In April 2019, Nancy Fraser wrote a pamphlet\u00a0The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born.\u00a0<\/i>Written in reaction to Trump\u2019s election, the pamphlet discussed the transformations underway as the global hegemony of neoliberalism collapses around us. The Gramsci quote selected as the title of the pamphlet has been the hackneyed slogan of our times for at least a decade. Writing in 2010 for\u00a0Monthly Review<\/i>, Stephen Gill similarly used the quote to describe the \u2018global organic crisis\u2019 of neoliberalism triggered by the financial crisis. We are in a time of transformations. We have been for a while.<\/p>\n
The thrust of the often repeated Gramsci\u2019s quote was on the \u2018morbid symptoms\u2019 of the \u2018interregnum\u2019 between the old and the new. This conference instead invites submissions to imagine we are post-interregnum. What is the new world order we now inhabit ten years after the financial crisis?<\/p>\n
Such transformations are multiple. Extractivist capitalism has triggered planetary transformation and environmental collapse. Fascist and far-right movements are resurgent in the likes of Trump, Bolsonaro and Modi. A decade of quantitative easing has created a political economy of inflated asset prices and a precariously leveraged shadow banking system. A generation of \u2018post-\u2019neoliberalism has created a state of constant precarity. The rise of the gig economy and hostile environment has solidified violent and unstable labour and immigration conditions. At the same time, protests in Hong Kong, uprisings in West Asia and North Africa and beyond, and the emergence of Extinction Rebellion and other climate justice movements have revealed how new resistances are shaped by and are shaping these transformations.<\/p>\n
International Relations scholarship takes a specific place in the movement and interpretation of such transformations at the nexus of knowledge production and power. The field accrues power and produces material effects by foregrounding certain processes, relationships and subjectivities at the expense of others. As a result, the embedded power relations of institutionalised schools of thought can lead to a blindness towards unfolding social transformations and be complicit in stymying new approaches and politics. By contrast, theory also has the power to upend our understanding of the world by focusing on that which was previously ignored, marginalised, and deemed irrelevant. Recent theoretical contributions in international relations and related disciplines have achieved this by uncovering the roots of the discipline in colonial administration, by mining the archives of scholars excluded from the canon, by tracing a legacy of white supremacy in cherished theoretical approaches, by locating the routine, everyday violence (in policing, immigration, labour, administration, medicine, and knowledge production) that reproduces liberal states, and by tracing the generative role of gendered and sexualized imaginaries in foreign policy, war, and political economy. To this extent, the conference also asks how International Relations is engaged and\/or complicit in this process of transformation and our understanding of it?<\/p>\n
Reflecting upon the contested nature of theoretical and worldly transformations, we invite papers and panels from a range of disciplines including international relations, global political economy, security studies, international theory.<\/p>\n
The conference takes place at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. It will be held Thursday 28th<\/sup>\u00a0and Friday 29th<\/sup>\u00a0May 2020. The conference is organised by doctoral researchers in the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex. The conference is open to everyone, but we particularly encourage PhD researchers and early career scholars to apply. There is a travel grant available, upon application, of approximately \u00a350.<\/b><\/p>\n Please send 200 word abstracts to\u00a0IRtransconf@sussex.ac.uk<\/a>\u00a0by Friday 28th February 2020.<\/b><\/p>\n Papers\/panels could address:<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Transformations in the politics of knowledge production<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Political economy of fascism<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Gender and sexuality in international politics<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Finance & everyday life<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Decolonising knowledge production<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Global health, resilience, medicine and psychiatry<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Political economy of the household<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Technological transformation and power<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Cybersecurity and the socio-technical construction of power<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Central banking politicisation\/ –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Alternative theoretical and methodological approaches<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Algorithmic security, big data, and AI<\/p>\n –\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Politics of -centrisms and the emergence of national schools of IR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In April 2019, Nancy Fraser wrote a pamphlet\u00a0The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born.\u00a0Written in reaction to Trump\u2019s election, the pamphlet discussed the transformations underway as the global hegemony of neoliberalism collapses around us. The Gramsci quote … Continue reading