2005-06 International Focus Year Colloquium: "Global Capitalism, Global Empire?"

2005-06 International Focus Year Colloquium Capital and capitalism are globally constituted social forms. Not surprisingly, the universalization of capitalism is one of the most distinctive features of contemporary global life. Contextually, conventional notions of capitalism and imperialism encountered in mainstream international relations accounts of globalization provide unsatisfactory explanations of universal capitalism and contemporary imperialism. The mainstream (realist/neorealist and liberal/neoliberal) approaches to international relations (IR) and international political economy (IPE) share a number of key assumptions about the nature of the world, human nature, reason, power, culture, capitalism, conflict, war, security, and the nature and role of states and individuals in historical change, differing by degree rather than by kind on the fundamentals. Those literatures also privilege state-centric thinking that equates history to a set of organic processes built around cycles of permanent inter-state rivalry, competition, force, and war in the production of culture and history. They disregard the fact that modern states and cultural institutions called nation-states are outcomes of particular historical processes. They habitually ignore, in their accounts of world order and change, the nature, meaning and significance of social relations of production and transnational forms of class competition. Contemporary global transformation is marked by processes of restructuring and incessant innovation in science, technology, industry, and transportation; information technology, communications and finance; state institutions, drugs, money laundering, nations, labor, and migration; gender, race, ethnicity, sex work, human trafficking and violence against females, and military and defense industrial bases and war—all of which connect to capitalism and imperialism. A number of leading scholars are rethinking the question of world order and mapping innovative approaches to explain the seismic changes and consequences for global humanity in ways that break with conventional interpretations of social reality.

The theme for the International Focus Year 2005-06 is Global Capitalism, Global Empire?
Four distinguished scholars—Professor Frances Fox Piven (City University of New York), Professor William I. Robinson (University of California, Santa Barbara), Professor Leo Panitch (York University, Toronto), and Professor Cynthia Enloe (Clark University)—will deliver public lectures under the International Focus Year program.

–Faculty Coordinator, Hilbourne Watson, International Relations

Schedule of Events:

The War at Home: The Domestic Causes and Consequences of America’s Imperial Wars
Francis Fox Piven
Sept. 20, 2005
7:30 p.m.
The Forum

The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Opportunities, Challenges, and Hazards
William I. Robinson
Nov. 1, 2005
7:30 p.m.
The Forum

Global Capitalism, Sovereignty and the American Empire
Leo Panitch
March 21, 2006
7:30 p.m.
The Forum

Where are the Women in the Newest Empire? Why Does it Matter?
Cynthia Enloe
April 11, 2006
7:30 p.m.
The Forum