Neoliberalism and Contemporary Capitalism Working Group
14th Annual Conference of the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE)
4-7 September 2024, Kadir Has Üniversitesi, İstanbul, Türkiye
The Changing World Economy, and Today’s Imperialism
Call for Papers: Neoliberalism and Contemporary Capitalism Working Group
Submit a Paper or Panel Proposal by 2 February Friday (night) 2024 at IIPPE.org
Please make sure to select the Neoliberalism Working Group when submitting your proposal.
Successful submissions will be confirmed by three weeks after the close of the proposal window, Sunday night, February 25
The IIPPE Neoliberalism and Contemporary Capitalism Working Group brings together researchers interested in the material basis of neoliberalism, its national varieties, and alternatives to it. As the contemporary form of global capitalism, neoliberalism is based on the systematic use of state power to impose a hegemonic project of recomposition of the rule of capital in each area of economic and social life, under the ideological veil of ‘non-intervention’. This is guided by the current imperatives of the international reproduction of capital, with the financial markets and the interests of the US capital to the fore. Politically, by insulating markets and transnational investors from popular demands, and through the imperative of labour control to secure international competitiveness, neoliberalism also severely curtails democratic possibilities. Neoliberalism has also created an income-concentrating dynamics of accumulation that has proven resistant to efforts by Keynesian and reformist interventions.
The neoliberal transition in the world economy has been closely associated with ‘globalisation’ and with it, new modalities of imperialism. Yet despite these global drivers, the neoliberal project has reconstituted economic and social relations differently in distinct countries – rather than being globally homogenising. This calls attention to the national and local specificities of actually existing forms of neoliberalism. This interaction between the global and national as well as local is key to understanding today’s imperialism and changing world economy, which are the general theme of the IIPPE conference in 2024. Accordingly, the Neoliberalism and Contemporary Capitalism Working Group invites paper and panel proposals that fit in with the general theme of the IIPPE conference and the working group’s research agenda. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
• What are the main tensions, contradictions and fragilities in neoliberalism with regards to the process of neoliberal globalisation on the one hand, and the national and local specificities of actually existing forms of neoliberalism?
• Is it possible to consider the attempts by the several governments of the Global North in favour of increased protectionism and direction of the economy (in the interests of capital) by the state as a deviation from neoliberalism?
• What are the possible ways for the dynamics of accumulation under neoliberalism to incorporate new technologies such as human biological technologies, artificial intelligence, and the pressingly essential non-carbon renewable energy technologies?
• What are the implications of these new technologies on the labour process, trade unionism, and workplace democracy?
• What are the limits to technological progress, in terms of both technical and social aspects under capitalism?
• In what ways neoliberalism at the global level has contributed to the relative decline of the North and the rise of the South? What are the implications of this on today’s imperialism?
• What are the functions of extractivism and rentiership in contemporary capitalism? Do they represent a deviation from the capitalist mode of production?
• Do the changes in the world economy undermine or consolidate neoliberalism?
Working Group Coordinators
Alfredo Saad-Filho, King’s College London (alfredo.saad-filho@kcl.ac.uk)
Celal Özkızan, Northeastern University London (celal.ozkizan@nulondon.ac.uk)
Devika Dutt, King’s College London (devika.dutt@kcl.ac.uk)
Edemilson Parana (edemilson.parana@lut.fi)
Lotta Takala-Greenish (lotta.takalagreenish@uwe.ac.uk)