PEWS 2000 March

Call for Papers: PEWS 2000
Political Economy of the World-System XXIV Annual Conference
THE MODERN WORLD-SYSTEM IN THE 20TH CENTURY

The twenty-fourth annual conference of the Political Economy of the
World-System Section of the American Sociological Association will take
place March 24-25, 2000 at Boston College.

The 24th annual conference of the PEWS is about the Modern World-System
in the 20th Century. We will do a retrospective analysis of the 20th
century by focusing on several world-scale, long-term processes. Priority
will be given to papers that covers from 50 to 100 years or more in terms
of time-length and/or encompass a regional or world scale level in terms
of the spatial dymensions. We will discuss several processes that have
been crucial in changing some of the geopolitical, geocultural and
economic dynamics of the capitalist world-system in the 20th century and
that have important implications for the next century.

*peripheral decolonization and global coloniality: How do we understand
the demise of the colonial  administrations in the periphery of the
capitalist world-economy? What new global forms of power and discourses
were created to discipline the periphery of the world-economy once
colonialism dissapeared as the dominant form of core-periphery
relationships in the world-system? What is the difference between global
colonialism and global coloniality? How was the debt crisis politically
administrated by core powers and the financial institutions of global
capitalism?

*anti-systemic movements: How were working class movements transformed in
the 20th century? What are the geocultural consequences of the
anti-colonial, racial, gender, and sexual movements in the late 20th
century? How did they affect knowledge production and ideologies on a
world-scale? What are the achievements and limitations  of national
liberation movements and recent social movements such as environmental,
gender, sexual, and anti-racist movements? What new forms of resistance
are emerging in the world-system? What is the significance of the
emergence of global identity movements (islamic fundamentalism, U.S.
Christian fundamentalism, green movements, zapatistas, etc.) after the
demise of socialism and the decline of revolutionary workers movements?

*utopistics and anti-capitalist strategies:  What new utopistics emerged
(or could emerge in the future) as a response to the demise of the
"socialist imaginary" in the modern world-system? How effective are (or
could be) these utopistics in replacing the old developmentalist
socialist imaginary? Is "radical democracy" an anti-capitalist
alternative utopistics? What would a "second decolonization" of the world
imply and how would it transform the capitalist world-system? What are
the historical choices that we all face for the Twenty-First Century? How
to think about a global democracy linked to a decolonization of
knowledge/culture/imagination and no longer steered or guided from a
hegemonic local history in conditions to impose global democratic
designs?

*gender inequality: How is gender inequality a constitutive element of
the modern world-system? Has there been a transformation of gender
dynamics, and if so, how does it affect power and inequality in the late
20th century? What are the bases for a convergence or dialogue between
radical feminist and world-system approaches? In what ways do both
feminist studies and world-systems analysis challenge conventional
political economy/social science? Where do they converge/diverge in their
critiques?'

*geopolitics of knowledge//geocultural locations//knowledge production:
What is the relationship between knowledge production and geocultural
locations in the 20th century? What are the present inequalities of
knowledge production in the world-system? What are the similarities and
differences between subaltern studies, post-colonial studies and
world-system approach? What dialogue or convergence can be developed
between these perspectives? What are the critics of these approaches to
eurocentric historiography and forms of knowledge? What forms of
knowledge are produced by these approaches that contributes to decolonize
knowledge production? What is the historical significance of the
emergence of these approaches in the 1970s and 1980s?

We will provide lodging and some meals for conference participants.
Selected papers from the conference will be published in the annual
series edited through Greenwood Press.  THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS OF
PAPERS OR DETAILED ABSTRACTS IS DECEMBER 15, 1999.  Please submit
materials to: Ramón Grosfoguel, Sociology Department, McGuinn Hall 426,
Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167-3807
(e-mail: grosfog@ix.netcom.com).