Event Date: September 23, 2016 - 10:00am to 11:30am
Location: FSS 4004, 120 University Private
Presented by IPEN
Critical international political economy (IPE) has drawn heavily on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi to theorize the role of hegemony, resistance and change in the global political economy. This presentation will argue that the work and life of Rosa Luxemburg serves as a useful supplement to these approaches. Luxemburg’s body of work was more concerned with the international than Gramsci, her writings were more prescriptive than Polanyi, and the times in which she wrote resemble our own more closely than either Gramsci’s or Polanyi’s eras. Rosa Luxemburg’s work can infuse Critical IPE with an internationalist stance and offer strategies for action that are lacking in studies drawing heavily from Gramsci and Polanyi. In addition, a variety of themes in her life and work provide a new opportunity to broaden the Critical IPE discussion to other important traditions such as environmentalism, feminism, postcolonialism and anarchism.

Robert O’Brien is Professor of Political Science at McMaster University. He has published six books and over twenty journal articles and book chapters in the fields of international relations and global political economy. Robert teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in global political economy and supervises graduate students interested in global labour issues, global civil society, international organization, global governance and the political economy of climate change. Robert is consulting editor of
Global Labour Journal.
This event is in English