Issue 191 January 18, 2016 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory
First of all, I would like to point our European readers to the EuroMemorandum 2016 petition, which "analyses recent economic developments in Europe and emphasizes the strong need for an alternative economic policy that is based on the principles of democratic participation, social justice and environmental sustainability." The deadline for supporting the EuroMemorandum 2016 ends today - so in case you have not yet undersigned the EuroMemorandum you can do so here. In a similar vein, today's Newsletter also features a statement on UK Economic Policy under the header the "cracks begin to show" published by a group of concerned and critical economists from EREP network ('Economists for Rational Economic Policies').
I also wanted to let you know that the AEA ('American Economic Association') is currently running a survey among its members aiming at an evaluation of their recently founded set of new journals. In case you are a member of the AEA, you can use this survey to protest against the exclusionary orientation in AEA-journals, which not only neglect heterodox approaches but also other important branches of research, like history of economic thought or economic methodology. Thereby, it is interesting to note that the exclusion of the two subjects was not intended, but rather emerged spontanously. In June 2013 the homepage of the AEA still stated that the newly founded American Economic Journals “will accept articles appropriate to its respective subject division in such areas as: history of economic thought . . .", a remark that has by now disappeared from it's website (thanks go to Kevin Hoover for pointing this out).
Operating in the background of this development is indeed nothing more than the usual routine of mainstream economics to locate these subjects outside the economic discipline as emphasized by David Colander, who thankfully provided some further background knowledge on the subject.
"The policy [of the new journals] has retrogressed from when the journals were started, although I suspect they never really took history of thought seriously. I was on the AEA journal committee that decided on adding the journals and I encouraged the committee that they have a journal devoted to issues such as methodology and history of thought. I was the only supporter for that idea, and it went nowhere. But I did get the committee to agree that all the journals would be open to both history of thought and methodology. But that focus was quickly lost since the editors they appointed to head the journals, and the editorial boards, had no background in history of thought or methodology."
While this development might not come as a surprise to you, there is always some worth in exploring the practical aspects underlying the narrowness in current economic thought.
All the best,
Jakob
© public domain
15-16 June, 2016 | Aix-en-Provence, France
It is organized by GREQAM, in collaboration with the Philosophy-Economics Network, theInternational Network for Economic Method (INEM) and the Charles Gide Association for study of Economic Thought.
The focus of this international conference is “The economic agent and its representation(s)”. We support all contributors working on this topic to submit papers relevant to the theme. Other contributions from economic philosophy are welcome.
The program will consist of both contributed papers and keynote lectures given by:
The full call for papers is available here.
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Theme of the conference developed
Economic agent matters as much for economic theory as for empirical investigations that are based upon such models. It matters in the way institutions emerge, as to how societies get organized, and for the many devices contributing to the “general good” (whether they appear spontaneously, or are pragmatically and purposely created). It matters also for correcting incomplete or missing markets.
As economics represents and models society, economic analysis relies on ‘representational tools’ towards a better understanding of the economic world. Hence, how to represent the economic agent plays a crucial role and remains in all cases of major significance. The economic agent can be displayed in many ways, such as maximizing agent, possibly contrasted with rationally bounded (or “located”) agent, representative agent, possibly contrasted with agent of the agent-based modeling, and many others. The different kinds of representation can be complementary or can be (fully or partly) inconsistent. The various representations of agents imply different representations of the market(s), of the institution(s), and of ‘spheres’ where agents do appear as such (spheres of interaction, spheres of justice and spheres of power), given that these spheres are indeed different from simple market interactions.
From a philosophical point of view, what are the assumptions and implications of the use of the representative agent as it is developed in the frame of some economic models? Those that use of many heterogeneous agents, so to speak, “interacting”, for instance? What makes a complex world, if not such agents? How (and how much) do origins, cultures and civilizations in which agents are embedded really matter? Does evolution matter as such? Does the brain (only) matter? Do moral values matter (to us)? If some of these queries receive positive answers, what does it imply with respect to agent-based modelling, macroeconomic modelling, econometrics, behavioural and experimental economics, and so many other fields?
This series of questions highlight a huge varsity of representations of the economic agent as well as the need for a wide spectrum of approaches to grasp it as efficiently as possible. As we investigate representational tools dealing with this agent in economic analysis, many levels of philosophical issues come to the fore: ontological, epistemological, methodological, psychological, ethical. Since economic philosophy must – insofar as it is a self-reflective inquiry on theory and practice of economics – candidly face these issues, an articulation and clarification of their practical consequences in terms of choice, justice, welfare (and on many other topics) is needed to depict and represent the economic agent satisfyingly.
The complex network of all these issues will be at the core of this conference. In order to bring clarity about what is at stake in the understanding of the economic agent and its representations, possible topics for proposals can notably include:
Many other topics may naturally come handy and are welcome. We particularly support the idea of a broad range of contributions to fuel the exchange of ideas and debates.
Abstract Proposals
Abstracts (max. 500 words) should be prepared for blind review and uploaded at: ecophilo.greqam.fr (Login required).
Abstracts and papers can be written and presented either in French or in English. Keynote speeches will be given in English. A fair number of parallel sessions will be held in English making sure an open choice of sessions is given whatever the language. Part of the staff will be bilingual.
Deadline: March 15, 2016
Proposals for thematic sessions
There is room to organize thematic sessions. Organizers of such sessions are welcome to make themselves known. Please submit your proposals along the same lines (French or English with max. 800 words in this case).
Deadline: February 28, 2016.
Important dates
For more details, submission and registration, please visit the conference website.
2-5 September, 2016 | Seaport Boston Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
It is now widely accepted that institutions, broadly defined as systems of established social rules, play a major role in explaining human behaviour. Although scholars generally agree that institutions coordinate human behaviourandto a certain extent mould it into recognizable patterns, there is much less consensus regarding the precise mechanisms involved. We also have yet to fully understand the ways in which alternative rule systems and behavioural patterns emerge, persist and evolve to create our complex social systems.
Theoretical and empirical research into these important topics needs to draw on insights from multiple academic disciplines, including anthropology, economics, ethnology, history, human geography, law, linguistics, management, philosophy, politics, psychology and sociology.
The Third WINIR Conference will provide a forum for leading scholars to advance the ongoing conversation about these and other key issues in the growing area of institutional research.
Keynotes lectures, representing five academic disciplines, will be given by:
Abstract submissions about institutions (or organisations), and/or institutional thought from any discipline or theoretical approach are welcome (300 words max.).
Unconfined to any single academic discipline or any particular methodology, WINIR accepts contributions from any approach that can help us understand the nature and role of institutions. WINIR aims to promote creative conversations across disciplinary boundaries in order to build an adaptable and interdisciplinary theoretical consensus concerning core issues, which can be a basis for cumulative learning and scientific progress in the exciting and rapidly-expanding area of institutional research.
Submit an abstract here.
Submissions will be evaluated by the WINIR Scientific Quality Committee: Peter Boettke (George Mason University, economics), Simon Deakin (University of Cambridge, law), Geoff Hodgson (University of Hertfordshire, economics), Timur Kuran (Duke University, economics), Uskali Mäki (University of Helsinki, philosophy), Katharina Pistor (Columbia University, law), Sven Steinmo (European University Institute, politics), Wolfgang Streeck (Max Planck Institute Cologne, sociology).
Please note the following important dates:
For more information about WINIR please visit www.winir.org or follow WINIR on Twitter @winir2013.
2-3 June, 2016 | SOAS, University of London, UK
Conference Theme: "Ricardo’s monetary theory and policy two hundred years after Proposals for an Economical and Secure Currency"
The Scientific Committee:
invites contributions to a conference to be held at SOAS, University of London on the 2-3 June 2016, to commemorate the bicentenary of David Ricardo's Proposals for an Economical and Secure Currency; with Observations on the Profits of the Bank of England, as they Regard the Public and the Proprietors of Bank Stock, published in 1816.
Organising Committee:
The conference is sponsored and supported by the Royal Economic Society, the Ricardo Society of Japan, and the Money and Development Seminar of SOAS, University of London. The conference will include a keynote address by Professor David Laidler, a conference dinner, a reception at Keynes' house in Gordon Square and visits to places associated with David Ricardo.
Proposals for an Economical and Secure Currency, published in 1816, provides the link between Ricardo’s first monetary essays at the time of the Bullion Report, which made him known as an economist, and his plan for the resumption of note convertibility, which was adopted by Parliament in 1819. Enlarging a suggestion he had made in the fourth (1811) edition of his famous The High Price of Bullion, a Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes, Ricardo introduced two main novelties for Bank of England notes: they were to be convertible into bullion instead of coin, and their quantity issued was to vary inversely with the sign of the spread between the market price of gold bullion and the legal price at which it could be obtained (against notes) at the Bank. The object of this “Ingot Plan” was to substitute convertible notes for specie – in short to demonetise gold in domestic circulation. As James Bonar would put it one century later, this “complete Plan was to be the euthanasia of metal currency.” Ricardo was so confident in his ideas that he quoted four full pages of Proposals in the second and third editions of On Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, in an attempt to put the case for his plan in Parliament – with success in 1819, although temporarily: convertibility into coin was resumed in 1821 and no guideline for the issuing of notes was henceforth imposed on the Bank of England.
Ricardo’s Proposals had afterwards to wait until the twentieth century to get recognition. In the nineteenth century, the Bank Charter Act of 1844 turned its back to them, by maintaining convertibility into coin and adopting a 100 per cent metallic backing as rule for the additional note issuing. The “Ingot Plan” was only revived in the 1880s by Alfred Marshall in the debate on bimetallism and in the 1890s by Alexander Lindsay in the context of reform of the monetary system in India. The latter connexion led John Maynard Keynes to praise it highly in Indian Currency and Finance in 1913 and to acknowledge that Ricardo had been the first to theorise the gold-exchange standard, by separating domestic circulation (exclusively of notes convertible into bullion) and foreign payments (in bullion). In Britain, it took more than a century to at last validate the ingot proposal when after WWI convertibility was resumed in 1925, without, however, breaking with the 1844 Bank Charter Act.
Contrasting the received association of Ricardo with monetary orthodoxy, Proposals thus convey an image of him far ahead of his time, with innovative solutions to guarantee the security of the currency, as emphasised in their title. This pamphlet focused on an issue which the present crisis has brought back to the top of the economic agenda: the appropriate design of a resilient monetary system. On the occasion of the bicentenary of its publication, papers submitted to the conference are invited to examine various aspects of Ricardo’s ideas and recommendations related to issues raised in Proposals, including the links to his other writings and to modern monetary theory and policy.
Deadline: One-page (500 words) abstracts should be sent no later than 29 February 2016 to Andrew Trigg, at A.B.Trigg@open.ac.uk
Notification of decision will be made on 15 March 2016 and the full paper should be available no later than 15 May 2016.
Book Series: STUDIES IN CRITICAL SOCIAL SCIENCES
Editor: David Fasenfest, critical.sociology@gmail.com
Modern capitalism began the 21st century seemingly victorious as the dominant social and economic organizing principle in the world. Rampant re- and de-regulation accompanied a wholesale attack on social, economic and political gains of the prior century under the guise of increasing competitiveness and the need to respond to the forces of globalization. The end of the cold war, the decline of the former Soviet Union, and the increasing foothold of capitalism in China all point to an unchallenged reorientation of the global political economy to reflect this ascendance of capitalist social relations. The peer-reviewed Studies in Critical Social Sciences book series, through the publication of original manuscripts and edited volumes, offers insights into the current reality by exploring the content and consequence of power relationships under capitalism, by considering the spaces of opposition and resistance to these changes, and by articulating capitalism with other systems of power and domination - for example race, gender, culture - that have been defining our new age.
Please submit your proposals to the series editor at the email above. For monographs, provide a short (max 5 pages) description of the project, a tentative table of contents, and the likely audience for the book. For edited volumes, in addition to the above instead of a table of contents include a list of likely contributors. In either case, include information about the authors/editors. We publish original material, and in some cases will reproduce important works that have gone out of print and/pr copyright transfer to Brill is possible. All books published in hard cover by Brill are considered for paperback release by Haymarket Books on year after initial publication. For a list of books published in the series go to http://www.brill.com/publications/studies-critical-social-sciences or http://www.haymarketbooks.org/category/scss-series
Feel free to email the series editor with any questions about possible books. Be sure to include “SCSS Book Proposal Inquiry” in the subject line of your email.
Prof. David Fasenfest
Dept of Sociology, Wayne State University
Editor, Critical Sociology
May 31 – June 3, 2016 | University of Calgary, Canada
Conference Theme: Energizing Class Struggles: Race, Gender, and Colonialism
We wish to energize class struggles, understanding that the class relationship in contemporary capitalism is mediated by forms of oppression related to gender, race, able-bodiedness and orientation, and is articulated with the ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples across lands and waters claimed by Canada. At the same time, energetic class struggles are a variable historical reality across the whole of society, in areas ranging from the arts to literary studies to everyday economics in the home, the workplace and the community. The University, too, is a site of sometimes-energetic, sometimes-waning class struggle. On the one hand it reflects the relative dominance of the capitalist class in radically unequal times, including the power of resource extraction industries to shape university institutions and aims. On the other hand, the working classes, women (and women-identified) and subaltern groups have sought to challenge the expression of capitalist power in academia and society more broadly. At least since the 1970s, diverse Indigenous peoples have likewise sought simultaneously to 'decolonize' and 'indigenize' university spaces as part of broader struggles of Indigenous self-determination and liberation. In short, the working classes have never merely accepted their domination but have always fought battles against the power of capital in very unequal conditions. We consider energizing class struggles as a possibility – the potential for revitalized struggles by and for equity-seeking groups, subaltern classes and among diverse Indigenous peoples against an unjust colonial-capitalist world system.
The theme of the 2016 CFHSS Congress is 'Energizing Communities'. In our attempt to Energize Class Struggles, the Society invites participants to critically reflect upon the histories of vital class opposition. We call upon contributors to think through the possibilities for re-energizing class and Indigenous struggles in an historical moment of unprecedented capitalist class power.
From May 31 to June 3, join us at the University of Calgary on Treaty 7 territory for four days of wide-ranging and engaged analysis and dialogue. Among other events, the conference will feature our Keynote Speaker Glen Coulthard, presenting "Red Capital: A Critique of Settler Political Economy".
If you wish to submit a proposal for a paper, please go to our conference website by clicking HERE. The 'submit an abstract' button is under the first paragraph. You will first be asked to register, with a user name and password (of your creation). Then, choose the 'conference track' (i.e., session) best suited to your paper. The conference tracks correspond to the sessions listed below. If your paper does not seem to fit into any of the listed sessions, choose the track, 'General Paper', and we will try to find a place for it. Paper titles and abstracts (maximum of 100 words) should be submitted before Friday, January 29, 2016.
We hope to see you in Calgary!
SSS 2016 Programme Co-chairs: rosa1919@uvic.ca
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The following sessions are currently accepting papers:
This panel invites papers concerned with forms of resistance to the expansion of low-waged work. In particular we are interested in studies of campaigns to increase the minimum wage, to establish a living wage, and/or new forms of worker organization and mobilization. In addition we are interested in a critical assessment of these movements, their methods and effectiveness in shaping state policy.
Organizer: Bryan Evans, Ryerson University, B1evans@politics.ryerson.ca
This session welcomes papers that explore the social organization of corporate power in and around the carbon-extractive sector, broadly defined (including petroleum and bitumen, natural gas, coal, and transport via pipelines etc.), whether extracted using conventional or unconventional methods. Papers may focus on any of a variety of modalities through which corporate power is expressed, including the strategic control of firms, elite networks, the allocative power of finance, operational power exercised within corporate chains of command, the power inscribed within transnational commodity chains, cultural power via media relations and corporate social responsibility initiatives, and political power vis-à-vis state bodies. While the social organization of corporate power is the main focus, papers that address how that power is contested in the struggle for a just transition to a better world are also welcome.
Organizer: William Carroll, University of Victoria, wcarroll@uvic.ca
Alberta's 2015 provincial election saw the NDP come to power, ending nearly 44 years of Progressive Conservative rule. Was it a blip? Or does it signify deep changes in Alberta's political, economic, and social structures? This session will explore ways of understanding the election.
Organizer: Trevor Harrison, Parkland Institute and the University of Lethbridge. trevor.harrison@uleth.ca
Social reproduction has become one of the most promising and exciting concepts for research on contemporary social life, used in multiple ways, with developments in geography, indigenous studies, labour and activism, studies of care and many more. This session invites papers that capture and explore some of this richness, in order to inquire how this concept is being employed and the promise it holds. What is the relationship between social reproduction and capitalism NOW, and how does a social reproduction perspective foster analyses of all oppressions – gender, race, class, sexuality, ability and more –including their connections? Can social reproduction inspire us to imagine bold, emancipatory futures and if so, how?
Organizer: Susan Braedley, Carleton University, susan.braedley@carleton.ca
Political sociology is a vibrant field with constantly redefined boundaries. This session invites empirical papers in sociology that focus on the political realm broadly defined, to include power relations in diverse areas of social life and among a wide variety of actors: governmental and non-governmental institutions, organizations, and citizens. Diverse and intersecting bases of political engagement, including class, identity, and citizenship are of interest, as are investigations of the political process itself. We welcome research using quantitative, qualitative and historical methods.
Organizer: Ivanka Knezevic, University of Toronto Mississauga, knezevic@chass.utoronto.ca
This session invites scholars to present theoretical and empirical perspectives on the internationalization of higher education, specifically as it relates to conditions of precarity. Papers may present analyses grounded in a particular geographical context (e.g., North America, East Asia, China), in an examination of relations between such contexts (e.g., North-South or East-West relations), or in a consideration of social relations within and between institutions [e.g., tenured vs. contingent faculty, north-south Massive Online Universities (MOUs)]. Papers may be exclusively theoretical or primarily practice-oriented. Where possible and appropriate, session participants are encouraged to orient their papers to conference theme.
Organizers: Lorin Geoffrey Yochim, Beijing Normal University, lyochim@ualberta.ca, and Robert McGrey, Brock University, rmcgray@brocku.ca
This panel focuses on the commitment, or lack thereof, of political parties of the 'left' in South Asia to consistently articulate policies on gender justice and equality. The region's 'left' parties oftentimes lag behind leading equal rights and gender justice activists. How compatible are gender justice and equality objectives with the agendas and strategies of leftist parties, and do they possess the potential to promote such causes across caste and class boundaries? This panel calls for a cross-cutting critical reflection on this and other related interrogations.
Organizer: Dr. Chaminda Weerawardhana, Queens University Belfast, cweerawardhana02@qub.ac.uk
Marx said the dialectic was "critical and revolutionary." However, as a mode of inquiry and presentation it has been neglected, if recognized at all, in much Marxian and socialist thought. This session contributes a "re-energizing" of the dialectic by taking it seriously as an epistemology and a method. A broad range of papers including a reflection on the dialectic as a philosophy of knowledge and as a means of conceptualizing and representing the dynamism of capital accumulation expands our understanding of the current moment and its reactionary and revolutionary opportunities. .
Organizer: Sean F. McMahon, American University in Cairo, smcmahon@aucegypt.edu
Although colonial universities saw themselves as being part of an international community and inheritors of a legacy of Western knowledge, they were also part of historical processes of imperialism. They were established as a central part of the colonizing process, a bastion of civilization and a sign that a colony and its settlers had 'grown up'. (Smith, 1999, p. 65) This session is energized by Tuhiwai Smith's understanding of the role of universities in legitimizing and reproducing imperialist orders. We seek abstracts that examine the infantilization, pathologization and surveillance of gendered, racialized, indigenous, LGBTQ2S and disabled challenges to capitalism within academe.
Organizers: Katie Aubrecht, Mount Saint Vincent University, katieaubrecht@gmail.com, Stephanie Latty, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, sk.latty@gmail.com, Isabel Mackenzie Lay, Artist, Mental Health Counsellor and Gestalt Psychotherapy Student,Isabelmackenzielay@gmail.com, Tania Ruize-Chapman, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, t.ruiz.chapman@mail.utoronto.ca
ENERGIZING INSPIRATION: RADICAL WOMEN REMEMBERED & ENGAGED
This panel focuses on the contributions of particular women radicals with the goal of not just "remembering" but also engaging their contributions to theory, philosophy, organization, and radical thought broadly construed. In a sense, the panel is an act of reclamation, seeking to place women in their historical contexts and ensuring that their contributions and commitments are not simply displaced or excluded from our historical narratives and contemporary thinking. The focus of the paper can be a living or deceased "radical woman" whose legacy and contribution are often overlooked even among critical thinkers. We are seeking additional papers to complement those listed below:
Organizer: Sandra Rein, University of Alberta, srein@ualberta.ca
Neoliberal globalization has been accompanied by the rise of resistance movements/spaces in both the Global North and South – Occupy, Via Campesina, Andean indigenism, the World Social Forum, etc. – and writers/academics supporting this "newest left." Strongly influenced by populism, nationalism, and/or academia's "cultural turn," many of these challenge neoliberalism and/or transnational finance capitalism rather than capitalism per se. Some even go so far as to reduce neoliberalism to its "cultural underpinnings" in (Enlightenment) modernity and its universalizing tendencies. Papers should address the following questions: What are the political implications of such foreshortened and displaced critiques of capitalism? Are they merely reformist or do they embody deeper contradictions?
Organizer: Regina Cochrane, University of Calgary, r.cochrane@ucalgary.ca
Frantz Fanon's chapter, "The Fact of Blackness" in Black Skin, White Masks (1967) starkly notes the experience of being "an object in the midst of other objects." Citing the Hegelian moment of "being for others," Fanon notes the specific ontological reality that frames colonialism in terms of the body, consciousness, negation and the gaze. Contemporary Blackness studies draws upon Fanon's work, as well as leading Marxist scholars such as WEB DuBois, CLR James and Angela Davis. This panel draws on current research that attends to these conversations, with a focus on the intersection of Blackness, gender and class.
Organizer: Abigail Bakan, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, abigail.bakan@utoronto.ca
Critiques of capitalism are often oriented towards a political and/or economic analysis and tend to overlook the implications of unequal power and class structures for cultural participation, in/formation, and expression. Within the Canadian context, capitalism and colonialism have unapologetically targeted Indigenous culture, identity, and performance, using various political, economic, and social means in attempting to silence and expel Indigenous languages, ceremonies, and expressions. Just as the capitalist-colonial system attempts to institutionalize and normalize stratifications, it actively attempts to homogenize populations, reorganizing cultural bodies into depoliticized consumers and uncultured labourers. However, Indigenous culture has not been erased; Indigeneity continues to be performed through a variety of means (cultural and otherwise) and this panel seeks to better understand how to account for and support examples and displays of Indigenous cultural resistance to a system that denies Indigenous cultural expression.
In particular, this panel explores the ways in which Indigenous performativity challenges the capitalist-colonial project by focusing on examples of popular culture that redefine common perceptions of Indigeneity. The inherent performativity within cultural expression is inextricable from anti- and decolonial acts, and demonstrates unique ways in which these expressions intentionally and unintentionally challenge capitalism.
Panellists already confirmed:
Organizer: Greer Brabazon, Independent Scholar, greerbrabazon@gmail.com
Although caste discrimination has been officially outlawed in India and affirmative action programs have been introduced to combat its horrendous effects, the great majority of Dalits (formerly "untouchables") continue to suffer from extreme poverty and social marginalization. Moreover, those who attempt to challenge this situation are often subject to violence with impunity. This session will focus on the reality of caste oppression today by examining topics like: the impact of Modi and the BJP on caste politics, the intersection of caste and gender, the continuation of caste oppression in immigrant communities in Canada, and the contemporary relevance of Ambedkar's writings.
Organizer: Regina Cochrane, University of Calgary, r.cochrane@ucalgary.ca
"Food insecurity" has become a mobilizing issue across Northern Canada for Indigenous communities who continue to face the twin challenges of contemporary capitalism: deepening structural inequality and climate change. Community members depend on locally harvested plants and wildlife (country food) for their sustenance, and yet while these resources are under threat, the social systems that support country food economies and that are integral to community life are also changing. In this panel we will consider how local food economies are impacted by the forces of global capitalism, and how the study of political economy can inform our understanding of these changes. Presenters from multiple disciplines are encouraged to participate. In holding this panel we hope to deepen our theoretical understanding of local food economies and the role of the state and Indigenous institutions in shaping them, and to share new empirical insights from across Canada (and internationally, if relevant).
Organizer: Rebecca Schein, Carleton University, RebeccaSchein@CUNET.CARLETON.CA
Despite the bankruptcy of neoliberalism, at least since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, the left and social movements continue to struggle to reach out beyond the 'radical ghetto' to new audiences to bring about progressive social change. If the growth in accessibility of new digital technologies and social media platforms has 'solved' many obstacles that impeded alternative media in the 1990s, why do dominant media continue to set the political agenda and negatively frame social movements and left parties? What future is there if we are unable to build our movements through our own independent media – to communicate with each other without censorship or omission, and to represent ourselves, ideas and visions to others? This session calls for contributions, whether practical, theoretical and/or analytical, to consider how, why and where might alternative media contribute to building an alternative (party, movement, coalition) to austerity and crises affecting our communities. Papers might wish to draw upon examples from history or propose ways to advance alternative media or identify problems with the existing or previous thinking around the left and alternative media.
Organizer: Herbert Pimlott, Wilfred Laurier University, hpimlott@wlu.ca
This session invites papers discussing any of the following questions:
Organizer: Ingo Schmidt, Athabasca University, ingos@athabascau.ca
ORGANIZING FOR SOCIALISM:
Neoliberal capitalism is in a crisis of legitimacy. In many countries, though, it is the political right, rather then the left, that thrives on that crisis. In Canada, an organized socialist voice is all but absent. This session explores the reasons for the weakness of the left and possible ways out of it. It invites papers dealing with the following questions:
QUEERLY ANTI-CAPITALIST: PERSPECTIVES ON SEXUAL LIBERATION
Organizer: Alan Sears, Ryerson University, asears@ryerson.ca
This session will address the challenge of constructing a queer anti-capitalist theory and practice that points beyond lesbian and gay equality rights towards sexual liberation. The development of such a politics requires that we enhance our understanding of the ways sexuality is grounded in ways of life and work that include the gendered and racialized organization of paid and unpaid labour as well as global relations of imperialism and settler colonialism. Papers should address issues in the development of a sexual liberation politics oriented around an eco-socialist, feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonialist, queer anti-capitalism.
This panel seeks those working to understand the changes and continuities in policing and security practices in protest and community contexts in Canada and internationally. These include militarization, surveillance, community policing, privatization, and spatial control, keeping in mind the ways that these trends affect Black communities and other communities of colour, indigenous communities, poor people and other marginalized groups.
Organizer: Leslie Wood, York University, ljwood@yorku.ca
Most states (whether socialist or otherwise) that rely on the export of primary commodities benefited to varying degrees from the recent commodity boom. The literature on developmental states has tended to argue that 'development' has been difficult or impossible in states with enormous natural resource wealth due to the distorting effects that it can have on class and state formation. We invite papers that engage with these debates, either focusing on case studies as well as theoretical treatments of these debates.
Organizer: Susan Spronk, University of Ottawa, Susan.Spronk@uOttawa.ca
A substantial body of scholarship has mapped out the nature and harmful implications of the corporatization process. The casualization of academic labour, over-regulation of academics and their work, commercialization of publicly funded knowledge, and downsides of the programme prioritization process, among other aspects of corporatization, have received critical attention in previous Congress sessions. What has not received as much attention is what to do in response to such issues. This roundtable session will focus on strategies for confronting corporatization in ways that restore and strengthen the public serving focus of higher education. Contributions are invited that do any of the following: (a) describe how you and your colleagues have dealt with, or are trying to deal with, a corporatizing policy or initiative in your own institution, with a view to undermining or diverting its negative effects; (b) propose a strategically focused response to a corporatizing trend currently unfolding in higher education; (c) develop a strategy that links responses to corporatization undertaken within a given university or college with social movements based outside. Contributors will have up to 10 minutes to present their work for discussion, with a view toward developing strategic suggestions that can be circulated to concerned colleagues.
Organizers: Janice Newson, York University, janewson@eagle.ca Claire Polster, University of Regina, claire.polster@uregina.ca
Note: This session is a joint session with the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA). In order to join this session, you may submit either to the Society for Socialist Studies website or the Canadian Sociological Association (but not both, please). You must be a member in good standing of one of these associations in order to submit. Deadline: February 1, 2016.
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INTERDISCIPLINARY FEMINIST SESSIONS AT CONGRESS 2016
Members of the associations co-sponsoring these two interdisciplinary feminist sessions at Congress are circulating this call for papers to their members. Proposals may ONLY be made on the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA-SCS) web site, but members of other co-sponsoring associations may propose papers to these sessions without be(com)ing members of CSA-SCS. Deadline for proposals: Feb 1, 2016.
SESSION 1 : FEMINISM AND ENERGIZING COMMUNITIES: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONVERSATION / LE FÉMINISME ET L'ÉNERGIE DES COMMUNAUTÉS: UNE CONVERSATION INTERDISCIPLINAIRE
The Congress theme of 'energizing communities' has been an implicit or explicit focus of feminism and feminist critique. In this session we explore how we can collectively learn from experiences of feminist research and engagement about communities, whether at the local, regional, national or transnational levels. Presenters are invited to briefly describe their experience (direct or through, for example, historical documentation), including its context and its conceptualization of community, and then to reflect on the insights and processes of action-reflection (praxis), consciousness, transformation, and/or conceptualizations which might be gained from these empirical experiences. Presenters can articulate the particular contributions that their feministapproach offers. Other possible topics may include: community-based research; the roles that researchers bring into communities; the themes/issues and structural arrangements which facilitate the bridging of diversities within varied social, political, historical, economic and/or geographical contexts; insights from Indigenous scholars and community organizations; social relations within communities and potential visions for social change; critique of patriarchal relationships that characterize contemporary societies and/or the contrasts between economic and social development; comparison of contemporary communities with feminist communities. We hope that the conversation in this session will enrich our feminist understandings of communities.
SESSION 2 : FEMINIST INTERSECTIONALITY IN THEORY, RESEARCH AND PRAXIS : AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONVERSATION / L'INTERSECTIONNALITÉ DANS LA THÉORIE, RECHERCHE ET PRAXIS FÉMINISTES : UNE CONVERSATION INTERDISPLINAIRE
Intersectionality has become an important approach for examining the interconnectedness of systems of oppression in women's lives, including by feminist scholars. It has varied manifestations - theoretical, methodological, historical and contextual. We invite presentations on feminist intersectionality in theory, research and/or praxis. Presenters may briefly discuss their use of feminist intersectionality methodologically, in theory and/or in their praxis, and alsoreflect on the strengths, limitations, implications and/or challenges of their experiences with it. Other questions might include: how is an approach bothintersectional and feminist? How is such analysis stronger than analysis that is not intersectional? Or feminist? What are the contradictions, limitations of how women's multiple dimensions are considered? What is the relationship in research and praxis between gender, race, class and other intersections such as indigeneity, sexuality, age, religion, family status, birthplace and/or culture? Without feminist intersectional analysis, how are women's individual and group identities ignored? Has this absence contributed to women's victimization/ marginalization? How does feminist intersectionality contribute to understanding the diversity of women's identity, social location and the structural barriers they experience? How does intersectionality contribute to considering patriarchy and other systems of oppression? We hope that this session will encourage fruitful interdisciplinary exchanges about these issues.
To submit a proposal to either of these sessions:/ Pour presenter une proposition pour l'une ou l'autre de ces sessions:
Go to: http://www.csa-scs.ca/files/webapps/csapress/annual-conferences/call-for-abstracts/ ('click to submit your abstract' is at the bottom of that page). You will first be asked to register, with a user name and password (of your creation). On the next screen go to author and click on 'new submission'. On the next screen you are asked to identify the 'conference track' for the submission – this is the session name (all are listed alphabetically by session title in the drop-down menu). Then continue on, following the instructions.
Interdisciplinary Session Organizers:
Ann Denis, University of Ottawa, adenis@uottawa.ca (CSA / SCS)
Linda Christiansen-Ruffman, Saint Mary's University, ruffman@smu.ca (CSA / SCS) Marleny Bonnycastle, Univeristy of Manitoba (CASWE / ACFTS)
Louise Carbert, Dalhousie University (CPSA / ACSP)
Lisa Starr, McGill University (CASWE/ACÉFÉ)
Rhonda Hinther, Brandon University (CCWH/CCHF)
Susan Spronk, University of Ottawa (SSS / SES)
Further information is available here: socialiststudies.ca
19 September, 2016 | Vienna, Austria
Organised by Austrian Institute of Economic Research WIFO Vienna (Austria), Mendel University Brno (Czech Republic) and King’s College London (United Kingdom)
The objective of the FairTax conference on “Options for an EU Tax as an EU Own Resource” is to promote the exchange of ideas among researchers working on reform options for the EU system of own resources in general, and for own EU taxes to substitute national contributions by EU member states in particular: Hereby considering both conventional tax policy criteria, also based on the main propositions of the fiscal federalism literature on the optimal assignment of taxes with a multi-level governance structure, as well as evaluation criteria that capture the four dimensions of sustainability relevant to revenue/tax systems (economic, social, environmental, and cultural sustainability).
KEYNOTE:
We are looking forward to receiving contributions analysing all the aspects connected with possible candidates for an EU tax as an EU own resource to finance the EU budget:
Selected papers will be included in a conference volume on “Options for an EU Tax as an EU Own Resource”.
Abstracts and Papers should be sent in PDF format to ann.mumford@kcl.ac.uk, danuse.nerudova@mendelu.cz, or margit.schratzenstaller@wifo.ac.at.
Deadlines:
Scientific Committee:
Tony Atkinson (Nuffield College, University of Oxford), Rita de la Feria (Leeds University), Friedrich Heinemann (ZEW), Anna Iara (European Commission; tbc), Inge Kaul (Global Policy Studies, Hertie School of Governance), Jacques Le Cacheux (OFCE), Jorge Nunez Ferrer (CEPS), Christiana HJI Panayi (Queen Mary University of London), Dorothea Schäfer (German Institute of Economic Research and Jönköping University), Sandor Richter (WIIW Vienna).
About FairTax
The project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme 2014-2018. FairTax is a cross-disciplinary four year H2020 EU project aiming to produce recommendations on how fair and sustainable taxation and social policy reforms can increase the economic stability of EU member states, promoting economic equality and security, enhancing coordination and harmonisation of tax, social inclusion, environmental, legitimacy, and compliance measures, support deepening of the European Monetary Union, and expanding the EU’s own resource revenue bases. Under the coordination of Umeå University (Sweden), comparative and international policy fiscal experts from eleven universities in six EU countries and three non-EU countries (Brazil, Canada and Norway) contribute to FairTax research.
Further details are available at the FairTax website.
The History of Economics Society (HES) will sponsor four sessions at the Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) meetings in Chicago, IL on January 6-8, 2017.
The ASSA offers historians of economic thought an opportunity to present high quality historical research to an audience of professional economists. Given this, preference will be given to proposals that are most likely to interest the broader community. Proposals are invited for entire sessions, rather than single papers.
Please submit session proposals, including abstracts for the proposed papers (approximately 200 words), to Maria Pia Paganelli at mpaganel@trinity.edu
The deadline for submissions is April 15, 2016.
7-9 September, 2016 | School of Economics & Management, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Panel organised by Social Capital Working Group: Social Capital in Context: Crisis, Values and Power
Economic models of social capital incorporate cooperative behaviour and trusting relations based on social norms and networks, challenging traditional assumptions of self-interest. Yet these models maintain instrumental, value-free, and individualist principles of rational choice, reducing cooperation, trust and solidarity to a means for satisfying individual preference and ensuring market efficiency. Thus they overlook the influence of the broader social and institutional context within which individuals and groups interact and which is characterized by diverse and conflictual interests, power and inequality, social and political struggles.
In this way, we fail to see that not all norms and networks are socially beneficial. For instance the current crises have fostered increasing poverty and inequality, the rise of extremist groups, the flux of immigrants and refugees, and the spread of uncertainty, fear and violence. There are groups in the private and public spheres that still promote policies that lead to market liberalization, welfare state retrenchment, the indebtedness of households and nations, the over-exploitation of the earth’s natural resources, and the degradation of certain ethnic and racial groups. At the same time, there are groups that resist these forces, raise social awareness and propose alternative values and networks for the restructuring of markets and states in order to protect the natural environment, human rights, justice and public welfare. These groups range from social movements spanning across countries to local organizations, especially in the social economy, mobilizing to respond to their community’s needs for subsistence and self-determination.
Thus we would like to invite contributions that re-contextualize conceptions and measures of social capital to incorporate the complex reality of social relations, as a dynamic space where people interact, define and pursue, individually and collectively, principles and objectives, means and ends for well-being. The aim is to uncover the dynamics of trust, cooperation and collective action to promote alternative principles and visions about the economy and society that favour public welfare. But we also encourage contributions that generally address the topic of social capital. We welcome works that derive from various social science disciplines and use different units of analysis (individual, regional, country or cross-country level), methodologies and techniques (theoretical, empirical, qualitative and quantitative).
Abstracts (500 words maximum) should be submitted to Asimina Christoforou (asimina.christoforou@gmail.com) and Luca Andriani (luca.andriani@bbk.ac.uk) by April 1, 2016.
Also to submit your abstract, please go to the following Electronic Proposal Form, and carefully follow the complete instructions there. All deadline dates are included on this Electronic Proposal Form.
More general information about IIPPE, the working groups and the conference, is available here or visit conference website.
10-12 June, 2016 | University of Crete, Rethymno, Crete, Greece
Conference Theme: CRISIS AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: NEW CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES
It is now almost seven years since the onset of the most severe financial and economic crisis that has taken hold in Europe since the 1930s. Since then, multifaceted crises ensued and Greece was and continues to be engulfed by them and at their epicentre. Social scientists have become engrossed in dialogue and debate regarding the impacts, the causes, the ramifications, and most importantly, how to best understand, confront and tackle the many adverse consequences on various aspects of people’s lives. The crisis in all its complex facets constitutes a major challenge for social science, and its predictive, analytical and interpretative power. The multidimensional nature of the character, causes and consequences of the crisis defies simple answers and brings to the fore the need for interdisciplinary methods and approaches trespassing the borders of any individual social discipline. Only through an open and dynamic dialogue between the individual fields that constitute social science will it be possible to address both the seriousness and breadth of the issues posed by the crisis.
The Faculty of Social, Economic and Political Sciences of the University of Crete, aware of this challenge and the interdisciplinary nature of the issues that arise in the aftermath of the crisis, announces the organisation of an international conference on the subject of the crisis and the role of social sciences. Researchers from all fields of social science and related scientific disciplines (including economics, political science, psychology, sociology and social anthropology) are invited to participate. Interdisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome, as are papers focusing on the European and the Greek crisis in particular. Topics include:
Papers, especially interdisciplinary ones, on any other aspect of social science are also welcome.
You are invited to send a title and a summary (up to 500 words) of your proposed paper by the 31 January 2016. Full papers should be submitted by the 31 March 2016. Registration deadline 31 March 2016. Suggestions for panels are also welcome.
Contact: icconss@soc.uoc.gr
More information is available at: icconss.soc.uoc.gr
6-8 May, 2016 | University Witten/Herdecke, Germany
Conference Theme: Justifying Power and Decisions in the 21th Century: Rethinking Legitimacy from a PPE perspective
How can political science, economics and philosophy contribute to shedding light on the current discussions around legitimacy in the 21st century? What are the latest research topics and hotly debated issues – and what is currently missing on the agenda?
The challenges facing modern society do not respect academic or national boundaries. In the highly complex and mutually interdependent societies of the 21st century, the most convincing and lasting impetus comes from individuals who think in interdisciplinary terms and know how to integrate economic, political and philosophical perspectives. Thus, the topic of “legitimacy” lends itself particularly well to our debate as it brings together a plethora of the yet-to-be-answered questions about what it actually means for a society to operate a morally legitimate, politically stable and economically viable social arrangement.
The aim of the conference is to give advanced undergraduate, graduate and PhD students working in the field of Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) an opportunity to present and discuss their projects with peers, receive feedback for work in progress, and build a wider community of interdisciplinary students across Germany, Europe and beyond.
The conference will consist of three keynote speeches and a series of paper sessions, organised by the scientific committee.
Keynote speakers:
Call for Papers Deadline: February 14, 2016
Email papers to: Scientific Committee (Laura Bickel and Anselm Houswitschka): ppe-conference@uni-wh.de
The scientific committee will make a selection of participants based on the quality and relevance of the submitted papers. Papers’ expected length is between 6000 and 8000 words. Based on the presentations at the conference, the scientific committee will invite a selection of authors to contribute to a book published in 2016.
We particularly encourage you to develop your own thoughts on the theme, to connect your current seminar work with the conference topic … and to submit your own paper! We are looking forward to your ideas!
Your PPE Conference 2016 Team
Guest Editors
Structure of the Special Section and contact
Revista de Economia Mundial (REM) / Journal of World Economy is an academic Spanish journal edited by the Sociedad de Economia Mundial/World Economy Society indexed, among others, in the SSCI (2014 IF: 0.237; 300/333 –Economics–).
This Special Section will include up to 5-6 papers on the nexus between financialisation and the EU crisis.
Authors are strongly encouraged to read carefully the background and rationale included on this Call for Papers before considering submitting. For further information for this Special Section, please contact the Guest Editors: Jan Toporowski (jt29@soas.ac.uk), Laura Horn (lhorn@ruc.dk), or Jorge Garcia-Arias (jrgara@unileon.es).
For queries about REM or the submission process (see below) please contact Teresa Aceytuno, Managing Editor of REM, (maria.aceytuno@dege.uhu.es)
Background and rationale of the Special Section
The process(es) of financialisation have been identified as a crucial transformation in recent decades in the global capitalist system, a shift from a Fordist model to one in which the accumulation of profits through financial channels predominates over that obtained by the production of goods and services. The impacts of financialisation have been identified in virtually all areas of economic, political and social life, both in microeconomic activity (levels of households debt, privatization of the Welfare State and other public goods and services, changes in identity, daily life and patterns of individual political, social and cultural activities, ...), as well as from a more macro perspective (changes in financial markets, transnational corporations and international financial institutions, in the design of economic policy, in crucial aspects of international development, and so on).
The current economic crisis –the most severe faced by the developed economies in decades– has specific features for the whole of the EU, and particularly within the Eurozone. What started as a crisis of a financial nature has resulted in a deep economic, political and social crisis, not only due to the usual evolution of any financial cycle, but also because of the political and institutional design of the EU and the Eurozone, and the unusually strong link that has been forged between rebalancing public finances and the fetishism of austerity and low inflation.
Thus financialisation seems not only to be a context for the origin, evolution and possible outcomes of the EU crisis. There are also grounds for suspecting that financialisation has adopted specific forms in the EU, making the EU crisis a test bed for exploring its foreseeable future dynamics. In this Special Section of the REM we will analyse some of the links between financialisation and the crisis in the European Union.
More specifically, the Guest Editors welcome papers engaging with the following topics, as well as other topics providing particular insights into EU financialisation and its global significance:
Although financialisation has developed in variegated ways in individual EU countries, and affected them in different ways, our objective is to overcome what has been called academic “methodological nationalism” (that is, considering countries as self-contained units of analysis); hence we are not in principle interested in receiving analyses of the process focusing on a single country, but rather studies focusing on broader areas such as the whole EU or Eurozone (highlighting, of course, its intrinsic elements of heterogeneity), or groups of countries considered as a whole (e.g. the European periphery, the Scandinavian economies, Central European countries, etc.), or on a comparative basis (i.e. the UK vs. Germany; Spain, Italy and Portugal, ...). We also seek papers in a broad spectrum of (International or European) Political Economy that do not overly limit their analysis to particular aspects of the relationship between financialisation and the EU crisis, or that focus on very specific areas (water, energy, housing, …), except when the authors are able to show a more general significance of their analysis.
We are interested in receiving original, not under evaluation elsewhere, and well-argued articles founded on a critical appreciation that may be multidisciplinary in their approaches to the phenomenon of financialisation and its impact on the EU crisis, as well as in the backgrounds of their authors. Articles from political economists but also sociologists and political scientists linked to critical areas of European Political Economy or Critical International Political Economy, are especially welcome.
Submissions
Papers must be written in English. The received full papers would be subject to previous editorial scrutiny and pre-selection, and to strict peer-review process before acceptance. Articles should be no more than 7,000 words in length, including all references, notes and tables. Articles must be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200 words and up to five keywords. Submissions should be directed through the Revista de Economia Mundial(REM)/Journalof World Economy on-line submission system: http://www.sem-wes.org/en/node/84
For further guidelines on submissions to Revista de Economia Mundial (REM)/Journalof World Economy please visit out http://www.sem-wes.org/en/node/1261. If you have technical queries about the process, please contact Teresa Aceytuno, Managing Editor of REM, at maria.aceytuno@dege.uhu.es
Timeline
Deadline for the submission of full papers: 28 February 2016
Expected publication of the Special Section in the Revista de Economia Mundial (REM)/Journalof World Economy: 2017.
4-6 July, 2016 | Belfast Metropolitan College, Titanic Quarter, Belfast
General Call for Papers
We particularly welcome paper proposals that reflect on the conference theme, however interpreted, and aim to encourage debate around the following issues:
We now welcome proposals for individual papers; and especially for symposia (sets of 3 themed papers); and for post-graduate symposia; and also for social policy papers focusing on issues outside the conference theme.
Abstracts for individual papers and proposals for symposia should be submitted electronically via our conference web page FROM 1 December 2015. The final deadline for submissions will be Wednesday 16 March 2016.
Proposals for Individual Papers: abstracts should be 200-400 words.
Proposals for Symposia: a 200-word outline of the aims and content of the symposium (including contributors’ names and email addresses). All abstracts and symposium proposals will be reviewed by the Programme Committee up to the deadline of 16 March 2016. Confirmed presenters, delegates will be sent a link to upload their full papers in advance of the conference.
Post-Graduate Bursaries: A number of reduced-fee places will be available for post graduate delegates (details to follow).
Further details and a full CFP for the SPA 2016 Belfast Conference will be made shortly, and regular Conference Updates will be circulated via Email, Twitter, Facebook, and on the SPA website.
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Symposium on "The transnational judicialisation of social policy" CfP:
The aim of the symposium is to explore the increasing significance of transnational courts and processes of judicialisation for social policy and related areas of public policy. By transnational judicialisation, we mean processes where decision making authority and jurisdiction lies with courts and/or legal actors that stand ‘above’ or ‘outside’ of nation states. These include legal processes created by trade and investment agreements, such as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) processes and the World Trade Organisation’s dispute settlement process, as well as world-regional legal systems such as that of the European Court of Justice within the European Union (EU). Although these processes have attracted significant attention in other fields of the social sciences, they have done less so within social policy. The symposium therefore aims to contribute towards filling this gap through the exploration of how transnational courts and processes of judicialisation are increasingly redrafting and rescaling power asymmetries for actors (such as individuals, collective actors, small-medium enterprises, governments, multinational corporations) and locales (nation states, international markets). The role of transnational legal processes has become increasingly important for the governance of transnational market integration in emerging (e.g. Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) and existing (North American Free Trade Agreement) trade agreements, as well as for the expansion of internal markets within transnational regional entities (e.g. the European labour market within the EU). In doing so, transnational courts are increasingly called to resolve disputes between public and private law, social and market rights, sovereign national governments and multinational corporations (e.g. Canada vs Eli Lily, Australia vs Philip Morris). The challenges that arise from these processes are at least twofold. First, they undermine the traditional capacity of nation states to exercise their sovereignty over key areas of social and public policy such as taxation, health and labour law. Second, and relatedly, they raise questions concerning democracy and accountability, as private or otherwise unaccountable actors increasingly take precedence over democratically elected representatives.
We invite papers that address these questions as they relate to any transnational judicial process affecting any area of social policy or related public policy, for one or more symposia to be submitted to the 2016 SPA conference.
Please send a title and abstract of 200-400 words to Chris Holden (chris.holden@yorkac.uk) and Antonios Roumpakis (antonios.roumpakis@york.ac.uk) to express your interest in participating.
The deadline for expressions of interest is February 29.
June 24-26, 2016 | University of California, Berkeley, US
Moral judgments that justify or vilify different economic arrangements on the basis of some final value are extremely common in the social sciences. Since the beginning of political economy, market institutions have elicited strong and rival views across a broad spectrum of positions. Those who marvel at the coordinating power of the invisible hand confront those who revile capitalism's inherently exploitative nature. The celebration of efficiency faces the condemnation of waste. And democratic interpretations of laissez faire meet the hard reality of growing social inequalities. There is no economy that is not political and moral at the same time.
Social scientists, of course, are not the only ones to judge the economy while living in it. E.P. Thompson famously coined the term "moral economy" to denote the inchoate feelings and obligations that orient workers, and make them see certain courses of action (such as riots) as legitimate or illegitimate. To the extent that individuals and institutions act on them, those judgments help constitute economic lines of action, too.
Finally, economic instruments and technologies lay down, and perform, moralized rules about what is expected of economic actors. All exchange systems embed implicit or explicit codes of moral worth in their specific designs and rules; all economic institutions make and remake kinds of moral beings by shifting their classificatory schemes or treatment algorithms. These "economic moralities," typically fashioned by the action of markets and states, interact more or less peacefully with people's "moral economies." Indeed many of today's pressing political conflicts may be understood in terms of the hiatus between these two social forms.
The 2016 SASE conference in Berkeley, California, hosted by the University of California, Berkeley from 24– 26 June 2016, will seek contributions that explore the relationship between economy and morality from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives, reaching back to SASE's origins and moving forward into new territories. Fiat Lux!
President and Program Director: Marion Fourcade (fourcade@berkeley.edu)
Local Organizing Committee: Neil Fligstein, Heather Haveman, and Annalee Saxenian
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Mini-conferences
SASE received an huge number of submissions for mini-conference themes this year. We are pleased to announce those selected for our 2016 annual meeting!
Submissions to the SASE conference must be made through one of the mini-conferences or through a research network. Please note that mini-conferences require an extended (~1,000 word) abstract, and ask that you submit a full paper by May 30th. For further information, please contact the organizer of the mini-conference to which you are submitting.
Mini-conferences are based around a selected number of focused themes, and have open submissions for panels and papers, based on an extended abstract (approx. 1000 words). Each mini-conference will consist of 3 to 6 panels. Each panel will have a discussant, meaning that selected participants must submit a completed paper by May 30th. In the event that a Mini-Conference proposal fails to attract sufficient participants to make three viable sessions, the conference organizers reserve the right to move any sessions which are organized into an appropriate Network. If a paper proposal cannot be accommodated within a mini-conference, organizers will forward it to the program committee, who will pass it on to one of the networks as a regular submission.
Click the title of each mini-conference for a full description of the theme.
Reasearch networks
Paper and session abstracts as well as full papers for grant, prize, and stipend applications must be submitted to all networks by January 26, 2016. Candidates will be notified by April 2, 2016. Please note that some networks may also require that a full paper be submitted by June 1, 2016 for the purposes of assigning a discussant or awarding a prize. For further information, please contact the organizer of the network to which you are submitting.
Click on any of the following for a full description and contact information of each Research Network.
Further details are available at the conference website.
20-22 May, 2016 | John Jay College of Criminal Justice,The City University of New York, US
Every year URPE members participate in the Left Forum, with URPE organized and co-organized panels, and as individuals on other panels. The Left Forum is the largest conference in the US that in a major way spans, or bridges, the common activist/academic/intellectual divide. This year we will do the same.
The call for this year’s Left Forum has gone out. If you go to www.leftforum.org, you will see information concerning the upcoming conference.
We hate to admit that the deadline that we are interested in is April 14 (if we register as a sufficiently numerous group we can get rates as low as 20% of onsite registration cost – in any case registering by then reduces to at least 40%), since for most URPE members that means “don’t think about it until early April.” Contrary to that, we would love to have people beginning now to let us know what they would like to do – either if they have full panels, or if they only have a couple of people and are looking to fill a panel – so begin talking to people you know have interests similar to yours now and see what you can put together.
As every year, members from the URPE Steering Committee will work with anyone building a panel to process it in the Left Forum system. Three of us will be working on the Left Forum Committee, but this year one of us has very specific other responsibilities so please contact either of the two whose emails are given here to discuss any panels or panel ideas you have in mind: Al Campbell (al@economics.utah.edu), Paul Cooney (pcooney@ufpa.br) or Julio Huato.
12–13 April, 2016 | Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, New York, US
Organized by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College with support from the Ford Foundation
Conference Theme: Will the Global Economic Environment Constrain US Growth and Employment?
The 2016 Minsky Conference will address whether what appears to be a global economic slowdown will jeopardize the implementation and efficiency of Dodd-Frank regulatory reforms, the transition of monetary policy away from zero interest rates, and the “new” normal of fiscal policy, as well as the use of fiscal policies aimed at achieving sustainable growth and full employment. Is economic policy leading to another Minsky moment?
Program details will be posted as they become available.
The attendance fee is $75 and due upon registration. To register, click here.
Participants
* Invited
Accommodations
Special rates for conference participants may be obtained at the following hotels: the Kingston Courtyard by Marriott and the Hampton Inn. The Kingston Courtyard by Marriott is located at 500 Frank Sottile Boulevard, Kingston, NY 12401. Reservations are available only by phone at 845-382-2300 (please mention the Minsky Conference). The Hampton Inn is located at 1307 Ulster Avenue, Kingston, NY 12401. Reservations are available by phone at 845-382-2600 (please ask for the Levy Economics Institute call-in rate; the group code LEV is helpful but not necessary) OR at 1-800-HAMPTON (please mention the Hampton Inn Kingston, the event date, and the group code LEV) OR online at www.kingston.hamptoninn.com (the group code LEV will be needed to access the rate). Transportation to and from these hotels will be provided by the Levy Institute.
Click here for directions to the Levy Institute.
Substitutions and Cancellations
If you have registered and cannot attend, you may send a substitute. A full refund will be made if notice of cancellation is received by April 5. No refund will be made after that date. In the event that the conference is canceled, the Institute will refund the full conference fee but cannot be responsible for any other costs incurred. If you wish to update or cancel your registration, or assign a substitute, please use the link provided in your initial confirmation e-mail, or you may e-mail info@levy.org.
11–12 February, 2016 | University of Helsinki, Finland
Chairs: Professor Barry Gills, University of Helsinki & Professor Neera Chandhoke, University of Delhi
Conference Theme: Making Alternatives Visible: Resisting and Reshaping the Mainstream
Development, understood as a set of complex processes of social transformation, entails processes of appropriation, whether of land, property, labor, or the social product. The tendency to greatly intensify globalization of production, trade, and finance over the past three decades has been advocated as a comprehensive historical solution to underlying structural problems in the global political economy, including growth, productivity, and profitability. Such (hyper)globalization policies have philosophically rested upon faith in linear technical progress and its presumed capacity to create unlimited increases in production and consumption. However, this paradigm of globalized development has left unresolved severe distributional, socio-political, and ecological problems that accompany these processes. Elites and citizens struggle to manage the tension between global capital expansion, global market competition, competing legal and political orders, and the protection of the rights and welfare of the local people. In this context, myriad forms of militant social contestation have arisen amongst labour, peasant, and social movements of the Global South, in response to global and domestic appropriation and capital accumulation. In some instances, these militant contestations are confined within peaceful norms of civic order, and in others they transgress these norms in insurrectionary or revolutionary contestation. The papers in this WG will seek to explore the common conditions generating such widespread social resistance in the Global South as well as the specific characteristics of particular struggles. Comparative analyses are also included in the call.
More information on the Development Day Conference is available here: http://www.kehitystutkimus.fi/conference
29th January, 2016 | University of Bath, UK
A workshop hosted by the ESRC South West Doctoral Training Centre & the University of Bath
This workshop brings together academics, theorists and people involved in social and environmental projects, organisations and activism to read Marx and Marxists’ work in the context of current controversies, challenges and alternatives. Through a mutual co-production of knowledge informed by academic research, open discussion, local practitioner expertise and public experience, the work of Marx and Marxists will be read in new ways and shared in new forms with new audiences, in order to be put to new uses.
Location: Room 3.9, Chancellor’s Building, University of Bath, Claverton Down, BATH, BA2 7AY
ORGANISERS: Ana C. Dinerstein & Frederick Harry Pitts
CONTACT: marxinthekeyofhope@gmail.com
REGISTRATION: http://tinyurl.com/marxinthekeyofhope
WEBSITE: http://www.bath.ac.uk/sps/events/news_0114.html
PROGRAMME
09:00 – 9:30 Coffee and Registration
09:30 – 09:45 WELCOME - Ana Bullock (SWDTC) - Joe Devine (Bath)
09:45 – 10:15: INTRODUCTION- Ana C. Dinerstein & Frederick Harry Pitts (Bath)
10:15 – 11:15 THE CITY AS A SPACE OF EXPERIMENTATION
Stephen Hunt (Bristol Radical History Group) - Fabian Frenzel (Leicester) - Greig Charnock (Manchester)
11:15 – 12:45 FOOD & LAND
Werner Bonefeld (York) - Naomi Millner (Bristol) - Skipchen (Bristol)
12:45 – 13:30 LUNCH served by Bristol Skipchen
13: 30 – 15:00 AUTONOMY, SELF-MANAGEMENT & COOPERATION:
Bristol Cable (Media Co-op) - Sarah Amsler (Social Sciences Centre Lincoln) - Dan Ozarow (Middlesex) – Sean Farmelo (Students For Cooperation)
15:00 – 15:15 COFFEE BREAK
15:15- 16:45 MONEY & ALTERNATIVES
Bristol Pound – Graham Taylor (UWE) - Critisticuffs
16:45 – 17:15 BREAKOUTS
17:15 – 18:00 CLOSING SESSION/DISCUSSION
18:00- DRINKS & DINNER
With our very best wishes for the new year to all of you, the INET YSI Working Group on the History of Economic Thought would like to announce the full 2016 Program of the INET Young Scholars Online Seminar in History of Economic Thought and Philosophy of Economics.
Here the details of these first two sessions (full 2016 program below):
Thursday 28th January 17h UTC: Wicksellian Monetary Theory and Contemporary Economics
In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) and with a focus on macroeconomic imbalances in the world economy economists have shown renewed interest in the way central banks and financial systems work. The rise of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has relied on the examination of balance sheets, which has led to advancements in the understandings of the nuts and bolts of the financial system and of the fundamental role of taxes, reserves and deposits. While the school is associated with Post-Keynesian economics, we make the case that it could just as well be called Post-Wicksellian. The aim is not to argue against or for some label, but to make explicit the Wicksellian connection. This can bring forward old discussions and insights and integrate them into the newer debates.
Discussant: Marc Lavoie, University of Ottawa
After the financial crisis in 2008, the relevance of disequilibrium in theoretical models became central. This seems reasonable since the crisis came about in a time where the disequilibrium was not part of dominant theoretical approaches. In this context, the aim of this paper is to analyze the incorporation of Wicksell’s monetary equilibrium in a DSGE, in particular within the NNS approach developed by Woodford (2003). My analysis is concentrating on Woodford’s work, since there the importance of Wicksell’s monetary equilibrium is explicitly emphasized. However, the solution of Woodford’s model expressed in the Taylor rule rejects the core idea of Wicksell (1898). The Wicksell monetary equilibrium explains the interrelation between the real and the monetary sector about disequilibrium. On the contrary, Woodford relates the equilibrium with the steady state where the equilibrium itself is an assumption not a result. I will introduce some aspects of Wicksell’s original of monetary equilibrium.
Discussant: Hans-Michael Trautwein, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg
Please find papers and the link for attendance on the event page.
Wednesday 17th February 16h UTC: Ethics and Morality in Early-20 Century Economic Thought
The presentation discusses the connections and disconnections between ethics and moral in economic ideas, particularly John Maynard Keynes’s thoughts about ethical cultivation and the search for the ‘good life’. We take Keynes's essays 'Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren' and 'My Early Beliefs', as well as his Aristotelian and Moorean influences to investigate how can one reach and experience the 'good life' as an ethical cultivation without being related to normative morality (do's and dont's). This points out to a rethinking about the role of economic activity in life, the reasons why do we wish prosperity and to what extent are we ruled by economistic principles to guide our lives.
Discussant: David Andrews, New York State University at Oswego
The presentation deals with the work of Wilhelm Röpke, Friedrich Hayek and Bertrand de Jouvenel in the years leading up to, during and following WWII. The common pattern that can be discerned in the trajectory of these liberal thinkers from different European countries is from the conviction that the scholar is primarily a student and observer of human affairs, toward the idea that the scholar has a social responsibility to contribute to his culture/civilization. The paper contextualizes the formative period of post-WWII economics, about which it is generally argued that economics is maturing into a value-free science, sometimes even because of the political radicalization of the interbellum and WWII. A study of the work of these liberals, however, shows that there are important exceptions to this trajectory, and thus sheds new light on the response of (European) economists to WWII and also on what role morality should play in economics.
Discussant: Harald Hagemann, Universität Hohenheim
The relationship between positive and normative analysis in economics seems to be clear: positive analysis is about how the world works and normative analysis about how the world should be. In this view, positive analysis implies considerable constraints on normative theory. I will argue that, framed in these terms, this view is highly uninformative and that the problem rests, to a large extent, on three previous questions: an ontological question, which is related to the role of structure and agency in the study of economic institutions; an epistemological question, which refers to the criteria by which we judge a theory as successful; and a question about the relationship between the behavioural assumptions used in political economy and the way in which human beings actually behave. With this framework I aim to show that it is not clear what are precisely the restrictions that positive analysis imposes to normative theory.
Discussant: David Colander, Middlebury College
Please find papers and the link for attendance on the event page.
TIME
An Example: 17h UTC on the 28 of January is: 11 a.m. on the 28 of January in New York, 6 p.m. on the 28 of January in Paris and 1 a.m. on the 29 of January in Tokyo. Please verify the precise time for you location. (Apologies to the East-Asians and Australians, unfortunately there is no timeslot with decent times around the globe; we can only hope some of you in this time zone may be interested enough to brave the late/early hour.)
Here an international guide to UTC times: Please verify the precise time for you location. This website may be helpful.
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2016 FULL PROGRAM:
January: Wicksellian Monetary Theory and Contemporary Economics
February:Ethics and Morality in Early-20 Century Economic Thought
March:The Influence of Mechanics and Cybernetics on 20 Century Economics
April:Old Institutionalism and Anglo-American Economic History
May: Economic Institutions and the “Scientification” of Economics in the Mid-20 Century: US and France
June:Economic Development and the Definitional Boundaries of Economics
Precise dates and other details of later sessions will be announced in time on the program page. The sessions will be possible to attend directly on a web browser, ideally with microphone and camera, via the go-to-meeting website, with no further installation (a standalone program, possibly more stable, is offered for free download alternatively, on the same website). T
he links are provided on the event pages of each session, accessible from the program page and the working group page.
19 January, 2016 | University of Greenwich, UK
GPERC brings together an innovative group of researchers who want to expand the knowledge frontier by challenging orthodoxies in economic and social science research.
The aim of GPERC is to encourage interdisciplinary analysis of the linkages between institutions, power structures and economic dynamics with a view to:
Enhance knowledge of the pressing problems of our time such as inequalities, unemployment, climate change, energy crisis, housing crisis, care deficit, aging, productivity, innovation, and technological change;
Expand the range of evidence-informed and progressive options for policy and practice.
GPERC builds upon four decades of political economy work at the University of Greenwich (formerly Thames Polytechnic). The first step in that direction is the launch of the Greenwich Papers in Political Economy. This paper series will maintain the legacy of the Thames Papers in Political Economy, which were edited at the Thames Polytechnic from 1974 to 1989 by Professor Philip Arestis, Professor Thanos Skouras, and Dr Yiannis Kitromilides.
GPERC also has a research collaboration with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS).
Details about the event:
WELCOME ADDRESS
SPEAKERS
CHAIR
The event will be followed by wine reception.
GPERC builds upon four decades of political economy work at the University of Greenwich (formerly Thames Polytechnic). The first step in that direction is the launch of the Greenwich Papers in Political Economy. This paper series will maintain the legacy of the Thames Papers in Political Economy, which were edited at the Thames Polytechnic from 1974 to 1989 by Professor Philip Arestis, Professor Thanos Skouras, and Dr Yiannis Kitromilides.
Full programme of the conference is available here. Registration is available @eventbrite.
More information about GPERC, our publications and projects is available here.
Contact: gperc@greenwich.ac.uk
Location: Daryll Forde Seminar Room, Anthropology Building, 14 Taviton St, off Gordon Square, London WC1E 6BT, UK
Mythology as a window into other worlds
Language, art, music and culture emerged in Africa over 100,000 years ago, culminating in a symbolic explosion or 'human revolution' whose echoes can still be heard in myths and cultural traditions from around the world. These talks are a general introduction to social and biological anthropology, ranging over fields as diverse as hunter-gatherer studies, mythology, primatology, archaeology and archaeoastronomy. Radical Anthropology brings indigenous rights activists, environmentalists, feminists and others striving for a better world together with people who just want to learn about anthropology. There is always time for questions and discussion after each talk and there are good local pubs for those wishing to socialise into the evening.
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Tuesdays, 6.45–9.00pm:
Thursday, January 12th
Thursday, January 19th
Thursday, January 26th
Thursday, February 2nd
Thursday, February 9th
Thursday, February 16th
Thursday, February 23th
Thursday, March 1st
Thursday, March 8th
Thursday, March 15th
Thursday, March 22th
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All talks are free and open to all in the Daryll Forde Seminar Room, Anthropology Building, 14 Taviton St, off Gordon Square, London WC1E 6BT.
Info: radicalanthropologygroup.org or @radicalanthro or Facebook
The HPPE seminar (Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Economics) at LSE's Economic History Department has now published its programme for Lent term 2016 (see below).
HPPE is a bi-weekly research seminar at LSE’s Economic History Department. The seminar takes place on Wednesdays from 1-2.30pm at LSE, in Tower 2, room 2.03. For maps and directions please visit: http://www.lse.ac.uk/mapsAndDirections/home.aspx
Please note this building is card access and so you will need to inform the security desk that you are attending HPPE.
For updates to the programme please visit: http://www.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/seminars/HPPE/home.aspx then click on the tab “Lent 2016", please note the website is not yet fully updated and the schedule is as below.
The convenor of HPPE is Maxine Montaigne (m.c.montaigne@lse.ac.uk)
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Time (always the same): Wednesdays, 1-2.30pm
Location: Tower 2, London School of Economics, room 2.03
Wednesday, 20th January
Wednesday, 3rd February
Wednesday, 17th February
Wednesday, 2nd March
Wednesday, 16th March
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About HPPE:
HPPE (Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Economics) has run since 2012 and is organised by PhD students at the LSE. It brings together scholars from different disciplines to discuss the evolution of economic thinking and embraces topics from Ancient Greece to contemporary Africa.
The seminar inquires how the theory and practice of economics changes with the historical and philosophical context. The seminar aims to provide scholars at any stage of their career with an opportunity to discuss their work with a critical audience.
For further information, please see: http://www.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/seminars/HPPE/home.aspx
10-18 June, 2016 | Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, New York, US
Organized by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College with support from the Ford Foundation
The seventh Minsky Summer Seminar will be held at the Levy Economics Institute in June 2016. The annual Summer Seminar provides a rigorous discussion of both the theoretical and applied aspects of Minsky’s economics, with an examination of meaningful prescriptive policies relevant to the current economic and financial crisis. Organized by Jan Kregel, Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, and L. Randall Wray, the Seminar program is geared toward graduate students and those at the beginning of their academic or professional careers. The teaching staff includes well-known economists concentrating on and expanding Minsky’s work.
Applications may be made to Kathleen Mullaly at the Levy Institute (mullaly@levy.org), and should include a current curriculum vitae. Admission to the Summer Seminar includes provision of room and board on the Bard College campus.
Due to limited space availability, the deadline for applications is March 1, 2016.
Job Title: Assistant Dean and Associate Professor of Financial Economics
Wingate University, a private residential university with a liberal arts core located near Charlotte, North Carolina, announces a full-time continuing position for Assistant Dean and Associate Professor of Financial Economics in the Porter B. Byrum School of Business, to begin August 2016. The ideal candidate will possess a Ph.D. in Economics or related field, with primary teaching interest in Monetary Institutions, Investments and Portfolio Management, Macroeconomics and/or Derivatives as well as general financial systems and institutions at the principles, intermediate, and MBA level as needed by the department.
In addition to teaching, this position will administer and manage the accreditation and assessment process for the School of Business. This will included managing the annual assessment process for both SACS and ACBSP, report writing for the accreditation compliance, maintaining a continual process of using outcomes to improve programs, and managing the external benchmarking process for the school. This position will also help manage the process of continual improvement for the overall School of Business curriculum.
Send application, including curriculum vitae, statement of teaching philosophy, and the contact information for three references to Mary Maye, Porter B. Byrum School of Business, Wingate University, Wingate, NC 28174, or email to mmaye@wingate.edu. Review of applications will begin on February 1st, and will continue until the position is filled. Founded in 1896, Wingate University offers students active learning opportunities through personalized instruction, world travel, career discovery, faith development and community service.
More information about the university may be found at http://www.wingate.edu
Dear friends and colleagues,
this is the second (and last) announcement: the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) currently invites submissions for its annual **EAEPE-Kapp Prize** competition.
The EAEPE-Kapp Prize awards the article published in the previous 2 years that best represents and develops EAEPE's mission and theoretical perspectives, as laid out in our Constitution and here: http://eaepe.org/?page=about&side=theoretical_perspectives
The EAEPE-Kapp Prize winner will be announced at our **Annual Conference in Manchester (UK) on 3-5 November 2016**.More information and the call for papers for the Conference can be found here: http://eaepe.org/?page=events&side=annual_conference&sub=call_for_papers_eaepe2016
All papers, normally not exceeding 12000 words, are eligible for the EAEPE-Kapp Prize, if published in a scholarly journal in the past 2 years (i.e. no older than 1 January 2014). Only one entry per author will be considered, and applicants must be paid-up members of EAEPE for the year of the competition (i.e. 2016).
The closing date to submit a paper is **31 January 2016**.
To submit a paper, please send a PDF version (including any relevant annex) carlo.dippoliti@uniroma1.it or send five non-returnable paper copies at: Carlo D’Ippoliti, Sapienza University of Rome, Viale Regina Elena 295, 00161 Rome, Italy.
Any member of the EAEPE Council, or Trustee of the Foundation for European Economic Development (FEED) serving at any time from 1 January of the year before the year of competition to 1 July of the year of the competition inclusive, shall be ineligible to participate.
We look forward to receiving and reading your entries!
*Carlo D’Ippoliti*
*EAEPE Council member*
The ESHET Council is inviting nominations for the Awards that will be announced at the next annual Conference in Paris, France, 26-28 May 2016.
1. The BEST MONOGRAPH AWARD is for the best book (not necessarily written in English) in the history of economic thought published during 2014 or 2015. The author can be from any part of the world. The winner will be invited to attend the Society Conference that follows the announcement of the prize to deliver the Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui Lecture. Note that, in supplement, the Council can also give a BEST SCHOLARLY EDITION AWARD.
2. The HISTORY OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS AWARD is for the best article (not necessarily written in English) in the history of economic thought, published in a scientific journal during 2014 or 2015. Candidates can be from any part of the world. The winner will be invited to attend the Society Conference that follows the announcement of the prize, and will receive 500 euro.
3. The ESHET YOUNG RESEARCHER AWARD. This prize recognizes scholarly achievements of historians of economic thought at an early stage of their career. The prize is awarded to scholars below the age of 40 at the time of the annual conference in recognition of outstanding publications in the history of economic thought. It consists of 1,000 euro and a waiving of the conference fee when the prize is awarded.
4. The GILLES DOSTALER AWARD is a new award created in 2012 in the memory of Gilles Dostaler, thanks to the generosity of his widow Marielle Cauchy. This prize — of 500 euro — recognizes scholarly achievements of young research fellows working on one of Gilles Dostaler’s many fields of interest — e.g., Marx and Classical political economy, Keynes, Hayek, critical approaches to free markets theories, relationships between economics, politics, philosophy and ethics, etc. It is awarded to scholars below the age of 35 at the time of the annual conference in recognition of an outstanding work not necessarily already published or published within the two previous years.
Nominations should be sent as soon as possible, but not later than January 30, 2016 to the Chair of the relevant panel:
Please note also the following points.
Subsequently each nominee will be asked to submit to the Council three publications on which s/he wishes to be judged.
The final decision on each of the prizes will be made by the Council of ESHET in Paris.
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Centre of Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy at the Vienna University of Technology, the Egon-Matzner-Award for Socio- Economics was established in 2012; it will be conferred on 2nd June 2016 for the fifth time.
Egon Matzner (1938-2003) was Professor of Socio-Economics, Public Finance and Infra- structure Policy at the Vienna University of Technology’s Centre of Public Finance and In- frastructure Policy from 1972 until his retirement in 1998. He is remembered by many as an innovative thinker, always with an open mind with regard to new topics in economics, especially in the fields of socio-economics, public finance and infrastructure policy, with a clear political vision and he always retained a critical distance. Professor Matzner had a great influence on several generations of planners and scientists, and was always very supportive towards talented students.
The Egon-Matzner-Award will be presented to young scientists (up to 35 years of age) for their scientific publications (namely contributions to journals or monographs issued by international scientific publishers) and for excellent diploma, master or doctoral theses. In particular, studies in the following thematic fields can be submitted:
Studies will be preferred that especially
The submitted works should have been published recently (2014-2016). The award is endowed with a premium of EUR 1,000 and can be shared, in the event of parity, by the authors of excellent publications. The award is funded by the revenues of the Centre of Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy. The submitted works can be written in German or English. The prize will be awarded based on the decisions made by an international jury, and will be handed over at the annual conference to be held at the Centre of Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy on 2nd June 2016, in Vienna. Award winners are asked to present their work personally in a short presentation at the conference.
Submissions including the author’s CV have to be sent electronically to EMP@ifip.tuwien.ac.at; for further information, please contact Prof. Dr. Michael Getzner, Vienna University of Technology, Resselgasse 5, 1040 Vienna, Austria (Michael.Getzner@tuwien.ac.at).
The deadline for submissions is 15th March 2016. The jury’s decision will be made known by the end of April, 2015.
Robert H. Chenhall, Frank Moers: The role of innovation in the evolution of management accounting and its integration into management control
Christine Cooper: Entrepreneurs of the self: The development of management control since 1976
Robert Libby, Kristina M. Rennekamp, Nicholas Seybert: Regulation and the interdependent roles of managers, auditors, and directors in earnings management and accounting choice
Michael Power: How accounting begins: Object formation and the accretion of infrastructure
Ken T. Trotman, Tim D. Bauer, Kerry A. Humphreys: Group judgment and decision making in auditing: Past and future research
Julie A. Nelson: Husbandry: a (feminist) reclamation of masculine responsibility for care
Beat Weber: Bitcoin and the legitimacy crisis of money
Jason Begley, Frank Geary, and Tom Stark: Convergence in the pre-1914 Atlantic economy: what really happened to wages in Ireland between 1881 and 1911?
George F. DeMartino, Jonathan D. Moyer, and Kate M. Watkins: Achieving fair trade through a social tariff regime: a policy thought experiment
Lennart Erixon: Is firm renewal stimulated by negative shocks? The status of negative driving forces in Schumpeterian and Darwinian economics
Verena Dill, Uwe Jirjahn, and Stephen C. Smith: Do foreign owners favour short-term profit? Evidence from Germany
Geoffrey Wood, Shuxing Yin, Khelifa Mazouz, and Jeremy Eng-Tuck Cheah: Foreign direct investment and employment rights in South-Eastern Europe
Soon Ryoo: Demand-driven inequality, endogenous saving rate and macroeconomic instability
Cristiano Perugini, Jens Hölscher, and Simon Collie: Inequality, credit and financial crises
Giulio Palermo: Power, competition and the free trader vulgaris
Marco Dardi: Philosophy and psychology of mathematics according to Alfred Marshall
John Considine and David Duffy: Keynes and the confidence faeries
Maria Cristina Marcuzzo and Eleonora Sanfilippo: Keynes and the interwar commodity option markets
Rod O’Donnell and Colin Rogers: IYLM: a General Theory–compatible replacement for ISLM
John J. Gutrich, Keith Gigliello, Kimberly Vest Gardner, Andrew J. Elmore: Economic returns of groundwater management sustaining an ecosystem service of dust suppression by alkali meadow in Owens Valley, California
Petterson Molina Vale: The changing climate of climate change economics
Esther Oliver Sanz: Community currency (CCs) in Spain: An empirical study of their social effects
G.J. Sanga, E.D. Mungatana: Integrating ecology and economics in understanding responses in securing land-use externalities internalization in water catchments
Maria Hecher, Ulli Vilsmaier, Roya Akhavan, Claudia R. Binder: An integrative analysis of energy transitions in energy regions: A case study of ökoEnergieland in Austria
Goytom Abraha Kahsay, Lars Gårn Hansen: The effect of climate change and adaptation policy on agricultural production in Eastern Africa
Qinghua Zhu, Yong Geng, Joseph Sarkis: Shifting Chinese organizational responses to evolving greening pressures
D. D’Amato, M. Rekola, N. Li, A. Toppinen: Monetary valuation of forest ecosystem services in China: A literature review and identification of future research needs
Weslem Rodrigues Faria, Alexandre Nunes Almeida: Relationship between openness to trade and deforestation: Empirical evidence from the Brazilian Amazon
Seema Arora-Jonsson: Does resilience have a culture? Ecocultures and the politics of knowledge production
Charlotte von Möllendorff, Jesko Hirschfeld: Measuring impacts of extreme weather events using the life satisfaction approach
Christian Krekel, Jens Kolbe, Henry Wüstemann: The greener, the happier? The effect of urban land use on residential well-being
Valeria Costantini, Giorgia Sforna, Mariangela Zoli: Interpreting bargaining strategies of developing countries in climate negotiations. A quantitative approach
Ethemcan Turhan: Value-based adaptation to climate change and divergent developmentalisms in Turkish agriculture
Chris J. Martin: The sharing economy: A pathway to sustainability or a nightmarish form of neoliberal capitalism?
E. Tello, E. Galán, V. Sacristán, G. Cunfer, G.I. Guzmán, M. González de Molina, F. Krausmann, S. Gingrich, R. Padró, I. Marco, D. Moreno-Delgado: Opening the black box of energy throughputs in farm systems: A decomposition analysis between the energy returns to external inputs, internal biomass reuses and total inputs consumed (the Vallès County, Catalonia, c.1860 and 1999)
Raoul Wieland, Sarah Ravensbergen, Edward J. Gregr, Terre Satterfield, Kai M.A. Chan: Debunking trickle-down ecosystem services: The fallacy of omnipotent, homogeneous beneficiaries
Armon Rezai, Sigrid Stagl: Ecological macroeconomics: Introduction and review
Giuseppe Fontana, Malcolm Sawyer: Towards post-Keynesian ecological macroeconomics
Lance Taylor, Armon Rezai, Duncan K. Foley: An integrated approach to climate change, income distribution, employment, and economic growth
Tim Jackson, Peter A. Victor: Does slow growth lead to rising inequality? Some theoretical reflections and numerical simulations
Emanuele Campiglio: Beyond carbon pricing: The role of banking and monetary policy in financing the transition to a low-carbon economy
Richard B. Howarth, Kevin Kennedy: Economic growth, inequality, and well-being
Klara Zwickl, Franziska Disslbacher, Sigrid Stagl: Work-sharing for a sustainable economy
Katy Gardner: Chevron's gift of CSR: moral economies of connection and disconnection in a transnational Bangladeshi village
Tim Dorlach: The prospects of egalitarian capitalism in the global South: Turkish social neoliberalism in comparative perspective
Torin Monahan & Jill A. Fisher: ‘I'm still a hustler’: entrepreneurial responses to precarity by participants in phase I clinical trials
Christian Berndt: Behavioural economics, experimentalism and the marketization of development
Galit Ailon: Rethinking calculation: the popularization of financial trading outside the global centres of finance
Kristian Bondo Hansen: Contrarian investment philosophy in the American stock market: on investment advice and the crowd conundrum
Peter J. Stauvermann and Ronald R. Kumar: Sustainability of A Pay-as-you-Go Pension System in A Small Open Economy with Ageing, Human Capital and Endogenous Fertility
Junho Yang, Tetsuya Kawamura and Kazuhito Ogawa: Experimental Multimarket Contact Inhibits Cooperation
Jaylson Jair da Silveira and Gilberto Tadeu Lima: Effort Elicitation, Wage Differentials and Income Distribution in A Wage-Led Growth Regime
Tae-Seok Jang and Stephen Sacht: Animal Spirits and the Business Cycle: Empirical Evidence from Moment Matching
Ian Steedman: On the Marginalist Theory of ‘Capital Supply’
Ekkehart Schlicht: Directed Technical Change and Capital Deepening: A Reconsideration of Kaldor's Technical Progress Function
Sarbajit Chaudhuri: Trade Unionism and Welfare Consequences of Trade and Investment Reforms in A Developing Economy
Andrea Lagna: Derivatives and the financialisation of the Italian state
Werner Raza: Politics of scale and strategic selectivity in the liberalisation of public services – the role of trade in services
Patrick Clark & Ian Hussey: Fair trade certification as oversight: an analysis of fair trade international and the small producers' symbol
Tim Kelsall & Seiha Heng: Inclusive healthcare and the political settlement in Cambodia
Leonardo Becchetti, Nazaria Solferino and Maria Elisabetta Tessitore: Some Insights on Procrastination: A Curse or a Productive Art?
Astrid Matthey and Tobias Regner: More Than Outcomes: The Role of Self-Image in Other-Regarding Behavior
Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hernán-González and Stephen Rassenti: Peer Pressure and Moral Hazard in Teams: Experimental Evidence
Christoph Engel and Daniel Nagin: Who is Afraid of the Stick? Experimentally Testing the Deterrent Effect of Sanction Certainty
Articles
Robert Boyer: A World of Contrasted but Interdependent Inequality Regimes: The Latin America Paradox
Mika Kato: Jean Tirole, Nobel Prize Winner
Mark Setterfield, Yun K. Kim & Jeremy Rees: Inequality, Debt Servicing and the Sustainability of Steady State Growth
John Smithin: Endogenous Money, Fiscal Policy, Interest Rates and the Exchange Rate Regime: A Comment on Palley, Tymoigne and Wray
C. Sardoni: A note on the sustainability of full employment in the presence of budget deficits
Special Section
Jan Toporowski & Andy Denis: Microfoundations: Introduction
Jan Toporowski: Microfoundations, Minsky and Classical Political Economy
Victoria Chick: On Microfoundations and Keynes’ Economics
Anthony J. Evans & Paul Dragos Aligica: The Microfoundations of Austrian Economics through a New Classical Theoretical Lens
Andy Denis: Microfoundations
Alessandro Vercelli: Microfoundations, Methodological Individualism and Alternative Economic Visions
Philip Arestis, Aurelie Charles & Giuseppe Fontana: Introduction to the Special Issue on “Ethics, Global Finance and the Great Recession”
George F. DeMartino: Harming Irreparably: On Neoliberalism, Kaldor-Hicks, and the Paretian Guarantee
Cynthia Bansak & Martha A. Starr: Distributional Costs of Housing-price Bubbles: Who pays the Price when Bubbles Deflate?
Philip Arestis, Aurelie Charles & Giuseppe Fontana: Power, Intergroup Conflicts and Social Stratification in the United States: What has the Global Crisis Taught us?
Ilene Grabel: Post-Crisis Experiments in Development Finance Architectures: A Hirschmanian Perspective On ‘Productive Incoherence’
Pepita Ould Ahmed and Jean-François Ponsot: Contestations monétaires: une économie politique de la monnaie
Benjamin J. Cohen: The Demise of the Dollar?
Georgina M. Gómez and Joop de Wit: Contestations and Contradictions in the Argentine Redes de Trueque
André Orléan: La valeur économique comme fait social: la preuve par les évaluations boursières
Jérôme Blanc: Contester par projets. Le cas des monnaies locales associatives
Guillaume Vallet: Le WIR en Suisse : la révolte du puissant?
Odile Lakomski-Laguerre and Ludovic Desmedt: L’alternative monétaire Bitcoin: une perspective institutionnaliste
Alain Laurent and Virginie Monvoisin: Les nouvelles monnaies numériques : au-delà de la dématérialisation de la monnaie et de la contestation des banques
Pierre Alary: Un régime monétaire traditionnel contesté par la monnaie d’État: l’histoire du kip au Nord-Laos de 1975 à 2000
Ramine Motamed-Nejad: Monnaie et illégalismes. Genèse des protestations monétaires en Iran (1979-2013)
Frédéric Lordon, Thomas Lamarche, Pepita Ould Ahmed and Jean-François Ponsot: L’euro ou l’oubli de la politique - Entretien avec Frédéric Lordon
Celina Whitaker, Thomas Lamarche, Pepita Ould Ahmed and Jean-François Ponsot: L’expérience des monnaies complémentaires: questionner et redéfinir le lien des citoyens à la monnaie
By Frances Thomson, Sahil Dutta | 2015, TNI
A beginner’s guide to financialisation: how it works, how it shapes our lives, the forces that lie behind it, and how we can resist
Introduction to Financialisation
Knowing your CDOs from your OTCs – Unpacking the jargon
How financialisation impacts commodity markets, food prices and the environment
How financialisation impacts on households, firms and the wider economy
Exploring the forces behind financialisation
Resisting financialisation
Is there a question you would like answered or do you have comments to improve this? Please email tni@tni.org and we will try and include your feedback in updates to any future editions of this primer.
Link to the book is available here.
Edited by Stefano Petrucciani | 2015, Carocci
Marx's influence on the history of the nineteenth and twentieth century has been enormous. Starting from Friedrich Engels's work, a large group of scholars has tried to delineate its main stages of development. The resulting picture is highly complex (both from the historical-geographical and the conceptual point of view). The first two volumes include essays on the German social-democratic Marxism, the Bolshevik revolutionary break in Russia, the establishment (with Lukács and Korsch) of the permanent linkage between Marxism and Philosophy, the spread of Marxism across Asia and Latin America, the penetration of Marxism into the European culture and politics from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the real socialism. The essays of the third volume investigate how Marx's work continues to be inspirational for the study of the socioeconomic and cultural transformations.
Volume 1: Social Democracy, Revisionism and Revolution (1848-1945)
Volume 2: Varieties of Communism and Critical Theories in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
Volume 3: Economics, Politics and Culture: Marx Today
By Eugene Gogol and Latin American Colleagues | Brill, 2016
Utopia and the Dialectic in Latin American Liberation begins by examining the concept of utopia in Latin American thought, particularly its roots within indigenous emancipatory practice, and suggests that within this concept of utopia can be found a resonance with the dialectic of negativity that Hegel developed under the impact of the French Revolution, further developed by such thinker-activists as Marx, Lenin and Raya Dunayevskaya. From this theoretical-philosophical plane, the study moves to the liberation practices of social movements in recent Latin American history. Movements such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, Indigenous feminism throughout the Americas, and Indigenous struggles in Bolivia and Colombia, are among those taken up--most often in the words of the participants. The study concludes by discussing a dialectic of philosophy and organization in the context of Latin American liberation.
Link to the book is available here.
By L. Randall Wray | 2015, Princeton University Press
Perhaps no economist was more vindicated by the global financial crisis than Hyman P. Minsky (1919–96). Although a handful of economists raised alarms as early as 2000, Minsky’s warnings began a half-century earlier, with writings that set out a compelling theory of financial instability. Yet even today he remains largely outside mainstream economics; few people have a good grasp of his writings, and fewer still understand their full importance. Why Minsky Matters makes the maverick economist’s critically valuable insights accessible to general readers for the first time. L. Randall Wray shows that by understanding Minsky we will not only see the next crisis coming but we might be able to act quickly enough to prevent it.
As Wray explains, Minsky’s most important idea is that "stability is destabilizing": to the degree that the economy achieves what looks to be robust and stable growth, it is setting up the conditions in which a crash becomes ever more likely. Before the financial crisis, mainstream economists pointed to much evidence that the economy was more stable, but their predictions were completely wrong because they disregarded Minsky’s insight. Wray also introduces Minsky’s significant work on money and banking, poverty and unemployment, and the evolution of capitalism, as well as his proposals for reforming the financial system and promoting economic stability.
A much-needed introduction to an economist whose ideas are more relevant than ever, Why Minsky Matters is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why economic crises are becoming more frequent and severe—and what we can do about it.
Link to the book is available here.
Click here to read CPEG Notes, a series of quarterly analyses of current economic reality by the Chicago Political Economy Group. In this edition: Prof. Joseph Persky examines the limping U.S. economy, Mel Rothenberg’s International Note examines the European refugee influx and economic crisis, Ron Baiman talks labor and the fight for $15, Bruce Parry talks trade and the TPP, and finally Bill Barclay dives into high frequency trading and a court case regarding “spoofing”.
Link to the Newsletter is available here.
This EuroMemorandum draws on discussions and papers presented at the 21st Workshop on Alternative Economic Policy in Europe, organised by the EuroMemo Group, from 24-26 September 2015 in Roskilde, Denmark.
The EuroMemorandum 2016 critically analyses recent economic developments in Europe and emphasises the strong need for an alternative economic policy that is based on the principles of democratic participation, social justice and environmental sustainability.
The year 2015 was marked on the one hand by the inability of the EU to emerge from the crisis which began in the financial sector in 2007/2008 and which shifted into the sphere of public finances in 2009/2010, and on the other by a dramatic rise in the number of people taking flight from their homes and from their homelands, because of wars and terrorist attacks, in many cases caused by the destructive policies of the EU and of its member states.
The continuing low growth rate environment in many countries, stagnation in others and even recession in some, have led not only to a general slow-down, but also to deepening divisions within the EU, both between member states and between regions. Such divergences are reflected in the basic economic and social indicators of the area, as well as in the democratic process on the political level, as certain countries acquire a hegemonic role in the shaping of EU policy, while particular group interests, notably those of financial capital, become dominant across the EU as a whole.
The Greek experience amply revealed the connecting links between politics and economics in the EU, i.e. the power imbalance between the ruling elites and society at large. Furthermore, it raises serious issues of constitutionalism: namely, the tendency of the EU institutions to restrict the area of democratic decision making by democratically elected governments, focusing instead on technocratic rules imposed by undemocratic decision bodies. In this sense, a discussion of alternative proposals to the current EU economic and social policy needs to take into account the underlying political process and the squeezing out of democracy.
As in previous years, this EuroMemorandum provides a summary of key economic and political developments in Europe in 2015, a critique of the official policy responses adopted by the European Union and the member states, and an outline of the basis for progressive policy alternatives. The EuroMemorandum 2016 will be published together with a list of signatories.
Therefore, if you are in broad agreement with the main lines of argument of this year's EuroMemorandum, please express your support.
In order to submit your declaration of support to the EuroMemo Group, please fill in the declaration of support, and send it back by Monday, 18 January 2015 via email to info@euromemo.eu or by fax to: +49-(0)69-4305-1764.
Thank you very much for your support and best wishes, Stefanie Marie Scholz - for the EuroMemo Group Steering Committee!
Read the whole EuroMemorandum here
Dear colleagues,
Apologies for the somewhat lengthy message, but I would like to draw your attention to an extraordinary case of missing manuscripts and letters of A.R.J. Turgot (1727-1781). By publicizing this case, I hope to be able to call on your collective knowledge, and possibly influence, with the ultimate aim of restoring these missing items to what I think is now their rightful place.
I think it is hardly necessary to remind you of the importance of Turgot’s writings for the early formation of some of the central ideas of classical political economy. Without a doubt, most of you would rank him in your top-five of 18 century economists (that is, if you are given to making such rankings).
As some of you will know, after his death in 1781 part of Turgot’s correspondence and a number of manuscripts of his writings were preserved in the family archive at the ancestral castle of Lantheuil in Calvados, Normandy.
On two occasions transcripts of parts of this collection were included in Collected Works; once in the Oeuvres de Turgot edited by P.S. Dupont de Nemours (1808-1811) and once in the Oeuvres by G. Schelle (1913-1923). However, since approximately the mid-1970s access to the collection was consistently denied to all researchers. Finally in February 2015 the collection was bought by the French state to be deposited at the Archives Nationales. There was some controversy about the amount of money that was paid, but that is not my concern here (if you want to read more about that issue see: http://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/2015/03/03/03004-20150303ARTFIG00018-archives-turgot-polemique-autour-de-leur-achat-par-l-etat.php).
Employees at the Archives Nationales have since made an inventory of the papers and just before Christmas they kindly provided me with a copy of this list. This was in reply to a request I made some months previously to be given access to the manuscript of Turgot’s well known unfinished work Valeurs et monnaies. To my surprise this manuscript was not listed in the inventory of the AN, and indeed I received specific confirmation that this item is missing from the collection.
I have since made a comparison between the list of documents that Schelle used from the Lantheuil collection and the inventory of the AN. From this it appears that not only Valeurs et monnaies is missing, but also some other, in my view, significant pieces. They include the early works Discours sur les avantages que l’établissement du christianisme a procuré au genre humain…. (reproduced in Schelle I, 194-214), a Tableau philosophique (Schelle I, 214-235) and Fragments de l’histoire du Jansénisme… (I, 425-435); and also some important letters of Turgot to Hume (Schelle II, 658-665) and to Tucker (III, 614-617).
Some further enquiries tell me that these items were probably already missing in 2002 when a previous inventory of the Turgot family archive was made. It is also known from eye witness accounts of Professor Tsuda, formerly of Hitotsubashi University, Japan, that in the early 1970s Valeurs et monnaies and the Discours just mentioned (in three versions) were still present in the family archive at Lantheuil. Therefore I conclude that sometime in the last quarter of the 20 century the pieces mentioned (and I don’t think my list is complete) have disappeared from the collection. I do not have any knowledge about their fate (that is, whether they were sold, stolen, misplaced, destroyed….).
I think that it is of great importance that these documents are traced. To give an example of why this is so, the Lantheuil version of Valeurs et monnaies is the only extended copy of that work that we know of. But as I argue in a recent article in EJHET (2014, 4, 549-582) there are reasonable doubts that a wholly accurate transcript of the manuscript was ever made. In the title of my article I mentioned ‘our incomplete knowledge of an incomplete manuscript’. I would seriously regret if this statement would have to be changed to ‘our incomplete knowledge of an incomplete and lost manuscript’.
If any list members, or persons known to list members, anywhere in the world have information about the possible whereabouts of any missing Turgot documents, I will be very grateful to receive it. This information may consist of rumour or hearsay: at this point anything is welcome.
Currently the Archives Nationales are digitizing the Turgot collection and I understand that this resource will be accessible to the public at large later this year. In my eyes, this laudable initiative makes the AN the rightful place to which the missing items should be restored, even if it would be in digital form only. If you have any information that may contribute to this outcome, please help.
Richard van den Berg
Kingston University, UK
Email: R.Van-Den-Berg@KINGSTON.AC.UK
Thames Papers in Political Economy are now online at the Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre webpage: http://www.gre.ac.uk/business/research/centres/gperc/pubreports
We are grateful to Philip Arestis and Yiannis Kitromilides for donating their collection, to Malcolm Sawyer, Sheila Dow, Alan Freeman, Peter Skott, and James Forder for providing other relevant copies. I would also like to thank my colleagues Eurydice Fotopoulou, Giovanni Cozzi and the librarians at the University of Greenwich for their valuable support in digitalising and uploading this valuable collection.The EREP network – Economists for Rational Economic Policies – has published its Review of the UK Economy in 2015, with a series of short articles focusing on different aspects.
The Review argues (adopting an Osbornian “building” metaphor)
“As the year has progressed, the economy has slowed and regressed. The public finances are built on hopes and assumptions that appear to be fragile indeed, and economic activity in many key areas has decelerated whilst the property boom helps the asset-rich. The weaknesses in the UK economy are more and more apparent, like a building with a flashy design but poor construction. The cracks begin to show. Let’s hope there’s no earthquake coming…”
The report’s authors include: