Political Economy Summer Institute: Imperialism Panel (Video)

Political Economy Summer Institute: Imperialism Panel (Video)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Political Economy Summer Institute
 

Imperialism

A Panel Featuring Radhika Desai, Jacob Mundy, Max Ajl


Saturday, 3 June 2023
3:00 PM EST

Cosponsored by Political Economy Project, Middle East and Islamic Studies (GMU) 

The practice and theory of imperialism has re-emerged as an urgent debate amidst the conflict in Eastern Europe. Yet, debates about imperialism and the practice of imperialism are nothing if not long-standing, tracing back to the classical works of Lenin, African and Asian theories of neo-colonialism and semi-colonialism, Latin American theories of dependency, and Arab theories of accumulation on a world-scale and de-dedevelopment. This panel examines the debate, situating it in recent world history.

Featuring


Dr. Radhika Desai
 is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She is the author of Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed, 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994), a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month, and editor or co-editor of Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism, a special issue of International Critical Thought (2016), Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy(2015), Analytical Gains from Geopolitical Economy (2015), Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today’s Capitalism (2010) and Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms (2009).

Jacob Mundy is Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University. He is the author of Imaginative Geographies of Algerian Violence: Conflict Science, Conflict Management, Antipolitics (Stanford, 2015); the co-author (with Stephen Zunes) of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse, 2010); and the co-editor (with Daniel B. Monk) of The Post-conflict Environment: Investigation and Critique(Michigan, 2014).

Max Ajl is a postdoctoral fellow at the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University and an associated researcher at the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment. He is an associate editor at Agrarian South and Journal of Labor and Society, and has written for The Journal of Peasant Studies and the Review of African Political Economy. His book, A People’s Green New Deal, was published in 2021 with Pluto Press.

 

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Living the Nile River: Materiality, Embodiment, and Egypt's Colonial Economy (Video)

The Political Economy Project, the Arab Studies Institute, and Middle East and Islamic Studies Program Present:

Living the Nile River: Materiality, Embodiment, and Egypt's Colonial Economy 

By Jennifer L. Derr

 

Keynote Speaker for the Political Economy Summer Institute, 6th Edition


Jennifer L. Derr's book is the Winner of the 2020 Political Economy Project's Book Prize: The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2019)
 
In October 1902, the waters of the Nile filled the reservoir of the first Aswan Dam, and Egypt's historic relationship with the river forever changed. Egyptian agriculture had long depended on the annual Nile flood, its rhythms demarcating the seasons and determining cycles of poverty and prosperity. Beginning in the second decade of the nineteenth century and stretching through the middle of the twentieth, the Nile River was engineered to support the production of new cash crops that included cotton, sugarcane, and maize. The construction of the dam tamed the river’s waters and produced new agricultural environments. The Nile River that took form – the perennial Nile River – reshaped Egypt's colonial economy and the forms of subjectivity with which it was associated. From the microscopic to the regional, the local to the imperial, Jennifer L. Derr’s book, The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt, places the environment at the center of questions about politics, knowledge, and the lived experience of human bodies. At the root of this investigation lies the notion that the Nile is not a singular entity but a realm of practice and a set of materially specific relations that structured experiences of colonial economy. The production of a new Nile River helped to mold the future of technocratic knowledge and shape the bodies of those who inhabited rural communities. In her talk, Derr will explore the material and epistemological histories of this profound transformation.

Featuring


Jennifer L. Derr
 is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she is also the Founding Director of the Center for the Middle East and North Africa. She holds a Ph.D. in History and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and an M.A. from Georgetown University in Contemporary Arab Studies. Professor Derr’s research explores the intersections among medicine, science, the environment, and political economy in the modern Middle East. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Hellman Foundation, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, the Fulbright-Hays Commission, the Social Science Research Council, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Mellon Foundation, and the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2019, she was awarded the National Science Foundation’s 5-year CAREER grant to support a broad research agenda focused on the “History of Science at the Interface of Biomedical and Environmental Concerns.” In 2022-2023, she will direct a Mellon Sawyer Seminar on the theme of “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine.”