Social Relations in Turbulent Times

Turbulence

SOCIAL RELATIONS IN TURBULENT TIMES

CALL FOR PAPERS – SESSIONS ORGANISED BY THE CRITICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY RESEARCH NETWORK OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION AT THE 10TH ESA CONFERENCE, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, 7-10 SEPTEMBER 2011 – http://criticalpoliticaleconomy.net/http://www.esa10thconference.com/index.php  

Conference theme: ‘Social relations in turbulent times’. Critical Political Economy sessions theme: ‘Varieties of capitalism in crisis?’

The continued fall-out from the economic crisis has led to continuous debate about the impact of this systemic shock to the world economy. For instance, evidence could be amassed to support or refute the argument that it has had a significant impact on the future of capitalist diversity. On the one hand, it has generated common systemic pressures everywhere – the most salient being the recurrent fiscal crises of different national states – but on the other, there have been important differences in the national responses to the crisis – compare for example Germany and the United States.

In the field of political economy, a much-discussed approach has been the varieties of capitalism literature. Conceived here as wider than just the paradigmatic Varieties of Capitalism framework and inclusive of a general institutionalist orientation when studying national political economies, a weakness in this work has been the low priority placed on the wider social relations which institutions are inevitably part of. Therefore, although much progress has been made in the past 15 years, the ability of the varieties of capitalism literature to account for the developments of the past few years – and thus its more general explanatory capacity – is open to question.

As such, the phrase ‘Varieties of capitalism in crisis?’ has two distinct but connected meanings. For this reason, the CPE RN is interested in receiving abstracts which consider the evolution of empirical capitalisms – we expect our sessions to focus on but not be exclusively concerned with Europe, be it at the national, regional or supranational level – and/or conceptual issues related to the study of capitalist diversity. We seek contributions from scholars with an interest in political economy research, whatever their disciplinary affiliation (sociology, political science, economics, geography, anthropology, ethnology, development studies, area studies, history, etc.). Hence we aim to attract a diverse range of junior and senior researchers, from postgraduate students to professors.

NETWORK OVERVIEW: The network was established in 2005 as a platform to promote and facilitate research aimed at understanding recent transformations of capitalism and capitalist societies in the European Union and Europe. Its purpose is to reassert political economy perspectives in European social science, and to promote critical and emancipatory scholarship. We are avowedly interdisciplinary in our outlook, and seek to bring together researchers employing a range of critical political economy perspectives.

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