career researchers, and scholars from groups that have been historically excluded from academia.

Although any submission that provides critical political economic analysis of the topic from a class perspective is highly encouraged, the following is a list of possible subjects for the special issue:

Please submit your manuscript to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rrpe. When asked what “type” of manuscript you are submitting, please check the box that says, “Climate Change and Capitalism.” If you intend to submit a paper, or have questions, please contact Kirstin Munro as soon as possible at kirstin.munro@gmail.com.

All submissions will undergo RRPE’s regular peer review procedures and must not be under review with any other publication. Submissions must conform to the Instructions to Contributors posted on the RRPE website (https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/RRP), or available from the Managing Editor (editor.rrpe@urpe.org).

Submission deadline: 31 December 2024

The Fifth European Conference on Banking and the Economy (Winchester, March 2024)

27 March 2024 | West Downs Centre, University of Winchester, United Kingdom

Opportunities and Challenges of New or Centralised Digital Finance

The Fifth European Conference on Banking and the Economy (ECOBATE 2024), organized by the Association for Research on Banking and the Economy (ARBE) in collaboration with the University of Winchester, will cover a range of topics concerning digital technologies for finance, monetary economics and macroeconomics, covering theory, applications and policy. A particular, though not exclusive, focus will be the opportunities and challenges posed by the modern digital economy, including the rise of such innovations as fintech businesses and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The organizing committee invites scholars, researchers, and experts to submit their work in all these areas, but particularly also concerning new directions in digital finance.

As the financial services industry has undergone rapid innovation since the 2007-2010 US and European financial crisis, propelled by advancements in big data, cloud computing, blockchain and other technological developments, new forms of digital finance have emerged as a facet of our lives. Such fintech and central bank responses challenge the long-established status-quo of the traditional banking industry and monetary policies designed around it, opening up both developmental opportunities and complex challenges.

We encourage submissions that examine the opportunities offered by digital finance, including CBDCs, in achieving financial inclusion, enhancing financial efficiency, supporting innovation and entrepreneurship, promoting a green economy, and optimizing economic structures for high-quality development. Papers exploring the following themes are particularly welcome.

We welcome submissions from diverse methodological traditions in economics. We encourage scholars to contribute to a pluralistic view of economic research, enriching our understanding of CBDCs and their implications.

Submission Guidelines:

For more information please visit the official website.

Submission Deadline: 28 February 2024

Workers of the World Journal: Special Issue on "Strikes, Social Conflicts, and Class Struggle in Wartime"

Workers of the World: International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflict aims to stimulate global studies on labor and social conflicts in an interdisciplinary, global, long term historical and non-Eurocentric perspective. It intends to move away from traditional forms of methodological nationalism and conjectural studies, adopting an explicitly critical and interdisciplinary perspective. Therefore, it will publish empirical research and theoretical discussions that address strikes and social conflicts in an innovative and rigorous manner. It will also promote dialogue between scholars from different fields and different countries and disseminate analyzes on different sociocultural realities, to give visibility and centrality to this theme.

Special Issue 1: Strikes, Social Conflicts, and Class Struggle in Wartime

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 symbolizes the end of a period of armed equilibrium between the two powers that led much of the world and that at the Yalta Conference, in 1945, agreed to delineate the respective spaces of influence. Even if this balance was hidden in several real conflicts that hellishly heated up the temperature of a so-called “cold” war, especially in the colonial spaces of Africa and South-East Asia, the armed conflicts that persisted left out, at least directly, the main powers and their arsenals. With the destruction of the wall, the previous balance in the apparent supremacy of the victorious power and the rise of others on significant regional scales, the danger of uncontrolled military escalations and the absence of international institutions capable of settling disagreements seems to be the new and threatening reality. International law is a dead letter and force remains the rule of armed imposition of all conflicts.

Conflicts between states and nations, of nationalities within the same national spaces, bloody civil wars from which drug traffickers and the burgeoning war industry take advantage. The "infinite war" that ushered in the 21st century, through the farce of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, was after all a neocolonial project for the control of strategic resources and corporate profits in the reconstruction of everything that the weapons had destroyed. The Middle East and the curse of its fossil wealth have made its populations victims of colonialism and exploitation by national elites, invariably educated and trained in the West, but it also provides us with the most blatant example of the hypocrisy of a discourse on human rights that has never served to ensure Palestinian self-determination, let alone the most basic rights of a besieged and occupied population.

In the face of all the conflicts and wars that follow one another within the framework of imperialist disputes, or in the strengthening of the control of the means of production in regions deprived of all the most basic rights, there have always been reactions and enormous mobilizations that have countered them and ensured internationalist solidarity between peoples. Although the position of the German revolutionaries, contrary to the approval of the credits of the Great War by the Reichstag, was the class expression of those who did not accept the imperialist war or the arguments of nationalist fervor for the enormous destruction and example of barbarism that this war meant in Europe.

The Barcelona dockers, by refusing to load military equipment to Israel, are a current example of the effective solidarity that can counter the illegitimate occupation of Palestine and today's colonial projects. The movement of deserters from the colonial countries in the wars of liberation, in Africa or Vietnam, as in Israel today, more than examples of courage, are signs of an internationalism with a class signal.

The concrete organization of workers against imperialist wars and neo-colonialism, through strikes or the participation in anti-war movements, had and still has a profound significance for the possibilities of self-determination of peoples, for decent living, and for decent living and working conditions in the fair distribution of wealth, the only ways to equate a world at peace.

In this sense, we invite contributions to the Workers of the World journal that explore the nature and processes of all those moments, in the past and in the present, in which the workers' movement influenced the course of the war and was decisive for its end.

The papers must be presented before the 28th of February 2024 and sent to the Executive Board at workersoftheworld1848@gmail.com

Deadline for submissions: 28 February 2024

Workers of the World Journal: Speical Issue on "Strike Activity in the 21st Century: Implications of the Recent Global Upsurge"

Workers of the World: International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflict aims to stimulate global studies on labor and social conflicts in an interdisciplinary, global, long term historical and non-Eurocentric perspective. It intends to move away from traditional forms of methodological nationalism and conjectural studies, adopting an explicitly critical and interdisciplinary perspective. Therefore, it will publish empirical research and theoretical discussions that address strikes and social conflicts in an innovative and rigorous manner. It will also promote dialogue between scholars from different fields and different countries and disseminate analyzes on different sociocultural realities, to give visibility and centrality to this theme.

Special Issue 2: Strike Activity in the 21st Century: Implications of the Recent Global Upsurge

Selected papers will be considered for publishing

While global capitalism has remained in the grip of a series of multi-dimensional and intertwined crises (including ongoing economic malaise, legacy of Covid, escalating impact of climate change, intensification of wars in different parts of the world such as Ukraine, Palestine and Africa and geopolitical crisis between Russia, China and the West, and the mounting debt crisis in the Global South), the past 18 months or so has also seen a welcome resurgence of strike action and social conflicts in many different countries around the world, representing a new, different and exciting period.

With the onset of the global financial crisis at the beginning of the 21st century there had already been a comeback of strikes and labour struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as a series of strikes against austerity in Western Europe. While the level of workers’ resistance was generally not sustained for long, there were elements of the global crisis that continued to create widespread anger and radicalisation, with an increasing political generalisation about the system of capitalism and the problems it creates, particularly among young people shaped by social movements such as Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and climate protests.

And more recently there has been a new upsurge of angry and defiant strike movements at varying levels of intensity and momentum in numerous countries, including France, Britain, Greece, Portugal, Belgium, United States, Canada, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and China, with workers rediscovering their power when they take collective action.

The revival of such strike activity has contributed to an undermining of the long predominant view that such action was no longer feasible due to widespread structural changes in the composition of the working class towards ‘precarious’, insecure and fragmented work contexts that make trade unionism and collective action near impossible.

In the light of such developments, we invite contributions to the Workers of the World journal that explore the nature, dynamics, trajectory, limits and potential, and implications of such strikes. As well as both empirical studies and/or analytical interpretations, we would also invite papers not merely on contemporary developments, but also comparative and historical studies that reflect on recent developments in the light of different struggles in the same or other countries and/or time periods.

Potential (but not exclusive) related topics are:

The papers must be presented before the 15th of April 2024 and send to the Executive Board at workersoftheworld1848@gmail.com

Submission Deadline: 15 April 2024

Workshop on "A Path to Inclusive Development: Unpacking Gender Inequalities in Economic Theory and Policies" (Blithewood, Sept 2024)

11-13 September 2024 | Blithewood, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York State (USA)

A workshop organized by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College with the generous support of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

The goal of this workshop is to explore ways to advance the integration of gender into economic analyses in order to promote inclusive development and policymaking. This workshop will provide a forum for scholars, academics, and policymakers to debate, discuss, and integrate the role of gender inequality in evaluating labor market dynamics, macroeconomic outcomes, and economic policies, with an overarching objective of discussing the methodological pluralism of feminist economics. There are multiple dimensions of gender inequality that intersect with other forms of inequality—such as social class, ethnicity, race, and nationality—to affect economic processes, outcomes, and policies. We are seeking contributions with strong theoretical, modeling, and/or empirical components to address these interconnections and we welcome research that applies a feminist lens to a broad range of topics in micro- and macroeconomics, cutting across local and global geographies. We invite research papers engaging but not limited to the following topics:

This workshop will bring together diverse visions of how and why gender and intersectional inequalities need to be integrated in assessing economic wellbeing and formulating development policy agendas. The workshop will facilitate deliberations on alternative theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence regarding strategies explored by feminist economists.

We invite theoretical contributions that utilize existing and novel economic modeling approaches, as well as empirical studies, in particular, those focusing on the dimensions of gender inequalities relevant to low- and middle-income countries. We encourage interdisciplinary research, submissions from young scholars and scholars from the global south. We are also interested in papers that provide a comprehensive picture of state of the art, identify gaps, and indicate directions for future research. The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is organizing this event with the generous support of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The organizers will cover accommodation and travel expenses.

Submissions

We invite individual paper submissions. Applications are now open. Please visit the link to submit your abstracts (500 words). The deadline is February 15, 2024. For questions, please contact Emily Ungvary at eungvary@levy.org

Submission Deadline: 15 February 2024

XVII AISPE Conference (Rome, October 2024)

3-5 October 2024 | Rome, Italy

Conference Theme: Regional Economic Integration and Multilateralism in Historical Perspective (AISPE)

2024 marks the 80th anniversary of the Bretton Woods conference, where the foundations of a new international economic and monetary order were laid. Following the formal collapse of its regime between 1971 and 1973, a de facto hegemony of the US dollar replaced its de jure hegemony. This shift led to increasing global imbalances and greater vulnerability of the world economy, attributed to what were named the Triffin dilemma and inherent destabilizers that characterize each international monetary system (IMS) relying on a national currency to provide global liquidity. Since China's economic rise, the US-led financial crisis, and the UN Stiglitz Commission in 2009, calls for multilateralism and a new, more equitable global economic governance have become pressing. The most relevant feature of the present global economy is interdependence. Despite attempts at fragmentation through the shortening of global value chains (with reshoring and friend shoring) and attempts to fence off negative transnational externalities (even with autarchic and neocolonial responses), there is an increasing need for supranational public goods (or reducing negative public bads).

Hence, there is a growing renewed interest in regional integrations as optimum policy areas to compromise between import substitution and market openness, attempting to govern unavoidable economic and monetary interdependencies. Furthermore, given the continental dimension of most actors now playing in the global arena, regional integration will increasingly be a key topic in the forthcoming future, as a key to restore a path to global multilateralization.

Inquiring into past experiences and understanding of regional integration in different areas of the world is key to designing regional experiments that may avoid failures and major shortcomings negatively impacting the return to multilateralism. How did Asian countries rationalize regional integration? How do African experiments in trade and monetary integration reflect a genuine attempt to overcome fragmentation, and to what extent are they born out of neocolonial ambitions? What about Latin Americans and their reiterated proposals for a common regional currency? Does any specific model of regional economic and monetary integration exist in specific regions of the world? Or do they all take for granted that, sooner or later, the path followed by the EU is to be replicated elsewhere? What lessons can be learned from European integration? How did the EU and non-EU regions make sense of the relationship between regional integration and global integration? How does this understanding evolve over time, and what major watersheds can be highlighted in different regions? What was the relative role of events and economic theories in shaping different understandings and policymaking connected to regional integration? How does regional integration respond (only, or mainly) to economic theorizing and/or reflect a complex set of features that require an interdisciplinary knowledge of history?

Alongside these — and further — questions, a whole set of research projects can be pursued and papers presented that reconstruct both the historical dimension and the comparative features of different models for interpreting regional trade, economic, and monetary integration, and their relationship with multilateralism The conference serves as a platform for discussions on the overarching theme of models for regional integration and multilayered governance. However, it is also open to paper presentations on broader topics related to the history of economic thought.

Please find more information on AISPE and the annual conference here.

Deadline for submissions: 31 March 2024

Call for Participants

Critical Research on Industrial Livestock Systems Network Workshop Series

16-17 April 2024 | London, UK

The Critical Research on Industrial Livestock Systems (CRILS) Network aims to understand the trade-offs of large-scale, industrial livestock systems and to use available evidence to advocate for just and sustainable food systems, especially in the Global South. The network brings together researchers and non-academics including civil society, activists, policy-makers, industry actors, and lawyers among others, to challenge and nuance narratives of livestock production systems.

Join us for training sessions and rich discussions on the future of livestock systems. We will privilege participants from the Global South and early career participants, particularly those who strive to integrate interdisciplinary research.

Please share this call with interested members of your communities.

How to apply

Please apply to the in-person workshop via this link.

Decision: We aim to notify applicants of our decision by late January or early February to allow sufficient time for the visa application process. Participants requiring UK visas are encouraged to apply sooner rather than later.

Cost: Free to attend. We have a limited pool of funding to sponsor applicants’ travel and accommodation. Please indicate whether you will be unable to attend if you are not awarded funding. We will prioritise funding for:

We look forward to hearing from you. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch at CRILSNetwork@rvc.ac.uk or visit our website www.CRILS.org. Informal enquiries are encouraged. Unable to participate in the in-person meeting? Join our ongoing online workshop series by clicking here [ https://forms.office.com/e/tpi1Zr7fSW]. These are held monthly over Zoom.

Duke Summer Institute on the History of Economics (Durham, June 2024)

3-12 June 2024 | Duke University, Durham, USA

The Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University will be hosting another Summer Institute on the History of Economics from June 3-12, 2024. The program is designed for students in graduate programs in economics, though students in graduate school in other fields as well as newly minted PhDs will also be considered.

Students will be competitively selected and successful applicants will receive free housing, access to readings, and stipends for travel and food. The deadline for applying is March 10. We are very excited about this year's program, which will focus on giving participants the tools to set up and teach their own undergraduate course in the history of economic thought. There will also be sessions devoted to showing how concepts and ideas from the history of economics might be introduced into other classes. The sessions will be run by Duke faculty members Jason Brent, Bruce Caldwell, Kevin Hoover, and Steve Medema. More information on the Summer Institute is available at the official website.

Application Deadline: 10 March 2024

INET YSI Workshop on “Individual and Collective Issues in the History and Philosophy of Economics”

28 May 2024 | Reims, France (before the 7th International Conference Economics and Philosophy)

The Institute of New Economic Thinking Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI) Working Groups on the History of Economic Thought and Philosophy of Economics

are organising a Young Scholars Workshop on

“Individual and Collective Issues in the History and Philosophy of Economics”

Some scholars tend to caricature economics as “Robinson Crusoe economics”. From the individual to the collective level, is there an insurmountable step? The categories of “individual” and “collective” can be useful to shed light on the objects of study in economic methodology and the history of economic thought. Whether it is for policy-design or for scientific claims, can one start from the individual level to deduce policies or scientific claims at the collective level? Can we explain macro-level phenomena simply by looking at their micro-foundations? These questions shape the theoretical debates in economic methodology (methodological individualism or holism), but more broadly in philosophy of economics and welfare economics. The symmetry or asymmetry between the individual and the collective levels also frame ethical discussions, as it shapes, for instance, individual or collective responsibility in regards to societal issues.

As both levels –the individual and the collective– are interrelated, the aim of this workshop will be to analyze how these relations shape economics as a scientific field. We, thus, encourage proposals that aim to interrogate the individual among the collective – as in the micro-foundation of macroeconomics models for instance – and vice versa the collective among the individual – as in the performativity of economic theories to the individual for instance. The aim of this workshop is to bring together young researchers to question the lenses by which one can analyze economics, philosophy of economics and history of economic thought.

To help us in our reflection, we will have the pleasure to welcome Prof. Johanna Thoma, Chair of Ethics at the University of Bayreuth.

The workshop will be held on May 28th 2024, the day preceding the 7th International Conference “Economic Philosophy” - Market(s) and Democracy, Thursday 29th May - Friday 31st in Reims, France. We invite all young researchers who might be interested in presenting a contribution or simply taking part in the discussions to apply. For those willing to present, we request them to submit an abstract of one page (max, without bibliography); for those willing to attend without presenting, a brief motivation will be sufficient. All works dealing with one of these levels or questionings are welcome, whether they come from theory or practice, philosophy, sociology or the history of science: epistemological works, contemporary case studies, historical case studies, reflections on the transfer of models or concepts, etc.

We encourage young scholars (widely defined) researching in economics, philosophy, sociology, history of economic thought or any related discipline to apply to this workshop, either as a speaker or as a simple participant.

Applictaion

Apply by filling out the form on the webpage of the workshop. Some travel and accommodation stipends are available. The language of the workshop will be English. The deadline for application is February 29th. Successful candidates will be notified by late March.

For further information and inquiries, please contact us: ysiworkshop.reims2024@gmail.com

Applictaion Deadline: 29 February 2024

Summer School: Keynesian Macroeconomics and European Economic Policies (Berlin, July-August 2024)

29 July - 3 August 2024 | Berlin, Germany

The summer school aims at providing an introduction to Keynesian macroeconomics and to the problems of European economic policies to interested graduate students (MA and PhD) and junior researchers. It will consist of overview lectures, a panel discussion, student study groups, an SFC lab, and a poster session. The summer school will feature leading international researchers like Robert Blecker (USA), Yannis Dafermos (UK), Sebastian Gechert (Germany), Eckhard Hein (Germany), Heike Joebges (Germany), Marc Lavoie (France/Canada), Maria Nikolaidi (UK), Miriam Rehm (Austria) and Mark Setterfield (USA), covering the following areas:

The summer school language is English. Participants will be provided with an accommodation and meals during the summer school. There is no participation fee for the Summer School. Travel costs cannot be covered but a selected number of students may receive a partial travel stipend from INET's Young Scholar Initiative (YSI) based on their application and travel requirements. Please note that we share your application information with YSI for the purpose of selection of travel grants.

Application: Please apply through the web-form available on the summer school website. Deadline for applications is 29 February 2024. The application form will ask for a short CV (as a list) and a short letter of motivation (max. 400 words) to participate, in particular on how the Summer School relates to your study and research interests, and the name and e-mail address of one academic adviser who may be contacted for reference. Applicants will be informed by mid-May and participants will be provided with a reading package.

Application Deadline: 29 February 2024

Summer School: Markets and Governments: a Theoretical Appraisal (Rome, June 2024)

The discipline of economics occupies a central role in the social sciences. Its conclusions are a key reference in public discussions. From a theoretical point of view, however, the foundations of the discipline appear far from being unambiguously established. Its basic prescriptions rest on assumptions which still deserve to be more fully understood and explicitly discussed. The MGTA initiative attempts at reexamining a very classic theme in economic thought, the tension between markets and governments, from the perspective of contemporary economic theory.

This year’s summer school will focus on inequality, the design of markets and redistribution.

Market outcomes are shaped by inequalities. Individuals come to the market with differences in skills and productive abilities that reflect differences in socioeconomic backgrounds, the lottery at birth. They also come to the market with differences in preferences, on how much of their time they want to sell for money, what their consumptions style should be and also in their views on the desirability of political interference with market outcomes.

The design of markets determines to what extent differences in preferences, abilities, income and wealth are amplified or moderated. For instance, the market power of firms affects how much consumers have to pay for goods and services and how much money the recipients of capital income can make. Governments frequently interfere to reach more equitable market outcomes.

This year’s summer school will discuss the principles that justify such interventions. It will also look at drivers of inequality in market-based societies, and, moreover, it will consider the question how markets and public policy should be designed in response.

The school aims at offering a critical review of all these issues. We will alternate traditional lectures by academics who have contributed to different areas of contemporary economic theory, with discussions around the presentation of recently published texts. In particular, the school aims to provide an opportunity to contrast contemporary economic theory with recent developments in political philosophy.

The school is organized over three days at Villa Mondragone, in Monteporzio Catone.

Preliminary Programme

JUNE 19th

JUNE 20th

JUNE 21st

We expect to accommodate a maximum of seventy participants at the school. Interested participants should apply by filling the registration form. The deadline for applying to the school is March 15th, 2024. Acceptance decisions will be communicated by April 3rd, 2024.

To ensure effective participation, and to guarantee that the available seats will actually be filled, the school requires a registration fee of 200 euros. However, we are pleased to announce the availability of several scholarships that will guarantee exemption from the tuition, for all the successful applicants without research funds.

For further information please visit the website.

Application Deadline: 15 March 2024

Summer School: Political Economy of Finance (Providence, June 2024)

June 17 – Friday, June 21, 2024 | Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs, Brown University

Organizers

Benjamin Braun (Max Planck) and Mark Blyth (Brown)

Location

Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs, Brown University

Funded by

Stone Inequality Initiative; The Rhodes Centre for International Finance and Economics; Hewlett Foundation

Concept

Who will finance the green transition? Are states that want to too scared of the bond market? Why are private equity firms seemingly everywhere? Why are Global Asset Managers the same folks that give ESG ratings? Finance is at the heart of the political economy of capitalism, but studying it can be difficult. Because of the technical knowledge required, barriers of entry are high. Young scholars of finance outside of economics often lack that depth of knowledge and a community of like-minded colleagues within their disciplines who can help them fill that gap. The good news: Some of the brightest social scientists in the field are eager to share their expertise, at the first ever “political economy of finance summer school”.

The summer school will connect promising young researchers with some of the leading scholars of finance. Our goal is to provide world-class training, while building an intellectual community in an excitingly interdisciplinary field.

Format

Multi-topic multi-day workshops (details below). PhD applicants who are within a year of submitting their dissertation can indicate their interest in staying for the whole week

PhD student workshop topics (June 17 & 18)

Early career scholars workshop topics (June 19-21)

Instructors

Application

The summer school is open to US and internationally-based PhD and early career scholars (including postdocs) from economics, economic geography, history of economics, political science, and sociology. The cost of travel to and from Providence, as well as hotel accommodation during the summer school, will be covered for all participants.

Application materials
1) Cover letter addressing your motivation to attend (no more than one page)
2) CV
3) Writing sample: a project description or draft chapter/paper for PhD students; a paper or published article for junior scholars

Submit materials as a single combined pdf via the link below.

Questions? email: rhodes_center@brown.edu

For Application and further information please visit the website.

Application Deadline: 1 February 2024

Conference Papers, Reports, and Podcasts

ASE Podcast Season 3 Episode 4: A Conversation with Dr. Aashima Sinha

In this month's podcast, we learn more about Dr. Aashima Sinha, Research Scholar at the Levy Institute of Bard College. Dr. Sinha provides her insights into how cultural and societal values influence economic decision-making, her multifaceted areas of research, the capability approach framework, and the unifying thread of gender in her work.

Smith and Marx Walk into a Bar: A History of Economics Podcast, Episode 75

The Podcast "Smith and Marx Walk into a Bar: A History of Economics Podcast" is delighted to announce a new episode.

For this week, we do a literature review episode, discussing recent work from the history of economics that we found interesting. We hope you will too. Check it out! You can also find here links to the articles we picked.

Please find a link to the lastest episode here.

Job Postings

Positive Money EU, Belgium

The Researcher position will produce in-house research while also managing research projects with external partners and work closely with the policy team to produce policy briefings and provide the team with accurate facts and evidence, making sure our campaign messaging and proposals are rooted in rigorous analysis. We are looking for an excellent communicator, passionate about our work, with strong quantitative and analytical skills.

Key responsibilities include:

The role is hybrid, based in Brussels. We are open to part-time or full-time candidates and offer a salary of €46,500 with generous benefits and dynamic and inclusive work environment.

Closing date for applications: February 15th at 9AM CET.

Check out the full advert on our website (https://www.positivemoney.eu/vacancies/researcher-2024/) for more information and apply at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSexBSmtz3QkkGEopSUTzHe5z7x2jVwkRh5-tBYx5dn0rCVgjg/viewform.

Unite the Union, UK

Job title: Economist / Senior Economist

Put your economics skills to work: help us rebuild the power of the workers’ movement. We believe it’s time for the trade union movement to be reborn. Unite, as the biggest industrial union in Britain and Ireland, is leading the way. Since the election of our new general secretary Sharon Graham two and a half years ago, we have fought over 800 industrial disputes and won over £430 million for our members. But this is just the beginning.

It is our members, reps and shop stewards who win these battles and build power on the ground. But to do so they need ammunition: including rigorous analysis from our inter-disciplinary team of strategic researchers with expertise in economics, forensic accounting, statistics, data science, and more. As an economist in our team, you will help analyse industries, model global supply chain networks, forecast sector demand, help build worker-led transition plans – and much more. You will never stop learning.

And you will help us shift the big narratives. Our cutting-edge research on profit-driven “greedflation” pushed the national debate, boosting workers’ confidence to demand their share. In a general election year, you will help realise our Workers’ Manifesto, our own vision of an economy run for and by working people. You will help work on long-term strategies to rebuild industry and investment, with a worker-led green transition that leaves no one behind.

Working for us is not like working at a think tank or university. This is a live struggle, with people’s futures immediately at stake. If you have passion and commitment, an inquiring mind – and you want to see your research have an impact, we’d like to hear from you.

This position is open to applicants with varying experience, from recent PhD students to senior economists.

This role is being advertised internally and externally. Applications are encouraged from people who are under-represented in the union. We actively encourage women, Black and Asian Ethnic minority, disabled and LGBT+ people to apply.

Details and link to application form here: https://unitetheunion.current-vacancies.com/Jobs/Advert/3375317?cid=1950

Application Deadline: 4 February 2024

University of Vienna, Austria

Job Title: Prae-doctoral researcher within the project „The Cultural Political Economy of Bitcoin in the Global South.”

The Faculty of Social Sciences (Department of Political Science) of the University of Vienna seeks fill the position of a Prae-doctoral researcher within the project „The Cultural Political Economy of Bitcoin in the Global South.”

The advertised position is part the project “The Cultural Political Economy of Bitcoin in the Global South. Social Structures, Practices and Imaginaries of Bitcoin Adoption in El Salvador” (BITELSA), which is funded by the Anniversary Fund of the Austrian National Bank (OeNB). The project is led by Dr. Mag. Tobias Boos, BA and based at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Vienna. The project also collaborates with the university-wide Latin America Research Network.

Start of employment: as soon as possible
End of employment: depending on start, duration 2 years/24 months)
Extent of employment: 30.00 hours/week
Classification according to the Collective Bargaining Agreement for University Staff: Article 48 salary group B1 Grundstufe (praedoc) with relevant work experience determining the assignment to a particular salary grade. (Job grading in accordance with collective bargaining agreement).
Workplace: University of Vienna (home office possible)

Your Tasks:

Your Profil:

Documents to be submitted:

Selection process and next steps: Rolling application process. For more information about the advertised position, please contact Boos, Tobias, tobias.boos@univie.ac.at.

Important: Applications are not processed through the University of Vienna Job Center. Please send your application by email.

The University pursues a non-discriminatory employment policy and values equal opportunities, as well as diversity (http://diversity.univie.ac.at/). The University lays special emphasis on increasing the number of women in senior and in academic positions. Given equal qualifications, preference will be given to female applicants.

Website-Link: https://bitelsa.univie.ac.at/?page_id=197

Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

Job Title: Researcher/senior researcher in ESG and climate risk – focus on insurance protection gap

Within the European project ESG UPTAKE aimed to strengthen and mainstream ESG and climate risk assessment across central banks and supervisory authorities in the EU, we are looking for a researcher/senior researcher to join the team.

The project is funded by the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support of the European Commission (DG Reform) and implemented by a consortium of research and academic institutions coordinated by the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, with the scientific contribution of the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE of Frankurt and of the WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business).

The candidate will work with Irene Monasterolo and her team at the analysis of the Insurance Protection Gap in Italy and Europe, analysing the supply and demand side drivers, codesigning environmental and climate scenarios for supervisory insurance stress-test, and providing policy recommendations about tools to fill the Insurance Protection Gap, starting from the case of Italy.

Minimum requirements:

What we offer:

The position is initially funded for 2 years, with possibility of extension. Deadline for application: 15th February 2024 Starting date: 1st April 2024 (negotiable)
Location: WU Wien, Institute for Ecological Economics, Vienna (AT)
Applications should be sent to: irene.monasterolo@gmail.com including (i) cover letter, (ii) one reference letter (iii) CV with list of publications (iv) two research articles.

For Application and further information please visit the website.

Application Deadline: 15 February 2024

Awards

Call for Submissions: Kurt Rothschild Award

We are calling for submissions to this year’s Kurt Rothschild Award for Economics Research and Journalism!

The Karl-Renner-Institut and the Social Democratic Parliamentary Group established this award in memory of the considerable achievements of the Austrian Professor of Economics Kurt Rothschild.

With this award we honour social and economic scientists whose excellent research leads to relevant insights because they situate economic questions in a wider context, rather than reproducing neoclassical myths and beliefs. The awardees move beyond their purely academic tasks by also communicating these insights towards a broader audience and getting involved in the public debate. Submissions for the Kurt Rothschild Award 2024 will be received until 22 April 2024; please find the submission form and further information on our webpage. Qualified submissions consist of both academic publications as well as articles directed at a broad media audience. It is important that there are elements of each category – scientific basis AND broader media communication.

We are looking forward to exciting submissions!

Submission Deadline: 22 April 2024

Journals

Ecological Economics 217

Michael C. Mew: Why and when do reserves estimates in mining change and innovations take place?

Anna M. Bartczak, Wiktor Budziński, Bartosz Jusypenko, Piotr W. Boros: The Impact of Health Status and Experienced Disutility on Air Quality Valuation

Gilles Grolleau, Christoph Weber: The effect of inflation on CO2 emissions: An analysis over the period 1970–2020

Charlotte S. Bez, Michael Ash, James K. Boyce: Environmental inequality in industrial brownfields: Evidence from French municipalities

Alain Naef: The impossible love of fossil fuel companies for carbon taxes

Hélène Rey-Valette, Jean-Michel Salles, Thierry Blayac: Perceptions of Ecosystem Services and Bonds with Nature: The Case of Fish-Farming Ponds in France

Julia Naime, Arild Angelsen, Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, Erin O. Sills: Participation, anticipation effects and impact perceptions of two collective incentive-based conservation interventions in Ucayali, Peru

Simon Rabaa, Robert Wilken, Sylvie Geisendorf: Does recalling energy efficiency measures reduce subsequent climate-friendly behavior? An experimental study of moral licensing rebound effects

Jonas Van der Slycken, Brent Bleys: Is Europe faring well with growth? Evidence from a welfare comparison in the EU-15 (1995–2018)

D. Guzzo, B. Walrave, N. Videira, I.C. Oliveira, D.C.A. Pigosso: Towards a systemic view on rebound effects: Modelling the feedback loops of rebound mechanisms

Ray Galvin: Reducing poverty in the UK to mitigate energy poverty by the 10% and LIHC indicators: What tax changes are needed, and what are the consequences for CO2 emissions?

Susan E.M. Cesar de Oliveira, Louise Nakagawa, Gabriela Russo Lopes, Jaqueline C. Visentin, Matheus Couto, Daniel E. Silva, Francisco d'Albertas, Bruna F. Pavani, Rafael Loyola, Chris West: The European Union and United Kingdom's deforestation-free supply chains regulations: Implications for Brazil

Harald F. Grabher, Karlheinz Erb, Simron Singh, Helmut Haberl: Household energy systems based on biomass: Tracing material flows from source to service in rural Ethiopia

Zafarani Uwingabire, Nicola Gallai: Impacts of degraded pollination ecosystem services on global food security and nutrition

Max Polewsky, Stephan Hankammer, Robin Kleer, David Antons: Degrowth vs. Green Growth. A computational review and interdisciplinary research agenda

Christoph Schulze, Bettina Matzdorf, Jens Rommel, Mikołaj Czajkowski, Marina García-Llorente, Inés Gutiérrez-Briceño, Lina Larsson, Katarzyna Zagórska, Wojciech Zawadzki: Between farms and forks: Food industry perspectives on the future of EU food labelling

Joël Foramitti, Ivan Savin, Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh: How carbon pricing affects multiple human needs: An agent-based model analysis

Judith Mutuku, Mark Tocock, Maria Yanotti, Dugald Tinch, Darla Hatton MacDonald: Public perceptions of the value of reducing marine plastics in Australian waters

Alejandro Agafonow, Marybel Perez: In search of a non-anthropocentric middle-range theory of the firm: On how the Patagonia Purpose Trust granted a controlling stake to nature

Caleb Gallemore, Thu Thuy Pham, Matthew Hamilton, Darla K. Munroe: Vietnam's Payments for Forest Ecosystem Services scheme's puzzling role in protecting longstanding forests as deforestation rates rise

Astghik Mavisakalyan, Swati Sharma, Clas Weber: Pro-environmental behavior and subjective well-being: Culture has a role to play

Michael Stecher, Stefan Baumgärtner: Quantifying agents’ causal responsibility in dynamical systems

Maurizio Malpede, Marco Percoco: The long-term economic effects of aridification

Charles Guay-Boutet, Mathieu Dufour: Estimating the relationship between EROI and profitability of oil sands mining, 1997–2016

Francesca Lipari, Lara Lázaro-Touza, Gonzalo Escribano, Ángel Sánchez, Alberto Antonioni: When the design of climate policy meets public acceptance: An adaptive multiplex network model

Peter Berck, Molly Sears, Rebecca L.C. Taylor, Carly Trachtman, Sofia B. Villas-Boas: Reduce, reuse, redeem: Deposit-refund recycling programs in the presence of alternatives

Qishi Zhang, Bo Li, Jing-Yu Liu, Yizhi Deng, Runsen Zhang, Wenchao Wu, Yong Geng: Assessing the distributional impacts of ambitious carbon pricing in China's agricultural sector

Anton Brännlund, Lauri Peterson: Power politics: How electric grievances shape election outcomes

Tobias Heimann, Ruth Delzeit: Land for fish: Quantifying the connection between the aquaculture sector and agricultural markets

Xiaolong Feng, Huanguang Qiu, Mingyue Liu, Jianjun Tang: Innovation of grassland ecological governance systems: Synergy between government regulation and grassroots governance

Xue Yang, Chao Zhang, Xinyi Li, Zhi Cao, Peng Wang, Heming Wang, Gang Liu, Ziqian Xia, Dajian Zhu, Wei-Qiang Chen: Multinational dynamic steel cycle analysis reveals sequential decoupling between material use and economic growth

Lutz Philip Hecker, Astrid Sturm, Lisa Querhammer, Frank Wätzold: Cost-effectiveness of state-dependent versus state-independent agri-environment schemes for biodiversity conservation

C. Galiana-Carballo, M.G. Rivera-Ferre, P.F. Méndez, G. Palau-Salvador: Reducing fossil fuel dependency in smallholding farming in l'Horta de València, Spain: A socio-metabolic approach

Forum for Social Economics 53 (1)

Priya & S. P. Singh: Factors Influencing the Adoption of Sustainable Agricultural Practices: A Systematic Literature Review and Lesson Learned for India

Lan Thi Mai Nguyen, Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen: Market Reaction to the Announcements of Free Trade Agreements: Evidence from Vietnam

Muhammad Salman Khan, Sarah De Nardi: The Affectual-Social Ecology of Cultural Artefacts: Illegal Markets and Religious Vandalism in Swat Valley, Pakistan

Mangirdas Morkūnas, Gabrielė Sirgėdaitė: Motives Underlying the Consumption of Black Market Cigarettes among Young People

Daniel Silander: The European Commission on Sustainable Development. A New Normative Power in Its Making?

Fiona Ottaviani: Sustainable Well-Being Indicators and Public Policy: A Cluster Analysis

Iberian Journal of the History of Economic Thought 10 (2)

Oz Iazdi: Ortho-Heterodox Biases and the Economist Algorithms of ChatGPT

Emilio Ocampo: Capitalism, Populism and Democracy: Revisiting Samuelson’s Reformulation of Schumpeter

Estrella Trincado: Manipulation and sexism in anarchism society: The case of Gustave Courbet

Rocío Sánchez-Lissen, Camilo Lebón Sánchez: El Instituto Universitario de Ciencias de la Empresa (IUCE): origen de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales de la Universidad de Sevilla y de sus estudios de Administración y Dirección de Empresas

Abraham Ortiz Miranda: Moneda y política: la herencia aristotélica en el contractualismo

International Critical Thought 13 (4)

Renjiang Chen: The Law of Uneven Development and the Transition to a New World System: On the Spatial Political Economy of Socialism

Derek R. Ford: From “Authentic” to Actual Marxist Educational Theory: Advancing Revolutionary Pedagogies

Kalim Siddiqui: Marxian Analysis of Capitalism and Crises

Lidan Song: The Origin, Current Situation and Trends of Racism in the West

Carolina Bouchardet: The Colors of Content Moderation: A Portfolio of Brazilian Resistances to Coloniality on Instagram

Antonio Pele, Stephen Riley, Katharina Bauer: Medicine, Dissent and the “Chloroquinization” of Truth: Brazil and Pandemic

Radhika Desai, Patrick Theuret, Rocco Lacorte, Alberto Lombardo: World Political Parties and Building a Community with a Shared Future for Humanity

Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 47 (1)

Celia Lessa Kerstenetzky, Marcio Alvarenga Junior, Lucas Costa, Ricardo Bielschowsky: Public social services and sustainable development: estimating opportunities in the global south

Zdravka Todorova: Social processes of oppression in the stratified economy and Veblenian feminist post Keynesian connections

Don J. Webber, Gissell Huaccha: Rethinking productivity: the crucial role of demand

Laura Barbosa de Carvalho, Gilberto Tadeu Lima, Gustavo Pereira Serra: Household debt, knowledge capital accumulation, and macrodynamic performance

Pintu Parui: Fiscal expansion, government debt and economic growth: a post-Keynesian perspective

Jinsong Wang, Luoqiu Tang, Yueqiao Li: Real estate assets, heterogeneous firms, and debt stability

Alexandre Chirat, Basile Clerc: Convergence on inflation and divergence on price control among post Keynesian pioneers: insights from Galbraith and Lerner

Donald W. Katzner: The past is only prologue – not the future: response to my critics

New Political Economy 29 (1)

Dylan Sullivan, Michail Moatsos & Jason Hickel: Capitalist reforms and extreme poverty in China: unprecedented progress or income deflation?

Assaf S. Bondy & Erez Maggor: Balancing the scales: labour incorporation and the politics of growth model transformation

Nicola Nones: Political independence through monetary dependence? The case of Montenegro

Shamel Azmeh: ‘Saving the WTO’: middle power insiders and joint statement initiatives at the World Trade Organisation

Salam Alshareef: A contender state’s multiscalar mediation of transnational capital: the belt and road in the Middle East

A. Katharina Keil & Julia K. Steinberger: Cars, capitalism and ecological crises: understanding systemic barriers to a sustainability transition in the German car industry

Emily Anne Wolff: Diversity, solidarity and the construction of the ingroup among (post)colonial migrants in The Netherlands, 1945–1968

Joan Torrent-Sellens: Homo digitalis: narrative for a new political economy of digital transformation and transition

Viktor Skyrman: Why didn’t Europe securitise more? The institutionalisation of covered bonds as an efficient instrument for financialisation

Jonas Gamso & Anna Dimitrova: Rewarding a friend: Does the World Bank direct non-commercial risk insurance to countries that support US foreign policy interests?

Review of Behavioral Economics 10 (2)-(4)

Vol. 10 (2)

Alejandro Hortal and Luis Enrique Segoviano Contreras: Behavioral Public Policy and Well-Being: Towards a Normative Demarcation of Nudges and Sludges

Xiaodong Chen and Miraj Ahmed Bhuiyan: Opportunity Inequality of Property Income Distribution: Measurement, Decomposition, and Comparison

Yong Lu, Marek Nieznnski and Micha' Obidzi'ski: The Effects of Expected Value and Episodic Memory on Preference Reversals

Vol. 10 (3)

J. Braxton Gately: At Least I Tried: Partial Willful Ignorance, Information Acquisition, and Social Preferences

Yossef Tobol, Erez Siniver, and Gideon Yaniv: Celebrity Commercial Boosts Viewers' Dishonesty: An Experimental Study

An Chen and Manuel Rach: Who Chooses Which Retirement Income? A CPT-based analysis

Jan Schulz and Daniel M. Mayerhoffer: A Network Approach to Expenditure Cascades

Vol. 10 (4)

Natalia V. Czap, Hans Czap, and Ilir Miteza: Learning to Trust: Does Trust Change Over Time in a Collaborative Project-Based Learning Environment?

Shinsuke Ikeda, Eiji Yamamura, and Yoshiro Tsutsui: COVID-19 Enhanced Diminishing Sensitivity in Prospect-Theory Risk Preferences: A Panel Analysis

Haifeng Zhang, Yumeng Pang, Yuyang Zhang, and Peter C. Coyte: Spiritual Beliefs and Risk Aversion Behavior: Evidence from Chinese Numerology

Shashank Kathpal, Asif Akhtar, and Asma Zaheer: Financial Literacy and Heuristic Driven Biases: The Role of Risk Perception

Revue de la régulation 35

Louison Cahen-Fourot, Gaël Plumecocq et Franck-Dominique Vivien: Réinterroger le capitalisme contemporain : vers une écologie politique de l'écologie

Sylvain Maechler & Valérie Boisvert: Du calcul biophysique à l'évaluation des risques financiers.

Béatrice Cointe & Antonin Pottier: Understanding why degrowth is absent from mitigation scenarios: Modelling choices and practices in the IAM community

Nicolas Béfort, Pascal Grouiez, Romain Debref & Franck-Dominique Vivien: Les récits de la bioéconomie comme

Nona Nenovska: Configuration institutionnelle nationale et gouvernance locale des biens communs complexes Le cas d'une aire marine protégée en Bulgarie

Interviews

Inge Røpke, Clive Spash, Louison Cahen-Fourot, Gaël Plumecocq et Franck-Dominique Vivien: Building an ecological economy, between science and politics

PhD Thesis

Simona Bozhinovska: Mise en œuvre de politiques monétaires en régime d'accumulation des réserves de change : une approche par la monnaie endogène. Aperçus des opérations des banques centrales macédonienne et suisse (2005-2020)

Héctor Labat Moles: Le capitalisme dominé par la finance après le « shadow banking » : implications analytiques, d'instabilité financière et macroéconomiques

Sylvain Maechler: Accounting for Nature: Risk, Uncertainty, and the Global Economy of the Ecological Crisis

Alban Pellegris: Le découplage entre la consommation d'énergie et le PIB. Questionnements théoriques et évaluations empiriques du rôle de l'énergie dans le processus de croissance économique.

Science & Society 88 (1)

Special Issue: Sixty-Five Years of the Cuban Revolution

Frank Josué Solar Cabrales: Cuba's Socialism: Certainties and Crossroads

José Luis Rodríguez: The Cuban Economy in the Last Decade: Balance and Outlook

Camila Piñeiro Harnecker: Labor Relations in Reform-Era Cuba

Luis Emilio Aybar Toledo: On the Revolution

Maritza Lopez McBean: Community Organizing for Neighborhood Transformation: Facing Evolving Challenges

Olga Fernández Ríos:On Socialism and Popular Participation in Cuba

Claudio Katz: Cuba: Achievements and Crossroads

Books and Book Series

Beyond Misbehaving: Changing Universities, Pluralism, and the Evolution of a Heterodox Behavioural Economist

Peter E. Earl | 2024, Cambridge University Press

Beyond Misbehaving is both my intellectual autobiography and a self-help career guide. It provides a deeply introspective tell-all account of a life spent as a non-mainstream economist working in universities in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. It explains how I began to work in the field of behavioural economics around the same time as the 2017 Nobel Laurate, Richard Thaler, but went down a very different, much more radical pathway than he did as a behavioural economist, a pathway that has resulted in an approach that should appeal to many heterodox economists as well as offering wider opportunities for those who have previously known only Thaler-style behavioural economics.

Beyond Misbehaving yields many career lessons and will be especially valuable to early-career behavioural and/or heterodox economists who want to understand how, and why, the way that academic career games need to be played has changed over the past half-century. Along the way, it provides a student’s perspective on what it was like to study economics at the University of Cambridge in the 1970s, both as an undergraduate and as a research student. It explores, via my experience over four decades, the challenges of teaching economics in a pluralistic way, how I sought to deal with them, and why they have become increasingly acute. It explores the challenges that research students must be able to deal with and the role that modern PhD management systems play in reducing risks of non-submission or having to revise and resubmit doctoral dissertations, in sharp contrast to how things were when today’s senior academics were early-career researchers. It shares senior-level experience on what heterodox economists need to do to survive and prosper in a world of research audits that favour their mainstream rivals – including the importance of being mindful about the psychology of being a scholar and pursuing promotion.

As a teaser, material from the preface and the introduction to Beyond Misbehaving is available here.

Buddha, Wisdom and Economics: A Contribution to the Art of Happiness

By S. Niggol Seo | Edward Elgar, 2024

In this innovative book, S. Niggol Seo investigates the intrinsic and intriguing relationship between the fundamental teachings of Buddhism and the principles of economics and happiness. Offering a unique perspective on the topic, Seo delves deep into the theoretical foundations of economics and Buddhist teachings, highlighting how these seemingly polar opposite thought systems cross paths.

Seo argues that when it comes to markets, prices, interest rates, growth, poverty, and environmental protection, Buddhism and economics share a number of common economic ideas. Written in an accessible style, Seo presents both a succinct and encompassing description of Buddhism for economists, as well as a comprehensive overview of economics. Buddha, Wisdom and Economics brings together in a balanced and systematic way the common ground between both endeavours. It further examines important topics in the field in light of Buddhist teachings, including economic growth and happiness, poverty and environmental protection.

This thought-provoking book will be an invigorating read for undergraduate and postgraduate economics students and to those with a particular interest in development economics, religion, welfare and happiness studies. It also offers ground-breaking insights for economic policy-makers looking to better understand the intersection between Buddhism and economics.

Please find a link to the book here.

Complexity Economics and Sustainable Development: A Computational Framework for Policy Priority Inference

By Omar A. Guerrero and Gonzalo Castañeda | Cambridge University Press, 2024

The Sustainable Development Goals are global objectives set by the UN. They cover fundamental issues in development such as poverty, education, economic growth, and climate. Despite growing data across policy dimensions, popular statistical approaches offer limited solutions as these datasets are not big or detailed enough to meet their technical requirements. Complexity Economics and Sustainable Development provides a novel framework to handle these challenging features, suggesting that complexity science, agent-based modelling, and computational social science can overcome these limitations. Building on interdisciplinary socioeconomic theory, it provides a new framework to quantify the link between public expenditure and development while accounting for complex interdependencies and public governance. Accompanied by comprehensive data of worldwide development indicators and open-source code, it provides a detailed construction of the analytic toolkit, familiarising readers with a diverse set of empirical applications and drawing policy implications that are insightful to a diverse readership.

Please find a link the book here.

Handbook of Feminist Research Methodologies in Management and Organization Studies

Edited by Saija Katila, Susan Meriläinen and Emma Bell | Edward Elgar, 2024

The Handbook of Feminist Research Methodologies in Management and Organization Studies focuses on the interlinkages between feminist theories, methodologies and research methods, and their practical implementation in business and management research. Featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field of management and organization studies, this groundbreaking Handbook analyses key theoretical texts and their methodological implications, as well as topical approaches including postcolonial feminism and critical race theory.

Please find a link to the book here.

Immanent Externalities The Reproduction of Life in Capital

Environmental degradation, crises in care and the predations of finance capital impose new challenges to human reproduction. It is imperative to understand their roots in capitalism. But how best to do so? This book develops the concept of ‘immanent externalities’ to grasp the non-capitalist life processes produced by – and necessary for – capitalist reproduction. Immanent Externalities thus considers the category of reproduction by means of a philosophical re-reading of the three volumes of Marx’s Capital. In doing so, the book locates capitalism’s fundamental contradiction as that between the reproduction of profit-driven activity and ecologically situated human life, suggesting new orientations for theory and practice today.

Please find a link to the book here.

Marx: Key Concepts

Edited by Riccardo Bellofiore and Tommaso Redolfi Riva | Edward Elgar, 2024

This scholarly book conducts an extensive exploration into the central ideas of Karl Marx, focussing on the key concepts that have defined his thought and legacy. Bringing together a wealth of internationally renowned contributors, across different generations, Marx: Key Concepts analyses in depth Marx’s theories of (surplus) value, money, and capital, and their reception in classical and contemporary economic, sociological and philosophical debates.

Chapters cover Marx’s core writings on the meaning of critique of political economy, materialism, dialectical method, real abstraction, absolute value, money, automatic Subject, reproduction, original accumulation, material interchange, domination, social reproduction, and pre-capitalist modes of production.

Rediscovering the theoretical stratified density of the basic notions in Capital, the book provides crucial insight into the complexity and global significance of Marx’s ideas and their relevance for the understanding of contemporary society, politics and economy. This book will be essential reading for academics, scholars and researchers interested in the history and the methodology of economic thought, social science, political economy, sociology, and political theory.

Please find a link to the book here.

Heterodox Graduate Programs, Scholarships and Grants

University of Leeds, UK

Job title: Opportunity to apply for a 4-year PhD studentship at the University of Leeds, fully funded by the EU Horizon Europe project “Models, Assessment & Policy for Sustainability” (MAPS)

Topic: Examining the role of inequality reduction for making welfare states more growth-independent

Supervisors: Professor Milena Büchs, Dr Richard Bärnthaler

We are seeking to recruit an outstanding PhD candidate (UK home fees status only) to conduct research on the role of inequality reduction in making welfare states more growth-independent. The project will examine relationships between inequality, social issues and social expenditure, as well as the role of progressive income and wealth taxation for redistribution and state revenues in a postgrowth context.

This project is part of a larger work package on “Safeguarding Social Outcomes” in a postgrowth context within the Horizon Europe funded project “Models, Assessment & Policy for Sustainability” (MAPS).

Applicants will have at least a merit from a Master’s degree in a relevant discipline, social science methods training, and experience with quantitative data analysis. Experience with narrative systematic reviews is also desirable. The funding conditions are limited to applicants who fulfil UK home fees eligibility.

How to apply: please submit your CV, transcripts from previous degrees, and a motivation statement (max 1,000 words) to Milena Büchs on m.m.buchs@leesds.ac.uk by 29 January 2024, 9am CET.

Stipend: UKRI standard living allowance (£18,622 in 2023/24); UK fees and cost for fieldwork travel and conferences will be covered by the project budget. For queries and more information please email Milena Büchs on m.m.buchs@leeds.ac.uk.

Application deadline: 29 January 2024

Interviews: week commencing 12 February 2024

Start date: 1 June 2024

EPOG-Doctoral network (11 PhD scholarships)

The MSCA-funded EPOG-DN (Economic Policies for the Global bifurcation -Doctoral Network) project aims to establish a community of economists capable of collaborating with various disciplines, sectors and stakeholders to address ecological challenges. It gathers 8 full partners (beneficiaries) and 12 associated partners from different fields and sectors.

This project explores the pathways toward achieving strong sustainability, where social, economic and environmental objectives are not substitutable with each other. The project introduces the concept of global bifurcation, which encompasses a range of multidimensional and systemic processes. The project proposes a distinctive strategy for tackling the complexity of global bifurcation, which involves a socio-technical, socio-economic and socio-ecological perspective, all working in concert to develop a systemic approach.

The EPOG-DN project offers 11 fully funded scholarships for doctoral candidates (DCs), as listed below:

Scholarships

More details here.
When to apply?

Applications submitted prior to March 1, 2024, will receive primary consideration and undergo review throughout the month of March. Nonetheless, we may consider applications received after this date until all positions are filled.

Application deadline: March 1, 2024 - 13:00 (Paris time).

International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE)

The International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE) is a three-and-a-half-year doctoral program offered jointly by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG), the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences, and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

The program offers doctoral degrees in sociology and political science. It begins with a 15-month period devoted to expanding students’ methodological skills and firming up their theoretical background in economic sociology, comparative and international political economy, and organization studies. Students undergo intensive training in research design and methods and participate in a biweekly doctoral colloquium. During this period, they also develop and defend their research proposal. The second part of the program comprises 27 months during which students concentrate on researching and writing their thesis. They are encouraged to spend four months at one of the partner universities in France, Italy, Denmark or the United States. IMPRS-SPCE contracts or scholarships are awarded to enable doctoral students to complete first-rate doctoral theses during their time at the IMPRS-SPCE. If the presentation of interim results at an academic conference helps to achieve this aim, the IMPRS-SPCE will support it. The Summer Conference on Economy and Society, at which many students present their work in progress to peers and leading scholars in their fields, offers such an opportunity.

The IMPRS-SPCE offers:

Structure of the program

Students complete foundational coursework to strengthen their theoretical background and methodological skills.

During the first year, students complete foundational coursework to strengthen their theoretical background and methodological skills. They also submit a first-year paper about their doctoral thesis. Students discuss their first-year paper in a joint workshop with the IMPRS Faculty at the end of the first year.

During the first six months, all new IMPRS students work at the MPIfG. After this period, students with advisors at the University of Cologne or the University of Duisburg-Essen move to their advisor's institution. The second phase of the program is dedicated to thesis research and writing. These years provide a structure of guided independence, allowing students to concentrate on their research and receive feedback through exchange with peers, advisors, and other scholars. Students have the chance to spend up to four months at the School's US, Italian, or French partner universities or to pursue a double doctorate from the University of Cologne and Sciences Po, Paris.

There are several opportunities for students to present research in progress to peers and scholars. This refers to colloquium presentations (especially in the second year) as well as to participation in an international conference (usually in the third year). A special highlight is the International Max Planck Summer Conference on Economy, Politics and Society, where selected third year students have the chance to discuss their work with leading senior scholars in their field as well as with doctoral students from the IMPRS partner universities worldwide.

Students may participate in German language courses and our professional development program, including courses on academic publishing, scientific writing in English, and computer programs.

We look forward to receiving your online application (see button below). It should be submitted in English. Applications by email cannot be considered. For further information on the program and how to apply, please visit https://imprs.mpifg.de. Applications will be accepted from the beginning of December 2023 and must be submitted by February 15, 2024.

Application Deadline: 15 February 2024

University of Greenwich, UK

Job Title: Funded PhD Scholarship

The Civic University: what is the future role of the University? University of Greenwich as a place-based civic institution

We are offering an interdisciplinary PhD scholarship (Vice Chancellor Scholarship) to develop the vision of Greenwich as a Civic University. The Civic University, an old concept but for UKHE today a new ‘business model’ (Goddard et al., 2016), requires an ability to integrate teaching, research and engagement with the outside world in a way that enhances all participants. This VC scholarship will develop a framework to ensure that research has socio-economic impact, and that teaching has strong community involvement with the long-term objective of widening participation.

We are looking for a PhD candidate with cross-disciplinary Political Economy and Sociology experience and an interest in Education. See here for further details.

Application Deadline: 20 February 2024

Calls for Support

'Call from economists': The European Green Deal requires a renewed economic modelling toolbox

Pierre Jacques (UCLouvain, Belgium) and Camille Souffron (Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS Paris), France) wrote a working paper available here. Its main point is that in the context of the EU Green Deal, it is urgent for the EU Commission to renew the economic modelling toolbox which it uses to guide policy making.

The working paper is part of a larger initiative, which we led together with the team of Philippe Lamberts, the Belgian member of EU Parliament who organized the Beyond Growth conference in May. Based on the paper's recommendations, our idea is now to gather a maximum of signatures to publish a 'call from economists' to push the European Commission, and DG ECFIN in particular, to use a larger diversity of economic models. The call would be signed exclusively by scholars or experts working on economic matters (no politicians would be involved) and published in the Financial Times (tbc) a little before the European Commission publishes its 2024 Winter Economist Forecast by the end of January.

You will see that the call is voluntarily sober in style and advocates for the diversification of tools rather than the pure replacement of existing models. Its aim is to create public debate on the matter ahead of EU elections and to establish a dialogue with the European Commission. In a second stage, we hope to meet with the staff of DG ECFIN, organise seminars and establish a collaboration that will progressively change their internal practices.

The support of as many scholars as possible is therefore extremely valuable to provide visibility to the arguments presented.

If you are interested, I would like to kindly ask you to add your name, title, institution and country to the list in the call accessible here. Don't hesitate to share the paper and the call with economist colleagues who may be interested to co-sign as well.

For Your Information

COSMOLOCALISM Project Conclusion

The following is a closure message for an ERC project that just concluded, by its PI Vasilis Kostakis.

In the midst of a systemic crisis, it's crucial to raise awareness about new post-capitalist futures. This was the primary goal of COSMOLOCALISM, an ERC project that concluded just ten days ago.

For the past five years, COSMOLOCALISM studied the seeds of a political economy based on an alternative technology development framework. The commons reside at the very heart of it. Much like how Adam Smith showcased the possibility of a different production method with his renowned pin factory in the late 18th century, a diverse range of commons-based "lighthouse projects" foreshadow alternative methods to address wealth inequality in more sustainable ways.

Numerous technology initiatives exemplify this new production model. For instance, L’Atelier Paysan for agricultural machinery, WindEmpowerment for renewable energy, LibreSpace for nano-satellites, and OpenBionics for robotic and prosthetic devices. These initiatives harness a global pool of knowledge to create local products while contributing back to this knowledge base through design files, software, best practices, and expertise. In this operational framework, local communities may reduce their reliance on global supply chains because a significant portion of the production process occurs locally. These endeavors are built upon the principles of reciprocity and self-organization, emphasizing local independence, cultural diversity, and a shared global benefit.

COSMOLOCALISM delved deeply into these initiatives, leveraging their insights to drive pilot projects in Greece, Bhutan, and Estonia.

Below is a selection of publications from the project:

Vasilis Kostakis, Vasilis Niaros, and Chris Giotitsas: Beyond global versus local: illuminating a cosmolocal framework for convivial technology development

Vasilis Kostakishttps, Alex Pazaitishttps, and Minas Liarokapishttps: Beyond high-tech versus low-tech: A tentative framework for sustainable urban data governance

Ben Robra, Alex Pazaitis, Chris Giotitsas, and Mario Pansera: From creative destruction to convivial innovation - A post-growth perspective

Priavolou, Christina;Troullaki, Katerina; Tsiouris, Nikiforo; Giotitsas, Chris; Kostakis, Vasilis: Tracing sustainable production from a degrowth and localisation perspective: A case of 3D printers Creators

Katerina Troullaki, Stelios Rozakis, Kostas Latoufis, Chris Giotitsas, Christina Priavolou, and Fausto Freire: Sustainable Rural Electrification: Harnessing a Cosmolocal Wind

Alex Pazaitis, Vasilis Kostakis, and Wolfgang Drechsler: Towards a Theory of Value as a Commons