KFG conference | Between Collapse, Integration and Co-Transformation (14-15 December, 2023)
“Between Collapse, Integration and Co-Transformation. Universalist and Particularist Economic Ideas and Practices in Europe since the 1970s”
Date: December 14th, 2023, 1 p.m. to December 15th, 2023, 2 p.m.
Location: Historisches Kolleg, Kaulbachstr. 15, 80539 Munich
The economy is often regarded as the universalist force par excellence: economic interdependencies reduce the risk of interstate conflicts; the pragmatic logic of business causes markets to expand indefinitely; universal rules facilitate trade and must be expanded; neoliberalism triumphs. Similarly, economics is presented as a universal discipline, identifying general laws of economic (and even social) interaction.
Rejecting such simplistic interpretations, this conference reassesses the role of the economy as a universalist force in Europe and its reflection in economic thinking. It focuses on the decades since the 1970s as a period that heralded a new age of globalization and ushered in fundamental change in economic thinking and practices all over Europe (and beyond). Contributions to the conference pay special attention to the interplay between universalist and particularist claims.
The conference topics cover developments in Eastern and Western Europe. Where the East is concerned, contributions will address late socialist ideas, as they oscillated between notions of internationalism and state-centric, nationalist approaches, as well as the transfer, reception, reinterpretation and adaptation of Western ‘universalist’ economic concepts and practices in the post-socialist world. For the West, the double lens of universalism and particularism offers a fresh way to examine the role of neo-mercantilist, social(ist) and neoliberal approaches. The same holds true for the co-transformation of East and West since the end of the Cold War and the increasingly central role of the European Union. As the EU incrementally grew into a force with universalist pretensions, both within its boundaries and vis-à-vis external partners, it found itself challenged time and again by new (and old) particularist claims – both internally and externally.