The Theme of the 42nd Annual Conference will be “Business Cycles in the Modern World System: Past, Present and Future.” The conference will be held at Fairfield University, in Fairfield, CT on April 26-28 2018. Paper proposals (around 500 words) should be sent to pews2018@gmail.com by October 30, 2017.

From the sixteenth century until the present day the capitalist world economy has been characterized by different economic cycles or conjunctures of various duration and intensity. Economic cycles impacting the core, the periphery and the semi-periphery have regularly played out across a multitude of commodity chains, impacting nation states, corporations, and households. Since the profound social, economic and political consequences of the Great Recession in 2008-2009 are still unfolding, the 42nd conference of the PEWS section of the American Sociological Association seeks to examine the role and significance of business cycles in the modern world-system by examining the following themes:

1) business cycles and social movements
2) business cycles and political trends
3) business cycles and commodity chains
4) business cycles and migration
5) business cycles and the web of life

Keynote speaker will be Matías Vernengo.