IGLP: The Colloquium

The IGLP is pleased to announce that the second annual IGLP: The Colloquium will be convened June 5-7, 2013 at Harvard Law School. 

What is the Colloquium?

In 2012, as part of our continuing effort to strengthen the network of collaboration among our Workshop alumni and faculty, the IGLP convened a week-long Colloquium at Harvard for IGLP Core Faculty, invited Guests and IGLP Docents.  Following the success of this seminar, which focused on the political economy of the modern global order, the IGLP is pleased to announce we will be hosting an annual Colloquium each June at Harvard for our Core Faculty and invited alumni.  Each year, IGLP: The Colloquium will focus on a central theme of significance.

IGLP at Five: The Colloquium 2013: The Global and Local (and) A Series of Locals

The 2013 IGLP Colloquium will explore two questions of method. People talk about linking the global and the local, “seeing” them together, appreciating their “interconnections” — but just how can this be done? After all, across the social sciences, linking the general and the particular, or the macro and the micro, or the theoretical and the practical, is no easy matter. What can we learn from the history of trying? How might we develop better accounts of the “whole” by placing our accounts of local and national legal, political and economic arrangements in relationship to accounts of the international or transnational or global? If “global and local” suggests a vertical axis of scale, “comparison” suggests a horizontal axis of differentiation. Our second question focuses on this horizontal axis: how can we understand the relationships among local or national arrangements? As a matter of technical similarities and cultural differences – or vice versa? As a pattern of historical influences? As a system of centers and peripheries? As we do each year at the Colloquium, we will invite interesting intellectuals from a range of disciplines to join us in Cambridge to explore these quite general questions as they have arisen in their own work.

Check back soon for more information about our IGLP: The Colloquium 2013!

The IGLP is particularly grateful to our Colloquium Leading Sponsors and collaborators Santander Universities and Sovereign Bank, who continue to show their faith in our efforts to develop innovative ideas and alternative approaches to issues of global law, economic policy, social justice and governance as well as to strengthen the next generation of scholars by placing them in collaboration with their global peers.  Santander Universities and Sovereign Bank have generously agreed to be the Leading Sponsor of the June Colloquium as part of their commitment to higher education.  Harvard Law School is proud to join with them in this effort.

About the 2012 IGLP: The Colloquium

In 2012 IGLP: The Colloquium focused on the potential to renew “political economy” as a domain of investigation, a framework for comprehending the global order, and as a terrain for investigation of the role of “ideas” or “expertise” in the operations of “power” and “governance.” It continued during our 2012 IGLP Workshop with a series of roundtable and reading group discussion sessions. The 2012 IGLP: The Colloquium focused specifically on the political economy of the modern global order, which we explored along three dimensions: economics as a technical field of explanation, knowledge and expertise as a mode of global governance and politics, and the significance of global structures of inequality, center-periphery dynamics and post-colonial legacy. Our question were whether a political economic approach could help us explore the way these dimensions conventionally operate and interlock to produce norms that separate markets and politics, define boundaries for acceptable governance, and prioritize certain forms of knowledge and knowledge production. Can we locate the role of law and legal vocabulary in entrenching those realities, and could we identify their roles in a contrary project? We will improve our understanding of the tradition through which politics and economics were rent asunder, the technical vernaculars that need to be analyzed today in the study of economic, capital dynamics and law for bringing them back into a relationship with one another, and the traditions for understanding the power/knowledge nexus, ideas as governance, power constituting the known, ideology, consciousness, expertise and more. The 2012, IGLP: The Colloquium was organized in three components:

A. Courses – outside scholars joined us in Cambridge to “teach” us their fields, help us ‘tech’ up on what they know. In 2012, classes and invited scholars included:

Capital Dynamics of the Euro Crisis: Jeffrey Frankel (Harvard KSG) offered a five hour course on sovereign debt as macroeconomics and governance, with attention to the role of central banks, and the claims of banks, creditors, debtor countries, and citizens, all as exemplified by the drama in the Euro-Zone.

World Systems/Capital Structures: David Harvey (City University of New York) offered us an alternative view from the Marxist tradition in a two hour course that explores the global structure of capital. He also led a discussion of foundational texts from the world systems tradition.

Post-Colonial and Center-Periphery Structures of World Political Economy: Gyan Prakash (Princeton University), Ritu Birla (University of Toronto), and Pheng Cheah (Berkeley) each offered one session of a six hour exploration of post-colonial studies. This course was convened by Vasuki Nesiah (NYU).

Heterodox Thinking in Development Economics Today: Professor Mustaq Khan (Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) taught this two hour course and led a discussion of foundational texts in the field.

Science and Technology Studies: Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard KSG) taught this two hour course and led a discussion of foundational texts in the fields.

B. Reading Group Sessions – we selected a few interesting texts to discuss together.

C. Roundtable Discussions– we selected a few works in progress by Advanced Workshop participants for circulation and discussion.