27th to 28th June 2019
Krakow, Poland
Contact person: Common Ground Research Networks
Global Studies Research Network: a conference and journal founded in 2008, exploring new trends and patterns in globalization.
Organized by: Global Studies Research Network
Deadline for abstracts/proposals: 27th May 2019 Twelfth Global Studies Conference
Jagiellonian University
Kraków, Poland
27–28 June 2019 2019 Special Focus: The “End Of History” 30 Years On: Globalization Then and Now
1989 was a momentous year in the history of the twentieth century. A revolutionary wave that started in Poland, and continued in Hungary, East Germany and elsewhere, led to the end of Soviet domination in Central and Eastern Europe and ultimately the collapse, in 1991, of the Soviet Union itself. 30 years later, the Global Studies Conference meets in Krakow, one of the main centres of the 1980s civil society resistance against the communist regime, to consider, in a multidimensional way, the nature of the post-Cold war period and the contrast between the current volatile world and the accelerated globalization of the 1990s. While in the aftermath of communism’s defeat, the discourse of capitalist triumphalism prevailed – with Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 “end of history” thesis as its most influential example – three decades on, more cautious assessments are in order. Although capitalism, especially of a particular, neoliberal kind, may have established its domination over almost the entire globe, the obituaries written in the early 1990s – for social democracy, the state, the nation, sometimes modernity itself – now seem utterly premature. Far from homogenizing the world, the processes of globalization have clashed with tendencies towards fragmentation, globalism has been undermined by nationalism, and neoliberal hegemony is often described as zombie-like, exhausted by challenges both on the right and the left. The questions addressed by this conference concern:
The history of globalization and the evolution of globalization debates
Neoliberal globalization and its discontents: globalization-from-below and anti-globalism
Multi-trajectories of modernisations
Populism, nationalism, and the resurgence of the right
US hegemony: declining or enduring?
Bumpy roads of regional integration projects
Emerging political and economic global multilateralism
Challenges and opportunities brought by new patterns of migration
Digital technologies: towards unification or fragmentation?
Global crises and globalization’s futures Theme 1: Economy and Trade Theme 2: Politics, Power, and Institutions Theme 3: Society and Culture Theme 4: Resources and Environment
