(Here's Max's abstract.)

The transformation of Chicago?s Navy Pier and its ?Public? Space: Neoliberalism of Local Despots? ( additional title suggestions are very welcome!)

While scholarly and populist critics of neoliberalism have addressed many policy aspects associated with this widespread phenomenon across the globe, precious little attention has been paid to public (and quasi-public) spaces within Chicago. Several works have spoken more broadly to conditions in New York (i.e. Jerold Kayden?s Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience) and various theoreticians have spoken to this contestation over various spaces and places more generally (i.e David Harvey?s Spaces of Hope, Condition of Postmodernity, etc.) Drawing on several of these theoretical and site-specific works, I intend to perform a limited study on Chicago?s Navy Pier. Utilizing long form interviews, newspapers, (some) onsite field work, and their local histories (and recent transformations), it is hoped that studying these two places, in conjunction with some of the aforementioned theoretical constructs, will help assist in assuaging whether the ongoing contestations and transformations of these spaces is indicative of neoliberalism and its attendant policy prerogatives or merely of localized control and provincialism.

(Similarly, here's Brenda Parker's abstract)

Sex and the City

In this class, we have viewed neoliberalism primarily from a political-economy framework, focusing on its tendentious political and capitalist practices. In my presentation, I muse about neoliberalism as a hegemony of different sorts. Shifting to a feminist lens, I shed light on the gendered origins, constitution, and impact of neoliberalism. This perspective adds to our understanding in three ways:

(1) It makes apparent the hybrid hegemonies involved in neoliberalization processes;
(2) It illuminates the fissures and contradictions of neoliberalism in relation to gender; and
(3) It speaks to the resistance opportunities available through a feminist framework

(This is Mike Fleenor's abstract, which I'm posting for him due to technical difficulties)

The Pension Fund Economy, Contesting ?Equity?, and Urban Investment Networks:
Workers? Control of Capital and the Heartland Labor Capital Network

Abstract: The pension fund economy has many contradictions, the most fundamental being that whereas Workers have considerable claims on pension funds, Workers do not have control of these funds. Corporate pension obligations, both social and labor, have been sacrificed for the sake of a pension funded economic system detrimental to Worker and community needs. Neoliberal pension funds policies have enabled firms to use Workers? pension funds as corporate assets while Workers? assume all investment risks. Pensions, both as defined benefit and defined contribution, are sources of geographically diffuse Capital flows originating from workers? back pockets and which become concentrated in financial institutions. Pension fund investing reveals strong ?home-bias?; that is, some 90% plus of US pension investments stay within the US. Pension funds, on the whole, are not part of the global economy or certain interconnections characteristic of globalization. They remain as ?home assets?. Workers can use this home-bias and home-asset to their advantage via urban network strategies in order to invest in labor friendly, small to medium size firms, improved urban infrastructure, education, housing, and anti-poverty programs. The Heartland Labor Capital Network, founded by the Steel Valley Authority in Pittsburgh PA ?has been exploring and promoting practical, jobs-oriented investment strategies, building on labor?s capital, since 1996.? In 1999, the HLCN established the Heartland Fund using the Solidarity Fund of Quebec as its model. The Fund is an attempt ?fill a growing investment capital gap that is preventing small and medium-sized businesses from expanding.? Cities involved in the proposed Heartland Fund Regional Network are Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Seattle, Cleveland, Chicago, Bay Area, Boston and New York. Workers must take advantage of the ?home-bias? flow of pension funds and turn it into community-asset investments.

(Working title) Environmental justice from a distance: Advocacy networking in the Twin Cities for the northern Manitoba Cree
Ryan Holifield

Abstract:
In 1998, members of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation (PCN) in northern Manitoba demonstrated outside the offices of the Northern States Power Company (now Xcel Energy) in Minneapolis. Their protest against the company, which buys cheap energy from a hydroelectric project that has devastated the ecosystems of several Cree communities, attracted the attention of environmental and social justice activists in the Twin Cities. This case study examines the transnational advocacy network that has since emerged to support the PCN in their struggle. In addition to describing the emergence, operation, and effectiveness of the network, the study asks whether and how the network’s focus on a particular place has contributed to broader progressive resistance to colonial and neoliberal projects. It argues that it has done so – not so much by producing a more “broadly political” consciousness among individual activists, but instead by forcing them to make strategic decisions to broaden the scope and scale of network activities.

Well, that "virtual march on Washington" that I mentioned in class the other day did make it into the mainstream media, though who knows whether or not it was effective (or how you'd even measure that, short of our government deciding NOT to go to war). Here's the article from the NYT:

February 26, 2003
An Antiwar Demonstration That Does Not Take to the Streets
By JOHN TIERNEY

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 ? The Mall was quiet, but the switchboard on Capitol Hill was swamped today as anti-war protesters conducted what they called the first "virtual march" on Washington. The organizers, a coalition called Win Without War, said that hundreds of thousands of people were sending messages by email, fax and telephone to the Senate and the White House.

There was no way to confirm those estimates, which the organizers said were based on the number of people who had registered online to join the protest. The virtual headquarters of the march is www.moveon.org/winwithoutwar/.

On Feb. 15, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets in cities across the United States, Europe and Asia, protesting the Bush administration's threatened invasion of Iraq. While those protests were largely peaceful, the logistics of organizing such conventional demonstrations can be overwhelming.

The decision to march electronically, beginning at 9 a.m. today, may have come as a relief to Washingtonians struggling with yet another snowstorm. The streets of the city have been clogged for the past week by snow left over from a blizzard on President's Day Weekend.

A virtual march might seem an ideal form of protest for a snowy day, although even electronic protest has its hazards. The protesters were urged online to help set the agenda by "sharing your thoughts on greats goals for our nation in our unique ActionForum," but this forum did not work as well as the old-fashioned kind in Rome. Virtual marchers who clicked on the link this morning and afternoon got a message that it was closed for "routine maintenance."

The event's organizers say it is the first virtual anti-war march ever held. They say 32 groups are involved, including the National Council of Churches, the N.A.A.C.P., the Sierra Club, the National Organization for Women and MoveOn.

The Sierra Club's Web site, www.sierraclub.org, encouraged its members to send this message to senators: "Don't rush to war. Let the United Nations inspectors do their jobs to resolve the Iraq situation peacefully. And reduce the chance of war in the future by ending the U.S. dependence on oil."

The Web site also maintained that this form of protest could be effective. "Senators pay attention when their phones and fax machines light up ? and stay lit up ? from morning until night. They'll get the message that Americans want peace, that we care deeply about saving lives, and that we are well organized."

If any chant will be remembered from this march, it may be the one heard by people who tried calling the Capitol Hill switchboard today. They got the same message over and over, a series of tones followed by a woman's voice saying: "We're sorry. All circuits are busy now. Will you please try your call again later?"

The organizers of the march said they were sending gift baskets to the switchboard operators and secretaries who had to handle the flood of phone calls and faxes today.

Here is our discussion question, followed by our answers to the "questions to guide reading," from Moira and Ryan.

Discussion question:

• What analytical possibilities are opened up when we include non-human things in the study of networks? Does treating non-human things as actors (rather than simple “tools” or background elements) have the potential to reveal insights about neoliberalization and possibilities for resistance to neoliberalization? Or is it a dead end that contributes little to theory or political practice?

Questions to guide reading:

1) All but Hartwick conceive of networks as heterogeneous assemblages of human and non-human actors. In these case studies, the actors are enrolled (whether knowingly or unknowingly) in these networks for a particular political purpose. While other approaches might conceive of networks as formed by groups of people linking to one another, actor-network theory (ANT) insists that non-human actors (e.g., deer, gold, camcorders) play important roles in the formation and activity of the network. Another important distinction between ANT and other approaches is the agency attributed to network actors. Agency is conceived as an effect of relations between and among actors, rather than as an attribute possessed by individuals. Hartwick, on the other hand, argues that many of the non-human things to which ANT attributes agency are in fact social relations taking the form of commodities. She criticizes ANT as insufficient to analyze and expose the power relations involved in chains of consumption.
2) The case studies (Woods, Holloway, and Murdoch & Marsden) all discuss networks organized for political action. The networks in the case studies move between local, regional, and national scales; “local” political issues are addressed at multiple scales as different actors are enrolled in the networks. Woods, for example, discusses the controversy over a local ban on hunting, which was ultimately resolved when one of the networks (the hunters) enrolled extra-local actors to support them. In contrast, Hartwick discusses material commodity chains rather than political coalitions.
3) The three case studies trace the relations among actors within particular political coalitions. Instead of explaining the actor-networks as the effects of some sort of causal mechanism (such as the structures of capitalism or the intentions of individual human subjects), they focus on describing the networks and their effects. This approach emphasizes that agency, and therefore power, resides in the networks themselves. Thus structures and individual intentions are understood as effects of these networks.
4) A) The conceptualizations of networks in the case studies lead to such questions as:
a. Who are the actors enrolled in the network?
b. How do these actors come to be associated, and how do they work in unison?
c. How are actors represented?
d. Which links in the network hold, and which fall apart?
e. What are the political and material effects of the network?
On the other hand, the case studies don’t ask the following kinds of questions:
a. What is the overall political and economic context in which the network is operating?
b. What kinds of inequalities and hierarchies are there within networks?
B) These authors don’t undertake analyses of the efficacy of the networks they study. Instead of asking why some networks and not others are successful in achieving particular political objectives, they seek to use the network as an ontological framework to explore the workings of political coalitions.

This might be of interest to folks who are studying "elite networks":

Call for Papers

Annual Meeting of the Business History Conference
In Conjunction with the Académie François Bourdon

"Networks"

18-20 June 2004, Le Creusot, France

On 18-20 June 2004, the Business History Conference (BHC) will host its
annual meeting in Le Creusot, France.

The BHC is the leading scholarly organization in the United States for the
study of business history. Le Creusot is a major center for the study of
France's industrial heritage, and the home of the Académie François
Bourdon. The Académie is an independent research institute that maintains
an archive with many collections on topics in European business
history. The Académie also maintains several buildings that were once part
of the Schneider Works, long a leading manufacturer of steel, armaments,
and metal products. The conference will take place at the Académie, as
well as at a nearby château. Le Creusot is located 250 kilometers
southeast of Paris, and is a gateway to the culturally rich Burgundy
region. It is easily reached from Paris by high-speed train.

Conference Theme

The theme of the conference is "networks." In the past few years,
networks of various kinds have engaged the attention of business
historians. Students of the so-called network industries in
communications, transportation, energy, and finance have moved beyond the
firm and the industry to make networks a focus of inquiry. Other kinds of
networks--rooted in geography, professional ties, mutual self-interest, or
shared values (such as religious affiliation or educational
background)--have figured prominently in recent work on innovation,
industrial regions, trade associations, cartels, and enterprises run by
women and minorities.

The program committee welcomes proposals that explore business networks,
broadly construed. The committee is particularly interested in scholarship
that is grounded in research in business archives, trade journals, oral
histories, or other primary sources. Among the questions that presenters
might wish to consider are the following:
· How and to what extent can a focus on networks illuminate central
themes in business history?

· How and to what extent can a focus on networks complement the
traditional preoccupation of business historians with firms and industries?

· How and to what extent can the study of networks build bridges
between business history and other areas of inquiry?

· How and to what extent can the study of networks alter our
understanding of the boundaries between business and society?

Note: In keeping with a longstanding tradition of the BHC, the program
committee will also entertain submissions on topics that are NOT directly
related to the conference theme.

PRIZES

Each year, the Business History Conference awards the Herman E. Krooss
Prize to an outstanding dissertation in business history completed in the
past three years. The Krooss Prize Committee welcomes submissions from
recent Ph.D.'s (2001-4) in history, business administration, the history of
science and technology, economics, law, and related fields. If you would
like to participate in this competition (and present at the conference),
please indicate this in a cover letter, and include a one-page vitae and
one-page dissertation abstract.

The Business History Conference also awards the K. Austin Kerr Prize for
the best first paper presented by a Ph.D. candidate or recent Ph.D.
(2001-4). If you wish to participate in this competition, please indicate
this in your paper proposal. Proposals accepted for the dissertation
session are not eligible for the Kerr Prize.

Submission Procedures

Potential presenters may submit proposals either for individual papers or
for entire panels. Individual paper proposals should include a one-page
abstract and a one-page curriculum vitae. The abstract should summarize
the argument of the paper, the sources on which it is based, and its
relationship to existing scholarship. Each panel proposal should include a
cover letter stating the rationale for the session, a one-page abstract and
vitae for each proposed paper (up to three), and list of suggested chairs
and commentators.

Graduate students who would like to have their dissertations discussed in
an informal yet informed dissertation-in-progress workshop should indicate
this in a cover letter, and include a one-page vitae and one-page
dissertation abstract.

The deadline for the receipt of all proposals is 1 October 2003. All
presenters are expected to submit abstracts of their papers for posting on
the Business History Conference's web site. In addition, presenters are
encouraged to post electronic versions of their papers prior to the
meeting. Graduate students whose papers are accepted for inclusion in the
program are eligible for travel grants to help defray the cost of their
attendance.

The program committee consists of Richard R. John (chair), University of
Illinois at Chicago; Patrick Fridenson, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales, Paris; JoAnne Yates, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; Reggie Blaszczyk, Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia;
and Philippe Mioche, University of Aix-Marseille I.

The chair of the Krooss Prize Committee is Andrew Godley, University of
Reading, United Kingdom. The chair of the Kerr Prize Committee is Janet
Greenlees, University of Manchester, United Kingdom.

Please send all proposals to Roger Horowitz, secretary-treasurer, Business
History Conference, P. O. Box 3630, Wilmington, DE 19807,
USA. Phone: (302) 658-2400; fax: (302) 655-3188; email rh@udel.edu

Eric just sent this out and I'm reposting it here: "I attach a copy of a set of guidelines for case study research that have been composed by me, Greg, Helga and Jamie, as promised in Trout Lake. As Helga notes, these are a bit long and involved, but hopefully better than nothing."

What is your unit of analysis?
Are you analyzing a particular place, a particular social concern, a particular activist group, a particular neoliberal concern, a particular promoter of neoliberal ideas and/or practices, or a particular “network” involving all of the above?

You should be able to show how your case relates to processes of neoliberalization.
Remember, “neoliberalism” is both a particular ideal version of capitalist logic, and a particular method of actually-existing capitalism -- both have a very recent history but the two are not exactly the same and the two are not currently universal in the global mix of capitalist ideas and forms. Part of the goal of your project should be to help analyze and map out these ideals and patterns of neoliberalism themselves.
- Does your case seek to advance, or resist, the process of neoliberalization (defined as the application of state/political power in the extension of markets, market-like systems and market disciplines)?
- How is your case affected by neoliberalization (e.g., by privatization, entrepreneurialism, shifting funding priorities, shifting organizational goals).
- What are the impacts, if any, of your case on neoliberalization?
- What have you learned about neoliberalization, and capitalism more generally?

You should be able to show how your case relates to cities and urban theories.
Cities and urban theories are constantly being transformed, challenged and revised; think about what your case has to say about the usefulness (and limits) of these theories
- Does it occur in cities, or connect cities (and if so, why is this, and is it significant for the dynamics of the case study)?
- Does it have important implications for the functioning of cities and/or urban life?
- What have you learned about cities and urban politics?

Think about connections between cities.
- Where do new ideas and initiatives originate (e.g., in which cities and why)?
- How do they move across space, and time?
- How (and where) do agents in one city draw on/learn from initiatives from other cities? By what channels does this learning take place?
- Where are they rejected, or fail?

Think comparatively:
- How might I compare my case to another one in a different geographical/social/ political/historical context?
- How do similar networks and issues operate in cities in other regional contexts? (e.g., Europe, or Asia, vs. North America). (If there are no such comparative examples in the literature, well, that’s important to know as well.)
- How does your case compare to others that are being researched by class participants?

What does your case imply for democracy and social justice?
- Don’t just describe your case, but critically analyze it.
- Do the efforts under study deserve support, or merit suspicion? You should be engaging not only in empirical observations and theoretical analysis, but also in value judgments.

Think about networks in your case study:
- What kinds of networks seem to exist (e.g., local and non-local networks, networks of networks, actor-networks, hierarchical networks)?
- How are networks being represented and thus made visible or invisible? This involves several aspects: how you as the analyst are making a network of relations between actors visible; how the actors themselves “see” (or don’t see) the networks they operate within; and whether making networks visible (or invisible) is a conscious strategy of the actors themselves as they pursue their goals.
- How do networks come about?
- Who are the main actors in the network and how do they influence the network agenda?
- Are they networks? You should ask yourself: Is there even a “network” in play in your case, or is it another kind of pattern of relations and exchanges between actors (such as a decentralized market outcome or a formal hierarchical power structure)?
- Can your study help us understand what “networks” are? How do ideal network types or idealized visions differ from really existing networks?
- How do networks relate to states, and markets?
- What constitutes, and can be included in, a network (e.g., are silent partners in a collaboration part of its network)?
- What is traveling through a network, and how? Think about, and attempt to trace, the “currency” that might flow through a network. Are the actors trading knowledge, ideas, models, commodities, capital, or even people?
- Pay attention to (dark, naughty, elite) networks that contribute to, as well as those (light, nice, cuddly, non-elite) networks that resist neoliberalization
- Pay attention to nationwide think-act tanks and networks, providing expertise to networks resisting neoliberalization.
- What are obstacles and difficulties in networks/networking?
- Are there actual or possible unanticipated negative consequences stemming from the operation of ‘good’ networks?
- What have you learned about networks? What is the benefit of “network thinking”?

Use theory to inform your case, but also let your case question the theory.
We will be covering a lot of background material on spatial and urban theory, theories of capitalism and neoliberalism, theories of social movements and social justiceand theories relating to networks. The first challenge (especially for the non-geographers in the group) is to be able to use this set of terminology, concepts, and processes to shape and analyze your own case; but the second challenge is to see what your case has to say about those theories in the first place.

Examine your case study from the outside as well as the inside.
- What did your case study teach you about broader issues (e.g., networks, social movements, cities, neoliberalization)?
- What can you learn from stepping outside your network and examining it critically, rather than just tracing how it works (e.g., don’t just narrate how a network is represented in the Internet, but try and read that representation critically—what lies behind it?)

Consider collaborative research.
Think broadly about this -- not just people working on the same city or the same social justice concern or the same network, but people coming to the same conclusions about neoliberalism, social movements, urban futures, or network functioning in the first place.
- Are there others in the seminar with whom you could do a joint project of common interest?
- Are there others in the seminar with who you should be in constant touch, to your mutual benefit?
- Even if you are working on substantively different topics, are there others you might usefully compare notes with, or share elements of your background research?

How can I use the work that others have already compiled? (especially Anant and Mike)
Check through their lists of networks, articles, and web sites (posted on our web site). Scour the bibliographies and footnotes of everything you read for this course. And don’t be afraid to ask the faculty for references too.

This is a conference to be held here at UW which might fit in with several folks' research interests in urban futures and urban neoliberalization...

The European Union Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
invites faculty and graduate students to a conference April 4 & 5, 2003

National Feminisms in a Transnational Arena: The European Union and Gender Politics

Feminist movements in every European country have taken distinctive forms due to specific national political factors. Despite these differences, European feminist movements increasingly share common political terrain due to the
expansion of the powers and boundaries of the European Union.

This conference considers questions such as: How are feminist movements adapting to the opportunities and obstacles that the EU poses for their particular national political traditions?
How much does "soft law" and the "boomerang" effect from the EU on member states influence the gender politics of individual countries?
What can the EU offer feminists in relation to specific issues and by means of particular strategies?
What are the costs of trying to work in and through a system that is widely viewed as suffering a "democratic deficit"?
And how do disagreements among feminists over what policies are most in women's interests get aired, negotiated and perhaps resolved in the context of transnational work in Europe?

Note: All panels and keynotes run serially, not concurrently.

Confirmed speakers include: Laura Agustin, Lisa D. Brush, Carol
Hagemann-White, Barbara Hobson, Jacqueline Heinen, Cathryn Hoskyns,
Amy Elman, Sally Kenney, Don Kulick, Rosa Logar, Renate Klein,
Patricia Yancey Martin, Amy Mazur, Sonya Michel, Claudia Neusuess,
Joyce Outshoorn, Silke Roth, Jill Rubery, Chiara Saraceno, Dorothy Stetson,
Mieke Verloo, Angelika von Wahl, Sylvia Walby, Fiona Williams, Alison
Woodward and Katrin Zippel.

Registration:
Non-UW Participants. Registration fees are $40 for students and $60 for
non-students (registration on-site is $50 and $70 respectively) and covers
ALL three meals on Friday (April 4) and Saturday (April 5).
Those coming from out of town should plan to arrive on Thursday night
since the program begins promptly at 8:30 on Friday and runs
through Saturday night.
UW faculty, Staff and Students. Registation is free. However, UW
associates must register to reserve a seat.

To register, please e-mail the EUC Project Assistant,Anne Genereux, at eucenter@intl-institute.wisc.edu.
Include the following information: Name, Status (Faculty, Staff, Graduate, Undergraduate),
Address, Phone Number, E-mail Address and Departmental Affiliation.
Pre-registration is available until March 31.
Registration forms and details of the schedule are available through the conference web site.

Conference website:
http://wiscinfo.doit.wisc.edu/eucenter/Conferences/Feminism/index.htm.
Further questions should be directed to the EUC Program Assistant, Anne
Genereux, at: eucenter@intl-institute.wisc.edu or 608-265-8040.

____________________________________________________________________________
Rebekah D. Pryor, Program Assistant
cges@intl-institute.wisc.edu

Center for German and European Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison
213 Ingraham Hall
Madison, WI 53706
http://daadcenter.wisc.edu
Phone: 608/265-8032 Fax: 608/265-9541