Introduction
The 2008 Wall Summer Institute for Research “The End of the Peasant? Global Capitalism and the Future of Agrarian Society” was held June 23 to 27, 2008. The Summer Institute brought together invited participants from around the world to explore the implications of a globalized capitalism for the future of agrarian society. The morning sessions of invited paper discussions were open to the public. In addition, there were be two free public evening gala talks.
It is well known that capitalist modernity beginning in the 19th century drastically changed the nature of agrarian society in North America and Europe. Presently, the globalization of capitalism appears to have a similar impact on societies of the global south, the currently fashionable term for what used to be called the Third World. The workshop took a comparative approach to the impact of capitalism on agrarian society. It involved experts from Eastern and South Asia and Latin America.
Some of the topics covered were:
- The status of the national economy under economic globalization
- Export-oriented development and rural society
- Urbanization of society and its implications for rural areas
- Development, ecological destruction, and the fate of rural society
- Globalization and governance
- People’s movements for survival
The Summer Institute featured evening gala talks by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant Secretary-General on Economic Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs at the United Nations, and Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University and developer of the most well-known version of the world-system approach.
The 2008 Wall Summer Institute UBC Graduate Student Symposium on June 28, 2008 was a crucial part of the week-long Summer Institute. The symposium followed the thematic focus of the Summer Institute. It brought together UBC graduate students from a range of disciplines to examine critically the conflicted formation and transformation of institutions, ideologies and practices in the rural, urban, and peri-urban spaces in various parts of the world as these places experience the ascendance of neoliberal socio-cultural, political and economic agenda.
Convened by Dianne Newell, Director, Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. Co-directed by Arif Dirlik, 2005 Peter Wall Institute Distinguished Visiting Professor, and Alex Woodside, Professor Emeritus, History, University of British Columbia. Coordinated by Abidin Kusno, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, and Alex Day, History, Wayne State University.