CfP: World Economy Working Group, 2020 IIPPE Annual Conference – Ferrara, Italy, September 9-11, 2020

CfP: World Economy Working Group, 2020 IIPPE Annual Conference – Ferrara, Italy, September 9-11, 2020 

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: March 15, 2020 

Dynamics of Unevenness, Politics of (Under)development, and Forms of Resistance in the Global South 

Beginning significantly in the 1980s, neoliberalism emerged as the latest phase of capitalism that has dissolved the social compromise between capital and workers to the detriment of the latter. With its aim to maintain the undisturbed mobility of capital, neoliberalism has sought to control over and suppress any potential social force. As a consequence, neoliberalism has brought about enhanced commodification and marketisation, privatisation, deregulation coupled with austerity, precarisation, and de-unionisation. In addition to the rise of authoritarian forms of government, the mainstream political parties and movements began to resort to populism that offered new welfare regimes and redistribution mechanisms to depoliticise the masses and isolate state benefits from civil rights. With its emphasis on the general will of the people and the national interest, populism has further contributed to the weakening of labour organisation and movements. 

The world capitalist system is characterised by a hierarchical relationship between the advanced capitalist countries and the peripheries of capitalism in the Global South. The Global South has been characterised by dynamics of unevenness, underdevelopment, and inequality not only in comparison to the advanced capitalist countries but also among various parts of the Global South itself. The impact of neoliberalism and populism on the Global South has been asymmetrical in its combination with other socioeconomic and socio-political aspects of underdevelopment, such as war and conflict, poverty, immigration, gender- and race-based inequalities, rural-urban divide and urbanisation, reorganisation of agriculture, and so on. Yet, peoples of the global South have often risen up against the national and global production relations and unequal distribution relations in the forms of protests, demonstrations, and social movements. 

This section aims to foster a critical and interdisciplinary debate on unevenness, underdevelopment, and resistance in the Global South in the age of neoliberalism and populism by drawing from political economy, international relations, geography, political ecology, gender studies, race studies, sociology, and history. 

We also welcome submissions about ongoing attempts to build alternatives to neoliberalism and capitalism in the Global South. 

About your submission:

If you are interested being part of a panel in this stream, or have any questions please e-mail Gönenç Uysal (gonencuysal@osmaniye.edu.tr) and Lucia Pradella (lucia.pradella@kcl.ac.uk).

Please tick the World Economy Working Group when you make your submission and then indicate under the title or abstract tab that you are submitting to this call by adding Dynamics of Unevenness.