Great Lakes Political Economy Conference and Historical Materialism Conference

Dear Friends,

Upping the Anti would like to encourage all of you in or around the Toronto area to consider attending these two upcoming radical conferences. The Great Lakes Political Economy Conference goes from Wednesday April 23rd to 24th at York University, and Historical Materialism -- what is likely to be the largest Marxist conference in Canada in the last decade -- begins on the evening of the 24th and continues to Saturday April 26th.

The Great Lakes conference website can be viewed at http://greatlakes2008.blogspot.com
The Historical Materialism website is at http://www.arts.yorku.ca/conferences/HMToronto/

The great lakes schedule is appended below.

In solidarity,

UTA.

Great Lakes Political Economy Conference 2008

Neoliberalism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism?

April 23-24. Organized by the Department of Political Science, York University

Contemporary radical political economy presents its students with a paradox. Our objects of study have often been defined in terms of the "new." However, radical scholarship haas regularly attempted to make sense of the contemporary world by means of concepts reminiscent of critiques of capitalism from a century ago and more. Is neoliberalism the "highest stage of capitalism," or has the old become new again?

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23

9:00AM - 10:00AM, MEET AND GREET

10:00AM - 12:00PM

1: THE CULTURE(S) OF NEOLIBERALISM (VH 1018)
CHAIR - SIMON BLACK
JULIAN AMMIRANTE "Sport and the Political Economy of Culture in the era of Neo-liberal Globalization."
TANNER MIRRLEES "Post-Fordism, Neoliberalism, & Reality-TV."
JULIAN HOLLAND "The Aestheticological Settlement: Modeling Neoliberal Ideological Forms."
ROB MACDONALD "Work and Food: Reconnecting with the Sources that Feed the Soul."

2: NEOLIBERALISM IN CANADA (VH 1020)
CHAIR - GREGORY ALBO
JORDAN BRENNAN "Neoliberalism in Canada after 25: Capitalist Power and Income Inequality."
BENJAMIN CHRISTENSEN "Building a Culture of Innovation: How the Canadian Council of Chief Executives Creates Consent."
ISABEL SOUSA "Virtual Vulnerabilities: Locating Teletriage and Health Informatics in a Changing Geography of Work and Care."
DAVID CAVETT "The Hollowing-Out of the Canadian Economy: Quantitative vs. Qualitative Analysis."

12:00PM-1:00PM, CATERED LUNCH

1:15PM-3PM

1: COMPARATIVE NEOLIBERALISM (VH 1018)
CHAIR - TIM CLARK
RAY SILVIUS AND NEIL BURRON "Trans-national Neoliberalism and its Relation to Low-Intensity Democracy: The Case of Haiti."
CEMIL BOYRAZ "Privatization, Contradictions in the Capital Accumulation Process, and the Labour Movement: The Turkish Case."
SALIMAH VAIYA "The Kenyan State and the Nature of Class."
TOM MAROIS "Comparative Neoliberalism, Banking, and Finance-led Accumulation in Mexico and Turkey."

2: PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION AND VIOLENCE (VH 1020)
CHAIR - KEVIN SUTTON
BIKRUM GILL "Agrarian Crisis in India: Processes of Accumulation by Dispossession."
MAITA ABOLA SAYO "Accumulation and the Problem of Violence."
CHRIS HURL "The Mode of Production as Event: The Legacy of the British Marxist Historians."

3:15PM - 5:00PM

1: EMPIRE AND THE NEW IMPERIALISM (VH 1018)
CHAIR - Leo Panitch
ANDREW LEE "Querying the Conditions for Warfare: The Political Economy of U.S. Military Spending in the 21st Century."
MICHAEL SKINNER "'Humanitarian' Empire: The Latest Stage of Capitalism.
CAN CEMGIL "Dialectic of New Imperialism: A Historical-Structural Account of Capitalist Imperialism."
SEAN STARRS "American Aggression Against Asian Aspiration? Ten Years After the East Asian Crisis in South Korea."

2: DISASTER, CONFLICT AND ACCUMULATION (VH 1020)
ORSAN SENALP AND MEHMET GURSAN SENALP "Disciplinary Neoliberalism, Transnationalization through Governance Mechanisms and Dispossession through Disaster & Loot."
IRINA CERIC "Rule of Law Imperialism and the Political Economy of Post-Socialist Transition."
ANDREW DAWE "Producing Vulnerability and Accumulating Exposure under Empire: The Political Economy of Disaster Vulnerability in Guatemala."
SAHAR T. RAD "Aid in Conflict or Conflict in Aid?"

7PM, PLENARY SESSION AND SOCIAL (VH A)
ALFREDO SAAD-FILHO, GENEVIEVE LEBARON, and ALAN SEARS

[ [ [ THURSDAY, APRIL 24 ] ] ]

10:00AM - 11:45AM

1: THEORIZING CAPITALISM (VH 1018)

ERIC NEWSTADT "Work, Measurement, and the Neo-liberal University: The On-going Relevance of the Labour of Value."
DANIEL MOURE "Marx Versus Weber and the Limits to Their Explanatory Potential."
TROY COCHRANE "What We Talk About When We Talk About Capital."

2: NEOLIBERALISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE (VH 1020)
DAVID CALNITSKY AND ASHER DUPUY-SPENCER "The Economic Consequences of Homo Economicus: Neoclassical Economic Theory and the Fallacy of Market Optimality."
JORDAN BRENNAN "The Errors of Neoliberalism: Hayek, Spontaneous Order and the Emergence of Capitalism."
XAVIER LAFRANCE "Beyond Fascism? The "Tyranny of the Market" as an Answer to the Workers' Challenge to Capital's Control."

12:00PM - 1:30PM

1: ENCLOSURE AND THE COMMONS (VH 1018)
SHIRI PASTERNAK "Empty Lands and Raw Seeds: From the Doctrines of Discovery to Patents on Life."
WILHELM PECKHAUS Primitive Accumulation and the Commons: Applying the Theory to the Study of Biotechnology in Canada."
KEVIN SUTTON "Enclosing the Ancient Commons: The Role of the Pharmaceutical Sector in Defining the Boundaries of Ownership and Accumulation."

2: THE NATION STATE IN THE 21ST CENTURY (VH 1020)
CARLO FANELLI "'Roll with It or Get Rolled Over': The Relevance of the Nation-State in the 21st Century and American Military Supremacy."
BRAD BAUERLY "The Nation-State, Identity and Capitalism: Late Development, Organic Crisis and Imperialism."
YAVUZ TUYLOGLU "Rhythms of (Inter) Nationalism and Imperialism: Explaining the Role of Nation-States."

1:30PM-2:30PM, CATERED LUNCH

2:45PM - 4:30PM

ANOTHER POLITICS? LEFT POSSIBILITIES AND POLITICAL STRATEGIES TODAY (VH A)
CHAIR - IRINA CERIC
CHRIS DIXON "'Another Politics' Rising: Anti-Authoritarian Currents in Contemporary Movements in the US and Canada."
GABRIELLE GÉRIN "From Quebec Solidaire to the Quebec Social Forum: Towards a 'Party of the Streets'?"
INGAR SOLTY "From Right-Wing Populist to Socialist Articulations of the Contradictions of Neoliberalism: The Relevance of the German Case in the Wider European Context."
GREG SHARZER "The Limits of Localism: Why We Need Political Economy to Resist Neoliberalism."

Full abstracts and affiliations can be viewed at http://greatlakes2008.blogspot.com