Société d'études socialistes

About the Conference: The theme of the 2017 Society for Socialist Studies Conference is Liberation Here and Now: Continuity and Change in Socialist Studies at 50 Years and Beyond. Taking place in the Dish with One Spoon territory, based on a treaty between the Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee, Congress 2017 at Ryerson University references the 150th anniversary of Canada’s confederation with its theme, ‘The Next 150, On Indigenous Lands’. We therefore particularly invite analysis this year that critically reflects on what is affirmed and whose struggles are erased in celebrations of Canada as a nation. As a settler colonial project founded on Indigenous dispossession, genocidal policies, and systemic racism, the Canadian state has continued to advance policies and practices consistent with the intertwined logics of colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy. Canada's "dominion" includes this internal imperialism and dispossession, contributing to resource extraction that now threatens human survival worldwide. At the same time, Canada often acts at capital's behest in the global South, engaging in a neo-imperial project that extends and reproduces relations of exploitation and alienation around the globe. We call upon participants to fundamentally trouble Project Canada, to celebrate past and future resistances and solidarities, and to engage in dialogue on how to get to a decolonized praxis and collective liberation here and now. As part of this dialogue, we remain open as always to sessions, papers, and roundtables on the full range of socialist inquiry. We note here other important anniversaries in 2017, such as 150 years of the publication of Marx’s Capital and 100 years since women’s enfranchisement in Canada. This conference is also an important opportunity to reflect on the Society for Socialist Studies at its 50th anniversary. How has Socialist Studies helped us know and change the world? And what conversations and transformations need to happen in the next 50 years? About the Society: The Society for Socialist Studies (SSS) is an association of progressive academics, students, activists and members of the general public. Ryerson 2017 is an opportunity to mark the Society's 50th anniversary and to build for the future. Formed in 1967, the Society’s purpose is to facilitate and encourage research and analysis with an emphasis on socialist, feminist, anti-racist and ecological points of view.