The Other Globalisers: How the Socialist and the Non-Aligned World Shaped the Rise of Post-War Economic Globalisation

Die Konferenz “The Other Globalisers: How the Socialist and the Non-Aligned World Shaped the Rise of Post-War Economic Globalisation” fand vom 6.-7. Juli 2017 in Exeter statt. Ziel der Konferenz war nicht weniger, als das vorherrschende Narrativ der Globalisierung herauszufordern. Dieses tendiert dazu, kapitalistische Staaten als die treibende Kraft der wirtschaftlichen Globalisierungsprozesse zu beurteilen. Dem gegenüber werden socialistische Staaten als die gescheiterten, passiven Elemente gestellt, Diese Darstellung ignoriert jedoch vielseitige Formen transnationaler Vernetzung zwischen sozialistischen und blockfreien Staaten. Die Konferenz “The Other Globalisers” stellte diesem Narrativ die Frage entgegen, inwieweit sozialistische und blockfreie Staaten als Akteure der Globalisierung betrachtet werden sollten und welche Alternativen sie dem globalen Kapitalismus entgegenzusetzen versuchten. In ihrer Konsequenz führen diese Aspekte schließlich zu der Frage, inwieweit eine Anerkennung sozialistischer und blockfreier Staaten nach einer alternativen Geschichtsschreibung verlange – und zu welchem Zeitpunkt diese beginnen müsse. 

The story of post-World War II global economic integration is often told as a one of capitalist success and socialist failure, in which non-Western actors appear as the objects rather than the subjects of globalisation. Yet this narrative ignores countless forms of transnational connection and entanglement that emerged out of socialist and non-aligned contexts in the second half of the twentieth century, including circulations of people, goods, expertise, and ideas, as well as the creation of new markets and institutions, many of which survived long past the collapse of the Cold War order. “The Other Globalisers,” invited scholars from three continents and a wide array of disciplinary backgrounds to address this imbalance.

Lesen Sie den ausführlichen Tagungsbericht von Johanna Folland bei HSozKult.

Conference Overview:

Panel 1: Chronologies of Socialist Globalisations

Marc-William Palen (University of Exeter) – Marx and Manchester: The Socialist Foundations of Post-1945 Globalisation

James Mark (University of Exeter) – Alternative? Socialist? Writing Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union into Postwar Globalisation 

Christina Schwenkel (University of California – Riverside) – The Afterlife of Global Socialism: Technology and Mobility in the Postcolony 

Discussant: Wolfgang Knöbl (Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung)

Panel 2: Global Integration

Angela Romano (University of Glasgow) – Competing Plans of Pan-European Cooperation: European Community’s Policy and Soviet Proposals During the 1970s Globalization

Besnik Pula (Virginia Tech) – From Reform Socialism to Transnational Capitalism: The Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment in Central and Eastern Europe

Discussant: Federico Romero (European University Institute)

Panel 3: Global Institutions Without Imperialism

Johanna Bockman (George Mason University) – Financial Globalisation Through Socialist and Non-Aligned Banks

Max Trecker (Institute for Contemporary History, Berlin) – Globalisation by Import Substitution? The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and the Global South

Vlad Pașca (New Europe College) – Global Advocacy or Self-Interested Relativism? Socialist Romania, International Organizations, and the Quest for Economic Development (1960s-1980s)

Ljubica Spaskovska (University of Exeter) – The Non-Aligned, the UN and the Defeat of the ‘New International Economic Order’

Discussant: Richard Toye (University of Exeter)

Round Table Discussion

Johanna Bockman (George Mason University)

Wolfgang Knöbl (Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung)

Federico Romero (European University Institute)

Panel 4: Neoliberalism and the Socialist and Nonaligned Worlds

Patrick Neveling (School of Oriental and African Studies) – The New International Division of Labour before the New International Economic Order: Special Economic Zones and Neoliberal Globalisation since 1947

Tobias Rupprecht (University of Exeter) – “Neoliberal” Ideas in the Communist Periphery

Discussant: James Mark (Exeter)

Panel 5: Africa and Alternative Globalisations

Darius A’Zami (Renmin University of China) – Extra-Liberal Interdependence: The Land Commission, Heterodox Globalisation and its Roots in Sino-Tanzanian Relations in the Cold War

Theodora Dragostinova (The Ohio State University) – The Second World in the Third: Bulgarian Notions of Economic and Cultural Development in Nigeria, 1976-1982

Pavel Szobi (European University Institute) – Was Angola the “Czechoslovak Africa?” The Obstacles of the ČSSR Support for the MPLA Government Between 1975 and 1992

Discussant: Patrick Neveling (School of Oriental and African Studies)

Panel 6: Resources and Experts

Ned Richardson-Little (University of Exeter) – East Germany and the Failed Dream of Global Socialist Oil Solidarity

Jan Zofka (University of Leipzig) – Coal as the Other Oil: East German Technical Experts and Industrial Expansion in the Socialist World of the 1950s

Andrew Kloiber (McMaster University) – Brewing Global Socialism: Coffee, East Germans and the World, 1949-1989

Discussant: Piers Ludlow (LSE)

Concluding Discussion