This is the first call for papers for Political Economy of the World-System (PEWS) section round tables for the American Sociological Association Meetings in Atlanta, GA , August 14-17, 2010. In addition to single submission papers, we invite scholars to submit papers on the following themes:

· “Relentless Capital, Resisting Subalterns? Reclaiming the Third World as Social Practice.” Organizer/Discussants: Ethel Brooks and Manjusha Nair, Sociology, Rutgers University. This table invites papers focused on the long-understood geographies of the Third World as well as those that challenge those geographies through examinations of migratory flows, the urban and rural outsides and outsiders to capitalist production practices, and the ways in which the Third World is now, in fact, at the center of Metropolitan global production, reproduction and social practice.

· “Racializing Capitalism: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Labor.” Organizer/Discussant: Robyn Rodriguez, Sociology, Rutgers University. The aim of this table is to explore the intersecting dimensions of race, gender and sexuality under contemporary processes of globalization and how they unfold in place-specific ways within and across localities.

· “Agriculture in the World-System.” Organizer/Discussant: Adam Driscoll, Sociology, North Carolina State University. This table seeks papers that emphasize the intersection of agriculture and the environment. The environmental consequences of the current global food regime is certainly an important topic and one that seems to be garnering a large amount of attention in a wide range of literatures. (Development, Environmental, Agrarian Studies, etc.)

· "Measuring the World-System.” Organizers/Discussants: Laura McKinney and Kelly Austin, Sociology, North Carolina State University, and Matthew Mahutga, Sociology, University of California, Riverside. This table seeks presentations related to how world-system position is measured/what indicators are used (e.g., economic determinants vs. political or cultural dimensions), statistical methods for discerning world-system position, and the implications of employing different measures of world-system position for various outcomes of interest.

· “Movements and Rights.” Organizer/Discussant: Elson Boles, Sociology, Saginaw Valley State University. This session seeks presentations that explore any facet of systemic or anti-systemic movements and rights, including trends, comparisons, a focus on a specific rights and movements, the more recent debates over "human rights," or theoretical explorations of rights, such as the relation between rights, the states, and power.

· “World Systems and the Environment.” Organizer/Discussant: Tom Burns, Sociology, University of Oklahoma. In recent centuries, the world has witnessed unparalleled technological change, wealth accumulation and population growth and concentration; these have led to an unprecedented number of problems, including many related to environmental degradation. This table invites papers that investigate the critical interface between world systems dynamics and the natural environment.

· “Indigenous Peoples, the Fourth World, Globalization, Borders, and Frontiers.” Organizer/Discussant: Tom Hall, Anthropology, DePauw University. This table seeks brief presentations from people working on any of the topics in the title. The idea is to build a network of people working on these topics who may not often connect due to how these topics are typically divided up.

· “The Prospects for World Peace.” Organizer/Discussant: Albert Bergeson, Sociology, University of Arizona. Many of us study North-South relations, and rightly so. Underdevelopment, exploitation, and so forth are key world-historical problems. However, today's world is just as importantly shaped by the new great powers (India, China, etc.), slipping older powers (USA), potentially resentful powers of the past (Europe), fragile ex-great powers (Russia), and so forth. These, it could be argued, are North-North relations. How will we all get along? What are the prospects for world peace? Can the relative post-1945 peace amongst the great powers hold? What threatens it? What can be done about our unraveling world?

· “Darfur: an ambiguous conflict?” Organizer/Discussant: Younes Abouyoub, Denis Diderot Paris VII University - Columbia University. The Darfur conflict has been depicted as the worst tragedy of this century. Some have qualified it as genocide. Is the common reference to the conflict as one opposing Arabs and Africans actually accurate? Are these clashes of identities? What does Arabness and Africaness mean for the parties in the conflict? Why is this conflict still perceived through the lens of the events of 2003, even as the conflicts have substantially shifted? Is the conflict local, regional, international, or all of the above? This table invites presentations which question the commonly perceived notions and the popular narratives of the Darfur conflict.

· “Capitalism versus Markets, Markets without Capitalism? New Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives on Braudel’s Wish.” Organizer/Discussant: Kevan Harris, Sociology, Johns Hopkins University. Fernand Braudel wrote that if his massive trilogy on the layers and structures of the world economy had accomplished anything, it was that the equating of market economy with capitalism would be permanently severed in the minds of readers. Three decades later we seem no closer to realizing his wish. Yet, if Braudel was right, and "capitalism and the market economy can coexist and interpenetrate one another without always merging entirely," then what are the implications for our understanding of the 21st century world-system and imagining possible alternatives to the current order?

If you wish to submit a paper for consideration at ASA 2010, here's what you will need to do:

1) Be a member of the American Sociological Association. If you have been a member of the ASA before , go to: https://www.e-noah.net/ASA/Login.asp. If you have never been a member before you can go to: https://www.e-noah.net/ASA/Profile/NewCheck.asp?S=1 and follow the instructions.

2) Submit an abstract and your talk to the online registration site, indicating in the first sentence of your abstract the round table to which you would like your abstract submitted. You do this by going to https://www.e-noah.net/ASA/MemberPortal.asp and logging in. On the new page, scroll down to “Events” and click “2010 Online Paper Submission System.” Then follow the instructions from there. When choosing which session to submit to you should select the “Political Economy of the World-System Roundtables.”

3) All papers must be submitted by January 13, 2010. If do not submit an abstract by this time you cannot be added into the program later. So it is important to meet this deadline.

Note: Only themed tables that include at least 3 accepted paper/abstracts will be included in the conference. In the case that we receive fewer we may need to combine papers with other similarly themed ones.

If you have any questions, please write to Kirk Lawrence at kirk.lawrence@email.ucr.edu. We hope that you will be a part of what is shaping up to be an exciting conference.

Best,

Kirk Lawrence

Christopher Dick

Hiroko Inoue

PEWS Round Table Organizers