[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: "Money, Power, Representations in the Americas and in Europe, " Paris Ouest Nanterre, France, November 20-11, 2014.

[Gonul Pultar]

Money, Power, Representations in the Americas and in Europe

International  Conference co-organized by the Universities of Paris
Ouest Nanterre, Poitiers, Le Mans, Caen

Université Paris Ouest Nanterre 20-22 November 2014


Long before the rise of neoliberalism and monetarism, in the early years 
of the XXth century, German sociologist Georg Simmel in his
Philosophy of Money had argued that money had become God because it
had become a "goal in itself" and its worship had triumphed over
organized religion. He advocated an approach to money which would not
be solely based upon economics. In a book entitled Money: Whence It
Came, Where It Went published in 1975 John Kenneth Galbraith wrote:
"Why is anything intrinsically so valueless so obviously desirable?"

This conference proposes to untangle the apparent dual nature of
money, the so-called universal equivalent, and its relations to power.
In all so-called democratic liberal and capitalist democracies, money
plays a key role in institutions and in cultural life. It is the
source of conflicts and also the requirement for any collective
existence. Money can therefore be considered as the fuel of any
democratic, political or cultural action and most economic, political
and political issues are caught in the dialectic of too little vs. too
much money.

Thus political parties need funding to contribute to the expression of
the will of the people but massive spending in elections campaigns
(close to $ 6 billion in the November 2012 elections in the US) is
itself a threat to democracy. Money is therefore an enabler but also a
corrupter of democracy and civic life. It is a means of access to
power but also a symbolic equivalent or a signifier of power. Money in
large part defines wealth and poverty and is the general converter of
most social conflicts. In the words of Marx in his 1844 Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts: "If money is the bond binding me to human
life, binding society to me, connecting me with nature and man, is not
money the bond of all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is
it not, therefore, also the universal agent of separation? "

Thinking about money and power entails revisiting age-old problems of
distribution, of money and power, in society, investments and
conflicts between social classes, interest groups, minorities or
political factions. Whether one thinks of social movements like Occupy
or the Tea Party, tax revolts, debates over budgets or discussions
about the military-industrial complex the central issue is the
distribution of money and therefore the allocation of power. Even
discussion of cultural issues involves a representation of fairness or
justice which goes hand in hand with financial considerations. Think
tanks produce ideas about the allocation of resources which are
challenged by other power centers in society.

Issues of economic fairness pervade the political discussion of all
Western democracies. Since Aristotle's definition of the "good life"
groups formerly excluded from the possibility of achieving it have
fought to be included and this fight has always included a
determination to change the distribution of wealth in order to get " a
slice of the pie" or a "bigger slice of the pie". The power of nations
or to use Paul Kennedy's phrase their "rise and fall" is a function of
their economic and financial power. The representations of nations,
cultural institutions are closely connected with their financial
clout.

Yet thinking about money and power must also incorporate a
philosophical dimension about What Money Can't Buy: the Moral Limits
of Markets (Michael Sandel). Thus rethinking the consumer society may
lead one to focus on non-monetary aspects of the "good life" and
representations of empowerment which are more connected to access to
symbolic resources than to the traditional sharing of the pie
conception of politics. So money and power imply studying poverty, the
humiliation of being deprived of money in a society worshipping it but
also the anxiety of "status seekers" (Vance Packard) or the new cool
arrogance of haves in their contacts with the have-nots. For money and
the flaunting of it as a signifier of power provide sociologists with
an area of study. (L'Argent sans foi ni loi, Michel Pinçon, Monique
Pinçon-Charlot) "Conspicuous consumption" has been a sociological
field of study ever since Thornstein Veblen but in a society in which
Mammon is God and celebrity culture characterizes "liquid modernity"
(Zygmunt Bauman) wealth, the new forms of money worship need to be
analyzed. Status, social stratification and the radical exclusion of
the "truly disadvantaged" (William Julius Wilson) are thus part of the
field of interest of this conference.

The world of art is also a field worth investigating from the
perspective of the relation between money and power and their
representations, from funding for cultural institutions to the tension
between artistic critique and the financial domination of art markets,
to the study of the representation or denunciation of money as God in
painting or sculpture (Barbara Kruger, Damien Hirst). Money and power
are, of course, key ingredients of Hollywood movies and TV series.
This international colloquium will thus focus on politics and power
defined in as broad a way as possible and tackle issues pertaining to
economics, social movements, minorities, artistic expression and
philosophical considerations of the role and meaning of money and
power. Proposals are therefore invited about historical, philosophical
and social science topics in which discussion of power and money plays
a central role.


Proposals to be sent before May 15, 2014

Contacts:
Pierre Guerlain :
pierre.guerlain at u-paris10.fr<mailto:pierre.guerlain at u-paris10.fr>,
Eliane Elmaleh :
eliane.elmaleh at univ-lemans.fr<mailto:eliane.elmaleh at univ-lemans.fr>,
Taoufik Djeballi :
taoufik.djebali at unicaen.fr<mailto:taoufik.djebali at unicaen.fr>,
Salah Oueslati :
salah.oueslati at univ-poitiers.fr<mailto:salah.oueslati at univ-poitiers.fr>