Finance In Question/Finance In Crisis
12-14 April 2010, University of Manchester
Conference Announcement
This international conference about finance is distinctive in that it invites analysis by, and encourages debate between, researchers from many disciplines who represent different kinds of political and cultural economy as well as social studies of finance. The emphasis is on finance in question as much as finance in crisis because, well before the onset of crisis in 2007, there were many unresolved issues about the role of finance in present day capitalism. The conference aims to re-examine received ways of understanding finance and to consider what changes to financial arrangement may follow from present strains.
As with other major conferences, there will be multiple themes and an opportunity for academic researchers to present papers and propose sessions. Themes so far proposed include: money, capitalist calculation, market devices and techniques; financial crisis, social relations and trust; the limits of prescience and the irrelevance of many economic knowledges; finance, restructuring and labour; politics/markets/moralities; states, re-regulation and governance of finance.
There will also be media and practitioner panels and plenary sessions where distinguished academics will be set to answer big questions about what and who is in crisis, why did nobody see it coming and whether more democratic control of finance is possible.
Plenary academics include Michel Aglietta (CEPII), Andrew Gamble ( Cambridge) Donald MacKenzie (Edinburgh), Doreen Massey (OU), Philip Mirowski (Notre Dame), Onora O’Neill (Cambridge), Mike Power (LSE), Saskia Sassen (Columbia) and Nicolas Dorn (Rotterdam)
The three big (sets) of questions for academic plenary panels:
(1) Democracy
What connects the crisis to democratic control of financial systems? How far was political control of financial markets before the crisis marked by a democratic deficit? Did crisis management increase democratic control? Are the governing and ownership arrangements in the post crisis world producing a reduction in the democratic deficit? Is the crisis benefiting the political fortunes of more radical parties and factions and, if so, with what potential effects for representative democracy. Will the crisis further erode public trust in democratic politics or enhance its prospects? How do issues of control and governance relate to matters of justice, distribution, and entitlement—specifically in terms of who and what finance is for? What would finance for labour entail?
Panellists: Andrew Gamble (Cambridge), Onora O’Neill (Cambridge), Nicolas Dorn (Rotterdam)
(2) Knowledges
Why did the crisis apparently come out of a clear blue sky? Why was knowledge not mobilised to prevent or contain the crisis? Were those who foretold crisis prescient, or lucky ? Why did trust between market actors evaporate so quickly in the crisis? Do some forms of social scientific knowledge appear less damaged in the light of crisis than others, if so why and how? Is economics exposed as a formalist attempt to squeeze events into dated categories? Is heterodox political economy (Marxist, post Keynesian and Minskyan) different because it recognises crisis and cyclicality. Was social studies of finance wrong footed? If there are limits to knowledge, how might we consider finance as a structure of feeling, a kind of affective or immaterial labour? So what is financialization?
Panellists: Donald Mackenzie (Edinburgh) Philip Mirowski (Notre Dame), Mike Power (LSE)
(3) Whose crisis ?
Whose crisis is this anyway? Are the categories of class useful in understanding crisis. Is it more about elites and masses? And , if so, why is mainstream politics about the middle ground What exactly is in crisis? How and why are the costs of crisis distributed and recovered? What, if anything, is novel in this crisis, either historically or institutionally? What are the national and regional variations in the form of the crisis especially in relation to the centred nature of financial activity and unbalanced flows of funds. What are the variations in national and regional modes of crisis management? What’s left of neo liberalism? How does saturation media reporting, the commentariat and blogging change the game?
Panellists: Michel Aglietta (CEPII), Doreen Massey (OU), Saskia Sassen (Columbia)
This conference is co hosted by CRESC and the IWGF at the University of Manchester; and by the Australian Working Group on Financialization at the University of Sydney
Conference Convenors: Karel Williams, Sarah Green, Mick Moran
CRESC Conference Administration
178 Waterloo Place, Oxford Road, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL
Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 8985 / Fax: +44 (0) 161 275 8986
Email: CRESC.AnnualConference@manchester.ac.uk
The Finance In Question/Finance In Crisis conference has been planned to coincide with another major international conference at Manchester on Financialisation and Environment: The Implications for Environmental Governance of the Global Financial Crisis . This conference has been organised by the School of Social Science, University of Manchester and will take place from the 15th till 16th April 2010. Details of this conference can be found on the School of Social Science website