Alternative Culture Now:The Politics of Culture in the Present Conjuncture

Alternative Culture

ALTERNATIVE CULTURE NOW: THE POLITICS OF CULTURE AT THE PRESENT CONJUNCTURE

 

Call for Proposals:

‘Alternative Culture Now: The Politics of Culture at the Present Conjuncture’
Conference and Event
Budapest, Hungary
April 8-10, 2010

Proposal Deadline: January 25, 2010

How do things stand with respect to the fate of the alternative? Branded and normativized, incorporated into a whole ensemble of mainstream discourses, and no longer the threat it once posed to capitalist and communist states alike, the political and social force of the alternative seems to have faded away. And yet the dream of the alternative continues to inspire political and social movements, artists, theorists, and all kinds of creative practices. How might we begin to situate and think alternativity as a global phenomenon at this precise conjuncture in world history? What is alternative about culture today? And what might or can it become?

The alternative, of course, has always been phraseable in the singular and the plural. On the one hand, it is a phenomenon locked into local configurations, a multi-polar and non-totalizable practice of myriad deviation. Here, its ambit can be that of a family drama or workplace, a national concatenation, or the homogenizing logic of a dominant cultural medium or genre. The dreams it holds in reserve are vitally minor: the fissuring of a regime with a joke or dissidence, the freedom mobilized in small, almost imperceptible defections or reversals. The production of the alternative is in this sense the aggregate, spontaneous effort of innumerable cultural agents to resist every species of stasis and capture, every grammar and vernacular, every gestural hierarchy and total system.

At the same time, this molecular vision of the alternative, of a plurality of fissions and margins, has always been accompanied by attempts to think what it is in the tendency of a moment which suppresses cultural possibilities on a global level. This is a dream of a communication or inter-mediation between margins, a system of deviances which comprehensively address the conditions which negatively hypostatize the life of the virtual. Global patriarchy, violent state expansionisms, the inhibiting logics of capital, and the globalization of the English language can be envisioned as transnational, systematized normativities that threaten cultural specificity or possibility in a way that is never exhausted by its expression on the register of the local. Is there, in this sense, only one alternative: an alternative to which there is no alternative? This notion of a single alternative-a universal difference necessary to shelter the future lives of difference–immediately sets into motion its own paradoxical dialectics of alternativity, itself appearing to erase the thing it promises. How do we escape this vortex, or at least make its impasses productive?

Is one alternative more important than another? Can alternatives be exhausted or rendered obsolete? What kind of method could we develop to test the valences of alternatives? Can or should alternative culture polemically charge the space of its own marginality, or would this degenerate into an infinite sectarianism?

We understand “alternative culture” to include diverse forms of cultural expression and activity, which are connected by their shared goal of creating just, humane, and equitable human relations by means of their opposition to existing cultural, social, and political forms.

This conference encourages contributions from scholars, educators, artists, cultural workers, policy makers, journalists, and others involved in alternative culture and international cultural policies. We are especially interested in contributions addressing alternative culture in Central/Eastern Europe and countries/regions of the former Soviet Union.

Areas of inquiry for submissions may include, but are not limited to, the following general topics in relation to the politics of alternative culture today:

Aesthetics – Collectivity – post-Communist Culture – Creativity – Cultural Studies – Eastern Europe – Geography -Globalization – Higher Education – Media – Memory/Nostalgia – Music – New Media – ex-Socialist History – ex-Soviet Urban Spaces – Visual Culture

The “Alternative Culture Now: The Politics of Culture at the Present Conjuncture” conference will take place at the OSA Archivum in Budapest, Hungary, April 8-10, 2010. It is organized and sponsored by the International Alternative Culture Center, with the support of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology (Central European University) and the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies (University of Alberta). The conference format will be diverse, including paper presentations, panels, round-table exchanges, artistic performances, and exhibitions. We encourage individual and collaborative paper and panel proposals from across the disciplines and from artists and community members.

Paper Submissions should include: (1) contact information; (2) a 300-500 word abstract; and (3) a one page curriculum vitae or a brief bio.

Panel Proposals should include: (1) a cover sheet with contact information for chair and each panelist; (2) a one-page rationale explaining the relevance of the panel to the theme of the conference; (3) a 300 word abstract for each proposed paper; and (4) a one page curriculum vitae for each presenter.

Please submit individual paper proposals or full panel proposals via e-mail attachment by January 25, 2010 to 
alternativeculturenow@gmail.com with the subject line “Alternative Culture Now.” Attachments should be in .doc or .rtf formats. Submissions should be one document (i.e. include all required information in one attached document).

Website: http://www.alternativeculture.org

Conference Organizing Team: Sarah Blacker (University of Alberta, Canada), Jessie Labov (Ohio State, USA), Andrew Pendakis (University of Bonn, Germany), Justin Sully (McMaster University, Canada), Imre Szeman (University of Alberta, Canada), Maria Whiteman (University of Alberta, Canada), and Olga Zaslavskaya (OSA, Hungary)

Sarah Blacker
Department of English and Film Studies
3-5 Humanities Centre
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
T6G 2E5

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Health, Embodiment and Visual Culture: Engaging Publics and Pedagogies

Health

HEALTH, EMBODIMENT AND VISUAL CULTURE: ENGAGING PUBLICS AND PEDAGOGIES

 

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Conference: “Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture: Engaging Publics and Pedagogies”

November 19-20, 2010
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Conference Co-Chairs:
Sarah Brophy, Associate Professor, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University
Janice Hladki, Associate Professor, School of the Arts, McMaster University

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: January 15, 2010

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION:
This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore how visual cultural practices image and imagine unruly bodies and, in so doing, respond to Patricia Zimmermann’s call for “radical media democracies that animate contentious public spheres” (2000, p. xx). Our aim is to explore how health, disability, and the body are theorized, materialized, and politicized in forms of visual culture including photography, video art, graphic memoir, film, body art and performance, and digital media. Accordingly, we invite proposals for individual papers and roundtables that consider how contemporary visual culture makes bodies political in ways that matter for the future of democracy. Proposals may draw on fields such as: visual culture, critical theory, disability studies, health studies, science studies, autobiography studies, indigenous studies, feminisms, queer studies, and globalization/transnationalism.

CONFERENCE EVENTS:
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
*Rebecca Belmore,* internationally recognized Anishinabekwe artist, Vancouver (exhibitions of her performance, video, installation, and sculpture include: Venice Biennale, Sydney Biennale, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts);
*Lisa Cartwright,* Professor of Communication and Science Studies and Affiliated Faculty in Gender Studies, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego (/Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture/; /Moral Spectatorship: Technologies of Voice and Affect in Postwar Representations of the Child/)
*Robert McRuer,* Professor and Deputy Chair, Department of English, George Washington University, Washington, DC (/Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability/; /The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities/);
*Ato Quayson,* Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto (/Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation/; /Relocating Postcolonialism/).

The conference will also feature /Scrapes: Unruly Embodiments in Video Art,/ an exhibition curated by Sarah Brophy and Janice Hladki, at the McMaster Museum of Art.

POSSIBLE THEMATICS:

1. Technologies
– medical technologies (e.g. medical imaging, drug therapies, prosthetics and other devices) and their implications for embodiment, subjectivity, community, kinship, and politics
– corporeality and the senses as sites/forms of knowledge-making
– biopolitics and surveillance
– the relationship between “old” and “new” technologies
– how technologies mediate social spaces of embodiment and interaction
– interrogations of the human and posthuman in medicine, science, and art

2. Cultural Production
– cultural pedagogy; the production of knowledge in sites of cultural production (e.g. galleries, festivals, classrooms, online, etc.)
– counter-publics (e.g. disability culture)
– indigenous modes of cultural production
– diasporic/transnational issues and practices
– new representational modes (e.g. digital arts, graphic memoir)
– documentary practices
– “doing politics in art” (Bennett)

3. Disability
– medical, scientific, and cultural discourses of disability
– performing and witnessing embodied difference
– interrogations of impairment
– genetics, reproduction, eugenics
– dis-ease and disorder
– “ability trouble” (McRuer)
– “radical crip images” (McRuer)

4. Affect
– explorations of “ugly feelings” (Ngai), “aesthetic nervousness” (Quayson), “moral spectatorship” (Cartwright), “empathic vision” (Bennett), and “seeing for” (Bal)
– relationships to medicalization, regulation, and surveillance
– affect as generative/productive in relation to concepts of ethical spectatorship and witnessing
– relationships between corporeality and theorizations of nature as dynamic and agentic (Barad, Grosz, Haraway)
– can we/should we move beyond the theories that posit /negative/ affect as a prime site for ethics?
– affect and global politics: representations of global mobilities, violence, war, terrorism

HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL:
We kindly invite submissions from scholars, artists, health professionals, community members, and activists in all areas and disciplines. Concurrent sessions will be 90 minutes in length. Proposals for the following formats will be considered:
1) Individual papers: 15 minutes in length
2) Roundtables: 4-5 participants, including a designated moderator and a plan for facilitated discussion of ideas
All submissions will be peer-reviewed.

Individual paper submissions should include:
1) affiliation and contact information
2) a biographical note of up to 200 words
3) paper title and a 300-500 word abstract; the description of the paper’s content should be as specific as possible and indicate relevance to one or more of the conference thematics.
4) Details of audiovisual needs (e.g. DVD, LCD projection, and/or VH S). Note that participants will need to bring their own laptops.

Roundtable submissions should include:
1) affiliation and contact information for each participant
2) a biographical note of up to 200 words for each participant
3) roundtable title and a 500 word proposal. The proposal should both indicate the relevance of the roundtable to one or more of the conference thematics and outline the organization of the proposed discussion.
4) details of audiovisual needs (e.g. DVD, LCD projection, and/or VHS). Note that participants will need to bring their own laptops.

All submissions should be sent via email attachment to
viscult@mcmaster.ca <mailto:viscult@mcmaster.ca> by January 15, 2010.
Please use the subject line “Proposal for Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture.” Attachments should be in .doc or .rtf formats.

If electronic submission is not possible, please mail or fax proposals to arrive by January 15, 2010.
Address: Sarah Brophy & Janice Hladki: Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture Conference
c/o Department of English & Cultural Studies
Chester New Hall 321
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L9
Fax: 905-777-8316

ACCESSIBILITY:
Presenters are encouraged to explore ways to make physical, sensory, and intellectual access a fundamental part of their presentation. Suggestions include: large print (18 point font) copies of handouts, large-print copies of paper or panel outlines, and/or audio descriptions of any film or video clips and images. Presenters are also encouraged to consider open or closed captioning of films and video clips.

POST-CONFERENCE PUBLICATION PLANS:
Papers from the conference will be considered for a special issue of /The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies/.

CONFERENCE SPONSORSHIP:
Sponsored by the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (John Douglas Taylor Fund).

Sarah Brophy
Associate Professor
Department of English and Cultural Studies
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
L8S 4L9
brophys@mcmaster.ca

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Culture As Resource: Cultural Practices and Policies After ‘89

Culture

CULTURE AS RESOURCE: CULTURAL PRACTICES AND POLICIES AFTER ‘89

 

Graduate Summer Course

Course Dates: 19 – 30 July, 2010
Location: Central European University (CEU), Budapest, Hungary,
Detailed course description: http://www.summer.ceu.hu/culture

Course Director:
Imre Szeman, University of Alberta, Department of English and Film Studies, Canada

Faculty:
- Nicholas Brown, University of Illinois at Chicago, English and African American Studies, Chicago, USA
- Alexandra Kowalski, Central European University, Sociology and Social Anthropology, Budapest, Hungary
- Lisa Parks, University of California, Santa Barbara, Film Studies, Santa Barbara, USA
- Will Straw, McGill University, Art History and Communications Studies, Montreal, Canada
- Maria Whiteman, University of Alberta, Art and Design, Edmonton, Canada

Target group: Applications are invited from faculty members and doctoral students of institutions of higher learning and researchers with academic background in cultural studies, political theory, globalization studies and cultural policy. Undergraduates without a university degree will not be considered.

Language of instruction: English
Tuition fee: EUR 550. Financial aid is available.

Application deadline: February 15, 2010
Online application (from mid November):
http://www.sun.ceu.hu/03-application/howto_apply.php

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The Question of Subalternity

Spivak

THE QUESTION OF SUBALTERNITY

 

A two-day seminar with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak at CENDEAC (Murcia, South Eastern Spain)  

1st and 2nd December // 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: The Question of Subalternity

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak will lead an intensive seminar at CENDEAC on the 1st and 2nd December 2009. It will be a unique opportunity to engage with Spivak’s thought, through a detailed analysis of some of her most influential texts. 

The seminar will discuss the history and usefulness of the elusive concept of the subaltern based on questions emerging from three texts by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak available in Spanish translation: “Can the subaltern speak?”, “Subaltern Studies: deconstructing historiography” and “Displacement and the Discourse of Woman”. The two sessions will be entitled: “The Subaltern: Use and Abuse” and “Women, Subalternity, and Strategic Essentialism”.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, is University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Toronto and London and Oberlin College. She has published, Of Grammatology (translation with critical introduction of Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, 1976); Thinking Academic Freedom in Gendered Post-Coloniality (1993); In Other Worlds (1987); Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993); A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999); Death of a Discipline(2003), Other Asias (2007). And the forthcoming An Aesthetic Education in an Age of Globalization. She has also translated from Bengali, Mahasweta Devi: Imaginary Maps (1994); Breast Stories (1997), Old Women (1999); Chotti Munda and His Arrow (2002) and Ramproshad Sen’s (eighteenth century Bengali mystic): Song for Kali (2000). The texts “Translation As Culture” (2005), “Translating into English” (2005), and “Rethinking Comparativism” (2009) reflect her concern for the task of the translator.  “Righting Wrongs” (2001), and “Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching” (2004) give a sense of her dedication to supplementing vanguardism. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1983) has become a controversial classic.

Information and enrolment:

Attendance is free unless a certificate is required, in which case fees will be 30€ standard, 15€ for the unemployed, full-time students and OAPs, and free to Friends of CENDEAC. 

Language of the Seminar: English with simultaneous translation into Spanish. 

CENDEAC is accessible for wheelchair users and people with diminished mobility. Whenever possible, we will strive to provide on request a transcript of papers for users with impaired hearing. Auditorium Capacity: 140 people

For more information, including assistance with travel and accommodation, please visit our website: http://www.cendeac.net or contact yhernandez[at]cendeac.net

CENDEAC
Pabellón 5
Antiguo Cuartel de Artillería
C/ Madre Elisea Oliver Molina, s/n
30002-Murcia (España)
Tel.: +34 868 914 769
Fax: +34 868 914 149

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Rethinking Imperialism

Rethinking Imperialism

RETHINKING IMPERIALISM: A STUDY OF CAPITALIST RULE

 

Rethinking Imperialism: A Study of Capitalist RulePalgrave-Macmillan 2009

 

By John Milios, and Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos

For over a century, “imperialism” has been a key concept in Left theory and politics, connoting both the aggressiveness and the characteristics of modern capitalism. This book aims at presenting and assessing imperialism as a theoretical concept. Since a variety of different definitions are assigned to the concept of imperialism, it is necessary to put to the test the rigour of these definitions. The authors of this volume provide a comprehensive evaluation, focusing especially on the tension between Marx’s theoretical system of the Critique of Political Economy and the theories of capitalist expansion and domination that emerge out of the various discourses on imperialism.

The book critically reviews all major (classical and contemporary) theories of imperialism. The authors embark on a critical interrogation of all innovations introduced into theoretical Marxism by theories of imperialism (for example those concerning the stages of historical evolution of capitalism, the capitalist state, internationalization of capital, crises etc.). They show that most of these theories deviate from the theoretical system formulated by Marx, especially in Capital and his other mature economic writings.

Furthermore, these theories seem to poorly interpret historical development. Is there a theory of the capitalist state to justify the thesis that the collapse of colonialism after World War II is so insignificant to the periodization of international capitalist relations (or “global capitalism”) that the “final stage” of capitalism commencing in the last decades of the 19th century is arguably still continuing? To pose the same question differently: on what theoretical grounds can the “early” colonialism, as opposed to the late colonial era (from the late 19th century to World War II), be bracketed off as a distinct period in the history of capitalism? On grounds of Marx’s theory of the CMP this period now has to be revisited. Why does the second colonial period have more affinities with the present-day non-colonial post-World War II era than with the era of early colonialism? Last but not least, is there a tendency towards expansionism that is innate in every form of capitalist domination, i.e. also in the less developed capitalist states that are not to be classified as being in the supposedly “ripe” or “monopoly capitalist” stage?

The authors propose a conceptualization of the international level which comes into a striking contrast with the majority of contemporary approaches of globalization or “new imperialism”. Their interpretation perceives the international level as a complex interlinkage of different (national-state) economic and social structures, each of which evolves at a different and unequal rate as a result primarily of the different class and political correlation of forces that have crystallized within it.

The book addresses the contemporary contradictions and trends of development of the “international capitalist system” and the evolving global economic crisis, formulating a fundamental reinterpretation of imperialism. Important in this line of reasoning remains the notion of imperialist chain, which is formulated in accordance with Marx’s concept of social capital and his theory of the capitalist mode of production. It thus defends the thesis that internal-national relationships and processes always have priority over international relations.

It is precisely the fundamental discovery of Marxism that the class struggle (which is at the same time economic, political and ideological and is thus consummated within each national-state entity) is the driving force of history. It is through these class correlations and relations of domination that international relations, with all the concomitant interdependence on other social formations, take effect. If imperialism is a permanent possibility emerging out of the structures of the capitalist mode of production, the historical form it will ultimately acquire for a particular social formation depends on the way in which the “external” situation (that is to say the international correlation of forces) over-determines but also constrains the practices that emerge out of the evolution of the internal class correlations.

Contents:
Introduction
* Classical Theories of Imperialism: A New Interpretation of Capitalist Rule, Expansionism, Capital Export, the Periodization and the “Decline” of Capitalism.
* Post World-War II “Metropolis-Periphery” Theories of Imperialism.
* Theories of Imperialism as Alternatives to Classical and Metropolis-Periphery Approaches.
* The State as a Vehicle of both Capitalist Expansionism and Decolonization: Historical Evidence and Theoretical Questions.
*Capitalist Mode of Production and Social Formation: Conclusions Concerning the Organization of Capitalist Power.
* Capitalist Mode of Production and Monopolies.
* Is Imperialism the Latest Stage of Capitalism? Reflections on the Question of Periodization of Capitalism and Stages of Capitalist Development.
* Internationalisation of Capital.
* Financialization: Market Discipline or Capital Discipline?
* The “Global” Level and the Concept of Imperialist Chain.
Epilogue: Rethinking Imperialism and Capitalist Rule.

John Milios, is Professor of Political Economy and the History of Economic Thought at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. He has authored more than two hundred (200) papers published or forthcoming in refereed journals (in Greek, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Turkish), and has participated as invited speaker in numerous international conferences. He has also authored or co-authored some eleven scholarly books. He is director of the quarterly journal of economic theory Thesseis (published since 1982 in Greek) and serves on the Editorial Boards of several scholarly journals.

Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos is Visiting Lecturer of Political Economy at the Department of Sociology, University of the Aegean, Greece. He has published papers in refereed journals (in Greek, English and German). His research interests include: theories of Political Economy, theories of Imperialism, theory of Value and Money. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the quarterly journal of economic and political theory Thesseis (published since 1982 in Greek).

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The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

The American Empire in Light of the Global Crisis

American Empire

THE AMERICAN EMPIRE IN LIGHT OF THE GLOBAL CRISIS
‘THE GLOBALISATION LECTURES’

Organised by the Department of Development Studies

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

University of London

Convenor: Professor Gilbert Achcar

2009-2010

This event is co-sponsored by Historical Materialism Conference 2009 (27-29 November)

A DEBATE BETWEEN PROFESSOR ALEX CALLINICOS AND PROFESSOR LEO PANITCH

Wednesday 25 November, 6:30pm, SOAS, Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, London WC1

Alex Callinicos was born in Zimbabwe. After teaching political philosophy for many years at the University of York, he is now Professor of European Studies at King’s College London. His most recent books are The Resources of Critique and Imperialism and Global Political Economy. His next book Bonfire of Illusions: The Twin Crises of the Liberal World will appear early next year.

Leo Panitch is the Senior Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto, and the co-editor of The Socialist Register. His most recent books are American Empire and the Political Economy of Global Finance, and Renewing Socialism: Transforming Democracy, Strategy and Imagination.

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The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

International Socialist Review – Issue 68

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW – ISSUE 68

International Socialist Review, Issue 68 is now out

http://www.isreview.org/

ISSUE 68:
November-December 2009 TOO MANY PEOPLE?
Population, hunger, and the environment

EDITORIAL

The business of health care reform

ANALYSIS IN BRIEF

Elizabeth Schulte: Why won’t they call it racism?

Eric Ruder interviews Gareth Porter: Obama’s Afghan Disaster

COLUMN

Phil Gasper • Critical Thinking: What ever happened to “Change we can believe in?”

Shaun Joseph: The coup in Honduras: Perspectives and prospects

INTERVIEWS

Cleve Jones: Getting back to our roots

Walden Bello: The G20 after the crash

FEATURES

John Pilger: Power, illusion, and American’s last taboo

Chris Williams: Are there too many people?

Rick Kuhn: Economic crisis and the responsibility of socialists

HISTORY

Rebekah Ward: Darwin: the reluctant revolutionary

John Riddell: Clara Zetkin’s strugggle for the united front

Sharon Smith: 1934: The strikes that led the way

REVIEWS

Chrisopher Phelps: The sexual revolution, A review of Sherry Wolf’s Sexuality and Socialism

Ian Angus: Two accounts of Engels’ revolutionary life

Phil Aliff on soldier’s resistance; David Florey on racism after Katrina; Sara Knopp and Mais Jasser on a teenager’s diary under occupation; Marlene Martin on Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Jailhouse Lawyers; Chris Williams on Monthly Review’s special issue on food

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Valences of the Dialectic – Fredric Jameson

Porcupine Tree - The Incident

VALANCES OF THE DIALECTIC – FREDRIC JAMESON

 

NEW FROM VERSO

VALENCES OF THE DIALECTIC

BY FREDRIC JAMESON

After half a century exploring dialectical thought, renowned cultural critic Fredric Jameson presents a comprehensive study of a misunderstood yet vital strain in Western philosophy.

The dialectic, the concept of the evolution of an idea through conflicts arising from its inherent contradictions, transformed two centuries of Western philosophy. To Hegel, who dominated nineteenth-century thought, it was a metaphysical system. In the work of Marx, the dialectic became a tool for materialist historical analysis. More recently, the dialectic has come under attack from poststructuralist thinkers such as Deleuze or Laclau and Mouffe.

Jameson brings a theoretical scrutiny to bear on the questions that have arisen in the history of this philosophical tradition, contextualizing the debate in terms of commodification and globalization, and with reference to thinkers such as Rousseau, Lukács, Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, and Althusser.

Through rigorous examination, Valences of the Dialectic charts a movement toward the innovation of a “spatial” dialectic. Jameson presents a new synthesis of thought that revitalizes dialectical thinking for the twenty-first century.

http://www.amazon.com/Valences-Dialectic-Fredric-Jameson/dp/185984877X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257803840&sr=1-1

Hardback • $49.95 • ISBN 978-1-84467-877-7 • 640 pages
November 2009
Available now in good bookstores and online
Distributed by W.W. Norton: tel. 1800 233 4830
Please submit desk copy requests to clara@versobooks.com

“Fredric Jameson is America’s leading Marxist critic. A prodigiously energetic thinker whose writings sweep majestically from Sophocles to science fiction … One of the great writers of our times, not just one of the most formidably gifted critics and cultural theorists” – Terry Eagleton
“Probably the most important cultural critic writing in English today … It can truly be said that nothing cultural is alien to him.” – Colin MacCabe

FREDRIC JAMESON is the Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. His many books include Postmodernism, Brecht and Method, Late Marxism, The Cultural Turn, A Singular Modernity, The Modernist
Papers, Archaeologies of the Future, and The Ideologies of Theory. He was a recipient of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize.

 Links:
   1. http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Papers-Fredric-Jameson/dp/1844670961/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257800242&sr=1-1
   2. http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Papers-Fredric-Jameson/dp/1844670961/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257800242&sr=1-1
   3. http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Papers-Fredric-Jameson/dp/1844670961/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257800242&sr=1-1
   4. http://www.amazon.com/Archaeologies-Future-Desire-Science-Fictions/dp/1844675386/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257805858&sr=1-2

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Theorizing the Dynamics of Social Processes

The Incident

THEORIZING THE DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL PROCESSES

 

CALL FOR PAPERS
Theorizing the Dynamics of Social Processes
Current Perspectives in Social Theory (Volume 27)
Edited by Harry F. Dahms and Lawrence Hazelrigg

Current Perspectives in Social Theory invites the submission of papers dedicated to theorizing the dynamics of specific social, cultural, political, and/or economic processes. Papers addressing the nature and importance of ‘‘process’’ in studying modern (industrialized, post-industrial, capitalist, postmodern, globalizing, etc.) societies are welcome – at macro, meso, or micro-scale (or, better yet, at cross or inter-scale). Submissions can have a formally, socially, or critically theoretical orientation. Preference will be given to papers that accomplish one (or more) of  the following:

* invent, develop, and/or demonstrate a theory (or theories) of a specific process (or interrelated processes), with sufficient clarity and scope to serve as an exemplar of such theorizing;
* identify, illustrate by example, and analyze specific problems, including problems of conceptualization and measurement, associated with theorizing the dynamics of social, cultural, political, and/or economic processes;
* connect theorizations of process across different disciplines of inquiry, including physical, chemical, and biological sciences insofar as the connections are shown to be relevant to and involve specific processes in social, cultural, political, and/or economic arenas (e.g. diffusion processes, hysteretic processes, aggregation processes).

Use of formal modelling techniques is acceptable (conditional on effective didactic quality in presentation), and should be addressed to more than the cognoscenti few. Priority will be given to intellectual integrity (rather than ideological orientation). We are eager to support venturesome projects of creative impulse, imagination, and insight – projects that show promise of being fruitfully wrong if not impeccably right.

If you are interested in this call, we urge you to contact either or both of us at the earliest convenience, with a general description of the paper you have in mind. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2010.

Harry F. Dahms, Editor (hdahms@utk.edu)
Lawrence Hazelrigg, Associate Editor (lhazelri@fsu.edu)

Harry F. Dahms, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, and Associate Head, Department of Sociology University of Tennessee; and Editor, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 901 McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0490. email hdahms@utk.edu, phone (865) 974-7028, fax (865) 974-7013, http://web.utk.edu/~hdahms/

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Historical Materialism Sixth Annual Conference – Registration

Historical Materialism 6

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM SIXTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE – REGISTRATION

 

Sixth Historical Materialism Annual Conference
Another World is Necessary: Crisis, Struggle and Political Alternatives
27–29 November 2008
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Birkbeck College, London, WC1
In association with Socialist Register and the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Committee

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!
http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/hm/conference2009.htm

The annual Historical Materialism conference is organised by the editorial board of Historical Materialism in association with the Deutscher Memorial Prize committee and the Socialist Register. The conference has become an important event on the Left, providing an annual forum to discuss recent developments on the agenda of historical-materialist research and has attracted an increasingly high attendance over the past four years. The Editorial Board of Historical Materialism welcomes attendance and active engagement in discussion with panellists from new as well as prior participants with an interest in critical-Marxist thought.

One of the principal objectives of the conference has been to build bridges among the various Marxist communities, including the breaking down some of the linguistic and intellectual barriers which continue to hamper the circulation and expansion of critical-Marxist thought. The sixth annual Historical Materialism Conference, under the banner of ‘Crisis, Struggle and Political Alternatives’, promises to continue and take forward this objective.

The conference is organised around three plenary sessions (the Deutscher lecture, the launch of the Socialist Register 2010, and Historical Materialism’s plenary) and a host of workshops dedicated to specific themes.

THE FULL TIMETABLE WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON

For more details, please contact: historicalmaterialism@soas.ac.uk

Attendance is free, but participants must register in advance online (if this is not possible, please contact historicalmaterialism@soas.ac.uk). However, the conference is largely self-funded and we will depend on voluntary donations by attendants and participants to support the organisation and running of the event. The suggested advanced online donation is £40 for waged and £15 for unwaged: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/hm/conference2009.htm, , and the suggested donation on the door is £50 for waged and £20 for unwaged.

For logistical and other support, Historical Materialism would like to thank the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Centre for International Security and Diplomacy. For sponsorship, thanks to the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences at SOAS, SOAS Student Union, Brill Academic Publishers, the Deutscher Memorial Prize committee, Socialist Register, Journal of Agrarian Change, the International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy and Bookmarks.

The Editorial Board of Historical Materialism

THEMES FOR THIS YEAR’S CONFERENCE INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING: A LEFT PROJECT: TRANSFORMING THE STATE? * AGENCY * AGRARIAN CHANGE IN CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM: TECHNICAL DYNAMICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL * TRAJECTORIES * ALTHUSSER AND PHILOSOPHY * APOCALYPSE MARXISM * ART AGAINST CAPITALISM * ART AND CRITIQUE IN GERMANY BETWEEN THE WARS * BOOK LAUNCH: ALEX CALLINICOS’S IMPERIALISM AND GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY * BOOK LAUNCH: KARL MARX AND CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY * CAPITALISM, CITIZENSHIP AND CRISIS * CLASS AND CONFLICT IN ANCIENT GREECE * CLASS AND POLITICS IN THE ‘GLOBAL SOUTH’ * CLASS, CRISIS, DISTRIBUTION * COGNITIVE MAPPING, TOTALITY AND THE REALIST TURN * COMMODIFYING HEALTH CARE IN THE UK * CUBAN REVOLUTION AND CUBAN SOCIETY * DERIVATIVES * DEVELOPMENTALISM, THE STATE AND CLASS FORMATION * DIMENSIONS OF THE FOOD CRISIS * EASTERN CENTRAL EUROPE FROM TRANSITION TO EU ENLARGEMENT: CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY * ECOLOGICAL CRISIS * EMPIRE AND IMPERIALISM * ENERGY AND GEOPOLITICS * ENERGY, WASTE AND CAPITALISM * EPISTEMOLOGY, DIALECTICS AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM * EXTENDING THE MINERALS-ENERGY-COMPLEX * FEMINISM AND SOCIALIST STRATEGY * FINANCE, THE HOUSING QUESTION AND URBAN POLITICS * GLOBAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS: MARXIST REFLECTIONS * GRAMSCI RELOADED * GREEN CAPITALISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS * HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND LATE CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT * HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND SOCIAL RESEARCH * HISTORICISING HISTORICAL MATERIALISM * HM BOOK SERIES LAUNCH:  MIKKO LAHTINEN ON ALTHUSSER AND MACHIAVELLI * HM BOOK SERIES LAUNCH: PETER THOMAS’S THE GRAMSCIAN MOMENT * IN MEMORY OF PETER GOWAN * INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE CRISIS * INTERPRETATIONS OF THE CRISIS * ISAAC AND TAMARA DEUTSCHER MEMORIAL PRIZE LECTURE: KEES VAN DER PIJL, NOMADS, EMPIRES, STATES * KNOWLEDGE, NATURE, PROPERTY * LABOUR * LABOUR AND THE ECONOMIC SUBJECT IN CONTEMPORARY ART * LABOUR BEYOND THE FACTORY * LATIN AMERICAN WORKING CLASSES * LEARNING FROM PAST CRISES * LINEAGES OF NEOLIBERALISM * LISTEN TO VENEZUELA SCREENING AND DISCUSSION * MARXISM AND LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY * MARXISM AND NATIONALISM TODAY * MARXISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE * MARXISM AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS * MARXISM AND TIME * MARXISM BETWEEN ETHICS AND UTOPIA * MARXISM, DEMOCRACY AND CLASSICAL POLITICAL THEORY * MIGRATION * MONEY * MORBID SYMPTOMS: HEALTH UNDER CAPITALISM * NEOLIBERALISM, AESTHETICS AND THE RECUPERATION OF DISSENT * ON THE OBJECTS OF COMMUNISM: A HACKING PANEL * PHILOSOPHY AND COMMUNISM IN THE EARLY MARX * PLANNING, LOCALISM AND THE LEFT * POSTNEOLIBERALISM * PRESENTATION OF THE JOURNAL CHTO DELAT/WHAT IS TO BE DONE? * RACE, NATION AND ORIENTALISM * RED PLANETS: MARXISM AND SCIENCE FICTION * RE-EMBEDDING MARXISM: COERCION AND POLITICAL ECONOMY * REGISTERING THE CRISIS: A SOCIALIST REGISTER ROUNDTABLE * RESEARCH ON MARX * RESTRUCTURING, OUTSOURCING, DISTRIBUTION: DIMENSIONS OF THE GLOBAL CRISIS * REVOLUTIONARY THEORY, AUTONOMIST MARXISM AND THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY * SLAVERY AND CAPITALISM IN THE US SOUTH * SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN LATIN AMERICA: THE CURRENT CONJUNCTURE * STUDENT MOVEMENTS AND YOUTH REVOLTS * THE ARTS AND CAPITALIST CRISIS: THE NEW DEAL EXPERIENCE * THE CRITIQUE OF RELIGION AND THE CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM * THE POLITICAL AESTHETICS OF REALISM * THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WORK * THE POLITICS OF FINANCE * THE POLITICS OF THE WILL * THE POLITICS OF VALUE * THE RIGHT: RACE, NATION, IDENTITY * THE TURN TO ETHICS AND THE CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM * ‘TURBULENCE: IDEAS FOR MOVEMENT’, NEW ISSUE LAUNCH * UNION STRUGGLES * UNOISM, ECOLOGY AND CRISIS * UTOPIAS, DYSTOPIAS AND SOCIALIST BIOPOLITICS * WEBLOGS AND THE OPPOSITIONAL PUBLIC SPHERE: A DISCUSSION * WHAT IS ABSTRACTION? * WORKERS AND STRUGGLE TODAY * ZIONISM, 
ANTISEMITISM AND THE LEFT – A DEBATE

SPEAKERS INCLUDE: Gilbert Achcar * Gregory Albo * Robert Albritton * Peter Alexander * Noaman Ali * Kevin B. Anderson * Ricardo Antunes * Caroline Arscott * Sam Ashman * John Ashworth * Ilker Atac * Jairus Banaji * Fletcher Baragar * Banu Bargu * Colin Barker * Tom Barnes * Luca Basso * Matthew Beaumont * Pinar Bedirhanoglu * John Bell * Aaron Benanav * Halil Berktay * Armin Beverungen * Robin Blackburn * Paul Blackledge * Max Blechman * Derek Boothman * Mark Bould * Bill Bowring * Ulrich Brand * Craig Brandist * Michael Brie * Wendy Brown * Dick Bryan * Adrian Budd * Verity Burgmann * Alex Callinicos * Mauro Farnesi Camellone * Bob Cannon * Thomas Carmichael * Warren Carter * Giorgio Cesarale * Maria Elisa Cevasco * Dae-op Chang * Vivek Chibber * Andrew 
Chitty * Christopher Chitty * Joseph Choonara * Sheila Cohen * Alex Colas * Tim Cooper * Stipe Curkovic * Steve Cushion * Gareth Dale * Neil Davidson * Gail Day * Tim Dayton * Kathryn Dean * Angela Dimitrakaki * Demet Dinler * Kevin Doogan * Elizabeth Dore * Nick Dyer-Witheford * Juliane Edler * Aram Eisenschitz * Hester Eisenstein * Fuat Ercan * Adam Fabry * Daniel Fairfax * Mariano Feliz * Ben Fine * Robert Fine * Mark Fisher * Peter Fleming * Gregory C. Flemming * Keith Flett * John Foran * Vassillis Fouskas * Carl Freedman * James Furner * Alexander Gallas * Andreia Galvao * Ferruccio Gambino * Earl Gammon * Mike Geddes * Lindsey German * Frantz Gheller * Lesley Gill * John Glenn * Jesse Goldstein * Maya Gonzalez * Jeff Goodwin * Jamie Gough * Nick Gray * Juan Grigera * Peter Hallward * Ayeesha Hameed * Carrie Hamilton * Bue Hansen * Jane Hardy * Chris Harman * Stefano Harney * Barnaby Harran * David Harvie * Owen Hatherley * Mike Haynes * Lesley Henderson * Christoph Henning * Rob Heynen * Andy Higginbottom * Sarah Hines * John Holloway *  John Holst * Patricia Howard * Peter Hudis * Liz Humphries * Robert Jackson * Dhruv Jain * Fredric Jameson * Elinor Jean * Seongjin Jeong * Bob Jessop * Bonn Juego * Anush Kapadia * Brian Kelly * Sami Khatib * Jeff Kinkle * Kelvin Knight * Meri Koivusalo * Ahmet Hasim Kose * Conor Kostick * Primoz Krasovec * Maria Kyriakidou * Xavier Lafrance * Mikko Lahtinen * Alex Levant * Les Levidow * Iren Levina * William Lewis * Nicola Livingstone * Jean-Guy Loranger * Monica Clua Losada * David Mabb * Andreas Malm * Gonzo Poso Martin * Randy Martin * Jonathan Martineau * Meade McCloughan * David McNally * Angela McRobbie * Simon Mohun * Peter P. Mollinga * Kim Moody * Colin Mooers * Jason W. Moore * Adam Morton * Sara Motta * Tadzio Müller * Vlad Mykhnenko * Ozgur Narin * Jonathan Neale * Mike Newman * Susan Newman * Benjamin Noys * Blair Ogden * Ozlem Onaran * Deidre O’Neill * Ebru Deniz Ozan * Melda Ozturk * Leo Panitch * Giorgos Papafragkou * David Parker * Jaime Pastor * Jody Patterson * Knox Peden * Alexei Penzin * Simon Pirani * Iain Pirie * Amedeo Policante * Nicolas Pons-Vignon * Charles Post * Moishe Postone * Nina Power * Gonzalo Pozo-Martin * Lucia Pradella * Toni Prug * Ozren Pupovac * Thomas Purcell * Hugo Radice * Ravi Raman * Akbar Rasulov * Gene Ray * John Rees * Tobias Reichardt * Paul Reynolds * Sébastien Rioux * John Roberts * Ed Rooksby * Ellen Rosen * Christina Rousseau * Sheila Rowbotham * Sally Ruane * Frank Ruda * Alfredo Saad-Filho * Spyros Sakellaropoulos * Birgit Sauer * Johannes Dragsbaek Schmidt * Alan Sears * Thomas Sekine * Ben Selwyn * Greg Sharzer * Stuart Shields * Subir Sinha * Gary Slater * John Smith * Johan Soderberg * Clare Solomon * Panagiotis Sotiris * Dimitris Sotiropoulos * Susan Spronk * Kerstin Stakemeier * Julian Stallabrass * Engelbert Stockhammer * Adam Swain * Erik Swyngedouw * Lotta Takala-Greenish * Daniel Tanuro * Jean Baptiste Thomas * Peter Thomas * Hillel Ticktin * John Timberlake * Bruno Tinel * Massimiliano Tomba * Jonathon Tomlinson * Alberto Toscano * Ben Trott * Julian Tudor-Hart * Emily van der Meulen * Marco Vanzulli * Leandro Vergara-Camus * Zaira Rodrigues Vieira * Dmitry Vilensky * Marina Vishmidt * Andriana Vlachou * Hilary Wainwright * Mike Wayne * Xiaoping Wei * Duncan Wigan * Evan Calder Williams * Michael Wood * Phil Woodhouse * Galip Yalman * Karel Yon * Christian Zeller * Alexander Zevin * Mislav Zitko *

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk