SOCIETY FOR SOCIALIST STUDIES/SOCIÉTÉ D’ÉTUDES SOCIALISTES

172 Allwright Close, Red Deer AB T4R 3P1

Telephone/Fax: (403) 342-7989

Email: kcollier@shaw.ca

Website: http://www.socialiststudies.ca

CONGRESS 2008

Thinking Beyond Borders

Global Ideas: Global Values

University of British Columbia

Vancouver, BC, Canada

Wednesday June 4 – Saturday June 7

PROGRAM

Sessions, Speakers and Abstracts

Program Committee

Chris Borst, Bill Carroll, Lanyan Chen, Ken Collier, Murray Cooke, Debbie Dergousoff

Roni Gechtman, Ian Hussey, June Madeley, Darrell McLaughlin,

Alicja Muszynski (Chair), Claire Polster, Jacqueline Preyde, Peter Prontzos, Bob Ratner

See summary list of sessions near back cover!

Also, check out the information on Socialist Studies: Journal of the

Society for Socialist Studies at www.socialiststudies.ca

Due to possible scheduling conflicts, session room numbers and times may be subject to last-minute changes. If you identify any scheduling conflicts or errors, please notify the Program Committee as soon as possible at the SSS Registration Information Table in Anthropology Sociology Building near 203 or 205

Merci CRSHC et FCSHS!

Thank you SSHRC and CFHSS!

La Société d’études socialistes remercie le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada et la Féderation canadienne des sciences humaines et sociales pour l’aide génénereuse accordée pour les frais de conférence.

The Society for Socialist Studies extends its thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada for their generous assistance toward conference costs.

The Society for Socialist Studies information desk is in Anthroplogy Sociology Building near rooms 203 or 205. Travel subsidies previously promised are available at this desk. Memberships can be started and renewed here. A good place to mingle.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Reports, Discussions, Elections

Friday June 6, 2:45 to 5 PM,

Buchanan A 106

Congress 2009 will be held at Carleton University in Ottawa. The dates of Socialist Studies sessions are yet to be determined.

SPECIAL SOCIALIST STUDIES EVENTS AT THE 2008 CONGRESS

Cross – listed sessions:

(Day before SSS starts, Tuesday June 3, 9:00 to 10:30 - 1968 and its Social Movements, with CSA)

Wednesday June 4, 9:00 to 2:30 – Security and Prosperity Partnership, with CPSA

Wednesday June 4, 12:30 to 2:30 – Fernwood Book Launch, Book Fair Lounge Area

Thursday June 5, 9:00 to 10:30 – Transnational Networks: Relations of Ruling and Resistance, with CPSA

Thursday June 5, 8:30 to 4:30 – Ruling Relations of International Funding, with CASID

SSS Program Special Events

Wednesday June 4, 1:00 to2:30 (could go to 5:00 max) Gindin Chair Round Table - New Paths to Social and Political Change

Thursday June 5, 2:45 to 5:00 Keynote Address by Michael Lebowitz

Friday June 6, 9:00 to 10:30 Exploring Ecosocialism

Friday June 6, 2:45 to 5:00 SSS AGM

Saturday June 7, 9:00 to 12:15 Beyond Dependency, Beyond Borders: Canadian Capitalism

TUESDAY JUNE 3, 2008 – Cross-listed session day before SSS starts.

 
Tuesday June 3, 2008 9:00 - 10:30 NOTE LOCATION BELOW.
 

1968 and its Social Movements: Reflections, Revisions, Revolutions

Cross listed with CSA, Leonard Klink Building, Room 200

This session highlights the 40th anniversary of the most celebrated year of the
1960s: 1968. Papers are welcome that explore any of the social movements of
the time, provide case studies, reflect comparatively on then and now, and
which trace social and theoretical aspects of the movements. Examination of
Canadian movements, or comparative analysis of movements in Canada and another
society are welcome.

Organizer: Patrice LeClerc (pleclerc@stlawu.edu) Sociology, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY, USA

Chair: Murray Cooke (cooke@connect.carleton,ca) Carleton University, Ottawa, ON. Canada

Discussant: Howard Ramos (howard.ramos@dal.ca) Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

1968: Sudden or Incremental Change in Consciousness?

John Cleveland (jcleveland@tru.ca), Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC, Canada

The last period of global cultural and political radicalization (pace the current global justice movement) is usually summarized as a decade, The Sixties, or even a single year, 1968. Are major leftward changes in political consciousness, commitment and action really sudden, or are they gradual, or are they some combination of both? This question is addressed by examining changes in the framing of issues and the action tactics used in student activism on five English-Canadian campuses (Dalhousie-King’s, McGill, Toronto, Regina and Simon Fraser) from 1964-65 to 1969-70 with a focus on changes within the calendar year of 1968.

Drawing Lessons from the “Hot Autumn”: Italian Workerism, autononmia, and Contemporary Struggles against Capital.

Wilhelm Peekhaus (wpeekhau@uwo.ca) University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

This paper traces the historical and theoretical development of what is broadly termed the autonomist Marxist tradition, which flows out of ‘workerism’ and the factory and student struggles in Italy of 1968. Emphasis is placed on interrogating the theory of autonomist Marxism in order to indicate its relevance for contemporary anti-capitalist struggles. Just as Marx’s methodology orients itself toward a new social vision based on the perspective of the working class that is founded on its own historical activity, contemporary efforts at understanding and opposing capitalist social relations can benefit by researching the genealogy of social and political opposition movements.

Conscience in Theater. The 1968 Polish Students’ Revolt

Marta Kunecka (mkunecka@hotmail.com) Political Studies and International Relations, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

The paper presents the events which took place under the Polish communist regime in 1968. Responding to increasing censorship, anti-semitic propaganda, the oppression of the church and the increasing arrests of state opponents, student uprisings occurred in many university centers. The direct cause of the students’ revolts was the censorship of one of the national dramas performed in one of Warsaw’s theatres in January 1968. In this paper I trace the causes of the uprisings as well as provide examples of other types of civil direct action used by Polish activists over the course of the next 20 years, using a philosophical perspective.

WEDNESDAY JUNE 4, 2008

 
Wednesday June 4, 2008 9:00 - 10:30, 10:45 – 12:15, 1:00 – 2:30 ANSO 207 (60 seats): The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America
 

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America – Contradictions and Contestations

Cross listed by Canadian Political Science Association and Society for Socialist Studies

In 2005, the governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico entered into a new, ‘deeper’ model of economic integration and security co-operation. Beyond trade liberalization and NAFTA’s Chapter 11 investment provisions, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) implies a broad range of issues including administrative cooperation; security harmonization; intelligence-sharing; threat assessment; sustainability in energy sourcing; protection for intellectual property rights; and border facilitation. Broader civil society groups and opposition politicians have charged that the SPP weakens democratic politics because of the way in which the executive level of government has been driving this agenda in close cooperation with security forces and business executives. In these linked panels, researchers will present papers discussing the contradictions of this new moment in North American integration.Panel #1 will be presented at the CPSA conference. Panels II and III will be presented at the SSS congress. All three panels will be advertised in the official program of both Associations.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America – Contradictions and Contestations 1

From NAFTA to SPP: The Predatory Deepening of Mexico’s role as US energy supplier

Alejandro Alvarez Béjar, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, abejar@servidor.unam.mx, Professor

Under the competing pressure of alternative economic integration projects and the deterioration of US hegemony in the global economy, we have seen the rise of bio-fuels as a “green alternative” for energy restructuring in the developed world, focussed mainly on the transportation sector. Based on a wide domestic power bloc and searching for external alliances with Brazil to isolate Venezuela and Cuba´s influence over the rest of Latin America, the US has proposed bio-fuels as an alternative. In reality, it is deepening the regionalization of North America. As well, this strategy is searching for a structural change in the Mexican energy sector and opening it up to private invesment without making any significant changes to the Constitution. The SPP is a new and sophisticated strategy that makes a detailed array of recommendations for all energy activities, including oil, gas and electricity. This comes at a time when we have seen a decline in domestic oil reserves and a rush to begin the exploitation of oil in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, Felipe Calderón´s administration announced public financial resources under the Puebla Panama umbrella, to promote the incorporation of 'exican southern states in the strategy of biofuels. All these policies put new pressures on land and water use, and more specifically, on domestic food production.

Security Discourses, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, and the Institutionalization of Private Authority

Janine Brodie (janine.brodie@ualberta.ca) University of Alberta,

In her recent book, Territory, Authority and Rights, Saskia Sassen argues that contemporary national states are undergoing foundational realignments in time-worn geographies of power. In particular, Sassen points to three ongoing tendencies thatare novel in the history of national states – an inordinate expansion of executive power, the institutionalization of private forms of authority, and the denationalization of prerogatives that were once the exclusive domain of the national state. This paper demonstrates the ways in which the SPP embeds these tendencies in the governance of a North American security community. It argues that the emerging private institutional order has been set in place under the veil of security discourses which lend urgency to current transformations in governance, underwrite non-transparency, and marginalize popular participation and democratic debate.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America: A Continental Institutional Innovation Fraught with Internal Contradictions

Stephen Clarkson (stephen.clarkson@utoronto.ca) University of Toronto

To fill a decision-making vacuum created in North America's transborder governance by NAFTA's institutional weakness, the 2005 Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America proposed an ambitious, executive-driven agenda with little administrative muscle. The addition in 2006 of an annual tri-national summit radically strengthened this initiative, and the insertion of a big-business-based North American Competitiveness Council added corporate muscle to the process. But the continuing tension between the Department of Homeland Security and the rest of the US administration plus the inherent legitimacy gap in a major continental policy-making program from which the three national legislatures are excluded suggest that the SPP's future is bound to remain contested. Nevertheless, while there is a valid concern about continental regulatory harmonization occurring without transparency, the holding of annual meetings of the three heads of government promise Canada and Mexico greater voice in the United States' administrative and executive worlds. This paper will be based on elite interviews carried out in Mexico City, Washington, Ottawa from 2006 to 2008

Deep Integration in North America and the Fusing of Trade and Security

Ricardo Grinspun (ricardo@yorku.ca) York University

The context of Canada-United States relations was dramatically altered by September 11, 2001 and the U.S. policy shifts that followed, which also brought about a transformation in the process of deepening integration between the two countries. A comprehensive approach to transforming the Canada-U.S. relationship, already taking root in the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), differs fundamentally from the strictly economic arrangements that defined the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement. Canadian business leaders have abandoned past claims that free trade deals are strictly about economics and now admit that long-standing Canadian positions on a variety of issues have to be reconsidered in order to achieve economic objectives. Their post-9/11 logic has been that if Canada would respond favourably to Washington's heightened defence, security, and energy concerns, then the Bush White House would respond by rewarding Canadians with economic and trade security. Business proposals have reflected the fusing of trade and security matters, and appeared to be the blueprint for the SPP launched in 2005 by the three governments, including Mexico. For the Canadian advocates, the plan is for Canada to increase military spending, support U.S. strategic interests in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and harmonize its immigration and security policies in return for secure access to the U.S. market. In this paper I describe and assess this radical change in the logic of North American integration and explore its implications from a Canadian perspective.

North American Integration and Human Rights: The SPP model of governance and questions for democracies

John Foster (jfoster@nsi-ins.ca) North-South Institute

This paper will identify key elements of the current approach to governance characterizing the Security and Prosperity Partnership, examining it from the points of view of the three constituent members. Against a summary examination of the current situation of key civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, utilizing recent evidence presented to the International Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other bodies, the paper will identify priority areas of concern as expressed by civil society organizations and other actors. The author will discuss the implications of the current approach to governance on several levels: the direction of its evolution, impact on democratic legislatures, impact on the shaping of legislation. The current effects of the Partnership on selected areas of concern, for example energy and intellectual property will be examined. The nature of the forces contesting the official agenda and the nature of their concerns as they affect human rights will be examined. Suggestions of alternative pathways for the North American community will be outlined.

How is the national insecurity agenda failing workers of colour: Who pays and who is protected?

Karl Flecker (kflecker@clc-ctc.ca) Canadian Labour Congress

In this paper I will discuss how racial profiling is emerging in our workplaces and how labour is responding. Across the country, unions represent workers which include letter carriers to pilots, from truck drivers to security guards. The membership includes workers of colour from diverse cultural and religious communities who work in many different locations including hospitals, airports and manufacturing plants all across the country. It is these workers who have first-hand experience with the systemic presence of racism and discrimination, both within the labour movement and in our society at large. It is this group of workers who have challenged how power and privilege in the movement and in our political and social institutions is exercised. The fight has been a long one and it continues. In terms of racial profiling – this is a battle that appears to be getting worse rather than getting better. Here I will share examples of how racial profiling persists for workers in the new context of insecurity. Following 9/11/01 and the overzealous introduction of the now 186-page Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) – workers, particularly workers of colour, feel the dangerous barbs that all too often accompany the institutional practice of racial profiling. I will discuss examples of the new security agenda from the perspective of workers in marine, air and trucking industries. I will discuss the issues for workers presented by the new watch lists and the integration of intelligence and immigration information with the United States government.

[[[[The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America – Contradictions and Contestations III – This session organized separately by CPSA – Political Economy Section in another building. Not cross-listed with Socialist Studies, but notice given here.

In 2005, the governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico entered into a new, ‘deeper’ model of economic integration and security co-operation. Beyond trade liberalization and NAFTA’s Chapter 11 investment provisions, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) implies a broad range of issues including administrative cooperation; security harmonization; intelligence-sharing; threat assessment; sustainability in energy sourcing; protection for intellectual property rights; and border facilitation. Broader civil society groups and opposition politicians have charged that the SPP weakens democratic politics because of the way in which the executive level of government has been driving this agenda in close cooperation with security forces and business executives. Panellists will present papers discussing the contradictions of this new moment in North American integration.]]]]

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America – Contradictions and Contestations III (with CPSA – Political Economy Section)

Chair and Discussant :   Marie-Josée Massicotte massicot@uottawa.ca

North American Integration and Copyright Policy: The Case of Canada

Blayne Haggart (bhaggart@gmail.com) PhD pre-dissertation, Carleton University

Regional integration is a political process, embedded in a network of domestic, global and regional treaties, institutions, organizations and politics. Copyright policy provides an ideal lens through which to examine the distinctive development of North American integration, and Canada-U.S. relations in particular. Like regional integration, copyright policy, which is moving to the centre of the global political economy, involves the interplay of cultural, economic and political interests and forces at the subnational, national, regional and global levels. Significantly, U.S. business and government have been driving the debate on this issue, pushing for very restrictive copyright regimes. In North America, despite copyright’s inclusion in regional agreements like the NAFTA and the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, all three countries’ involvement in the Agreement on Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties, and strong American pressure on Canada, each country continues to pursue distinctive national copyright policies. Using Canada as a North American case study, this paper examines the evolution of Canadian copyright policy in response to domestic, global and regional pressures. This includes the changing roles of the state, business and civil society in the development of copyright policy. In doing so, this paper will highlight the limits to and possibilities for regional integration, including ways in which greater democratic oversight in the regional-integration process can realistically be pursued.

Hobbling the Regulatory System: An Analysis of the New Federal Cabinet Directive on Streamlining Regulation

Marc Lee (marc@policyalternatives.ca) Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

This paper provides a critique of the new federal regulatory policy, the Cabinet Directive on Streamlining Regulation (CDSR), effective April 1, 2007. The CDSR builds on a quarter-century of deregulatory activity in Ottawa, and makes the development of public interest regulation much more difficult. It centralizes authority for approving new regulations at Treasury Board Secretariat - with an invitation for TBS to challenge departments and agencies - while ensuring that corporate interests are balanced against the public interest in the evaluation of proposed regulations, and that business voices are heard loudly and clearly at every stage of the process of developing and implementing regulations.

From Banff to Puerto Vallarta: Access, Information and Democracy in an integrated North America

Teresa Healy (thealy@clc-ctc.ca) Canadian Labour Congress

In 2006, a leaked agenda from the North American Forum’s meeting at Banff, Alberta indicated that elected leaders, government officials, military leaders and corporate executives had quietly gathered to discuss their visions of North America’s future. The ensuing public reaction raised questions about the extent to which corporate and political executives have become accustomed to side-stepping democratic institutions as they exchange information and develop their positions on economic integration and security cooperation. As governments in North America develop and share intelligence information, linked data bases and watch lists, Canadian citizens and residents find their access to information increasingly restricted. Less and less are economic integration and security issues debated in the legislature. Rather, these have become administrative matters under executive direction. Increasingly, police information is used instead of judicial decisions for border, immigration and security clearance issues. This paper will discuss these issues by analysing the Canadian Labour Congress’ Access to Information requests relating to the North American Forum meeting in Banff and what was learned about the Security and Prosperity Partnership in the process.

Wednesday June 4, 2008 - 9:00-10:30: ANSO 203 (30 seats):

Latin America at a Crossroads: Imperialism, Social Movements and the Left  

Session Organizers: Jeffery R. Webber (jefferyrogerwebber@hotmail.com)

and Todd Gordon (tsgordon@yorku.ca), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Roughly the last decade witnessed resurgence in leftist movements and governments in Latin America.  As imperial wars advanced in other areas of the world, Latin America served as a beacon of hope, a site of resistance. Many Centre-Left regimes assumed power only to perpetuate the neoliberal capitalist projects that preceded them. The Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador respectively are raising fundamental questions about twenty-first-century socialism. The papers in this panel explore both domestic challenges facing the Latin American Left in specific countries, and external ones in a global context of capitalist imperialism.

A Decade of Latin American Left Resurgence, 1998-2008: Promises and Setbacks for Transformation in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela

Jeffery R. Webber (jefferyrogerwebber@hotmail.com) University of Toronto

This paper seeks to contribute a clearer theoretical, empirical and strategic analysis of the conjuncture of the Latin American Left after roughly a decade of popular movement resurgence across the region. It points out some of the weaknesses in dominant theoretical frameworks of social democracy, populism and anarchism in the Latin American context. It develops an alternative revolutionary socialist framework through an examination of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, referring to their political economies and shifting social forces since the late 1990s. The paper concludes with hypotheses on the transformative potential and limitations of the Left in each of the cases.

Canadian Imperialism in Latin America

Todd Gordon (tsgordon@yorku.ca) University of Toronto

Most writing on imperialism in Latin America focuses on the United States. What’s often ignored is the role of Canadian capital and the Canadian state in the Americas. Canada is one of the largest foreign investors (and has the largest mining industry) in Latin America, while the Canadian state is increasingly seeking to exert its political influence in the region. My presentation will look at the economic and political features of Canadian imperialism in the Americas, including an assessment of Canada’s response to social movements and anti-neoliberal governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Beneath the Mantle of Democracy: Confronting the Evolution of Paramilitarism in Colombia

Jasmin Hristov, York University

This paper is part of an in-depth inquiry into the phenomenon of paramilitarism. In order to understand the challenge that the Left is currently facing in Colombia, I trace the changes and continuities in the formation of the paramilitary structure from its inception until present, especially with regards to its targets, methods, and relationship with the Colombian state, local and US capital, the CIA, and DEA. In this context are examined the latest developments since the official “demobilization” of the AUC in February 2006.

Wednesday June 4, 2008, 9:00-10:30, ANSO 205 (30 seats)

Socialism and Trade Unionism
Session organizer: Alex Levant (alevant@wlu.ca)

Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada

Socialism and trade unionism have had a complex relationship over the decades in the Canadian state and beyond. This session explores this relationship, focusing on questions such as: What is the history of socialist activism in the labour movement? What is the role of unions in the struggle for socialism? What does it mean to be a socialist trade unionist in the Canadian state today?

Workers, Unions, Community and Organizing: "Union Renewal" and Implications for Socialist Praxis

Sheila Wilmot (sheila.wilmot@gmail.com) PhD candidate, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Theory and practice of social unionism, social movement unionism and community unionism in the context of "union renewal" is often contradictory and confused. Inner-related with this is the compartmentalization of the categories "community", "union" and "worker". Some of the separation is quite real: the specificity of legal-political relations of unionized waged-labour that evolved to create and maintain the union-employer relationship requires a degree of internally-oriented praxis. Yet our lives do not happen in discrete conceptual boxes. Socialist unionists therefore can (re)introduce a critical historical materialist praxis, grounded in the complexity of multiple inner-connected power relations, into our shop-floor, union and community-oriented organizing.

Ideological Tensions in the Formation of the Histradut

Katherine Nastovski (knastov@yorku.ca), Social and Political Thought, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

This paper will analyze the ideological foundations of the formation of the Histradut, Israel's primary labour federation. I will focus on the early history of the Histradut prior to and around the time of the establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine. While many of the early founders of the Histradut identified as Socialists and incorporated socialist principles in how they structured the federation, many of these principles were compromised by the project to colonize Palestine. I will explore the relationship between Zionist nationalism, the formation of the Histradut and the privileging of nationalist goals over worker solidarity.

The “One Million Heroes” Versus The “Steel”: The Final Showdown

Dhruv Jain (jaindhruv@hotmail.com) York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

I argue that whilst being cognizant of the ‘right deviationist’ and ‘left deviationist’ errors in Maoist practice that has resulted in reformism or ultra-leftism – there must be a return to union politics and a correct utilization of the ‘mass line’. This paper is written in light of three decades of Maoist practice and experiences. Including the 1970’s ‘back to factory’ movements and subsequent shift away from union politics since the 1980’s. This paper articulates the need for socialists to recognize the relationship between the ‘particular’ and the ‘universal’, between class politics and trade unions and the goal of ‘socialist revolution’.

Worker Activism: Radical Renewal after the End of 20th Century Socialism

Alan Sears (asears@ryerson.ca) Sociology, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada

Worker activism through most of the 20th century was nourished by an infrastructure of dissent that contributed to the development of capacities to analyze, communicate and organize. This infrastructure ranged from informal neighbourhood networks through to sustained union opposition movements, from social gathering places through to socialist and anarchist organizations. It developed in specific circumstances, including particular configurations of work and community and political conditions that produced 20th century socialism. This paper seeks to understand the development and attrition of the last infrastructure of dissent to inform the project of building the next one as part of a project of radical renewal. 

Socialism and Trade Union Activism in the Age of Political Deskilling

Alex Levant (alevant@wlu.ca) Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada

This paper discusses strategy among socialists who are active in the Canadian union movement today. It reflects on the power and limits of approaches from the period of classical Marxism, and examines some challenges that are specific to the current context – most importantly the political deskilling of working people today. Situating the bureaucratization of the union movement in the larger social process of political deskilling, it looks at ways that socialists can intervene to transform unions into organizations of political re-skilling, as a way to both strengthen unions and to develop an empowered subjectivity among working people.

Wednesday June 4, 2008, 10:45- 12:15, ANSO 203 (30 seats):

Participatory Culture
Session Organizer: June M. Madeley (jmadeley@unbsj.ca) 
 
Full Institutional Affiliation (if applicable): Information and Communication Studies Program, Dept. of Social Science,
University of New Brunswick, Saint John
 

Description: Particularly with the rise of the internet consumers have increasingly participated in cultural production in a variety of new ways. Many such participatory practices have been viewed as trespassing on the rights of copyright holders and those who own (and seek to maintain their control of) intellectual property. This session is seeking papers which explore participatory cultures such as fan cultures, fan fiction, media co-ops, bloggers, and other indymedia producers and users. Analysis should be from a critical perspective.

Pro-Anorexia, Obsession and Calvin Klein

Mebbie Bell (Mebbie.Bell@ualberta.ca) Women’s Studies Program, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Working from a critical feminist perspective, I analyze the regulation of cultural production as illustrated through the pro-anorexia movement’s use of the Calvin Klein ‘Obsession’ perfume campaign. Pro-anorexic websites circulate both the campaign’s images and Adbusters’ spoof of the campaign. Yet, Adbusters’ reappropriation is read as satirical, while pro-anorexic appropriations are read as ‘dangerous.’ At issue is whether mainstream censure of the movement is directed at pro-anorexic discourse or at the social critique inextricably embedded in its counterculture (mis)appropriations of conventional signifiers of feminized embodiment, exposing the constraints of normative femininity and calling out mainstream culture as itself ‘pro-anorexic.’

Remixing Participation: User-Generated Culture and The Politics of Creation

Carolyn Guertin (carolyn.guertin@gmail.com) English, University of Texas at Arlington, TX, USA

As western culture has shifted from a production to a consumption model over the last 50 years, the notion of cultural participation has taken on whole new meanings. Remixing cultural content is the very stuff of creation and yet copyright law has damned that act as a violation of corporate rights in a commodified world. How might the social nature of these works combine with open source approaches to create a space for a new artistic model outside of the economy of exchange? How might the recycling of commercial content and the refusal to participate in consumer culture free artistic work from conventional frameworks? Can such a culture sustain itself?

On pedagogy, pleasure and propriety in a communication studies course about DJ culture
Mark A. McCutcheon (sonicfiction@gmail.com), Information and Communication Studies, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, NB, Canada

This paper reflects on teaching a senior undergraduate seminar on DJ culture. This course combines theoretical and applied learning: the former, in assigning readings in the history of DJ practice; the latter, in assigning podcasts as the main assignments. Focusing on selection and organization as the basics of DJ practice, the course has opened vital pedagogical questions about collaboration, criticism, aesthetic pleasure, and intellectual property. My talk seeks to renew and politicize the value of pleasure in pedagogy, and to problematize the propriety of cultural production in collectivist terms, as a critique of the individualist hegemony institutionalized in policies on copyright and plagiarism. Thus, my talk also seeks to intervene in current debates over the "use" of the Humanities, and over policy initiatives to align Canadian copyright law more closely with its US counterpart.

Fans of the “West” go “East”: Assessing Pop Cosmopolitanism at Nippon/Worldcon 2007

June M. Madeley (jmadeley@unbsj.ca) Information and Communication Studies Program, Dept. of Social Science, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, NB, Canada

Henry Jenkins has argued that the global spread of pop culture flows not just West to East, but also East to West. This two-way flow is exemplified in the spread of anime and other Japanese popular culture to North America throughout the 90s and beyond. The paper draws on participant observation research conducted at the first Worldcon (World Science Fiction Convention) set in Asia since the organization’s founding in 1939. Only 12 of 65 Worldcons have taken place outside of North America. The focus of the analysis is on the extent of pop cosmopolitanism evident at this participant organized convention where the majority of members are from America.

Wednesday June 4, 2008, 10:45-12:15,ANSO 205 (30 seats):

Socialism and Globalization

Session Organizer: Frank Cunningham, Philosophy and Political Science, University of Toronto, ON, Canada

Should the Left rejoice in the prospect of “Cosmopolitan Democracy?

Jocelyne Couture, Département de philosophie, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada

Jan Aart Sholte (2000) claimed that globalization offers great opportunities for the progressive forces to overcome the pitfalls of the state system regarding democracy, equality and social justice.  This claim, I shall argue, needs to be assessed in the light of a feasable alternative institutional framework to the state system.  I shall critically examine in that context the potential of David Held’s “Cosmopolitan Democracy”.  

Globalization and the Fall

Frank Cunningham, Philosophy and Political Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

This paper argues that the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is the single most important factor in the background of globalization, which can neither be adequately understood nor politically engaged except by understanding it against the collapse.

Is socialist Globalization an Oxymoron?

Kai Nielsen, University of Calgary & Concordia University

It is not. We are becoming, more and more, a global economy and with that forms of global governance tail along. Without a global economic, environmental or nuclear meltdown (all real possibilities) globalization will continue to accelerate. This will be true of any socialist world order that might emerge as well. What the anti-globalization movement rightly attacks is capitalist globalization and particularly its most pernicious form: neo-liberalism. But in examining this, what we need to ask first is what exactly globalization is and what it can be in a socialist world order.

Socialist Internationalism and Capitalist Globalization

Bob Ware, Prof. Emeritus, Philosophy, University of Calgary

I argue that Socialists shouldn’t be for anti-globalization. Building on the history of socialist activism internationally, on ideas from socialist fundamentals, and on contemporary international organizations, lessons are drawn about what socialist internationalism should be at the dawn of the 21st century.

Socialism and Free Trade

Mel Watkins, Prof. Emeritus, Economics and Canadian Studies, University of Toronto, Canada

What stance should socialists take toward free trade and international financial transactions?

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On Wednesday, June 4 between 12:30 to 2:30pm, please drop into the Book Fair's Lounge area to Greet Fernwood Authors. Authors include Joanne Naiman with her new edition of How Societies Work: Class, Power and Change in a Canadian Context 4th ed. This edition has been thoroughly revised with several chapters reorganized, new topics added and the language and content made even more user-friendly (and a user friendly price). Also profiled is Creating a Failed State: The US and Canada in Afghanistan by John Warnock, Mobilizations, Protests and Engagements: Canadian Perspectives on Social Movements edited by Marie Hammond-Callaghan & Matthew Hayday and the first title in our new highly accessible About Canada series, Health Care, by Pat Armstrong & Hugh Armstrong. Please drop by and visit, also to chat with the Fernwood Publishing and Fernwood Books staff. For information and updates on books and authors profiled, see www.fernwoodpublishing.ca.

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Wednesday June 4, 2008, 1:00-2:30 (could go to 5:00) BUCH A 106 (200 seats)

Gindin Chair Round Table - New Paths to Social and Political Change: From Bolivia to Boston

Session organizer: Judy Rebick, who will outline the main theses of her forthcoming book: "Building Power: New Paths to Social and Political Change". From the new political experiments in Latin America to the grass roots movements for change in the United States, Judy Rebick will outline new options for social change rooted in practices of radical democracy, respect for diversity, valuing of heart as well as mind and a new relationship between state, party and movements. After her talk several discussants from the activist and academic communities will respond, followed by a discussion

Discussants would probably include Seth Klein, Sunera Thobani, Art Manuel and others.

Wednesday June 4, 2008, 1:00-2:30 and 2:45-5:00, ANSO 203 (30 seats):

Session I: Circumventing Borders: Building Anti-Capitalist Ideas and Values

Session organizer: Debbie Dergousoff (ddergous@sfu.ca) Sociology/Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

 
 
 
Decommodification of Labour and Socialism
Dave Broad (dave.broad@uregina.ca) Social Work, University of Regina, Regina, SK, Canada
 
In 1919, the International Labour Organization stated that “labour is not a commodity.” But in capitalist society, labour is a commodity. Historically, the trade union movement and the welfare state promoted a decommodification of labour. With neo-liberal globalization we have seen an accelerated commodification of everything. This paper will examine these issues and consider the role of labour and social movements countering the universal market.

The Dynamics of Eco-Alienation in Marx and Weber

Andrew W. Jones (awjones@uvm.edu) Sociology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

Recent scholarship on Marx's metabolic rift has opened up the study of Marx's ecology after almost a century-long hiatus. It is argued here that this metabolic rift also manifests itself as alienation from nature and from natural processes. With this background it is possible to analyze Weber's work on the origins of capitalism in terms of eco-alienation. Although Weber displays a profound ambivalence toward this question, he provides abundant evidence that the spirit of capitalism manifests a profound and ongoing alienation from nature through its over-valorization of instrumental values. Suggestions on how to overcome this eco-alienation are advanced.

Nature, Neuroscience, and Community

Peter G. Prontzos (pprontzos@langara.bc.ca) Political Science, Langara College, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Socialists from Marx to Einstein to Gould have insisted that socialism must be "scientific" - that is, grounded in an understanding of nature in general and in human nature in particular. Recent advances in science, especially neuropsychology, have provided significant support for the idea that our "social brain" is hard-wired for empathy, cooperation, and "mutual aid" (Kropotkin). This paper will focus on some of these developments, and what they say about human well-being, the need for authentic community, and the possibilities for an ecological society.

Freedom and the Critique of Capitalism in the Early Cold War United States

John Munro (jjmunro@umail.ucsb.edu), Graduate Student, History, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

The post-World War II period was one of capitalist consolidation and unprecedented challenge to global racial capitalism. In the US, the rise of McCarthyism raised the stakes for anyone advocating racial equality within but also against the imperial relations of rule that had brought the US and Europe considerable wealth. Paul Robeson’s journal Freedom, spanning 1950-1955, constituted a remarkable articulation of anticolonial resistance in the face of unrelenting anticommunism, its pages offering vibrant conceptions of anticapitalism and anticolonialism that, through their contributions and contradictions, offer much to contemporary attempts to contest our own interpolation by the social relations of capital.

Session II: Circumventing Borders: Building Anti-Capitalist Ideas and Values

Session organizer: Debbie Dergousoff (ddergous@sfu.ca) Sociology/Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

“Of and Against the Market?”

Mark Hudson (mhudson@ursinus.edu) Mara Fridell and Ian Hudson, Anthropology and Sociology, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, USA

Michael Barrett Brown once famously referred to fair trade as a system “of and against the market.” To what extent can we talk about the fair trade movement—a movement whose main practice is based on commodity exchange in globalized markets—as anti-capitalist? Does fair trade have a role in building an anti-capitalist future, or does it serve to reinforce the notion that “there is no alternative” to the market, even for delivering traditionally non-market “goods” like social justice? Drawing on content analysis and participant observation, our paper charts the movement’s shifting relationship to anti-capitalist ideas and practice.

The ‘Shining India’: The Real Story of ‘Growth’ and ‘Development’

Kanchan Sarker (sarkerk@gmail.com) Grant MacEwan College, Edmonton, AB, Canada
 

India began opening its economy in the early 1990s. Since then, its average GDP growth rate has doubled compared to that of the period 1951-1991. However, GDP is only one measure of ‘growth,’ ‘development’ is something quite different. ‘Development’ is more value added: reduction of poverty, inequality, gender gap, rural-urban disparity, increase in life expectancy, heath care indicators, access to safe drinking water, literacy, working conditions in the un-organized sector etc. are some of the most important indicators of ‘development.’ This paper will analyzes some of the problems of capitalist development and the real story of ‘Shining India’.

Indigenous Self-Determination as Prefigurative Practice

Glen Coulthard, Political Science and Indigenous Governance Programs, University of Victoria,Victoria BC, Canada

While remaining sensitive to certain formulations of left-liberal and Marxist critiques of culture-based struggles and claims, my paper will explore a different form of recognition politics in the context of indigenous peoples’ struggles for self-determination in Canada. Drawing on indigenous, anarchist and Marxist anti-imperialist traditions, I will explore a politics of self-recognition that is less oriented around attaining an affirmative form of recognition from the liberal settler-state and society, and more about critically revaluating, reconstructing and redeploying indigenous cultural forms in ways that seek to prefigure radical alternatives to the social relations that continue to exploit and dominate indigenous peoples and territories.

The Constitution and the Commons: Struggles for Land, Food and Freedom in Kenya
Leigh Brownhill (lbrownhi@uoguelph.ca) un/self-employed, Fergus, ON, Canada
 
This paper provides an ethnicized, gendered class analysis of Kenyan social movements and their contributions to the process of drafting and enacting a new constitution in Kenya. It lifts constitutional politics out of the legalistic and bureaucratic realms and places them squarely at the heart of social movement struggles for the commons, and for land, food and freedom. Focusing especially on human rights, feminist and landless peoples’ movements, the paper provides the background required to understand the roots and implications of the conflict which followed the flawed December 2007 presidential election. It also considers likely directions of change in Kenya’s future.

Wednesday June 4, 2008, 2:45-5:00, ANSO 205 (30 seats):

Re-Thinking the Working Class and Radical Politics

Session Organizers: Rachel Magnusson (rachel.magnusson@gmail.com) and Paul Mazzocchi (pamazzoc@yorku.ca) Political Science, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

In recent decades there has been a trend in both critical theory and post-Marxist thinking to jettison the concept of the working class in an effort to re-conceive radical politics.  This panel seeks both new theorizations, and critiques of these new theorizations, about working-class identities and their role in radical politics.  Have these critiques rendered ideas of “the working-class” obsolete?   Or can we theorize the working-class in new ways that maintain a commitment to radical, anti-authoritarian politics?  Is it possible to theorize about the working-class? Or does this inevitably lead to theorizing for the working-class?

From Korsch to Ranciere: The Dilemmas of Working-Class Identity

Paul Mazzocchi (pamazzoc@yorku.ca) Political Science, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

This paper investigates the works of Karl Korsch and Jacques Ranciere, seeing in them a convergence of criticisms from diverging political commitments that draw out the rigidification of the ultimately transcendental conception of the working class that emerges in orthodox Marxism.  In doing so, I argue that these orthodox attempts to theorize about the working class have stunted the dialectical unity of theory and praxis, producing either an eternal dualism or reducing one to the other.  Furthermore, I seek to explore the manner in which Korsch and Ranciere’s critiques help us to theorize working class radicalism, and/or radical subjectivity, in new ways.

The Militant Subjects of Jacques Ranciere and Alain Badiou

Rachel Magnusson (rmagnus@yorku.ca) Political Science, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

Works of Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou are quickly gaining attention in the English speaking world. In their works, they propose new ways to think radical politics and the subject of this politics. These reconceptualizations harbor many parallels, especially in critiques of the traditional Marxist subject of politics, the working class. Perhaps most intriguing in their work is detailed explorations of the 'militant' and his/her political practice. These accounts of the 'militant' contain the promise of a radical politics for Badiou and Rancière, despite this also being the location of their most fundamental disagreement about the nature of this radical politics.

Marcuse, Nietzsche, and the Reconstruction of Radical Subjectivity

Christopher Holman (cholman@yorku.ca) Political Science, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

Herbert Marcuse’s theoretical project is marked by the effort to recuperate that central dimension which organizes the Marxian ontology.  For Marcuse, the point of all revolutionary struggle should be production of a world in which individuals are can express themselves as actors, as doers who self-consciously shape the nature of themselves and the world.  Reconstructing the concept of radical subjectivity is thus achieved in part by Marcuse through rereading Nietzsche.  This paper outlines how Nietzsche contributes to Marcuse’s understanding of the nature of the creative agent, and how Marcuse will ultimately violate his own model through his theoretical reproduction of the traditional Leninist understanding of political subjectivity.

Does the Working Class Have a Historical Mission to Accomplish?

Davide Turcato (davide_turcato@sfu.ca) History, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

I undertake a comparison between the outlook of Marxism and anarchism on the notion of the "historical mission" of the working class, as expressed, respectively, in the writings of Marx and Engels and Errico Malatesta.  I argue that differences hinge upon antithetical theoretical assumptions, which, in turn, determine divergent approaches to collective action. The Marxist notion of "historical mission" proceeds from a methodologically holistic approach and the conflation between the descriptive and prescriptive domains, which anarchism keeps distinct in virtue of its methodologically individualism.

Correspondingly, Marxism holds a monistic conception of working-class politics, while anarchism holds a pluralistic one.

Wednesday June 4, 2008, 2:45-5:00 ANSO 207 (60 seats)

Imperialism and Culture

Session Organizer: Scott Forsyth (sforsyth@yorku.ca) Centre for Film and Theatre, York University, Toronto ON, Canada

This session will explore the relationship between contemporary culture and cultural industries and the current development of globalized imperialism. Proposals for papers developing the Marxist tradition in cultural politics are particularly welcomed. Subjects could include: the impact of American-led imperialist globalization on particular media; developments at the local and national level; aesthetic change in particular media; political and ideological features of the cultural conjuncture; changes in media technologies and cultural labour; features of cultural resistance now. Papers combining theoretical and political discussion and aesthetic and textual criticism encouraged.

24 and Post-9/11 Culture

John McCullough (johnmccu@yorku.ca) Centre for Film and Theatre,

York University, Toronto ON, Canada

This paper uses the popular television show 24 to illustrate a variety of characteristics about cultural production and political meaning in the post-9/11 context. Topics considered will include: terror in entertainment, television as a ‘cognitive map,’ representation in postmodernity, gender relations post-9/11, the function of seriality in globalization, the place of technology in national mythologies, the role of Los Angeles in US imperialism, the ideology of professionalism, the meanings of workplace and office design, and the function of xenophobia in siege narratives. The presentation will integrate analysis of the show with the theoretical work of Fredric Jameson and David Harvey.

Cognitive Mapping: mind, culture and materiality

Dr. Martin Morris (mmorris@wlu.ca) Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, ON, Canada

This paper investigates how 'cognitive mapping' may advance critical cultural politics. There is little in recent interdisciplinary research in cognitive science, artificial intelligence and new information technologies that recognizes the immanent political dimension of human cognition. Processes of the mind occur in communicative contexts and are not simply the product of physiological processes in the brain; hence the study of cognition is necessarily the study of socio-political cognition. Cognitive mapping projects aesthetics and politics under postmodern conditions; it seeks to represent to the collectivity its real conditions of existence in the interests of democratic empowerment.

Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Imperialism: Hollywood’s New Left?

Scott Forsyth (sforsyth@yorku.ca)

Film and Political Science, York University, Toronto ON, Canada

Hollywood continues to be a crucial part of American led globalization and cultural imperialism. Films provide dramatizations of ruling ideologies about the world but despite its prominence in propaganda for the American Way, Hollywood has always been associated with liberalism as well. Leftists have been able to intervene in the industry as activists, trade unionists and cultural workers – writers, directors, actors – to make politically charged movies. Recent commentators focussed on films critical of American corporations, the war on Iraq and America’s relationship with the world (eg. Syriana, The Good Shepherd). This discussion considers this New Left, through ideological and aesthetic analysis, and its relationship to liberal and neo-liberal ideologies and to contemporary American imperialism.

THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 2008

Thursday June 5, 2008, 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM

Civil and Mechanical Engineering CMEB 1205, University of British Columbia

The Ruling Relations of International Funding: A Research Workshop on Institutional Ethnography and International Development

This workshop is funded by a CFHSS-CIDA conference grant

Co-sponsored by Society for Socialist Studies, and Canadian Association for Study of International Development.

Organized by Marie Campbell (mariecam@uvic.ca) University of Victoria, and Debbie Dergousoff (ddergous@sfu.ca) Simon Fraser University

The workshop introduces institutional ethnography as a research approach that is distinctive in viewing international development as a multi-level “institution” whose relations with participants stretch across global, scholarly and socio-cultural boundaries. The institution (according to institutional ethnography’s ontological approach) comes into being through the activities of people at all levels, including in local projects that enable and empower “beneficiaries”. Studying “how things work in everyday life” this feminist-inspired approach is particularly suited for inquiry into the organization of women’s and other marginalized people’s experiences. In the case of international development, the questions that we consider include: How do policies and practices of (western/northern) agencies engage actors in activities specifically designed to “develop” and “empower”? And, in turn, how do local participants in development projects make their knowledge and subjectivity count in these relations?

Usually taken for granted as simply the necessary support for people attempting to improve their lives in developing societies, international funding for development is understood as an ingredient in a new relation. From one side, the relation-building begins with finding a donor, writing proposals, negotiating an agreement, learning to manage funds and account for its uses, and so on; from the other side, it includes a range of (matching) activities - developing policy and programs, creating accountability mechanisms, making contacts, and communicating requirements, and so on. The workshop offers a venue to reconsider international development and development research, as it brings together international development experts and practitioners, institutional ethnography scholars and other development researchers to consider presenters’ accounts of being involved in taking up development policy and programs in local settings.

I: (8:30 am) Introduction: Women and International Development Funding

Keynote speakers:

(i) CIDA representative, Ottawa, (i) Rajkumari Shanker, CIDA representative

(ii) Tim Pyrch, Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary

Panel II (10:00 am): Understanding Institutional Ethnography as a Method of Inquiry in International Development

Dorothy Smith, Professor Emerita, OISE, will lead this teaching session intended to help participants develop an understanding of the way Institutional Ethnography frames the approach to research that begins in “women’s experience” and moves from ethnographic data to the discovery of “ruling relations” in the institution (of international development).

Lunch Break (11:30 – 12:45)

Panel III (12:45 pm): Empowerment of Women and the Ruling Relations of Development Funding

Norma Jo Baker, Department of Sociology, Nipissing University “Making and knowing the post-Soviet world: The case of post-secondary development initiatives in Central Asia;” Guljan Kudabaeva, Aigine Research Centre, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan,"Participant observation of the process of getting international funding in a Kyrgyzstan NGO;"

Lanyan Chen, Institute of Gender and Social Development Studies, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China “Chinese women’s participation in governance through public consultation: learning from women’s development projects;”

Sheila Gruner, Department of OISE, Toronto, “Northern development and displacement;” Peter Ove, Department of Sociology, UBC: “(Fund)Raising the Sponsored Child: On the Discourse and Dynamics of Child Sponsorship;”

Sonya Jakubek, Faculty of Nursing, University of Calgary; “Managing results for the Right to Health: the social organization of the rights to mental health and development”.

IV: (3:00 pm) Mapping Social Relations: Moving from “Experiential Knowledge” to “Ruling Relations”

Facilitator: Susan Turner, Coordinator of the Rural Women Making Change Project, University of Guelph will facilitate an analytic “mapping” activity, drawing from accounts given by researchers in the workshop.

Participants: We extended our invitation to registrants who are themselves professionals and/or academics working in the field of international development, and/or members of various disciplines interested in research, policy and practice of development, gender and women’s empowerment in local and international contexts.

Thursday June 5, 2008, 11:00-12:30 ANSO 207 (60 seats)

CPSA is scheduling Session One from 9:00 to 10:45

Transnational Networks: Relations of Ruling and Resistance, Part 2. (Part 1 scheduled by CPSA)

Session organizers:  Bill Carroll (wcarroll@uvic.ca) Sociology, University of Victoria, Canada

and Chris Hurl (churlishness@gmail.com) Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
(Cross-listed session with Canadian Political Science Association, Political Economy Network and the Society for Socialist Studies)

Social networks of various kinds are implicated in and often underwrite the agency of various collective actors in the global political economy, whether transnational corporations and neoliberal policy-planning groups, social movement organizations and NGOs, internet journalists and cultural activists, or governmental bodies and transnational state apparatuses. This session features emprically-based or theoretical papers that explore the history, dynamics and/or structure of the transnational networks that enable practices of ruling and resistance in the contemporary world.

Transnational Networks: Relations of Ruling and Resistance, Part 1

NOTE: this session has been scheduled for 9 am-10:30, 5 June 2008 [CPSA Section on Political Economy]

Chair: Chris Hurl (churlishness@gmail.com)
Discussant: Yildiz Atasoy

Exploring the dichotomy between security and the economy: borders as sites of territorialisation and reterrritorialisation

Helene Pellerin (hpelleri@uottawa.ca) Ecole d'études politiques, Universite d'Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Borders have become an interesting vantage point for looking at the articulations between security objectives and economic interests in recent years. The focus on some borders characterised by deep economic fault lines, like that between Mexico and the United States or that between Europe and South of the Mediterranean have tended to dichotomize the two domains. Accordingly, security concerns are associated with asserting sovereign territoriality while economic interests are linked with a movement towards deterritorializing globalization. This paper wants to address the adequacy of this dichotomy, by examining existing practices of negotiations and compromises in the border regions mentioned above.

Palestinian resistance and international solidarity: the Israeli state, the boycott/divestment/sanctions campaign and hegemony

Yasmeen Abu-Laban (yasmeen@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca) Department of Political Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

And Abigail Bakan (bakana@queensu.ca) Political Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada

In recent years an organized transnational movement has developed calling for a movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) aimed to protest the Israeli state's illegal military occupation of Palestine. Adopting a Gramscian approach, and drawing from Charles Mills' concept of the racial contract, we will examine the origins and history of the BDS campaign and the debates it has engendered in the context of Israel/Palestine, and various international state and non-state actors. We argue that the effectiveness of boycotts as a strategy of resistance and cross-border solidarity is closely connected to the struggle for hegemony.

Several Souths: assessing Latin American involvement in a renewed international labour movement

Thomas Collombat (tcollomb@connect.carleton.ca) Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

This paper will review the contemporary involvement of Brazilian and Mexican trade unions in the international labour movement. By comparing these two experiences, it will assess the heterogeneity of Global South unionism and indicate the contradictory impacts of the end of the Cold War on Latin American international involvement. Variations will be identified between countries, economic branches and organizations. The necessity to take into consideration not only international changes but also domestic dynamics will be supported.

The FTAA and the Contestation of Neoliberalism in Latin America

Marcel Nelson (5mn16@queensu.ca) Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada

The failure to reach an agreement on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) at the 2005 Summit of the Americas signalled a turning point in inter-American relations. This development was all the more surprising because the FTAA enjoyed significant support from the majority of Latin American countries throughout the 1990s. My paper will examine the dynamics that impeded the successful negotiation of an agreement on the FTAA. I will argue that developments at the negotiating table need to be analyzed in the broader context of the delegitimation of neoliberal policies in the Americas.

Thursday June 5, 2008, 11:00-12:30 ANSO 207 (60 seats)

CPSA is scheduling Part 1 from 9:00 to 10:45

Transnational Networks: Relations of Ruling and Resistance, Part 2
Session Chair: Bill Carroll

Bilateral Investment Treaties, Transnational Networking, and the Struggle against Multinational Water Companies in Bolivia

Susan Spronk (ss956@cornell.edu) Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

and Carlos Crespo Flores, Universidad Mayor de San Simón, Cochabamba, Bolivia

Bilateral investment agreements (BITs) are part of the neoliberal ‘free trade’ agenda to open markets to foreign investment and protect the corporate ‘right’ to profit over the human right to water. Since 2002, the water justice movement in Bolivia has waged a successful campaign to pressure the government to withdraw from these ‘conditioning frameworks’ that restricted the ability of governments to meet the democratic demands of citizens. The article provides an historical account of how networks of local grassroots organizations and international non-governmental organizations played a crucial role in resisting the system of global governance established by BITs.

Resurrecting Colonial Knowledge: the construction of post-socialism

Chad D. Thompson (chadt@community.nipissingu.ca; chad.d.thompson@gmail.com) Social Welfare programme, Nipissing University, North Bay, ON, Canada

In the almost two decades since the collapse of communist regimes in Central Europe and the former USSR, there have been waves of academic interest in this sprawling region, beginning with early laissez-faire carpetbaggers intent on remaking the economies of the region to more recent claims to study societal and political norms. This paper explores the manner in which Western academic interests have constructed the field of “post-socialism,” a process hearkening to the construction of colonial knowledge and educational systems in the late 19 century. Connecting with these international academic networks has been a means of legitimation for regional social and political elites – which in many cases strongly resemble the old elites in composition and practices.

Class and Clan in Post-Communist Ukraine: Problems and Possibilities in Theorizing Ruling and Resistance

Jerrold L. Kachur (jerry.kachur@ualberta.ca) Educational Policy Studies, Education,
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada,

Ukraine’s democratic election and Orange Revolution 2004-05 was a struggle between millionaires and billionaires. Furthermore, presidential and parliamentary politics continue to be a facade for the machinations of seven “clans” each led by “oligarchs.” Ukraine exhibits other characteristics such as “capitalists without capitalism,” “post-communist managerialism,” and the “keystone in the arch” for European security in the fight with Russia for Eurasian oil. What is the appropriateness and adequacy of “clan” and “class” analysis in the context of Ukraine? Understanding this "borderland" between West and East may provide new insights into the functioning of networks in Post-Communist and Western capitalist societies.

Toward a General Proposal for Consumption Reduction Policy among the Developed Countries
Hiroshi Setooka (setooka@komazawa-u.ac.jp) Economics, Komazawa University, Tokyo, Japan

Investigating the cases in the U.S. and Japan, we can find the fact that the pursuance of unsuitable high level of living standard as well as productive capacity are harmful not only for the preservation of natural environment but for the preservation of national identity of each country.  This paper suggests a proposal, like the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, we should arrange another agreement for the future generation to cut down the consumption level especially among developed countries, and along this policy the program of economic development with consumption-restrained growth should be introduced among the developing countries.

Thursday June 5, 2008, 9:00-10:30 and 10:45-12:15, ANSO 203 (30 seats)

New Directions in Drug Policy Research 1

Session Organizer: Susan Boyd (scboyd@uvic.ca) Studies in Policy & Practice, Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

Chair: Susan Boyd (scboyd@uvic.ca)

Hegemonic Struggles: Mayerthorpe, Marijuana Grow Operations and the Media

Susan C. Boyd (scboyd@uvic.ca) and Connie Carter (ccarter@uvic.ca) PhD Student

Studies in Policy & Practice, Sociology, University of Victoria,Victoria, BC, Canada

Typically, scholars have not examined drug use and production through the lens of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic struggles. Since the early 2000s, marijuana grow operations were identified by Canadian newspapers, police, community organizations, city and provincial task forces, and politicians as a social problem requiring new criminal and civil regulation. This paper analyses the media coverage of shootings of four RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, Alberta in March 2005 to examine how media coverage of this event consolidated hegemonic frames about drug use, while reiterating dominant social relations. We conclude with implications of these framing techniques for the organization resources and responses to drug issues (i.e. more policing).

Diagnosing women: FAS/FASD – discursive organizer of women’s lives

Carolyn Schellenberg (cmschell@uvic.ca) Human and Social Development, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.

The diagnosis of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) provides an authoritative, categorical approach to knowing “about” children and explaining the cause of their problems. This doctoral research-in-progress draws on the experiences of women – birth mothers and grandmothers caring for their children while trying to meet needs for food, shelter, and child care in one of Canada’s poorest urban neighbourhoods. Using the conceptual tools of institutional ethnography, the researcher traces disconnects between women’s experiences and how they are discursively organized. The goal of this research is to illuminate how policies and practices intended to help may serve to keep poor women and children in their place.

The support needs of queer women who experience problematic substance use

Sher Knox (sher@uvic.ca) MA Candidate, Studies in Policy & Practice, Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

This research explores social exclusion due to homophobia and heterosexism and its interlocking relationship with problematic substance use. Data are derived from in-depth interviews with key participants, women who are non-heteronormatively identified and who recognize their substance use as problematic. Queer women in Canada and elsewhere continue to be underserved as a community in receiving support for drug-use related problems. In response to this gap in the literature, this research uncovers the support needs identified by queer women who sought help for substance-use problems. Recognition of the effects of social exclusion and awareness of differences provides the foundation for novel treatment and supports.

New Directions in Drug Policy Research II

Chair: Susan Boyd (scboyd@uvic.ca)

Methamphetamine Use and Critical Policy Analysis

Connie Carter, (ccarter@uvic.ca) PhD Student, Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

In 2001 the BC Government embarked on an intensified program of economic restructuring ostensibly aimed at making the Province’s economy more competitive in the global economy. Against this backdrop, the BC Ministry of Health developed a series of documents that articulate the Province’s framework for responding to “problematic substance use”. Included is a policy framework on methamphetamine use meant to guide the actions of BC’s health authorities. The BC Government uses ideas about drug use in the context of economic restructuring to enact particularly individualistic notions of “care” having implications for citizenship, as well as the project of social change.

The Community-Based Research of Medical Cannabis: A Patient-Centered Approach Towards Progressive Social Change

Philippe Lucas (phil@drugsense.org) Master’s Candidate, Studies in Policy and Practice, Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

A prohibitive legal climate worldwide stymies research and distribution of medicinal cannabis. North American implementation of medicinal cannabis dispensaries often work without benefit of regulatory oversight or legal protection. The Vancouver Island Compassion Society (VICS), a non-profit medicinal cannabis research and distribution organization located in Victoria, B.C., supplyies over 700 members with a safe and standardized supply of medical-grade cannabis. VICS participated in and initiated a number of peer-reviewed research protocols. This presentation examines the challenges of doing social and clinical medical cannabis research under national drug prohibition. Additionally, results of past and present research will be discussed.

Injection Drug Use: Barriers and Access to Harm Reduction Equipment

Erin Gibson (erinkgibson@gmail.com) Interdisiplinary MA student, University of Victoria, IMPART trainee.

This presentation examines complications of accessing, and policy affecting, people who use drugs by injection. Drawing from the experiences of people who use injection drugs, barriers and access to harm reduction equipment will be discussed. The complications of accessing this population and the results of the respondent driven sampling research will be explored; especially those that influence harm reduction policy and practice affecting women's health and access to resources.

Thursday June 5, 2008, 9:00-10:30, 10:45-12:15, and 1:00-2:30 ANSO 205 (30 seats)

In Search of a Language of Reconciliation

Session organizer: Sima Aprahamian (aprhsma@alcor.concordia.ca) Sociology-Anthropology & Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University,Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Papers are based on studies of alternatives to the conflict-resolution model now being used. In particular papers were sought that have a critical view on the current attempts by international bodies & the U.S. in particular to situate genocide in the context of conflict resolution. Papers were also sought that explore paths or ways to bring closure and a sense of justice, as well as explorations of possibilities of communication and dialogue between or among ethnic, religious, national or other groups in contexts of post-war, post-conflict, post-genocide situations. Also papers that explore the applications (and mis-applications) of Truth and Reconciliation commissions or equivalent are welcome.

PANEL ONE

Discussant: Dorota Glowacka (Kings College, Dalhousie, Halifax. NS)

Barabara Coloroso and a new possible language of reconciliation

Sima Aprahamian (aprhsma@alcor.concordia.ca) Sociology-Anthropology & Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

The paper examines the current language used in post-conflict, post-genocide contexts. The idea for the paper and panel emerged after a discussion with a Ethiopian of C. Gibbs novel, Sweetness in the belly. The reaction in Ethiopia was that it only presented the Harare perspective. This paper will explore the possibility of a language of reconciliation that Barbara Coloroso, the educator, provides.

Rupture and Redress: The Geopolitical barriers to Genocide Reparations

R.S. Ratner (rsratner@interchange.ubc.ca) Sociology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

and Andrew Woolford (Andrew_Woolford@umanitoba.ca) Sociology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MN, Canada

This paper will examine some of the conceptual and empirical obstacles to obtaining

genocide reparations, cross-culturally and in individual cases, including those

instances in which the application of the term `genocide´ is moot. Emphasis will be

placed on the ways in which globalization and neoliberal rationalities of governance

have created new opportunities for pursuing reparations (e.g., by spreading the

actuarial and juridical logic of compensatory justice), while simultaneously placing

limits on the form reparations might take (e.g., by discouraging reparative payments

that might disrupt national or global economies). We end the paper by evaluating the

possibilities for "transformative" reparations within current geopolitical contexts.

Undoing partition? The role of civil society in the Indo-Pakistani reconciliation process

Christine Moliner (cmoliner@club-internet.fr) Ecole des Hautes Etudes

en Sciences Sociales (Centre d'Etudes de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud), Paris, France

Civil society has played a major role in the Indo-Pakistani reconciliation process, particularly since the reopening of the border in 2004 which has resulted in a spectacular increase and diversification of exchanges between the 2 populations (peace marches, theatre and music tours, cricket tours, pilgrimages...). After reflecting on the legacy

of partition in fostering hostility between the 2 frères ennemis, I will focus on the `revival' of local culture and identity (Panjabyat), and the particular sets of relationships that are developing across the border between East and West Panjab.

PANEL TWO:

Organizer: Sima Aprahamian

Tricks or Treaty? An Examination of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord

Aditya Dewan (akdewan@hotmail.com) Sociology-Anthropology, Concordia University,

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

The Government of Bangladesh made a peace treaty with the Jana Samhati Samiti (JSS) and signed the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord December 2, 1997. The JSS, a political organization (or party), represents a dozen indigenous peoples' groups in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of eastern Bangladesh. The Shanti Bahini, armed wing of the JSS, waged guerrilla warfare1972-1997 against the army for regional autonomy, land and human rights. The CHT peace accord brought no peace for the indigenous people in the CHT. The government violated its own promise by not implementing the peace accord until today. Instead, the peace accord helped the government suppress indigenous peoples' rights through continuous settlement of Bengalis from the plains and displacement of native villagers from their ancestral lands. This paper will survey the post-peace Accord social, economic and political situation in the CHT.

Attitudes towards Reconciliation in Iraq

Aysegul Keskin (akeskin@kent.edu), Kent State University,Kent, OH, USA

Post-Ba’athist Iraq seemed to provide a unique case study for Truth and Reconciliation Commisioins to settle differences between former members of the Party and communities affected by its policies. Despite TRC plans based on the South African model, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) instead embarked on a policy of De-Ba’athification and disbanding the Iraqi military. The Arab League efforts to hold a reconciliation conference in 2005 failed as “reconciliation”, for the Kurdish and Shi’a parties in power meant negotiating with the Ba’athists. Prime Minister Maliki later adopted a plan for “National Reconciliation,” opposed by the Ba’athists and insurgency groups. Reconciliation in both cases ultimately failed. This paper examines literature on TRC and reconciliation in the Middle East, and how it could still function in an Iraqi context.

Individual Autonomy and the Kurdish Question: De-Politicizing National Cleavages

Erol Ulker (ulker@uchicago.edu) History, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

For Austro-Marxist intellectuals Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, the individuality principle is a radical critique of the conviction that every nation should form its own territorial state - an unnecessary condition for the existence of nation whose realization as a cultural community is part of emancipation in a classless society. Implications of this critique for today’s ethnic conflicts bear in particular on the Kurdish question of Turkey, in search of a new discursive field that may integrate struggles for Kurdish rights with justice and emancipation. Fixation on territorial claims is an obstacle to achieving integration. Recognizing and promoting Kurdish national claims, the individuality principle has the potential to constitute a new reference point for cooperation and solidarity among the Kurds and the Turks in their struggle for justice.

PANEL THREE:

Compassionate Listening: Building Trust One Oral History at a Time

Marion Gerlind (mgerlind@umn.edu) Gerlind Institute for Cultural Studies, Oakland, CA, USA

While conducting oral histories with female working-class and rural Jewish survivors of the European Holocaust, I had to face my role as a child of the generation of German perpetrators and collaborators. This presentation discusses the process in which narrators and interviewer are able to overcome mistrust and engage in (im)possible conversations. I reflect on the significance of mindful listening which I am currently exploring in interviews with working-class and rural German Christians who have not recorded their war stories. My aim is to integrate legacies of victimization and collaboration into a complex, gender- and class-conscious analysis of genocide.

Confronting the parts torn apart: Armenian pilgrimages to Anatolia

E-mail: Carel Bertram (carel@california.com) University of California

Armenian pilgrims are “returning” to Turkey in search of the houses, villages and towns of their families, bringing back stories of Armenian daily life to their place of origin. This adds a focus of what was lost to a focus on how it was lost. Unexpectedly, by meeting residents of their old homes and towns, pilgrims help overcome a collective Turkish amnesia. For when locals understand that these are shared stories of a shared culture, the success of genocides, with their goal of erasing not only a people, but the normalcy of their past, is interrupted.

Attempts to Resolve Ethnic Conflict in the Canadian Multicultural Context

Nellie Hogikyan (nellie@b2b2c.ca) (c3354@er.uqam.ca) Centre Interuniversitaire d’études sur les lettres, les arts et les traditions, CÉLAT, UQÀM Montréal, Québec, Canada

Recent minority cultural productions, in the context of the post-genocide traumatic transmission, are trying to understand and re-appropriate such a heritage to bring closure to a troubling question that has haunted four generations. Focussing on Araz Artinian’s The Genocide in Me (NFB, 2005) and Atom Egoyan’s Ararat (Alliance, 2002), I will offer an analysis of the strategies that the third and fourth generation Canadians of Armenian origin use in an attempt to create a dialogue with the inheritors of the Turkish Ottoman legacy of denial, holding the current generations of Turkish men and women as being responsible, but not guilty for the history of their nation.

Thursday June 5, 2008, 1:00 – 2:30 ANSO 203 (30 seats)

What’s In a Name? Race, Class, Gender and Citizenship and the Politics of Names and Naming

Session organizer: Abigail Bakan (bakana@queensu.ca), Political Studies, Queen’s University,Kingston, ON, Canada

In Reproducing the State, Jacqueline Stevens notes that “One site of national affiliations that is infrequently attended to by scholarly literatures of the nation, but widely relied on for idiomatic taxonomies of nationality, is the personal name.” Names also denote histories of oppression, forced assimilation, and/or the claiming and re-claiming of lost, hidden or newly asserted identities. Suggestions for papers are welcome regarding ‘naming stories’ through the lens(es) of anti-oppression politics, political economy, and critical citizenship studies that can reveal sites of oppression, resistance and reclamation in various social and historical contexts.

Panel:

Losing the ‘Ofsky’: Rethinking Marxism and the Jewish Question”

Abigail Bakan (bakana@queensu.ca) Political Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

Questions of global geopolitics and international political economy posed by the “war on terror” commonly rest at the level of broad generalities. However, this is not the case when it comes to discourses regarding Palestine, Israel and Zionism. The latter tend to readily move to a plane of debate and challenge regarding legitimate voice and claims of representation. This paper considers the “Jewish Question” as it has been posed in post 9/11 debates from two entry points: 1) as it has emerged from the perspective of Palestine solidarity and anti-imperialism; 2) from the perspective of anti-Zionist Jewish positioning. The argument will address the intersection of these two dialogical planes from a critical Marxist perspective. The paper will consider the experience of the author’s family’s name change and the experiences of anti-Semitism in the US, as well as the role of Zionism as a feature of Western post-WWII hegemony.

What’s in a Name?: Garbled Memories and New Diasporic Meanings”

Dina Georgis (georgis@queensu.ca) Women’s Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

From the fissures of a wound, life in the diaspora is inaugurated. In this paper, I will draw on the fragments of personal memory to reconstruct the traumatic events of my family’s diasporic history. Troubled by my father’s insistence that “we are not really Arabs” because “Georgis,” my family name, shares ancestral roots with the Christian Greeks and Russians, I attempt to work through my father’s silence about his life and why he cut himself off from Iraq upon leaving it in 1966, the year I was born. Arriving and leaving many places, including the Lebanese civil war where my family was persecuted for being Iraqis in, ironically, Christian territory, this paper will imagine what it means to go on living from the site of loss and unanswered questions.

Blackface, 'White Names': Slavery, (Name) Branding and the Body Politic

Malinda Smith (malinda.smith@ualberta.ca, Political Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

[No abstract received]

From Yugoslavian to Italian to Macedonian – In Name Only”

Biljana Vasilevska (biljana.vasilevska@utoronto.ca) M. Education Candidate, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto,Toronto, ON, Canada

In this personal account, I trace the evolution of the name by which I am known, how it has been received, and how it has mis/identified me according to various conceptions of what it means to be “Canadian” or a “foreigner”. From having a name imposed on me in childhood, to reclaiming my true name in adolescence, I elaborate upon one’s name as a disputed terrain within discourses of citizenship and multiculturalism. This narrative will be presented alongside relevant discussions of concepts of citizenship and citizenship learning; social, cultural and economic capital; personal and political agency; and the impact of international events on personal identity.

Thursday June 5, 2008, 1:00 to 2:30 PM, ANSO 207 (60 seats)

The Sixties and Canada: on the occasion of the 40^th anniversary of 1968

The CBC’s Morningside Sunday programme recently has a 40^th anniversary retrospective on 1968. On the radio panel with Michael Enright were two 60s Americans, and a young unknown UTP historian. This morning show was just that, lots of music and 35 minutes of chatter during the hour devoted to the most superficial view of a radical moment wherein the Canadian experience was a really minor moment.

This SSS panel will be different. It will combined seasoned veterans of the sixties in Canada, left-wing academics and public intellectuals. A blend between what happened and why will be presented as the session will also examine the legacy of the decades and what is on the agenda for today.

Presenters:

Dimitri Roussopoulos, dr@ecologieurbaine.net , chair of the panel, Montreal, activists, writer, and founding president of the Urban Ecology Centre of Montreal will introduce the subject, drawing from his most recent book “The New Left – Legacy and Continuity”. The basic framework of the panel will be a balance between the past and present.

Bryan Palmer, Canada Research Chair & Professor of Canadian Studies, Canadian Studies, Traill College, Trent University, bpalmer@trentu.ca

The presentation titled “New Left Liberations: the Poetics, Praxis, and Politics of Youth Radicalism in the 1960s”, will addresses the content and meaning of the New Left in this country. Rather than dismiss the eclectic and diverse mobilizations and movements of dissent associated with a tumultuous decade, this exploration of the period suggests that the New Left made history (and remade Canada), albeit not in ways entirely of its own choosing. It thus had a lasting, if ironic, impact. The 1960s, in various ways, wrote finis to longstanding, if waning, understandings of nation, leaving in their place ambiguities and ambivalences that have framed the politics of being Canadian for the last four decades.

Lucia Kowaluk,Montreal,  democracite@urbanecology.net, social worker teaching at McGill University, community organizer during the sixties and today, editorial coordinator of Our Generation. Will make a presentation that will deal with the politics of everyday life and how an impressive community organising movement evolved in a major Canadian city and its impact on the political and economic history of its urban development. How did the communitarian left organize the grassroots, is another question discussed. “The ethos of community organizing from the 60s through today, a new left perspective on social housing for the people”.

Cy Gonick, Winnipeg, gonick@cc.umanitoba.ca, publisher and editor of Canadian Dimension, “Looking Back at the Sixties from the vantage point of today”. The presentation will show that it is remarkable how the concerns of that era and the core ideas that emerged then still resonate in most currents of the Canadian Left, shaping the way we see the world, Canada’s place in it, and our conception of the good society. The presenter will reflect on this by perusing the pages of Canadian Dimension magazine over the course of its 45 years which began in 1963.

Sean Mills, Montreal, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 7swm1@queensu.ca “The Many Means of Decolonization: Montreal in the Sixties”. Montreal, a city in which a vast array of international and local influences converged, acted as the nerve centre of radical political activity in both Quebec and Canada during the 1960s. The city’s blending of linguistic and cultural groups created a unique laboratory in which New Left ideas and activism flourished. Montreal not only acted as the location of major political confrontations, but also as a physical and symbolic incarnation of the cultural and economic exploitation that was to be resisted and overturned. This presentation will explore the various ways in which political groups in Montreal made use of the idea of ‘decolonization’ to advance their specific political projects, arguing that they were all affected not only by the larger language of Third World liberation, but also by the specific local conditions which prevailed in the city.

Myrna Kostash, Edmonton,  mkostash@telus.net, writer. When my book, Long Way From Home: The story of the Sixties Generation in Canada was published in 1980, it provoked harsh reaction from the mainstream press, and virtually no reaction from the Left.

I had felt justified in expecting a welcoming response from its activists and adherents. Responses from other quarters were forthcoming, hostile as well as supportive, but the men and women of the organized Left were silent. Not only was my book ignored, most other books – memoirs, biographies, memorabilia, and deconstruction – remain unwritten. Why?

Thursday June 5, 2008, 1:30 to 3:00 PM, Scarfe 1004 *** Note location***

Globalization and Neoliberalism: Institutions and Ideologies

Session Organizer: Elaine Coburn (coburn@stanfordalumni.org or ecoburn@aup.fr)

CADIS-Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales

(Joint session with the Canadian Sociology Association)

Papers should address one or more of these theoretical and empirical concerns: a. What is the connection between globalization and neoliberal capitalism: are they the same or distinct, even contradictory dynamics? b. What are globalization and neoliberalism’s major institutions, how have they transformed since Keynesianism and what drives these changes? c. What is the division of labour among these institutions and what underlying tensions does this reflect? d. What ideologies are associated with globalization and neoliberalism: are they distinct or intertwined? The aim: to think about how we 'think beyond borders', critically analysing the connections and contradictions between globalization and neoliberalism.

Globalization, Neoliberalism and the Call Centre Industry in New Brunswick
Joan McFarland, (mcfarlan@stu.ca) Saint Thomas University, Fredericton, NB, Canada

New Brunswick’s call centre industry shows the connections between globalization and

neoliberalism. Enabled by developments in global telecommunications and dominated by TNCs, the call centre industry is shaped by neoliberal regulatory frameworks: workers without union protection must accept whatever job is offered. In New Brunswick, Business Product Outsourcers have recently invaded, outsourcing the outsourcing of call centres by other TNCs! Thus, New Brunswick’s neoliberal strategy creates a new class of workers dependent on call centers, yet with little power compared with corporations with no particular stake in the region and which are resolutely global as they seek profit margins.

Lessons from Abroad: The Impact of Foreign Funding on Civil Society Development in China

Anthony Spires, (ajspires@cuhk.edu.hk) The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Like global capital, global civil society has rushed to China in past decades. Foreign foundations, notably from the US, offer rhetorical support for grassroots efforts to help China’s poorest and foster community-based empowerment and democracy. In practice, however, the vast majority of foreign funding for Chinese civil society development goes not to grassroots organizations but rather to government agencies, and academic institutions. The ‘holy trinity’ of nonprofit management – governance, accountability, and transparency – works to professionalize Chinese NGOs, nurturing a bureaucratic and managerial culture that supports the authoritarian political status quo and promoting a neoliberal economic logic acceptance to Chinese leadership.

The World Bank’s Legitimacy in Question – Gender Mainstreaming and Neoliberalism

Geralinda Polanco (gerald28@interchange.ubc.ca), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

This paper critically analyses the tensions between the World Bank’s policy prescription of ‘gender mainstreaming’and its overarching neoliberal development practices. Field research in El Salvador in 2006 shows the contradictions between discursive commitments towards gender mainstreaming and actual policy programs and concrete development initiatives. Institutions like the World Bank are successful at co-opting feminist ‘concerns’ and discourses towards development initiatives, portraying neoliberal policies like the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), as ‘legitimate’ and ‘human-centered’. But, the gap between the World Bank’s policies and practices mean that the Bank’s and neoliberalism’s legitimacy is chronically in a state of crisis.

Thursday June 5, 2008 2:45 – 5:00 max, BUCH A 106

Society for Socialist Studies PLENARY

Michael A. Lebowitz

Building Socialism for the 21st Century?

Michael A. Lebowitz is Professor Emeritus of Economics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby. BC, currently working and living in Caracas, Venezuela. His Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 and Spanish, Venezuelan, Turkish, Korean and Chinese editions) won the 2004 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize for the best and most innovative writing in the Marxist tradition; and his Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-first Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006) has so far been republished in Venezuelan, Norwegian and several Indian editions. Lebowitz is the author of the widely distributed El Socialismo no Cae del Cielo in Venezuela, where he has been directing a programme on Transformative Practice and Human Development at Centro Internacional Miranda. A former editor of Studies on Left (1962-8) and Studies in Political Economy (1980-2003), he is currently working on books on socialism and on Marx’s economics and has written numerous articles in journals such as the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Canadian Journal of Economics, Historical Materialism, Monthly Review, Science & Society, Studies in Political Economy, Review of Radical Political Economics, Marx Ahora and Herramienta. Lebowitz was a founding member of the Society for Socialist Studies.

FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 2008

Friday June 6, 2008, 9:00-10:30, ANSO 203 (30 seats)

Exploring Ecosocialism

Session Organizer: Cy Gonick (EDITOR@CANADIANDIMENSION.COM) Canadian Dimension Magazine, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

The evolution of ecosocialism as a body of thought; Indigenous, labour, international and feminist perspectives on building an eco-socialist movement in Canada. Participants will discuss and provide input to a draft manifesto under consideration by the Ecosocialist International Network.

Chair: Cy Gonick (EDITOR@CANADIANDIMENSION.COM)

The Development of Ecosocialist Thinking in the 60s and 70s

Andrea Levy, Ph.D. History, Concordia and member of the Canadian Dimension collective, alevy@videotron.ca and Cy Gonick

Keep the Oil in The Ground
Leigh Brownhill, lbrownhi@uoguelph.ca and Terisa Turner, terisatu@uoguelph.ca, Sociology, University of Guelph.

This paper analyses a number of international initiatives by governments and social  movements to 'keep the oil in the ground.' These are often women-centred initiatives, located in Africa and across the global south, that are creatively addressing climate
change and the curse of oil.  People in northern and industrialised societies have much to gain by learning and helping to defend thsubsistence political economies of 'commoning' which underpin the organized power of indigenous peoples, in particular, in their
pursuit of the cessation of climate destruction.

Ecosocialism as a System of Thought
Cy Gonick, EDITOR@CANADIANDIMENSION.COM and Andrea Levy, alevy@videotron.ca

This paper outlines the key ideas in ecosocialist thought and traces their origins from Karl Polanyi to Rachel Carson, Andre Gorz, James O'Connor, Joel Kovel and several other writers  from the sixties to the present.

A New Ecosocialist Manifesto Ian Angus, Editor, Climate and Capitalism; senior editor, Capitalism Nature Socialism; member of the Canadian Dimension collective; convening member Ecosocialist International Network)

This presentation begins with an outline of the draft of the Second Ecosocialist Manifesto followed by a discussion focusing on suggestions for changes in the draft.  The Manifesto will be presented to a meeting of the Ecosocialist  International Network (founded in October, 2007) that will be part of the World Social Forum to be held in Brazil in January 2009.

Friday June 6, 2008, 10:45 AM – 1:00 PM, ANSO 203 (30 seats)

SSS Journal Board meeting

Friday June 6, 2008, 9:00 – 10:30 and 10:45 – 12:15 ANSO 205 (30 seats)

Orientalism and its Intersections with Class/Gender/Nation/Sexuality: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Regina Cochrane (r.cochrane@ucalgary.ca) and Malek Khouri (khouri@ucalgary.ca) Communication and Culture, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

Since its publication in 1978, Said’s Orientalism has been the focus of a myriad of political and academic discussions and debates. Many of these discussions have involved expanding the application of this notion from postcolonial studies to issues in poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, and Marxism. Contradictions arising out of some of these applications have led, in turn, to more critical readings of the notion itself and to the formulation of related notions like “affirmative Orientalism.” This panel will explore contemporary discussions and debates on Orientalism in disciplines such as the Social Sciences, Women’s Studies, Film Studies, Communications, and Development Studies.

Globetrotting with Imperialist Baggage: Academic Feminism, Globalization, and Affirmative Orientalism

Regina Cochrane (r.cochrane@ucalgary.ca) Communication and Culture, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

While Western imperialism was justified by an Orientalist view of an irrational, uncivilized Other in need of colonization and, later, “development” via capitalist modernization, under neoliberal globalization Orientalism is increasingly taking the form of “affirmative Orientalism.” If Orientalism hyper-differentiates the modern Self from a negatively-valued pre-modern Other, “affirmative Orientalism” looks to pre-/anti-modern Otherness as the answer to the ills of modernity. Just as the Western academy produced and disseminated Orientalism, today’s neoliberal academy – including academic feminism – is becoming increasingly complicit in producing and spreading “affirmative Orientalism”. This paper will examine the production of “affirmative Orientalism” in contemporary Western feminism and its complicity with neoliberalism.

First Nations and Neo-Orientalism: Why Indigenous Peoples Are Still Colonized in Canada

C. W. James Butler (jcbutler@ucalgary.ca) PhD student, University of Calgary, Calgary AB, Canada

The disconnect between the indigenous peoples of Canada and the dominant population can only be fully understood by accepting the notion of an ongoing colonization of the First Nations Peoples by both provincial and federal governments. It rejects postcolonial theory as a critical lens for such an understanding because the dominant power structures that overwhelmed the Aboriginal peoples remain largely intact. The arguments for progress and the inability of governments to resolve lands claims issues clearly reflect this. Thus this paper seeks to critically examine the relationships between First Nations peoples and the rest of Canada through the lens of neo-Orientalism.

Building a Modern Nation through Multiculturalism: China’s Internal Orientalism

Joanne Schmidt (reigasan@hotmail.com), Graduate student, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

Orientalism has long been considered a European or Western phenomenon. This paper will examine the case of China using the framework of Said’s 1978 book Orientalism and show that the Han Chinese hegemonic discourse used in nation-building and the promotion of a “multicultural China” is very much indicative of an “oriental Orientalism.” It is apparent that the way the concept of “minorities” has been constructed in China is similar to the construction of the Orient by the West. These peripheral groups have been categorized, particularized, and compartmentalized in order to manipulate their place as the “other” to the Han Chinese.

Queer Arab Cinematic Representations...A Case of 'Reverse Orientalism' or Re-appropriation of Indigenous Arab Queerness?: The Case of the Popular Hit Film The Yacoubian Building

Malek Khouri (khouri@ucalgary.ca) Communication and Culture, University of Calgary

Calgary, AB, Canada

 
This paper explores queer male representations in one of the most successful and controversial film hits in contemporary Arab cinema, the 2006 Egyptian film The Yacoubian Building (Marwan Hamed). Specifically, representation of male queerness in the film impacts the notion of ‘Orientalism’ as originally presented by Said. In this context, the paper explores how the film paradoxically informs and is informed by preoccupations around issues of social and political change, national liberation, and the love-hate relationship with the West; then discusses the Western-based argument that such preoccupations in contemporary Arab cinemas arguably underlie a ‘reverse Orientalist’ perspective of representing queer sexuality.

Japan’s Reverse Orientalism in the Opening Ceremonies of Expo ‘70 and the 1998 Nagano Olympics

Taeko Tashima (tteshima@yahoo.com) Independent scholar, Burlington, VT, USA

I examine how Japan’s reverse Orientalism, hakkô ichiu ideology, is employed in the opening ceremonies of Expo ‘70 and the 1998 Nagano Olympics to support militaristic nationalism in Japan. By examining the official film Expo ‘70 and the TV representation of the Nagano Olympics, I discuss the way that nationalists refined the concept of reverse Orientalism. Gender and national identity are important to both opening ceremonies because nationalists felt that Japan (and Japanese men) had been emasculated by its defeat in the Second World War and its military occupation by the Americans, and so employed reverse Orientalism to regain dignity.

How Does Affirmative Orientalism Touch “Untouchable” Women?

Kathleen McWilliams (kmcwill@telus.net) Graduate student, University of Calgary (graduate student)

Nineteenth century British colonial masters promoted an Orientialist image of India that played up negative stereotypes like Indians’ “proclivity” for passivity, non-rationality, cultural backwardness, medieval spirituality, exotic beliefs, primitive technology, and traditional village society. According to anthropologist Richard Fox, Gandhi embraced an “affirmative Orientalism” whereby these same derogatory stereotypes became India’s strengths. I want to explore how contemporary Hindu nationalism, which has appropriated some Gandhian ideals including affirmative Orientalism, has impacted a historically disempowered and marginalized community – Dalit or “untouchable” women. This paper will ask, “How have Dalit women’s lives been impacted by the affirmative Orientalism associated with Hindu nationalism?”

Globetrotting with Imperialist Baggage: Academic Feminism, Globalization, and Affirmative Orientalism
Regina Cochrane (r.cochrane@ucalgary.ca) Communication and Culture, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

While Western imperialism was justified by an Orientalist view of an irrational, uncivilized Other in need of colonization and, later, “development” via capitalist modernization, under neoliberal globalization Orientalism increasingly takes the form of “affirmative Orientalism.” If Orientalism hyper-differentiates the modern Self from a negatively-valued pre-modern Other, affirmative Orientalism looks to this same pre-/anti-modern Otherness as the answer to the ills of modernity. Just as the Western academy produced and disseminated Orientalism, today’s neoliberal academy – including academic feminism – is increasingly complicit in producing and spreading affirmative Orientalism. This paper examines the production of affirmative Orientalism in contemporary Western academic feminism and its complicity with neoliberalism.

Friday June 6, 2008, 1:00-2:30, ANSO 207 (60 seats):

Epistemologies of Struggle 2008: Anti-Elite Discourses Around the Globe
Session organizer: Chris Borst (chris.borst@utoronto.ca) Toronto, ON, Canada

The struggles of the exploited, the oppressed and the excluded have always had a discursive component - naming and condemning their oppressors, claiming and demanding something better. For a few decades in the early/mid-20th century, "socialism" bid fair to encompass all such discourses. No more. What kinds of anti-elite discourses have currency in the world today? How do we explain the variation in such discourses, across regions and (sub-)populations? How might we understand each, especially those who use "socialist" and "leftist" as names for the oppressor? How might we make common cause with movements under such diverse and contradictory labels?

Session Chair: Josh Brem-Wilson (J.W.Brem-wilson@Bradford.ac.uk ) Peace Studies, University of Bradford

Addressing Global Culture Clash: Creating Dialogues between Gender and Sexually Diverse Populations and the UN

Nick Mulé (nickmule@yorku.ca) Social Work, Liberal and Professional Studies, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

The status of gender and sexually diverse populations vary throughout the world, with the United Nations representing an organizational means with which to address the oppressions these communities face. Yet, the interventions of Western queer activists need to proceed with caution, so as not to re-colonize via their neoliberal agendas. Principles are now emerging that promotes legal justice of which social work ethics can contribute to a further sensitized approach towards social justice. A mindful, critical, ethical, principled discourse and practice could assist in bridging the divide between fundamentalist religious/cultural perspectives and perspectives that accommodate gender and sexual diversity.

Migrants at Risk, Migrants as a Risk: metaphors of exploitation and the end of capitalism

Olivia Ruiz (otruiz7@yahoo.com), El Colegio de la Frontera Norte / Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico

Recent debates about immigration juxtapose a perception of the migrant at risk, a victim of exploitation in the societies of origin, transit and destination, with a perception of the migrant as a risk, a threat to local society and culture, if not civilization. This paper explores these two discourses in light of the exclusionary forces of capitalism and the emergence of human rights' organizations and communities. It is argued that by grounding itself in ontological and philosophical arguments as well as social, economic and political issues, human rights' discourses about immigration not only seek to redress oppression but posit a framework for a post-capitalist human condition.

Alain Badiou’s ‘Communist Hypothesis’

Norman Madarasz (normanmadarasz@yahoo.ca) Philosophy, Graduate School (Programa de pós-graduação), Universidade Gama Filho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

With the critical undermining of the Leninist Party-state, there are many reasons for pursuing the communist ideal as an anti-elite discourse committed to equality. This ongoing pertinence of communism characterizes the philosophy of Alain Badiou. Badiou’s recent ‘communist hypothesis’ is a bid at periodizing the history of communism and reject the primacy of ethics over the political. For ethics flattens social class differences, whose result is to deprive the working class of its trans-national name. We propose a critical discussion of this rejection in light of the third stage in communism: the move toward communist politics without the Party.

Walls of mass instruction: Guevarist murals and a Caracas collective, Venezuela

Carolina Cambre (carolina.cambre@ualberta.ca), Doctoral Student, Educational Policy Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

“23 de enero” in Caracas where neither police nor taxis will enter, houses the “colectivo Alexis vive”. Despite being one of the most dangerous places in Venezuela, hope is a palpable presence in this “barrio”. The members of the “colectivo Alexis vive” are explicit about including Che Guevara’s face in all murals, and other visual media representing their community.

This presentation explores a Venezuelan community whose murals visually contest dominant societal discourses. It also considers new socialist discourses in Venezuela portrayed visually. I take the example of protest art as a cultural practice that can help us open toward other possibilities of conceptualizing and communicating visual experience, and finding common cause. Within a visual and political cultural studies framework, I ask: How does the collective frame their “struggle”? How do these images work discursively?

Friday June 6, 2008, 2:45 – 5 approx, BUCH A 106

Society for Socialist Studies ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 2008

Saturday June 7, 2008, Four Panels, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, ANSO 207 (60 seats):

“Accountability Chains" and Precarious Labour

Session Organizers: James Lawson (lawsonj@uvic.ca) Political Science, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

and Feng Xu (fengxu@uvic.ca) Political Science, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

9:00 to 10:30 AM ANSO 207 (60 seats):

PANEL A: Reforging Accountability: Organizing Unions and Social Justice

Chair: James Lawson (lawsonj@uvic.ca)

Discussant: Tina Pippin (tpippin@agnesscott.edu)

Grassroots Union Organizing: The hidden labour in activism

Jeffrey Shantz (Jeffrey.Shantz@kwantlen.ca) Kwantlen University College

This paper investigates grassroots union organizing in Canada. It shows that union-based social justice organizing has a hidden transcript that lurks behind the public transcript, and it is a historical transcript worth investigating and preserving. This paper shows how these forms of organizing are connected, linked, and synergistic. It also demonstrates how social movements are fragile and sometimes precariously balanced. It specifically investigates the rank-and-file members of the CAW and their efforts to build rank-and-file networks for organizing within the workplace and the community.

The Coalition Politics of MNSJ: The hidden labour behind union and community

Michael C.K. Ma (mikeckma@gmail.com) Independent Scholar, Peterborough, ON, Canada

This paper looks at the work of the Metro Network for Social Justice, Toronto (MNSJ). Through an investigation of how this movement initially developed it traces its rise and fall. It connects groups and relationships arrived at through this inter-linking of union and community-based struggle and mobilization. It frames these activities and practices as the social incubators of political activism that often translate and morph into other forms of political resistance. By arguing that inter-personal relationships arise, extend and propagate to areas outside of the original organizing, this paper focuses on the last 5 years of the organization and its eventual demise.

10:45 – 12:15 ANSO 207 (60 seats):

PANEL B: Reforging Accountability: A Living-Wage Movement in a Right-to-Work State
Chair: Michael Ma (mikeckma@gmail.com)

Discussant: Jeffrey Shantz (Jeffrey.Shantz@kwantlen.ca)

Movement Building for Economic Justice in “The World for Women”: A Journey toward Living Wages at a Liberal Arts College for Women

Tina Pippin (tpippin@agnesscott.edu) Religious Studies, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA, USA

The Living Wage Campaign at Agnes Scott College has over a decade been building and rebuilding a movement toward worker justice. This presentation starts with a short film from the campaign that serves as a visual marker of the current issues and present participant voices. I will then tell the stories of our journey through living wage strategy sessions with community partners, coalition building sessions within campus movement and with other educational institutions, popular education models with/in the community that we use to educate ourselves and the Administration, and the development of the key documents (and blog) of the movement.

1:00 to 2:30 ANSO 207 (60 seats):

PANEL C: Gender, Policy, and Vulnerable Labour

Chair: Feng Xu (fengxu@uvic.ca)

Discussant: Judy Fudge

Sex Workers as Vulnerable Workers: Australian Lessons for Canada

Leslie Ann Jeffrey (ljeffrey@unbsj.ca) History, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, NB, Canada

and Barbara Sullivan (barbara.sullivan@uq.edu.au) Political Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QU, Australia

This paper explores the vulnerabilities faced by sex-workers (both migrant and non) in Canada – stigmatization, problematic legal and employment status, economic exploitation and violence. It also examines how those issues have been addressed in Australia where there has been considerable experimentation with sex-work policy in an attempt to address the conditions of work faced by stigmatized workers in the sex-trade. Responding to the needs of sex workers requires balancing the desire for independence and flexibility in work as expressed by many sex workers with requirements to regularize the sex industry, provide acceptable working conditions and increase government and industry accountability.

Explaining Workplace Injuries among “Union-Men”: Cultures of Risk vs. Cultures of Desperation among West Coast Loggers

James Lawson (lawsonj@uvic.ca) Political Science, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

A sharp disagreement divided forest-sector employers and the USW over recent spike in injury rates among west coast loggers. “Cultures of risk” – macho codes of silence and carefree attitudes toward safety – were employers’ major theme; the USW shot back with “cultures of desperation” – corners cut to maintain income after outsourcing removed effective oversight, lengthening the working day and depressing wages. A straightforward class account would have a ready explanation for this disagreement. But in political terms, the disagreement was relatively recent; in terms of injury prevention research, a gender-and-class approach to “precarious labour” promises to sharpen and complicate the picture.

2:45 – 4:15 PM ANSO 207 (60 seats):

PANEL D: Outsourcing and Denying Accountability

Chair: Judy Fudge

Discussant: Leah Vosko

Temp Agencies and Global Just-in-Time Production: the Case of China
Feng Xu (fengxu@uvic.ca) Political Science, University of Victoria, Canada

China, as a low-cost production site, is an important link in the global “just-in-time production”. The “iron rice bowl” is now replaced with “porcelain rice bowl”, precarious and fragile. Temp agencies, recently introduced to China, are hailed as representing modern service sector and one more instrument in facilitating the global “just-in-time” production. Temp agencies, among other things, enable firms in China to outsource human resource management, hence firms’ accountability to workers. This paper uses both document analyses and personal interviews to shed light on these emerging temp agencies and their implications for employment relationship in China.

“Accountability chains”: The re-organization of production and exchange linkages and the subversion of accountability

James Lawson (lawsonj@uvic.ca) Political Science, University of Victoria, Canada

This paper concerns “accountability chains”. Relations of exploitation and domination, present in the earliest conceptualization of commodity chains (Hopkins and Wallerstein; cf. Aronowitz), are increasingly downplayed as commodity chain, value chain, or filières literatures evolve. Either these formulations are oriented to maximizing value for businesses; or they offer a reformist view about “exceptional” abuse and merely humanitarian change through ethical consumption. But the maintenance of relations of exploitation and domination increasingly depend on manipulating these chains directly. They provide institutional buffers, increasingly insulating these relations from the business actors who profit from them most, circumventing existing mechanisms of democratic accountability.

Saturday June 7, 2008, 9:00-10:30 and 10:45-12:15ANSO 203 (30 seats)

Beyond Dependency, Beyond Borders: Canadian Capitalism in the 21st Century

Session organizer: Murray Cooke (cooke@connect.carleton.ca) Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Contrary to dependency analysis, the Canadian capitalist class continues to demonstrate its vitality through its domestic dominance and its global aspirations. The Canadian state plays a complementary role in promoting the conditions for capital accumulation on a global scale and maintaining the imperialist relationship between the global north and south by asserting an aggressive military role abroad and maintaining a racialized security apparatus at home. This session will analyze the global activities of Canadian capital, their relationship to the Canadian state's 'war on terror' at home and abroad and explore avenues of resistance.

Rethinking Canadian Economic Development: Canadian Industry and American Managerial Capitalism

Bruce Smardon (: bsmardon@yorku.ca) Political Science, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

I review three different eras of Canadian development – the National Policy era, the post-Second World War “Golden Age” era, and the neo-liberal era and argue that, in the first two eras, Canadian capital was able to adopt and adapt the institutions and relations of American managerial capitalism in a way that combined elements of dependency with rapid development of advanced manufacturing. In the final era of neo-liberalism, this synthesis could no longer be sustained and the result was erosion in the position of Canadian industry, particularly in research-intensive areas of manufacturing relying on original innovation.   

Independent Canadian Finance Capital: Ownership and directorship 
linkages among the largest corporations in Canada
Bill Burgess (billburgess@shaw.ca) Geography, Kwantlen University College, New Westminster, BC, Canada

This paper describes the ownership and directorship linkages among the largest corporations in Canada. It demonstrates that Canadian capital is highly concentrated, linked across industrial sectors and nationally distinct. This empirical portrait was derived by merging data from three sources – on corporate finances, ownership and directors. The results indicate that Canadian finance capital is sufficiently strong and independent of US capital to project independent imperialist interests at home and abroad.

From the Avro Arrow to Afghanistan: The Political Economy of Canada’s New Militarism

Paul Kellogg (: mpkellogg@gmail.com) Centre for Global and Social Analysis, Athabasca University, AB, Canada

We are now 17 years into a newly militaristic posture for the Canadian state. From the 1991 war in Iraq, to the current NATO-led war in Afghanistan, the Canadian state has a now established record of open military engagement. This flies in the face of the “peacekeeping” ideology which continues to dominate much of the discourse about Canadian foreign policy. This paper will argue that the transition from “peacekeeping” to open militarism is not accidental. Both the earlier “peacekeeping” moment and the current return to militarism reflect conjunctural trends in Canada’s economy, and in the development of its capitalist class.

Defending the Empire: The Global Expansion of Canadian Capital and the 
New Security Agenda

Todd Gordon (tsgordon@yorku.ca) Canadian Studies, University of Toronto, Canada

This paper looks at current trends in security policy in the context of the extensive expansion of Canadian capital into the developing world and the growth of conflict surrounding Canadian developments. More than ever, the Canadian state is pursuing aggressive means – both bilateral and multilateral – to secure the appropriate conditions for Canadian foreign investment.

Challenging the war machine: Organizing against a heightened Canadian militarism

Derrick O’Keefe (sankara83@hotmail.com) Co-chair, StopWar Coalition, Vancouver, BC, Canada and Editor, rabble.ca

A community activist reports from the front.

Saturday June 7, 2008, 1:00-2:30: ANSO 203 (30 seats)

Socialists and Elections in Canada: Rethinking Electoral Politics beyond the NDP

Session organizer: Murray Cooke (cooke@connect.carleton.ca) Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Despite their limitations, elections are seen by the public as the primary arena of political debate. Lack of a strategy toward the electoral process is one aspect of the socialist left's for social change during elections? Can issue-based campaigns do more than support the lesser evil?

‘No Time to Educate the Public?’ Rethinking the Role of Socialists in the NDP in

local Election Campaigns

Herbert Pimlott (hpimlott@wlu.ca ) Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada

In 1993, Kim Campbell quipped that an election campaign was no time to educate the public, yet with the dominance of neoliberalism, there is an urgent need to find pragmatic ways of reaching out to workers to redress corporate power. With no viable alternative outside of Quebec, the NDP, with all its problems and limitations, represents the best option for socialists, if only as a vehicle for educating the public around a few key issues. I reflect upon my experience working with socialist activists in single-issue and electoral campaigns to make the case for pragmatic politics in - and between - local elections.

Rock the Vote or Mock the Vote? Progressive Movements and Electoral Politics Beyond the NDP

Murray Cooke (cooke@connect.carleton.ca) Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

This paper reviews and rethinks the approach of the broad left toward electoral politics in Canada outside Quebec. The longstanding debate over the role of the NDP continues, but in practice, many progressive individuals and movements are engaging in electoral politics in a variety of ways beyond the NDP. Others, of course, have turned away from electoral politics altogether. This paper also explores the evolving role of political institutions and regulations (involving party finance, party registration, third-party spending, and the electoral system) in shaping the opportunities for progressive forms of electoral politics.

Building Capacity for a Socialist Left: The Role and Place of Elections

Bryan Evans (b1evans@politics.ryerson.ca) Politics and Public Administration, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada

This paper explores alternative ways to think of elections as opportunities to develop political and organizational capacities. Elections do provide a moment when even the most disinterested person is exposed to some form of political discussion, no matter how superficial. While the means of the Socialist Left in Canada, especially English Canada, are limited, this does not mean there is no point to elections or that the Socialist Left should let such occasions pass by. Various socialist parties provide lessons on how we might think about an electoral strategy for building a socialist Left.

Saturday June 7, 2008, 1:00-2:30: ANSO 205 (30 seats)

Global Applications of Marxist/Marxian Theory

Session Chair: Bob Ware (ware.hodson@shaw.ca) Professor Emeritus, University of Calgary

This session assembles papers with a commonality of applying Marxist or Marxian theory situations, nations or historical questions.

The Marxist Subject in Globalized Production

Alan Ramon Ward (alan.ramon.ward@wadh.oxon.org) Doctoral Student, University of Leeds, UK.

Gayatri Spivak suggests a new Marxist 'subject' in response to Georg Lukacs' conception of the 'worker'. Lukacs attempts a reconciliation between the subject as a pure historical function, and the subject's self-conscious private aspect, in the 'worker'. Spivak presents instead a poststructuralist reading of Marx's value-chain. She emphasises 'use-value' (what the worker needs to sustain 'his' labour problematised by what the worker wants) and 'consumption'. Spivak suggests that the (Marxist) subject implied by the value-chain is not the Lukacsian worker but the new support of globalised production, the 'subaltern woman'. Yet it seems to me that her subaltern cannot escape the same fundamental structure as Lukacs' worker.

Currents of Marxism in Contemporary China

Bob Ware (ware.hodson@shaw.ca) Professor Emeritus, University of Calgary

Recently, I had lengthy discussions at five academic institutions in China about Marxism in theory and practice. Easy observations, especially about China, are simplistic; and especially about China, the complex observations are interesting. China has changed dramatically since the late eighties when I taught philosophy in Beijing and Shanghai. I will discuss some differences with respect to Marxism and consider ways in which Marxism is being developed, defended, promoted, and applied in China today. Marxism is more alive in China than ever despite the struggle against many of the same global forces as elsewhere.

Hegemony and the International Legal Regime

Mohsen al Attar (m.alattar@auckland.ac.nz; http://www.law.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/law/about/staff/mohsen_al_attar.cfm)
Law, University of Auckland

There are important connections between hegemony, the global economy, and
the international legal regime. Transnational law, I argue, is the carrier
of a singular worldview, a dominant way of knowing the world that seeks to
universalise a specific social arrangement; an emergent transnational elite
demands compliance notwithstanding the throng of ill effects this worldview
produces for the masses. Today, this hegemony is so ingrained that our
ability to think beyond transnational law has been thwarted, reducing much
resistance towards a reformulation of the current arrangement along more
'equitable' lines; a powerful sign of a flourishing hegemony.

Society for Socialist Studies Program Schedule 2008:

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 2008

ANSO 207 (60 seats): The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

9:00-10:30: Teresa Healy (co-sponsored with CPSA) - 3 panels

10:45-12:15: Healy

1:00-2:30: Healy

ANSO 203 (30 seats): Latin America at a Crossroads

9:00-10:30: Jeffrey Webber and Todd Gordon

ANSO 205 (30 seats): Socialism and Trade Unionism

9:00-10:30: Alex Levant

ANSO 203 (30 seats): Participatory Culture

10:45- 12:15: June Madeley

ANSO 205 (30 seats): Socialism and Globalization

10:45-12:15: Frank Cunningham

Book Fair Lounge Area Fernwood Book Launch

12:30-2:30: Errol Sharpe and Wayne Antony

BUCH A 106 (200 seats): New Paths to Social and Political Change

1:00-2:30 (could go to 5:00): Judy Rebick

ANSO 203 (30 seats): Circumventing Borders: Building Anti-Capitalist Ideas and Values

Two Sessions

1:00-2:30: Debbie Dergousoff

2:45-5:00: Dergousoff

ANSO 205 (30 seats): Re-Thinking the Working Class and Radical Politics

2:45-5:00: Rachel Magnusson and Paul Mazzocchi

ANSO 207 (60 seats): Imperialism and Culture

2:45-5:00: Scott Forsyth

THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 2008

Civil and Mechanical Engineering CMEB 1205

The Ruling Relations of International Funding: A Research Workshop on Institutional Ethnography and International Development

8:30-4:30

ANSO 203 (30 seats): New Directions in Drug Policy Research

Two Panels

9:00-10:30: Susan Boyd

10:45-12:15: Susan Boyd

ANSO 205 (30 seats): In Search of a Language of Reconciliation

3 panels

9:00-10:30: Sima Aprahamian

10:45-12:15: Aprahamian

1:00-2:30: Aprahamian

ANSO 207 (60 seats): Transnational Networks: Relations of Ruling and Resistance

CPSA is scheduling Session One from 9:00 to 10:45

11:00-12:30: Session Two – Bill Carroll and Chris Hurl

ANSO 203 (30 seats): What’s in a Name?

1:00 – 2:30 Abigail Bakan

ANSO 207 (60 seats): The Sixties and Canada

1:00 – 2:30 Dimitri Roussopoulos

BUCH A 106 SSS PLENARY – KEYNOTE ADDRESS 2:45 – 5:00 approx

FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 2008

ANSO 203 (30 seats): Exploring Ecosocialism

9:00-10:30: Cy Gonick

10:45 – 1:00 PM (SSS Journal Board meeting)

ANSO 205 (30 seats): Orientalism and its Intersections

6 papers, 2 panels

9:00 – 10:30 Regina Cochrane and Malek Khouri

10:45 – 12:15 Cochrane and Khouri

ANSO 207 (60 seats): Epistemologies of Struggle 2008

1:00-2:30: Chris Borst

BUCH A 106 (200 SEATS) SSS ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

2:45–5:00 max

SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 2008

ANSO 207 (60 seats): Accountability Chains and Precarious Labour

Four Panels – James Lawson, Feng Xu

9:00-10:30: Lawson

10:45-12:15: Michael Ma

1:00-2:30: Xu

2:45 – 5:00: Judy Fudge

ANSO 203 (30 seats): Beyond Dependency, Beyond Borders: Canadian Capitalism

6 papers – 2 sessions?

9:00-10:30: Murray Cooke

10:45-12:15: Cooke

ANSO 203 (30 seats): Socialists and Elections in Canada

1:00-2:30: Murray Cooke

ANSO 205 (30 seats); Global Applications of Marxist/Marxian Theory

1:00-2:30: Ward, Ware, Al Attar

CROSS-LISTED SESSIONS SCHEDULED BY OTHER ORGANIZATIONS:

1. 1968 and Its Social Movements (Patrice LeClerc): CSA June 3 (9:00-10:30)

2. Globalization and Neoliberalism (Elaine Coburn): CSA June 5 (13:30-15:00) in Scarfe 1004

3. The Ruling Relations of International Funding (Debbie Dergousoff): CASID June 5 (8:30-4:30)