ÌÇÐÄTV

In recent decades the concept of ‘uneven and combined development’ (U&CD) has come to occupy an increasingly significant position in academic assessments of society and culture. The rise of globalized capitalism, the aggressive expansion of economic neoliberalism, and the associated emergence of global modernity as key concerns of cultural theory have all contributed to a resurgence in the deployment of this term. Together these developments therefore constitute a crucial evolution of the concept from its original inception in the early twentieth century writing of Leon Trotsky. This resurgence is witnessed, for instance, by works such as Michael Löwy’s The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development (1982), Franco Moretti’s Modern Epic: The World-System from Goethe to García Márquez (1996), Fredric Jameson’s A Singular Modernity (2002) and a recent series of articles by political scientist Justin Rosenberg. These interventions embody key moments within the ongoing project of expanding the Trotskyian terminology of a capitalist system that is definitionally uneven yet combined in character into a contemporary form of cultural and historical analysis.

The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars from across a variety of disciplines in order to examine ‘uneven and combined development’ and the issues arising from it: its genesis and history, its theoretical structure, its material manifestations and the renewed importance that it holds today.