Call for Papers: Confronting the Global: Alternatives, Alterity, Solidarity

Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of

Warwick, 8th-9th September, 2011

Conference co-convened by the UK Political Studies Association’s Anarchist Studies Network, the BISA Poststructuralist Politics Working Group, the BISA International Political Economy Group and the BISA Marxism and International Relations Group.

Supported by: The Political Studies Association, the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick, and the International Political Economy Group.

Plenary Roundtable:

Dr Gurminder Bhambra (Warwick), Dr Richard Day (Queens University, Ontario), Professor John Hobson (Sheffield), Dr Marysia Zalewski (Aberdeen)

The aim of this conference is to nourish intellectual affinities and build research synergies across a broad cross-section of critical approaches to ‘the global’. This conference follows from an ESRC supported conference on ‘Anarchism and World Politics’, held at the University of Bristol in June 2010, and the subsequent forum in Millennium: Journal of International Studies (39:2, 2010). Anarchist approaches to the global, characterised mainly by a desire for a radical, fuller democratic agency in world affairs and the eschewal of the state to this end, raise interesting questions about both how we conceive of agency in the international domain and how we conceptualise the global itself. Anarchists are not the only ones with answers to these questions, but they have hitherto been marginal to the debates. This conference seeks to build solidarities and to widen the terms of debate.

This conference will explore questions of the global from anarchist, Marxist, feminist, post-colonial, post-structuralist and other radical approaches to global politics. It seeks to bring together a wide range of scholars with the aim of exploring the affinities and differences between and within these approaches, and to consider the productive spaces for praxis which might be generated from intellectual engagement. We welcome scholars from international relations, sociology, philosophy, geography, anthropology and beyond, and we encourage contributions that reflect on questions such as: 

• How should we understand the global?
• What is internationalism in the 21st century?
• How do commitments to localism intersect with a global focus?
• What are the radical alternatives to statism at a global level?
• Do totalising visions necessarily engender totalising polities?
• What is the proper relationship between academic analysis and social movements?
• How might we situate existing work on the intersections between anarchism and poststructuralism within the context of world politics?
• What lessons can gendered approaches to world politics offer for other radical theories?
• How have globalised resistance movements responded to changing forms of capitalism and hegemony?
• How does a postcolonial imagination affect the nature and practice of solidarity?
• How might we think the ethics of resistance within and beyond state forms?
• What place do Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Butler and other poststructuralist theorists have for theorising resistance in the context of the international?
• What relevance do Marxist theories of international relations have for anarchists, and vice versa?
• How should anarchists approach dominant theories of anarchy in the international arena?

 The conference will take place across two days in September 2011, and will be hosted at the department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) at the University of Warwick. The conference is supported by the PSA Anarchist Studies Network (ASN), the BISA International Political Economy Group (IPEG) and the BISA Poststructural Politics Working Group (PPWG). It is funded by IPEG, the Central for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalism (CSGR) at the University of Warwick, and through the Political Studies Association specialist activities fund. Following the conference, the intention is to collect a selection of the best papers into an edited volume and we are actively seeking publishers.

Places for paper-givers will be strictly limited. Funding will be made available for paper-giving delegates, with further space provided for a number of non-presenting attendees. The conference organisers will arrange refreshments and lunch on both days, with a conference dinner for all registered attendees on the evening of the first day. Accommodation details will be provided and accommodation itself subsidised. A limited amount of travel funding will be made available, to be allocated on the basis of need. There will be a small registration fee, but substantial bursaries will also be available. 

Paper submission

We welcome paper, panel, roundtable and workshop proposals. Please send a 250 word abstract outlining the aims and scope of your proposal to Chris Rossdale (c.rossdale@warwick.ac.uk) by Monday May 2nd, 2011. Please ensure you include your name, contact details and a short academic biography (100 words) with your abstract. If you would like to be considered for a conference bursary, please indicate the amount you will need clearly.

For further information, please contact Chris Rossdale (c.rossdale@warwick.ac.uk) or Alex Prichard (w.a.prichard@lse.ac.uk).

Event organisers:

PSA Anarchist Studies Network (www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk)

Chris Rossdale, University of Warwick (c.rossdale@warwick.ac.uk)

Alex Prichard, LSE (w.a.prichard@lse.ac.uk)

BISA International Political Economy Working Group (http://www.bisa-ipeg.org/)

Stuart Shields, University of Manchester (Stuart.Shields@manchester.ac.uk)

Ian Bruff, (also Political Economy Network) University of Manchester(ianbruff@gmail.com)

BISA Poststructuralist Politics Working Group

Emily Jackson, Keele University (e.l.jackson@ilpj.keele.ac.uk)

Martin Coward, University of Newcastle (martin.coward@ncl.ac.uk)

BISA Marxism and International Relations Group

Rick Saull, Queen Mary, University of London (r.g.saull@qmul.ac.uk)

Alex Colas, Birkbeck, University of London (a.colas@bbk.ac.uk)