Capitalism, anticapitalism and social sciences engaged on a global scale: around the works of Immanuel Wallerstein

To mark its 60th anniversary, the Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme is organising the international conference "Capitalism, anticapitalism and social sciences engaged on a global scale: around the work of Immanuel Wallerstein" on September 11 and 12, 2023.

Immanuel Wallerstein passed away on August 31, 2019. On July 1 of that year he had brought to a close the blog he had been publishing regularly since October 1998, titling this issue 500: This is the end, this is the beginning.

From his meeting with Fernand Braudel in the early 1970s to his definitive departure at the beginning of 2018, Immanuel Wallerstein chose Paris and the MSH Foundation (which hosted him for several months each year) as the European hub of an ambitious project of considering all the major issues facing contemporary society on a global scale, placing them within their context and their dynamics spanning half a millennium of history. This overall project was developed in successive stages, dealing in turn with the economy and history of these five centuries, with politics and social movements, and with the epistemology of the social and human sciences, all while looking to the future. At each of these stages, he mobilized impressive networks of researchers from all over the world.

Organised in partnership with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Association of Friends of the FMSH and the Institut Universitaire de France, the conference aims to take stock of this intellectual path, which has spanned more than half a century, and to highlight its current relevance in the face of the challenges, uncertainties and unknowns of the present and the future.

→ Download the programme

Welcome by Antonin Cohen, chairman of the FMSH executive board,  Katharine Wallerstein, daughter of Immanuel Wallerstein, and Maurice Aymard, historian, director of studies at EHESS (9:30-10:00 am)

Roundtable 1 | Summary of the work of Immanuel Wallerstein (10:00 am to 1:00pm)

Moderator : Thierry Paquot

Speakers : 

• Yves David Hugot, Un anti-impérialiste en quête de théorie : du paradigme de la modernisation à l’analyse des systèmes-monde.
• Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, L'œuvre d'Immanuel à Binghamton University telle que je l'ai connue de 1981 à 2005
• Maurice Aymard, L'historien et le sociologue: Braudel et Wallerstein
• Carlos Aguirre Rojas (by zoom), Impacts et présence de l'œuvre d'Immanuel Wallerstein en Amérique Latine
• Gregory P. Williams (by zoom), Utopistics in an Age of Uncertainty
• Elaine Mokhtefi, Nous étions jeunes

Lunch break (1:00-2:00 pm)

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Roundtable 2 | Global left and anti-systemic movements (2:30 to 5:30 pm)

Moderator : Gustave Massiah 

Speakers :   

• Havin Guneser, Democratic Civilization - Öcalan and the impact of world-systems analysis in the Middle East
• Françoise Vergès, Le post-capitalisme sera féministe et antiraciste
• Manuela Bojadzijev, The Left and the Question of Migration
• Gilbert Achcar (by zoom), Que signifie être de gauche aujourd'hui ? Réflexions sur l'anti-systémisme
• David Palumbo-Liu (by zoom), Systems and Commons

Roundtable 3 | Epistemology/ Social Sciences/ Historical Marxism (9:00 to 11:30 am)

Moderator : Jean Copans

Speakers : 

• Stéphane Dufoix, Wallerstein décolonial ? Hypothèses sur la constitution du collectif Modernité/Colonialité
• Silvia Federici (by zoom), Wallerstein and the Formation of a World Patriarchal Capitalist System
• Gennaro Ascione, Unthinking the endless accumulation of capital: Marx’s Mathematical Manuscripts and the spacetimes of capitalist world-economy
• Veronica Gago, World-Economy and Interdependence: rethinking feminist internationalism
• Yann Moulier Boutang (by zoom), Système de l’économie monde: penser la libération au-delà de la domination

Pause (11:30-11:45 am)

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Roundtable 4 | Capitalism / Post-capitalism / Global Economy (11:45 am to 1:30 pm)

Moderator : Marta Petrusewicz

Speakers :

• Beverly Silver, From ‘Common Premises’ to ‘Friendly Debates’: Revisiting the (World-Systems) ‘Gang of Four’ on the Dynamics of Global Crisis
• Jacques Bidet, Immanuel Wallerstein et l'ordre du monde dans les temps modernes
• Georgi Derluguian, Is This a World War Yet? Wallerstein, Huntington, and other grim prophecies revisited
• François Gipouloux (by zoom), L'impossible avènement d'un capitalisme en Chine
• Manuela Boatcă, Occidentalism as Geoculture of the Modern/Colonial World-System

Lunch break (1:30 to 2:30 pm)

Discussion of round table 4 from 2:40 to 3:15 pm

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Roundtable 5 | Present-day challenges: Human Resources and Ecological Resources (3:30 to 6:00 pm)

Moderator : Judith Butler

Speakers :

• Étienne Balibar, Biopolitique, géopolitique, cosmopolitique
• Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, Les facteurs structurels des migrations internationales au XXI^e siècle : sud-nord, nord-nord, sud-sud, nord-sud
• Robert Boyer, Les transformations des capitalismes contemporains : croiser système de l'économie monde et approche de la régulation
• Marie-Claire Caloz-Tschopp, Le système-monde hanté par Marx et les disparu.e.s. Relire Wallerstein anti-nihiliste, à partir de trois notions: l’apartheid (Laurent Monnier), la multiplication du travail, du capital, de la guerre (Mezzadra&Neilson), l’acosmie (Arendt)
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore (by zoom), Unthinking Racial Capitalism, Unthinking Despair

Registration to attend the conference on site is now closed. You can attend online by registering below.