Call for abstracts: Sixth annual conference

Call for Abstracts

Capital, Climate, Crisis

Sixth Annual Conference of the Danish Society for Marxist Studies

Aalborg University, Denmark
October 1-2, 2021

Keynote: Andreas Malm

As the world comes to terms with the new normal of the COVID pandemic, contemporary capitalism reveals itself as a cluster of intersecting crises of systemic proportions: health crisis, economic crisis, and the relentlessly unfolding crisis of the relationship between humans and nature. Viral disease as well as climate change are rooted in and produced by a type of social relation that, for the first time in human history, rules on a global scale: capital.

While the transitions to capitalism have always entailed transformed relations between humans and their environment, the unfolding ecological crisis appears intimately related to the ongoing crises of capital. Capital seems unable to produce any kind of stable development today, a situation that has deep roots in the upheavals and economic stagnation that has persisted since the 1970s. Thinking through the relation between capital and ecological crises is crucial for understanding our contemporary political conjuncture.

The history of capitalism is also the history of struggles against its forms of exploitation. These struggles have always had an environmental and ecological dimension. When workers fight polluting work and living environments, it is also a fight against capital. Nevertheless, the link between anti-capitalist and ecological struggles is not always a straightforward matter, and tactics and strategies are more diverse than ever.

The Danish Society for Marxists Studies wishes to interrogate and address the unfolding double crises of capital and the ecological relationship between humans and nature, their history, and the types of conflicts and struggles they produce. We therefore invite contributions on this and related topics for the society’s sixth annual conference. Topics might include (but are not limited to):

• Natural limits to economic growth
• Class struggle and ecological crisis
• Social reproduction in times of crisis
• The power of fossil capital
• Critical analyses of national and international climate policies
• Unequal distribution of the effects of health and climate crisis
• The interdependency of ecological and economic development
• Human bodies and their environment
• Marxist concepts of nature and bodies
• Metabolism of humans and nature through production
• Struggles around displacement and the inhabitability of cities
• Visions of nature and crisis in art
• Class struggles during the pandemic
• The interrelation between different types of crisis and their sources

Open Call

It is the ambition of the Danish Society of Marxist Studies to create a common platform for critical and emancipatory research in Denmark. For this reason, we also welcome papers that do not directly touch upon this year’s theme but contribute to these research traditions.

Please submit an abstract of 200-300 words to info@marxistiskestudier.com no later than June 15, 2021. Abstracts and presentations may be in Danish or English.