Joint Conference of the Partner Universities New Orleans and Innsbruck (as well as 5th Economic History Symposium of the Research Area “Economic and Social History” at the Faculty of Economics and Statistics at Innsbruck University)
The phenomenon of globalization is changing our world. The global process of growing together leads to the creation of a new cosmopolitan culture. Within that process of mutual influence, the importance of cities is everything but declining. They are meeting places, communication nodes and sites of exchange as well as locations, where global processes become particularly visible and influential.
“Global cities” are and always have been both – produced by globalization and producing globalization. They play an important role in the formation of a global economy, culture and society, but they are also shaped by it. They are places, where countervailing forces match, where local reactions to globalization become especially visible. Consequently, also adverse effects of globalization and backlashes to it are particularly apparent there.
The conference seeks to discuss the role of cities in the long-run process of truly “global” globalization. It aims at describing the city as a place where globalization takes place much more pronounced than anywhere else: as economic exchange, migration, communication, technological development and political conflict, as cultures clashing and amalgamating, and also as a violent process. In order to achieve that goal the conference seeks to stimulate discussions about the global city as a door to the world, open for the good and bad in it, as a multifaceted information interface, and as a focal point of globalization in various forms.
In this conference, a graduate session is included, for which we invite papers addressing the conference topic by doctoral students from all related fields (history, but also economics, geography, or anthropology) to participate. We especially invite contributions from a global/world history perspective, including those focussing on cities of much more historical than contemporary importance, those following a comparative perspective, those providing a longitudinal analysis of a certain case study, and particularly extra-European examples. But we also welcome case studies form certain fields of analysis (especially economic and social history) and restricted to certain time periods.
The conference language is English. All contributions, including the graduate forum, will be published in a collective volume in 2012. We will offer free accommodation and catering during the conference, but cannot cover travel costs.
Paper suggestions (of not more than 300 words) shall be written in English and sent by e-mail not later than July 15th. For any further requests and for submission contact:
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Andreas Exenberger
Department of Economic Theory, Policy and History
University of Innsbruck
e-mail: andreas.exenberger@uibk.ac.at