The University of Oxford is accepting abstract submissions for the conference “Geographies of Neoliberalism and Resistance After the Crisis: The State, Violence, and Labour.” The deadline for submissions is September 1, 2013. The conference will be held February 15, 2014.

Students of all levels are encouraged to submit abstracts from a variety of fields.

From Geographies of Resistance:

Although the global financial crisis of 2008 exposed inherent instabilities and contradictions within the system of capitalist production and speculative finance, neoliberal ideology and policies have become more politically durable, economically ‘necessary’, and culturally hegemonic than ever.  This academic conference engages with the deepening inequalities and structural violence caused by reinvigorated manifestations and re-articulated processes of neoliberalism (exclusion, domination, ‘accumulation by dispossession’).  It seeks to widen the discussion of the present crisis to include analyses of (dis)organised resistance against and amid neoliberalism as well as perspectives of neoliberal crisis in the longue durée, including examinations of structural adjustment programmes, trade liberalisation and the privatisation of public assets since the 1980s in the ‘global South’. We are keen to explore the ways in which outsourcing, deregulation, dispossession, austerity, the workfare-prisonfare nexus, and the so-called ‘race to the bottom’ shape and inform labour organising, subaltern struggles, and resistance by the marginalised or excluded.

In this moment of post-industrial capitalist globalisation – in which we have witnessed an intensified and militarised global assault on resources, particularly in the global south, acute underemployment and unemployment, deregulation of employment conditions, and untenable ecological destruction – what is the role of the state?  What are the interactions between the state, labour and social justice in different spaces of neoliberalism and resistances to it?  This conference is an opportunity for graduate students engaged in rich theoretical and empirical work on social struggles and (dis)organised resistances against and amid neoliberalism to present their work, discuss with other scholars and imagine new futures.

Submissions

We invite submissions for paper presentations for Geographies of Neoliberalism and Resistance After the Crisis: The State, Violence, and Labour. We welcome proposals from students at all levels and in all areas of graduate study as well as early career postdocs in addition to activists.  Practitioners, NGOs, community groups and those from the policy-making community are encouraged to attend and participate.

Read more at the conference website.