Canadian Council of Area Studies Learned Societies (CCASLS)

(CAAS, CASA, CALACS, CANMES)

FURTHERING THE GLOBALIZATION DEBATE: CROSS REGIONAL COMPARISONS

April 27 – May 1, 2005

Marriott Chateau Champlain, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Planning Committee

• Chris Youé
• Albert Berry
• Rodolphe DeKoninck
• Reeta Tremblay
• Tom Najem
• Steven Palmer
• Miriam Grant
• Yann Roche
• Annamaria Piccioni
• Brooke Ellis

The Canadian Council of Area Studies Learned Societies (CCASLS), in conjunction with the Canadian Association of African Studies (CAAS), the Canadian Asian Studies Association (CASA), The Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CALACS), and the Canadian Association of Middle Eastern Studies (CANMES) is pleased to announce a call for papers for its inaugural, multidisciplinary conference. Panel proposals are strongly encouraged, since it will ensure interesting and thematically coherent sessions, of course, individual proposals are equally welcome. All proposals should fall into the theme of the conference.

Early Submission Deadline: September 15, 2004

Submission Deadline: December 15, 2004

CONFERENCE THEME:

Furthering the Globalization Debate: Cross Regional Comparisons

CCASLS represents several Area Studies societies covering Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East. While Appadurai considers Area Studies as “the largest institutional epistemology through which the academy… has apprehended the world in the last fifty years”, it is clear that the reluctance to transcend regional or local boundaries, or move outside traditional disciplines, has hampered our attempts to elucidate the structures and processes that are often only vaguely captured by the catch-all abstraction called “globalization.”

This CCASLS conference is an attempt: to integrate the academy with NGOs and policy makers; to bring together scholars from different regions and perspectives who often “dig long and deep” in their own case study areas while remaining oblivious to the theories and methodologies of those asking the same research questions in other places; to make sense of the real, existing impacts of globalization by presenting “deep” comparisons of places, cultures and economies; to understand the changing structures and processes of world history so that we may “historicize” globalization.

We ask for papers that address the theory and methodology of comparativism; that integrate regional studies in a comparative context; and that help us understand the social variables that constitute particular regional or local studies, so that such studies can be matched with similar research projects from other places.

Papers must conform to the overall theme and/or the sub-themes. Potential contributors who are unsure which sub-theme is appropriate for their papers should specify “Other” and leave the decision to the Program Committee. Papers which are irrelevant to the objectives of the conference will not be accepted. The sub-themes are:

Theorizing the Integration of Area Studies
Capitalism and the New World Order
Historicizing Globalization
Social Inequality and Social Cohesion
Health, Disease and Society
Globalization and the International Division of Labour
National and Cultural Sovereignty
Other

For further information and conference details, please visit our website (address given below).