Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation Speaker: Ben Spies-Butcher Thursday 7 November 2024, 12-1:30pm Room 441, Social Sciences Building (A02), The University of Sydney Neoliberalism has transformed work, welfare and democracy. However, its impacts, and its future, are more complex than we often imagine. Alongside growing inequality, social spending has been rising. This…
Join a panel of experts for a conversation that tackles the moral and ethical obligations integral to research and investing priorities. When: 5:00 pm – 6:15 pm, October 14, 2014 Where: Eastern Avenue Lecture Theatre 315, University of Sydney Registrations: https://events.humanitix.com/weapons-climate-justice-and-investing-ethically We are living in an era of overlapping crises: from climate catastrophe to devastating wars, alongside…
During the past decade, it has become obvious that economic interconnectedness did not bring forth frictionless international relations as many liberal theorists had predicted. To the contrary, the fact that economic integration has been profoundly uneven has enabled the weaponisation of asymmetrical economic relations for the achievement of geopolitical and/or economic goals (Whyte 2022; Farrell 2023). The weaponisation of the unique international role of the US dollar is one of the most consequential examples of this trend. For instance, in the period since 2001, US sanctions designations have expanded by an extraordinary 933%. In the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine, dollar hegemony made it possible to freeze Russia’s foreign reserves and expel the country from the SWIFT payments system and US correspondent banking. Many states, including geopolitical rivals of the US such as China, understand this reality as a direct threat to their sovereign rights and interests and have been debating possible solutions, such as the introduction of central bank digital currencies and/or the creation of alternative mechanisms of payments clearing and financial messaging (Eichengreen 2022).
The intertwining between dollar hegemony and private money creation puts additional pressures on state sovereignty, as functions with profound and direct effects on the organisation of public life, such as money creation and credit allocation, are carried out by private institutions. Lawyers and political theorists alike have produced useful elaborations on the effects of dollar hegemony and public money on monetary sovereignty (Pistor 2017; Murau & van’t Klooster 2023). What remains relatively under-explored is the conceptual and practical challenges posed by dollar hegemony to state sovereignty more broadly, beyond the confines of monetary sovereignty. In other words, more work remains to be done on the tensions between state sovereignty, a globalised capitalist economy, and the economic unevenness that hegemonic currencies embody (Tzouvala 2024).
To this end, we seek contributions from economists, IR scholars, political theorists, historians, sociologists and lawyers to explore this important question as well as its theoretical and practical implications.
Political economy seminar Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt Speaker: Mareike Beck, University of Warwick When: Wednesday 17 April, 3-4pm, 2024 Where: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 341, The University of Sydney, and Zoom About the talk: I will speak about my new book, Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. The book offers a…
Political Economy Seminar Cryptocurrencies as units of account: possibilities for a postcapitalist, distributed mode of measurement Presenter: Dick Bryan Date: Oct 25 2022 Time: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time) Location: Room 650, Social Sciences Building (A02), University of Sydney, NSW, 2006 and Zoom Recording Abstract There is, as yet, relatively little…
Join Australian Feminist Studies (AFS) and the School of Social and Political Sciences (SSPS) at the University of Sydney for the launch of AFS’ special issue on ‘Money’. The issue asks: how is money a feminist issue? Speakers include: Lisa Adkins (Head of School, Social and Political Sciences) whose editorial explores how “the new monetary order…
‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’: Problematising Property Financialisation Masterclass with Rachel Weber (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Brett Christophers (Uppsala University) In this seminar we discuss the burgeoning literature in geography and urban studies on the financialisation of assets in general and property assets in particular. Our aim is to identify and critically reflect…
Unpacking the Private Rental Investment Boom in the UK and Australia Declining home ownership and an expanding private rental sector have been dominant global trends over the past decade. In Australia, this pattern has seen private rental expand from 21% of all households to 26% in the ten years to 2013/14. Albeit from a lower…
