Call for applications, YSI workshop at the 2019 ASEER Conference, February

Workshop “Is orthodox/heterodox a fruitful classification? From static labels to plural and interdisciplinary theory building”

Deadline EXTENDED: January 16th.

Undergraduate, master and PhD students, as well as young scholars working on any social science are invited to submit a brief note (between 300 and 700 words) stating why and how they think our workshop could contribute to their training and research, including a short description of your current research project and/or training.

In a nutshell, our workshop will attempt to elaborate on alternative ways of tackling paramount economic (as well as political and social) questions. This is not a workshop where we will focus on saying neoclassical economics is bad, while heterodoxy is good just because it is said to be at the antipodes of the former. We will instead suggest to avoid starting by already frozen labels even if mainstream economics has indeed failed to provide a complete and accurate understanding of contemporary capitalist system, thus failing in its policy recommendations.

On the contrary, we invite you to openly debate on how we conceive economic problems; to reexamine our own practice as faculty, researchers and professionals. We will argue that labeling before developing ideas freezes conceptual development, limiting our capacity to actually address pressing challenges of our time. Yet, never before economists have been so pressed to provide answers. In particular, the economics profession has been elevated to such dominating status among social sciences that we wonder if this is the right path to follow, disregarding other disciplines’ contributions. In particular, economic expert advice has played and still plays such as an important role in public sector domain which could be compared to that of engineering experts in the 19th century.

With this responsibility in mind, have you ever wondered why we automatically assume that the researcher should start by “choosing” a stream of thought as a framework, just as if we were choosing a meal from a menu? Even before that choice we had to come to another, probably non-sufficiently informed, decision. From which discipline will we address our problem? Once our answer is economics, the decision making process continues with the quake between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Moreover, for those choosing the latter, it continues with a third choice: which heterodox school of thought will frame your research?
In this context, we ask ourselves whether this ex-ante splitting process is the best approach to contemporary economic, political and social challenges. What could happen if we change our approach for a more interdisciplinary research that does not neglect a contribution before it has been put under deep scrutiny?

Summing up, our workshop will continuously move backwards, re-defining those questions that seem to be widely answered but that we think should be further elaborated in a context where those answers are not fulfilling our expectations of contributing to a better life for all. Therefore, our main aim will not be to provide magical solutions, because the out-of-date status of our discipline could not be completely dealt with in only one workshop. Nevertheless, our commitment is to invite you to work together, in a horizontal and open space, where we expect to jointly develop an enriching and fruitful path where we can all reframe –thus transform- our original questions, raise new ones and keep working on all of them. Hence, the only requirements to apply are to be open enough to embrace multiple contributions (conceptually integrating different disciplines and authors within and beyond economics) and critical enough to move beyond them, accepting that knowledge is a never ending process where we critically build from gaps and failures. Join us!

Accommodation and partial travel stipends (for international students) will be provided to selected young scholars.
Deadline for submissions: January 16th, 2019.
More information about the event: https://www.uni-due.de/soziooekonomie/gsoebw2019_en
Venue: University of Duisburg-Essen.
Language: Our workshop, as well as most of the event, will be in English. There will always be a session in English for those not knowing German.