CALL FOR PAPERS


‘The Globalization(s) of the conflict in Somalia’

*24th-25th March 2010*


Two decades ago, the collapse of the Somalian government of Siad Barre coincided with the rise of a new vision of global order: liberal, democratic, capitalist and under the leadership of the United States. US troops entered Mogadishu in the same year that Francis Fukuyama pronounced the ‘End of History’. Today, such visions seem gone forever. The liberal, free market system of the Washington Consensus is in ruins and the United Nations is once again paralysed by great power rivalries at the top table. And yet the transnational forces which lay behind the global visions of the 1990s are far from dead: if anything, they are stronger than ever. An, yet again, Somalia stands at a nexus of these global trends. In a place where dreams of the US as world policeman met with their first, ominous setback, continuing anarchy is providing a playground as well as a battlefield for competing forces of transnational scope. In 2009, Somalia is becoming the venue for a squabble of globalisations, the outcome of which may have much to tell us about the shape of things to come.

This conference will explore how the plurality of transnational forces is helping to shape the conflict in Somalia – and how Somalia, in turn, is bring its internal conflicts and contradictions to the world stage: from transnational organised crime to the transnational diaspora community; from international NGOs to international terrorist movement; from neo-fundamentalist Islam to neo-liberal economics.

To this end, the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence would like to invite you to submit an abstract of up to 500 words for a two-day conference entitled ‘The Globalization(s) of the conflict in Somalia’. It is anticipated that an edited volume will be published after the conference.


*Deadline for submission: 1st December 2009
Please submit abstracts to Emma Leonard: emma.leonard@st-andrews.ac.uk

For further information please contact either Emma Leonard (as above) or Gilbert Ramsay (gawr2@st-andrews.ac.uk)*

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Miss Emma Leonard

Research Administrative Assistant
Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence
School of International Relations
University of St Andrews
Arts Faculty Building
The Scores
St Andrews
Fife
KY16 9AX

Tel: +44 (0) 1334 462988

The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland : No SC013532