A Multi- and Inter-disciplinary International Conference on…
‘From the Thirty Years’ Crisis to Multi-polarity: The Evolution of the Geopolitical Economy of the 21st Century World’
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
25-27 September 2015
The centenary of the outbreak of the First World War was marked in Canada and around the world in 2014. 2014 also marked the centenary of the opening of what noted historian, Arno Mayer, called the ‘Thirty Years’ Crisis’ of 1914-1945, spanning the First World War, the Great Depression and the Second World War. This long crisis birthed a new world. The old world of the nineteenth century expansion of the empires of industrial capitalist countries, often mistakenly termed ‘liberal’, met its end. It gave way to an inter-national one populated by a variety of welfare, Communist and developmental orders in national economies whose states had, moreover, greater legitimacy among newly enfranchised women and men than the imperial and colonial regimes they replaced. The Thirty Years crisis also radically redistributed economic, political, military and cultural power within countries and among them. Critical cultural and intellectual changes – new movements in art, new media, and new paradigms of understanding, particularly in economics, inevitably accompanied these historic shifts.
As we stand at the cusp of another wave of complex changes to the world order, this time towards multi-polarity, our conference aims to understand the major changes of the past century better than hitherto dominant paradigms, such as neo-classical economics, globalization and empire, have so far done and to bring that re-assessment to bear on how best to understand problems of and prospects for the world order of the 21st century.
We invite submissions for papers, panels and steams of panels relevant to any aspect of the overarching conference theme from scholars across the humanities, social sciences and in inter- disciplinary studies based in Canada and around the world. Heterodox and critical scholarship is particularly encouraged. A preliminary and non-exhaustive list of themes includes:
- Science, Technology and Society in War and Peace
- Production and Prosperity in Capitalisms and ‘Communisms’
- Continuity and Change in Economic Thought: Keynes and beyond
- Gender: Economy, War, and Politics
- Colonization, Independence, Sovereignty, Indigeneity.
- Multipolarities Old and New: 1914, 2014 and beyond
- World Monetary and Financial (Dis)Orders: sterling standard, dollar standard and beyond
- The Matter of Nature: Extractive Economies, Environmental Governance and Sustainability
- Canada: Nations, Identities and Economies
- Art, Politics and Practices of Power: Beyond Westernization
The conference will inaugurate the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba and will bring together scholars connected with its network of supporting research centres and academic departments the world over.
Abstracts should be 300 to 400 words. They should be single spaced and use 12 point Times New Roman font. They should include the author or authors’ full name, affiliation, a brief biography, and e-mail address. We ask they be sent by May 15, 2015 to contact@gergconference.ca
