Events
Dollar Hegemony, State Sovereignty and International Order: an International Workshop
During the past decade, it has become obvious that economic interconnectedness did not bring forth frictionless international relations as many liberal theorists had predicted. To the contrary, the fact that economic integration has been profoundly uneven has enabled the weaponisation of asymmetrical economic relations for the achievement of geopolitical and/or economic goals (Whyte 2022; Farrell 2023). The weaponisation of the unique international role of the US dollar is one of the most consequential examples of this trend. For instance, in the period since 2001, US sanctions designations have expanded by an extraordinary 933%. In the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine, dollar hegemony made it possible to freeze Russia’s foreign reserves and expel the country from the SWIFT payments system and US correspondent banking. Many states, including geopolitical rivals of the US such as China, understand this reality as a direct threat to their sovereign rights and interests and have been debating possible solutions, such as the introduction of central bank digital currencies and/or the creation of alternative mechanisms of payments clearing and financial messaging (Eichengreen 2022).
The intertwining between dollar hegemony and private money creation puts additional pressures on state sovereignty, as functions with profound and direct effects on the organisation of public life, such as money creation and credit allocation, are carried out by private institutions. Lawyers and political theorists alike have produced useful elaborations on the effects of dollar hegemony and public money on monetary sovereignty (Pistor 2017; Murau & van’t Klooster 2023). What remains relatively under-explored is the conceptual and practical challenges posed by dollar hegemony to state sovereignty more broadly, beyond the confines of monetary sovereignty. In other words, more work remains to be done on the tensions between state sovereignty, a globalised capitalist economy, and the economic unevenness that hegemonic currencies embody (Tzouvala 2024).
To this end, we seek contributions from economists, IR scholars, political theorists, historians, sociologists and lawyers to explore this important question as well as its theoretical and practical implications. We are interested, amongst other issues, in papers exploring:
1) the material and ideological foundations of dollar hegemony and their effects on state sovereignty and international order;
2) the distributional impacts of dollar hegemony both between states and between classes/factions of classes;
3) the legal rules and infrastructures that enable and challenge dollar hegemony;
4) the historical evolution of dollar hegemony;
5) the interplay between dollar hegemony, private money creation and financial capitalism;
6) institutional and political alternatives to dollar hegemony.
7) public and private experiments with digital currencies and their consequences for state sovereignty.
8) the implications of dollar hegemony and challenges to it for unilateral sanctions.
9) the geopolitics of dollar hegemony;
10) the mutually-sustaining relationship between US militarism and dollar hegemony.
We will explore these and other urgent question in a two-day workshop that will take place on the 5th and 6th of December 2024 at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia). If interested, please send us an abstract of no more than 400 words and a short bio of no more than 50 words by the 1st of July 2024 at dollarandsovereignty@gmail.com. Limited funding may be available for speakers who do not have access to institutional funding.
Confirmed speakers include: Professor Melinda Cooper (Australian National University), Professor Mona Ali (State University of New York – New Paltz), Professor Will Bateman (Australian National University), Dr Ilias Alami (University of Cambridge), Professor Benton Heath (Temple University), Professor Shahar Hameiri (University of Queensland), Prof. David Blaazer (University of New South Wales), Professor Ryan Mitchell (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Dr Kanad Bagchi (University of Amsterdam).
Organisers: Dr Jessica Whyte (University of New South Wales), Dr Ntina Tzouvala (Australian National University). The event is co-sponsored by the ANU Capitalism Studies Network and the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship project Economic Sanctions After the Cold War (FT230100697).
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Call for Papers: FRIBIS Annual Conference 2024: Towards the Development of a Full UBI?
“The FRIBIS Annual Conference 2024 focuses on partial basic income models and their implementation into various welfare systems. By examining feasible designs of partial basic income, the conference aims to identify ways to advocate for the idea of an unconditional basic income politically. FRIBIS is particularly interested in contributions related to social protection floors, sustainability, and issues in an […]
Call for Papers: FRIBIS Annual Conference 2024: Towards the Development of a Full UBI?
FRIBIS Lecture Series – Can a Basic Income Grant Reduce Violence?
“Event Title: FRIBIS Lecture Series – Can a Basic Income Grant Reduce Violence? Evidence from Namibia, Kenya, and Uganda Date & Time: April 23, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM Format: Online Event Organizers: FRIBIS in cooperation with the BIP & WEF_FABI teams Zoom Link: https://uni-freiburg.zoom.us/j/67974655698?pwd=Mk4rY3BaM3VkK2ptYmpVUVFXc... Contact: Geoff Harris, geoffreyh@dut.ac.za Event Summary: Youth in Africa are in search of wage employment and expect their governments to provide such opportunities. […]
FRIBIS Lecture Series – Can a Basic Income Grant Reduce Violence?
Seminar: Randall Germain, ‘The Problem of History in IPE: An Intellectual History’
Political Economy seminar
The Problem of History in IPE: An Intellectual History
Speaker: Randall Germain, Carleton University
When: 3-4pm, Wednesday, 24 April, 2024
Where: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 341, The University of Sydney
About the talk: The idea of history, although present throughout much of the traditional canon of political economy and its internationalized off-shoot – international political economy (IPE) – is today largely erased as a key theoretical feature of IPE research. Where it is included as a part of the research enterprise, it is most often formulated as either context for the problem under investigation, or as a linear unit of account such as t + 1. This represents a theoretical loss for the discipline of IPE, and my effort here is to recenter the idea of history as a core feature of IPE’s broad research agenda. To do this, I first revisit how the idea of history is framed in the work of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Max Weber, to demonstrate that the idea of history was a critical element of the inspiration to political economy (and IPE). I then pick up how the idea of history informs what might be described as ‘modern’ IPE, most importantly in the work of foundational IPE scholars (Antonio Gramsci, Karl Polanyi, David Mitrany, E.H. Carr, Susan Strange and Robert Cox). This intellectual history reveals the important way in which the idea of history can frame the research enterprise of IPE as an examination of transformative change within the global political economy. In period marked by what appear to be deep and disruptive change, the idea of history is a necessary addition to the IPE conceptual and analytical toolkit.
About the speaker: Randall Germain is Professor of Political Science at Carleton University, Canada. His teaching and research examine the political economy of global finance, issues and themes associated with economic and financial governance, and theoretical debates within the field of international political economy. His scholarship has been published in journals such as the European Journal of International Relations, Global Governance, International Studies Quarterly, New Political Economy, Review of International Political Economy, and Review of International Studies. He is also the author of The International Organization of Credit (CUP, 1997) and Global Politics and Financial Governance (Palgrave, 2010). Most recently he edited Susan Strange and the Future of Global Political Economy (Routledge 2016). His current research explores how the idea of history has informed disciplinary debates in IPE.
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Book Launch: Ben Spies-Butcher, ‘Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation’
UPDATE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED AND WILL BE RESCHEDULED. STAY TUNED!
Join Ben Spies-Butcher, Frank Stilwell and Gabrielle Meagher to launch Ben’s new book, Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation.
Where: New Britannia Hotel, 103 Cleveland St, Darlington
When: Wednesday 17th April, 5.30 for 6pm-7.30pm
About Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation by Assoc Prof Ben Spies-Butcher
Neoliberalism has made Australia less equal and our welfare system more brutal. But it has also changed the politics of inequality. Using examples from health to housing, unemployment to universities, this book identifies opportunities to make a more equal Australia. Published by Anthem Studies in Australian Politics, Economics and Society. More information and to purchase the book visit: https://anthempress.com/the-politics-of-the-australian-welfare-state-after-liberalisation-hb
Catering: Drinks and food available from the venue.
Getting there: 8 mins walk from Redfern Station, or 6 mins from Broadway. On the 352 bus route. Some timed car parking available.
The post Book Launch: Ben Spies-Butcher, ‘Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation’ appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Seminar: Mareike Beck, Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt
Political economy seminar
Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt
Speaker: Mareike Beck, University of Warwick
When: Wednesday 17 April, 3-4pm, 2024
Where: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 341, The University of Sydney, and Zoom
About the talk: I will speak about my new book, Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. The book offers a new account of the Americanisation of global finance. It advances the concept of extroverted financialisation as an original framework to explain US-led financialisation. The paradigmatic case study of German universal banks is used to demonstrate that the transformation of global banking towards US-style finance should be understood as a response to a revolution in funding practices that originated in US money markets in the 1960s. This new way of funding led to the securitisation of USD debt and rapid globalisation of USD flows, which has fundamentally reshaped the competitive dynamics of global finance as this has empowered US banks over their European counterparts. I argue that this has caused German banks to partially uproot their operations from their own home markets to institutionalise themselves into US money markets. I show that to be able to compete with US financial institutions, German banks had to fundamentally transform the core of their own banking models towards US-style finance. This transformation not only led to the German banks’ speculative investments during the 2000s subprime mortgage crisis but also to rising USD dependency and, ultimately, their contemporary decline.
About the speaker: I am an Assistant Professor in International Political Economy at the University of Warwick. Previously, I was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at King’s College London, after having finished my PhD at the University of Sussex. My research agenda focuses on the drivers and socio-economic impacts of financialisation at the global and everyday level. My work has addresses this in three inter-related areas. First, I am interested in a social history of global finance. My book project Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt (under contract with Cambridge University Press) develops a novel conceptualisation, extroverted financialisation, to frame the US Americanisation of global finance. I am particularly interested in the uneven nature of the USD-based global financial architecture, and how this has shaped financial globalisation, innovations in on- and offshore finance, and financial instability. Secondly, using a feminist political economy approach, I investigate how everyday asset management and global asset management interact to produce various forms of asset-based inequalities in financialised economies. My third area of interest concerns creative and performative methodologies for knowledge exchange and impact. I regularly engage with civil society groups and local communities. For example, in May 2023, I directed and performed in an aerial acrobatics circus show that performed feminist political economy theorising of homes in their dual function as (1) an everyday living space and (2) a global financial asset.
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22nd Annual Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) Conference July 22-23, 2024
“The Basic Income Guarantee Conference (BIG!) is the only annual conference in the U.S. focused on building and supporting the thriving basic income movement as we drive towards national policy. The BIG Conference is a BIG TENT event that includes pilot participants, policy analysts, pilot administrators, community based organizations, activists, artists, researchers and more as we share […]
22nd Annual Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) Conference July 22-23, 2024
Launch of Indian Basic Income Coalition (iBIC)
“While India is a rich site of several Basic Income Pilots held by Research and Governmental agencies, there is a recent uptrend in the number of cash-based social policies in several states, especially with evidence that shows a marked increase in several indicators of a better life. The time has come in India when the […]
Open Forum on Feminist Definitions of Basic Income, April 25
Open forum on feminist definitions of basic income co-organised by FRIBIS UBI and Gender team (FRIBIS-UBIG) and by BIEN working group for Clarification of BI definition (BIEN-CBID) 7.30am Eastern Daylight Time (North America) / 12.30pm British Summer Time / 1.30pm Central European Summer Time / 8.30pm Japan Standard Time / 11.30pm New Zealand Standard Time […]
Open Forum on Feminist Definitions of Basic Income, April 25
Forum: The Eternal Return of the Rentier? How Our Past Weighs on Our Future
In April, the School of Social and Political Sciences, in collaboration with the Justice and Inequality research priority of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, will be hosting Mike Savage, Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He has a longstanding interest in the social and historical sources of inequality, within and across nations. From 2015 to 2020 Mike was Director of the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, and his most recent book is The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Harvard University Press, 2021), praised by Thomas Piketty as a “major sociological contribution to the ongoing global debate on inequality and the return of social class”.
During Mike’s visit, we will be holding two public events: a public lecture on ‘The Racial Wealth Divide’ and a forum on ‘The Eternal Return of the Rentier? How Our Past Weighs on Our Future’ (details below). In addition, we will be holding two closed workshops: one on the hold of finance on public policy (and how to loosen or break it) (April 4-5) and another on the methodological and theoretical challenges facing inequality researchers at a time of escalating inequality (April 16). These events are invitation-only, but spaces are available – please contact martijn.konings@sydney.edu.au for further information.
Forum: The Eternal Return of the Rentier? How Our Past Weighs on Our Future
Wednesday 3 April, 3:30-5 pm
A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 650, The University of Sydney
Over the past decade, a certain strain of intellectual pessimism has migrated from social theory to popular culture. Our ability to make better futures, it advises, is hamstrung by the sheer weight of the past, resulting in economic stagnation, escalating inequality, generational rifts, and political instability. In political economy, that weight of the past has often been identified with the figure of the rentier, and Piketty’s work has documented the return of this morally questionable character, living off the return on property. But today’s rentiers are no longer top-hatted financiers, and whether owning a second home represents moral turpitude or a middle-class survival strategy is actively debated in the op-ed pages of Australian newspapers. Nor is it clear that we can account for the full extent of inequity in contemporary society by continuing to rely on existing definitions of wealth. As suggested by the current popularity of concepts such as “technofeudalism”, the production of speculative claims on imagined futures shape what appear to be anachronistically exploitative forms of work.
The disorienting ways in which old and new combine to produce unfamiliar forms of inequality demands that we open up our concepts and reconsider our methods. One of the most ambitious and compelling attempts to do so has been advanced by Mike Savage in his recent book The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Harvard University Press, 2021). Professor Savage will be visiting the University of Sydney in April, and, taking its cue from the subtitle of his book, this panel invites leading scholars to reflect on how the past weighs on our future-making, and how we can acknowledge this without falling prey to pessimism of either will or intellect. Four panellists – Janet Roitman (RMIT), Mareike Beck (Warwick), Amin Samman (City), and Gareth Bryant (Sydney) – will provide punchy takes on the problem, and Mike will conclude with his own reflections on the post-pandemic future of the past.
Immediately after the event is Sophie Webber and Gareth Bryant’s book launch for Climate Finance at Gleebooks (from 6pm)
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