Join us for our conference on the “Other Globalisers”, Exeter 6-7 July 2017
The Other Globalisers: How the Socialist and the Non-Aligned World Shaped the Rise of Post-War Economic Globalisation
Location: Exeter University, UK
Date: 6-7 July 2017
Abstract Deadline: 18 March 2017
Papers are now invited for our exciting conference addressing how the socialist and non-aligned world shaped the rise of post-war economic globalisation. This conference is the second in a series of events exploring how processes and practices that emerged from the socialist world shaped the re-globalised world of our times.
CONFERENCE SYNOPSIS
In the wake of the Second World War, the world economy began to ‘reglobalise’ – following the disintegrative processes of the interwar period. This story has most often been told as the final triumph of a neoliberal international order led by the West. Recent research, however, suggests that the creation of our modern interconnected world was not driven solely by the forces of Western capitalism, nor was it the only model of global economic interdependence that arose in the second half of the twentieth century. This conference aims to rethink the histories of postwar globalisation by focusing on the socialist and non-aligned world, whose roles in the rise of an economically interconnected world have received substantially less attention.
This conference aspires to address a wide variety of processes, practices and projects – such as efforts to create alternative systems of international trade, new business practices, through to theoretical conceptualisations of economic interconnectedness – and examine a broad range of actors, such as e.g. governments, experts, international institutions, and business ventures. It will also explore whether such initiatives were alternative at all: as recent research has suggested, actors from these worlds could be contributors to the emerging neoliberal consensus, as well as to other forms of regional economy and global trade that survive to this day. We also hope to encourage an interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars using different approaches to global interconnectedness, and/or working on a variety of regions (e.g. Latin America, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union).
Abstracts of 300-500 words, together with an accompanying short CV should be submitted to Natalie Taylor (N.H.Taylor@exeter.ac.uk) by 18 March 2017.
The selected participants will be notified by the end of March 2017.
Funding opportunities for travel and accommodation are available, but we ask that potential contributors also explore funding opportunities at their home institutions.
This event is kindly supported by Exeter University’s Leverhulme Trust-funded project 1989 after 1989: Rethinking the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective.
The full call for papers is available on our conference page
→ Download the Call for Papers The Other Globalisers
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Global Circuits of Expertise and the Making of the Post-1945 World
Interested in learning more about Professor James Mark’s research on Hungary, South Korea and economic exchange in the Late Cold War? Then why not come along to Global Circuits of Expertise and the Making of the Post-1945 World: Eastern European and Asian Perspectives in New York, 29 – 30 April 2016:
Location:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute
International Affairs Building, Room 918 – 420 West 118th Street, New York, New York 10027
Register:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/global-circuits-of-expertise-and-the-making-of-the-post-1945-world-tickets-22426838277
This workshop aims to explore transfer and circulation of expert knowledge across socialist worlds in the post-1945 period of decolonization. The workshop brings together scholars with regional expertise, Eastern European and/or Asian, to seek commonalities between histories and historiographies that cut across regions, geopolitical blocs and continents.
Bringing these stories together, we will tell a story of expert circulation in the “socialist world.” These were regions where socialism was the dominant state ideology, where socialist parties were politically dominant, or where “progressive” export cultures played important roles. Yet we also wish to consider how experts from “socialist cultures” interacted globally, and were part of broader transnational debates over modernisation, political development, technology, and decolonization. Connections were made, for example, between Eastern Europe and India, as well as Socialist China and India, that defied Cold War blocs. Bringing scholars working across these regions, and on the place of these regions in a global perspective, will help provide important new insights into non-western contributions to various fields of knowledge in the wake of decolonisation.
This event is sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, The Harriman Institute, and The Center for Science and Society at Columbia University, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK)-funded research project “Socialism Goes Global”.
Workshop Programme
Friday, April 29
9:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Panel 1: Science and Decolonization
Chaired by Eugenia Lean, Columbia University
Session 1: The Eastern European Peasant in Nehru’s India: Transnational Debates on Rural Economies, 1930s-1960s
Malgorzata Mazurek, Columbia University
Session 2: Water Management and Transnational Expertise in 1950s China and India
Arunabh Ghosh, Harvard University
Session 3: Curing Ills with Socialist Medicine: China’s Medical Missions in Algeria, 1963-1973
Dongxin Zou, Columbia University
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Panel 2: Global Revolution: Circuits of Expertise and Techniques
Chaired by James Mark, Exeter University
Session 4: The Screen is Red: China and East Germany Make Films Together in 1950s
Quinn Slobodian, Wellesley College
Session 5: Between Work and Struggle: The Varieties of Bolshevik “Self-Criticism” in Maoist China
Chris Chang, Columbia University
3:45 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Panel 3: Politics of Exchange and Circulation
Chaired by Eugenia Lean, Columbia University
Session 6: Tending the Trees of Friendship, Breeding New Knowledge at Home: The Case of the Albanian Olive Tree in China
Sigrid Schmalzer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Session 7: Earthquakes, Disaster Governance, and Socialist China — an International Perspective
Fa-ti Fan, State University of New York, Binghamton
Saturday, April 30
9:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Panel 4: Late Socialist Reforms: Economics and Exchange
Chaired by Malgorzata Mazurek, Columbia University
Session 8: Entangled Electronics: Bulgarian Computers and the Developing World as a Space of Exchange, 1967-1990
Victor Petrov, Columbia University
Session 9: The Political-Economy of Détente: Interdependence, Technocratic Internationalism and Formation of Perestroika Political Economy
Yakov Feygin, University of Pennsylvania
Session 10: Between Eastern Europe and the ‘East Asian Tigers’: Hungary, South Korea and Economic Exchange in the Late Cold War
James Mark, Exeter University
2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Roundtable
Paul Betts, Oxford University
Eugenia Lean, Columbia University
Elidor Mehilli, Hunter College
Adam Tooze, Columbia University
Link to Conference Poster
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