[artinfo] Conference - Activism and the State of Neo-liberalism

[Beata Hock]

CALL FOR PAPERS
 

Graduate Conference of the Sociology and Social Anthropology department,
CEU
 
 Activism and the State of Neo-liberalism
 
22-23 June 2007
 
Deadline for submitting abstracts is 31 March  2007
 
The Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of Central European
University is pleased to announce its First Graduate Student Conference
that will take place in Budapest on 22-23 June 2007. The conference aims
at bringing together graduate students, scholars, and activists who are
committed to understanding forms of neo-liberal governance and
capitalist states as well as the concrete mechanisms of resistance to
and contestation of neo-liberal imperatives. We invite abstracts that
address related theoretical concerns, discuss empirically based
research, or present the particular experiences of activists. Our goal
is to bring together participants of a variety of disciplines and
geographical loci.
 
Our key speakers include:
 
Dr Gavin Smith (University of Toronto), who will talk on "Organic
ideology and political economy: Modes of resistance and modes of rule".
 
Dr Paul Stubbs (The Institute of Economics, Zagreb), who will talk on
uneven neo-liberalisms and the present problems and possibilities for
various kinds of activism.
 

Submitted abstracts shall address one of the topics of the panels:
 
PANEL DISCRIPTIONS
 
1. Panel: States of Neo-liberalism
 
The panel seeks to discuss the complex and often ambiguous processes
connected to the transformations that states are going through due to
neo-liberal reforms of the last decades. The 'retreat' of the
nation-state from economic and social regulations has been accompanied
on the one hand by the increasing prominence of supranational
organizations like the IMF or World Bank, and on the other by increased
opportunities for sub-national groups or organizations. At the same
time, the state itself is undergoing important transformations, inviting
further analysis of how practices of neo-liberal governmentality are
relayed through clearly identifiable state policies and apparatuses.
 
This panel invites contributions focusing on:
-the new types of relations between state actors and non-state actors
such as social movements, NGOs, international organizations, and the
business sector;
- the novel practices of the neo-liberal state such as re-scaling,
devolved sovereignty, and the new forms of spatiality and their
cultural-ideological representations.
2. Panel: Of markets and transnational movements
 
This panel invites papers that examine the concrete links between civic
activism and donors, charity organizations and other funding bodies. The
focus of the panel is on the specific cases of distribution and/or
competition for money in the framework of the marketization of civil
society and the paradoxes of cooperation between civic movements and
trans/national sponsoring agencies.
 
The panel encourages the submission of abstracts related to the
following themes:
-civil society initiative, fund raising, accountability; 
-allocation of aid, conditionality of financial support, transnational
donors and the European Union initiatives.
 

3. Panel: Fighting subalterities
 
Though subalterity seems a position from which the most urgent
criticisms of the global neo-liberal regime and its transfiguration onto
local politics can be launched, it is also a condition that people
usually seek to overcome. This panel seeks to explore the complex
processes involved in simultaneously organizing as a subaltern group and
overcoming subalternity, i.e., of 'fighting subalternities'. In
particular we hope to look at how the internal dynamics of organized
subaltern (indigenous, Roma, dalit..) movements have been affected by
neo-liberal rule.
 
The panel calls for papers that look at:
-the divisive pressures of neo-liberalism on leaders and constituencies
of subaltern social movements;
-the difficult connection between lived subaltern experiences and their
public, political representations.
 

HOW TO APPLY
 
Applicants from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds are encouraged to
submit an abstract (not more than 300 words) and a short cv to the
following e-mail address:
Activism_vs_Neoliberalism at yahoo.com (cc: to
oustinova-stjepanovic_galina at phd.ceu.hu).
Please state clearly if you are interested in presenting your paper
within a specific panel. If not, your paper will be allocated to one of
the panels upon our discretion. Completed applications should be
submitted electronically no later than 31 March 31 2007. Applicants will
be notified about the results by 15 April. Presentations should not be
longer than 15-20 minutes. A written outline of the presentation should
be submitted two weeks before the conference. For any further questions,
please contact us at Activism_vs_Neoliberalism at yahoo.com (cc: to
sphstl01 at phd.ceu.hu).
 
Visa
Those requiring support to obtain a visa to Hungary, please contact us
mentioning your passport details.
 
Funding
Limited funding to cover travel costs and accommodation is available.
However, we encourage participants to also try to find travel support at
their home institutions.