Inaugural lecture of the Jane and Aatos Erkko Professor in Studies on Contemporary Society
Prof. Stephen Gill (York University, Toronto): “The Constitution of Global Capitalism”
Time: Wednesday, 30 September 2009 at 4:15 pm
Venue: University main building, lecture hall 1, Fabianinkatu 33.
Free admission. Welcome!
Organised by the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
This lecture will seek to identify and explore some of the constitutive features of global capitalism in the early 21st century, in light of the current deep and interrelated set of global economic, socio-cultural and ecological crises. Together these crises of accumulation, society and the biosphere comprise what I call a global "organic crisis", which, it seems demands a truly global and collective response in order to move towards its solution.
Partly to address this question, the lecture will highlight two key constitutive features associated with the governance of global capitalism. The first is "new constitutionalism" which is hypothesized as the dominant juridical and political dimension of governance. The second is disciplinary neo-liberalism which is hypothesized as an increasingly dominant set of socio-economic processes that increasingly subject social and political life to the discipline and power of capitalist market forces.
So far, most of the dominant (G8) political responses to the organic crisis, and specifically to the global economic emergency, have been mainly couched in terms of restoring those aspects of new constitutionalism and disciplinary neo-liberalism that have been temporarily suspended in the bailouts and stimulus packages --to prevent a collapse of the financial structures of global capitalism. Whether this situation will be politically sustainable in the longer term, and indeed whether it can contribute to resolving the global organic crisis, is, however, very much open to doubt.
Stephen Gill is Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science, Communications and Culture at York University, Toronto, Canada. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Senior Associate Member of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford University. From autumn 2009 he will be the Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor in Studies on Contemporary Society at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. His main fields are Global Political Economy, International Relations, and Social and Political Theory. More information on Stephen Gill: http://www.stephengill.com/
The Jane and Aatos Erkko Professorship in Studies on Contemporary Society was established in 2008 with the generous donation from the Jane and Aatos Erkko foundation, www.jaes.fi