08.05.2014

Institutskolloquium: A Cultural/cultureal Political Economy of the Eurozone Crisis

Bob Jessop (Lancaster University), Wednesday 14 May 2014, 16:00 c.t., 124 IfP

Institutskolloquium/<wbr></wbr>Departmental Seminar

Wednesday 14 May 2014, 16:00 c.t., 124 IfP

Prof. Dr. Bob Jessop (Lancaster University)

A Cultural/cultureal Political Economy of the Eurozone Crisis

The cultural turn has taken off in political economy, including its international and global variants; but this often comes at the expense of neglecting the extra-discursive or "material" dimensions of the world market and its embedding in a world of states. This lecture presents the key features of a cultural political economy that navigates between a constructivist Charybdis and structuralist Scylla to produce a coherent theoretical approach to the "semiotic" and "material" aspects of capitalist social formations – hence cultureal political economy. After introducing these features, it demonstrates the intellectual added-value of this approach in relation to the origins of the Eurozone crisis, its development, and attempts at crisis-management.

Bob Jessop studied sociology at Exeter University and then moved to the University of Cambridge (1967) doing doctoral research in political sociology in the Faculty of Economics and Politics. Since 1970 he worked as Research Fellow and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences in Cambridge. Having moved to University of Essex as Lecturer in Government and Reader in Government, he was finally appointed Professor of Sociology at University of Lancaster in 1990. He is renowned for his books and many journal articles on critical theories of the state. His recent research interests embrace changes in contemporary capitalism and cultural political economy.