Call for Papers
Marxism (and related) Matters
Following the successful conference Marxism Matters, the Media Discourse Group at De Montfort University, and the Meccsa Social Movements Network, is pleased to announce a new call for papers. This is the Social Movements Network first conference following its recent creation. Keynote Speakers to be announced shortly.
(To subscribe to the MeCCSA Social Movements Network mailing list, please go to http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/MECCSA-SMN)
The follow-up conference will be held at De Montfort University on the 20th and 21st November 2013, and will address a number of issues arising from the original event.
As the first conference noted, the economy has been nominated in public debate as capitalist in nature, while Marxism (together with attendant perspectives) has once again become visible as a viable mode of critical analysis.
Since 2011, a number of significant developments have taken place. It is now clear that austerity has been used as a weapon against the most vulnerable, while entire political systems have been subjugated to the rule of a trans-national bureaucratic elite, in some cases ‘temporarily’ supplanting the elected bourgeois parties that oversee the imposition of public sector cuts.
Some commentators have argued that the pan-European resistance represented by groups like the Indignados has begun to decline, while others point to the renewed energy that is directed into the communal defence of those threatened with eviction and, in the case of those already dispossessed, with deportation.
Meanwhile, Leftists have been driven to consider new initiatives and alliances, from the Left Unity project in the UK, through the revival of the Feminist/Socialist current represented by the re-launch of Beyond the Fragments, to the attempt to reconfigure the Leninist project (associated with theorists like Dean, Zizek and Badiou).
Some activists on the Left have drawn inspiration from the Libertarian tradition, while others have attempted to emphasise the need to analyse the real location of ‘the enemy’ – not, they suggest, a distant ruling-class, but a more local managerial authority that can be identified and opposed.
On the Right, meanwhile, xenophobia and ‘proto-fascist’ movements (electoral or otherwise) have thrown down a challenge to any form of rational or progressive assessment of the crisis. The State, as an ‘ensemble of power’ centres (Jessop, 2008) appears especially formidable, as both outright repression and behavioural measures are used to pacify the social order.
We welcome papers that address the following, though suggestions are welcomed from across the field of sociology, media and cultural studies, political economy and related fields:
Social Movements and New Technology
Socialist-Feminism
The Occupy Movement
LGBT organisation
Online/Offline Activism
Marxist Political Economy
Theories of the State
The Libertarian Communist tradition
The ‘communist’ horizon
The Portuguese Revolution (nearly) 40 years on
Syndicalism and Workplace Activism
The state of the trade unions
Marxist perspectives on Austerity
Violence and Resistance
The Spanish Revolution
The Dictatorship of the Markets
Consensual decision-making
Internationalism and Nationalism
The Far Right
Please send brief abstracts (c200 words) to Stuart Price ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) and Ruth Sanz Sabido ([log in to unmask]). The closing date is 14th July 2013.
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