The Class Problematic in Legal Studies
*Call For Papers*
The core of the traditional Marxist theory of politics has always been the theory of class struggle. In the aftermath of 1989, the triumphant global right pronounced the concept of class struggle dead, consigning it, together with the rest of the Marxist political theory, to the dustbin of history. Two decades later, the question we want to ask is not, ‘how premature and ungrounded was this pronouncement?,’ but, rather, ‘what new class-analytical framework would best meet the demands of the critical-theoretical project in the age of the liberal capitalist globalization?’
Our starting intuition here is that every historical conjuncture produces a certain change in the dynamic character of class struggle which needs to be accounted for on the level of critical theory to enable continuous long-term planning. The concept of class struggle is central to both the Marxist and the Weberian traditions of social theory. A number of attempts have been made over the past several years to reincorporate various strands from these traditions into the critical legal project. Some of these attempts came in the field of international law. Casting even the shortest glance over the tremendous wealth of historical material confronting critical law scholarship today, it becomes clear, however: the potential for the reintegration of the class analytic into the contemporary law discourse and its strategic value in the practices of the critical law project remain far from exhausted.
We invite contributions on all questions related to the topic of class struggle and contemporary law. We are particularly interested in critical re-readings of traditional law topics from a class-based perspective and discussions of the strategic potentiality of the class problematic for the theoretical organization of counter-hegemonic interventions in the age of globalization.
Stream Organisers:
Akbar Rasulov
Emilios Christodoulidis
Send titles and abstracts to the organising committee by 15 June:
clc@lbss.gla.ac.uk