Call for Papers: Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development
University of Warwick UK; June 13, 2014
Confirmed speakers: Professor Justin Rosenberg (The University of Sussex)
Neil Davidson (The University of Glasgow)
Professor Neil Lazarus (The University of Warwick)
“From the universal law of unevenness thus derives another law which . . . we may call the
law of combined development – by which we mean a drawing together of the different stages
of the journey, a combining of separate steps, an amalgam of archaic with more
contemporary forms” (Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution).
In recent decades the concept of ‘uneven and combined development’ (U&CD) has
come to occupy an increasingly significant position in academic assessments of society and
culture. The rise of globalized capitalism, the aggressive expansion of economic
neoliberalism, and the associated emergence of global modernity as key concerns of cultural
theory have all contributed to a resurgence in the deployment of this term. Together these
developments therefore constitute a crucial evolution of the concept from its original
inception in the early twentieth century writing of Leon Trotsky. This resurgence is
witnessed, for instance, by works such as Michael Löwy’s The Politics of Combined and
Uneven Development (1982), Franco Moretti’s Modern Epic: The World-System from Goethe
to García Márquez (1996), Fredric Jameson’s A Singular Modernity (2002) and a recent
series of articles by political scientist Justin Rosenberg.
The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars from across a variety of
disciplines to examine ‘uneven and combined development’ and the issues arising from it: its
genesis and history, its theoretical structure, its material manifestations and the renewed
importance that it holds today. This is with the wider intention of cultivating a formally
interdisciplinary approach to the topic, aiming to expand its boundaries as a methodology and
field of study. Building upon the concept’s political and economic foundations, we wish to
focus in particular on cultural expressions of and reactions to the reality of a combined and
uneven world-system – exploring how the existence of that system has been manifested in
terms of cultural and social experience. Conceptualizing ‘culture’ in Raymond Williams’
‘ordinary’ sense, which encompasses the broad experience of everyday life (see Williams,
‘Culture is Ordinary’ in Resources of Hope, 1989), we welcome papers from a wide range of
disciplines including (but not limited to) history, sociology, politics, literature, film and
philosophy. Questions participants might wish to consider as starting points include:
What are the new material forms that U&CD takes under neoliberalism, and how do they
initiate changes in the forms of their representation?
What are the theoretical possibilities and problems occasioned by extending U&CD from
the coexistence of modern (capitalist) and premodern modes of production to the fully
capitalist world-system?
How might the tendential logic of U&CD be characterized during the era of globalised
capital? Where are we heading? How does U&CD qualify or intervene within
contemporary debates about the future of capitalism?
How does the uneven and combined character of development result in the coexistence of
different temporalities (on a global and urban scale), and to what extent does this ‘nonsimultaneity’ affect the forms of their cultural registration?
What is the ‘world-ecological’ implication of present-day U&CD?
How do logics of contemporary cultural production such as ‘world literature’ reflect and
respond to the U&CD of capitalist modernity or postmodernity?
We invite abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers of 20 minutes in length,
accompanied by a short biographical note. Please email all abstracts and inquiries to the
convenors at unevenandcombineddevelopment@gmail.com. The deadline for the receipt of
all abstracts is Sunday the 16th of March 2014.
Further information is also available on the conference website:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/events/culturesofunevenandcombineddevelopme
ntconferencejune2013
This conference is funded by the Institute of Advanced Study, the Humanities Research
Centre, The Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, and The
Department of Politics and International Studies (P.A.I.S.)
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