BISA IPEG 2014 Annual Conference: Programme Announced

The British International Studies Association International Political Economy Group (BISA-IPEG) 2014 annual conference, hosted by the University of Leeds will take place on the 5 and 6 September.

The title of this year's conference is IPE and the new normal. Open conflict after the crash. 

Abstract

The world of the 2010s is a fast-changing and highly conflict-laden political-economic territory: states and corporations in many places have changed many of their priorities, relationships and practices to the post-crash requirements of power and profit, survival and renewal. Notably, what many considered to be ‘unthinkable’, ‘outrageous’ and ‘backward’ only a while ago has now been established as what we are calling The New Normal (TNN) in many countries. In the Global North especially, we see an intensive attack on the welfare state, industrial relations, and democracy including popular protest; rule by law and we-spy-on-everybody, a late and soft response to large-scale corporate criminality; and a further militarized foreign policy. High unemployment, poverty, inequality, migration, insecurity multiplicity and an ever more open conflict (e.g. between capital and labour, capital and people) dominate life for millions of people and further advance the workings of TNN. Similarly in the Global South, the daily workings of post-crash capitalism and its intensified dynamics of resource competition, marginalization, poverty, corporate power & criminality, and corruption generate new conflicts and instabilities, and produce new frontiers of TNN in these early-adjusters-countries (SAPs et al.) as well.

IPEG 2014 invites papers and panels that discuss the apparent ‘new normal’ by analysing its drivers, characteristics and repercussions. Contributors to this event might address, for example, the IPE of the normalisation of TNN: How and why was ‘the old normal’ de-normalised and TNN normalised? What and who drives TNN in respective subject areas? What does TNN signify and to what degree has it made hidden structural forms of conflict explicit and open?

This year's Leeds organising team consist of Professor Raymond Bush, Dr Charles Dannreuther and Dr Jörg Wiegratz.

For further information, an article written by Dr Jörg Wiegratz- 'The arrival of the new normal'- which relates to the conference theme may be of interest.

Programme

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