18~19 November 2023 – University of Tokyo (Hongo Campus)
We invite historical researchers of all approaches and disciplines to an international symposium that explores the history of commodities in different temporal and regional contexts. As a multifaceted topic, commodity history has been examined from a variety of disciplinary angles, including economic and business history, social and cultural history, global and transnational history, anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. Recent works by Anna Tsing (2015) and Joshua Specht (2019) situate the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities as integral to capitalism, creating local and global networks of commercial and cultural exchange. Drawing on Arjun Appandurai’s (1986) influential work on the ‘social life of things’, Jane Bennett (2010) and Ian Hodder (2012) examine how commodities themselves possess a social existence, with the meanings attached to them shaped not only by knowledge of their intrinsic properties and market value but also by the politics of negotiation and contestation.
This two-day interdisciplinary event aims to identify these intersections and interrogate what they mean for our understanding of commodities, both tangible (food, natural resources, luxury goods) and intangible (labour, information, financial instruments), and their broader significance for questions of power, knowledge, and social change. We welcome a variety of papers on topics from all historical periods and regions, dealing with, but not necessarily limited to, the following themes.
- Global capitalism and commodity production and distribution networks
- Cultural interaction and exchange through commodities
- Gender, race, empire, and the impact of commodities on marginalised groups
- Commodities and science, technology, and medicine
- The politics and ethics of commodity pricing and distribution
- The Anthropocene and the environmental impacts of commodity chains
- Critique and regulation of commodity consumption
- Material culture and the social history of things
- Interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to commodity history
The symposium will be hosted in person at the Center for International Research on the Japanese Economy (CIRJE) on 18-19 November 2023. Participation is free, and those joining from outside Tokyo will receive a bursary to cover part or all of their travel and accommodation expenses (adjusted according to where they will be travelling from). Applications are especially encouraged from graduate students and postdocs in the early stages of their academic careers.
Applicants are invited to submit proposals for individual papers of 20 minutes or panels of up to 90 minutes. Abstracts of ~300 words for individual speakers, or panel abstracts of ~400 words and individual abstracts for each speaker, should be submitted through the following online form by 28 August 2023: https://forms.gle/Avd9q9fozEh1xppk9
We are proud to deliver this English-language symposium at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Economics, organised collaboratively by PoETS and the Research Unit for Business in Context (RUBiC). We aim to create an open, friendly space for scholars from across regional and disciplinary backgrounds to share completed and work-in-progress research.
Keynote Speaker – Ai Hisano
Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, University of Tokyo
Author of Visualizing Taste: How Business Changed the Look of What You Eat
Dates: Saturday 18 – Sunday 19 November 2023
Deadline for Abstracts: 28 August 2023, https://forms.gle/Avd9q9fozEh1xppk9
Deadline for Registration for Non-Speaking Participants: TBD
Location: Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall), Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo Hongo Campus
Language: English
Participation: Free
If you have any questions, please contact poetsutokyo@gmail.com
Featured Image – Milne Ramsey (1869), ‘Marble Tabletop with Fruit and Wineglass’, oil painting, National Gallery of Art
Organisers: Lillian Tsay, Shaun Yajima, Koji Yamamoto, Ryosuke Yokoe
References
Appadurai, Arjun (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1988)
Bennett, Jane, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC, 2010)
Hodder, Ian, Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (Hoboken, NJ, 2012)
Specht, Joshua, ‘Commodity history and the nature of global connection: recent developments’, Journal of Global History 14.1 (2019), pp. 145-50
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton, NJ, 2021)
Political Economy Tokyo Seminar (PoETS) 