KEYNOTE by Ali Kadri
“De-development and the Accumulation of Waste Through Wars”
Abstract: In neoclassical analysis, war is treated as a side event to economic processes. In econometric analysis, data indicating war-years are written off or smoothed to maintain the steady state of the time series. It is as if nothing happens to impact the economy over the longer term. In short, war is treated as a fleeting nuisance, a sort of tax that distorts capital accumulation. War, however, is the ultimate form of waste. Waste is commodified. It is objectified labour and it sells for profit like any other commodity. It is therefore of value and submits to the dynamics of the law of value. Waste, especially war, is the sort of commodity that creates its own demand. People must pay for waste and war. They are choiceless, and as such, a demand-led crisis for waste products is unlikely to ever arise. What is more, as the crisis of capital deepens, capital resorts more and more to the production of waste, of which war becomes a production sphere on its own and, a leading stage that underpins the whole process of capital accumulation. In my ongoing work, I argue that war was crucial to the formation of capitalism and it continues to support the profitability of capital to this day.
Ali Kadri is a leading scholar specializing in the political economy and development economics of the Middle East, North Africa, and East Asia. His extensive writings include The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction (2023), China’s Path to Development Against Neoliberalism (2021), A Theory of Forced Labour Migration: The Proletarianisation of the West Bank Under Occupation, 1967-1992 (2020), Imperialism with Reference to Syria (2019), Cordon Sanitaire: A Single Law Governing Development in East Asia and the Arab World (2018), The Unmaking of Arab Socialism (2016), and Arab Development Denied: Dynamics of Accumulation by Wars of Encroachment (2014).
Currently, he is a visiting professor at Sun Yat-Sen University. Previously, he was a senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore, and has been affiliated with the London School of Economics as senior fellow at its Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy and a visiting fellow at its Department of International Development. Before returning to academia, he worked for a decade at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN ESCWA) in Lebanon, where he led the Economic Analysis Section.
***
KAPUSCINSKI LECTURE by Alina Sajed
“From the Third World to the Global South: Lives and afterlives of a global political project”
Abstract: The term ‘Global South’ is not a controversial one. There have been many debates in the last decades regarding its usefulness, both analytical and historical, but especially its connection to another equally debated term, ‘Third World’. Amidst of these debates, however, there has appeared a loose consensus around their meaning and linkages. The term Global South cannot be considered separately from that of the Third World. In fact, the idea of Global South could not have emerged without taking seriously the conceptual work done by the term Third World, or the legacy left by Third Worldism and its historical landmarks.
In her Kapuscinski Lecture, professor Alina Sajed elucidates the meaning and histories of both terms, and the connections and ruptures between them. Her lecture will focus on understanding not only the emergence of the term Third World, but the central role played by processes of capitalist expansion in conceptualizing both Third World and Global South, albeit in different ways and at different historical junctures. What (if anything) connects the Third World project to the Global South? While the rise of emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has been hailed by some as signalling the end of the US’ (and the general West’s) political and economic hegemony and the arrival of multipolarity, others see little hope in this relatively recent development.
Alina Sajed is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University. Her expertise lies in the area of politics of the Global South, focusing particularly on the challenges of decolonization, and on the political, social and economic challenges of post-independence societies; Third Worldism and development policies; with a regional focus on North Africa and Middle East. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on these topics. She is also the author of Postcolonial Encounters in International Relations. The Politics of Transgression in the Maghreb (Routledge, 2013), and the co-author (with William D. Coleman) of Fifty Key Thinkers on Globalization (Routledge, 2012). She is the co-editor (with Randolph B. Persaud) of Race, Gender, and Culture in International Relations. Postcolonial Perspectives (Routledge, 2018).
***
PLENARY with Manuela Picq
“Scholar Activism: When Our Bodies Stand for our Ideas”
Abstract: Should it feel good to get an award for scholar-activism? As well-intentioned the recognition of my activism is, it misses the point of what activism is by singling out one person, especially a scholar. The danger with claiming scholar activism as heroic is two-fold. First, it makes activists exceptional, implying that society may rely on exceptional individuals instead of valuing the collective work. Second, it glorifies the activism of scholars, as if it were more valuable than that of others while ignoring the hierarchies that empower and protect academia. Instead, we must normalize scholar activism, sharing the load and using our bodies as shields and doing activism in constellation with others, valuing emotions, and embodying our ideas.
Manuela Picq is the 2024 recipient of the Outstanding Activist Scholar Award of the International Studies Association. She is a Professor of International Relations at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador) and Senior Lecturer in Political Science and Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College (USA). Her most influential books include Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the States (co-authored with Andrew Canessa 2024), Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics (2018) and Sexualities in World Politics (co-edited with Markus Thiel, 2015). She is Editor of Public Humanities and has contributed to international media outlets such as Al Jazeera and the New York Times. Her work at the intersection of scholarship, media, and activism led her to be nominated in a New Generation of Public Intellectuals (2018) and featured in the FemiList 100 (2021). Manuela’s legal work contributing expert reports for indigenous and women rights is accompanied by larger causes in the UN and OAS systems. With her partner, they set an international legal precedent with the recognition of indigenous ancestral marriage at the OHCHR in 2022. In 2021 and 2023, she coordinated the presidential campaign of indigenous water defender Yaku Pérez in Ecuador. She lives between Ecuador and Massachusetts.