PEWS conference at Clark to focus on workers, global capitalism

Clark University will host the 36th annual Political Economy of the World System (PEWS) Conference, “Labor, Democracy and Global Capitalism” from Friday, April 20, through Sunday, April 22.  Thirty-five scholars from the United States and around the world will probe the nature of the world system of global capitalism as it affects workers, labor and democracy.

Immanuel Wallerstein, founder of World-Systems Analysis, which inspires the Section on the Political Economy of the World-System of the American Sociological Association, will deliver a public keynote address, “Labor vs. Capital?” on Friday, April 20, at 12:30 p.m. in Tilton Hall, 2nd floor of the Higgins University Center.

Wallerstein, a Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the former president of the International Sociological Association and a recipient of the Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award (2003) from the American Sociological Association.  His most important work, “The Modern World-System,” has appeared in four volumes.

Click here for the conference schedule; for more information, call 508-793-7376.

Several panel sessions (open only to the Clark community) will explore crisis and stagnation, growth and industrialization, upward mobility among the hierarchy of nations and growing inequality within nations. Presentations will include “Production, Reproduction, Well-Being,” “Worker Rights and Their Extensions,” “Labor Movements, Democracy, and Inequality,” and “Social Movements and Protest Waves.”

A presentation titled “The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement and the Global Crisis” will be given between 10:45 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. as part of the panel, “Worker Rights and Their Extensions,” in the Lurie Conference Room, Higgins University Center, 1st Floor.

Students, faculty and staff are invited to hear social-political humorist and stand-up comic Jimmy Tingle present his current stage show, “Jimmy Tingle for President: The Funniest Campaign in History,” funded by the Clark Undergraduate Student Council, on Saturday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Jefferson Academic Center, Room 320.

This conference, which has been coordinated by Robert J.S. Ross, professor of sociology and director of the International Studies Stream (ISS), is co-sponsored by the Women and Gender Studies Program; the Departments of Political Science, Sociology, and Geography; ISS; the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise and the Office of the Provost.