The Colloquium on the Global South will present a seminar today, from 2:30 to 4:30pm, 305 York Lanes. The seminar, titled "The Southern Question: Gramsci post-development and the political economy of difference", will argue that the work of political theorist Antonio Gramsci provides a useful method for considering political problems. In particular, Gramsci’s analysis of uneven 
development in Italy, otherwise known as the Southern Question.
Right: Antonio Gramsci
Gramsci, an Italian writer, politician and political theorist, was the founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy. He was imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascist regime and his political and social writings occur in two periods, pre-prison (1910-1926) and prison (1929-1935). His pre-prison writings tend to be politically specific, while his prison writings tend to be more historical and theoretical.
The study and nature of development has been subject to significant debate and re-conceptualization in recent years. This presentation will argue that Gramsci’s broader theorization of the relationship between the material, the ideational and the subjective, provides a way of examining uneven development internationally in a form that captures both the material concerns of traditional development studies and the ideational concerns of post-development, a discussion that seems missing in literature.
Nicola Short, professor of political science, in the Faculty of Arts at York University, will deliver the seminar. Short’s most recent book, The International Politics of Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Guatemala, will be published in December 2007.
The Colloquium on the Global South is an open space for debate and critical inquiry for students, faculty members, non-governmental organizations, social activists and policy makers. It is sponsored by the University Consortium on the Global South at York University.
This is one of the Colloquium on the Global South’s fall series of free Wednesday panels.
Upcoming colloquia include:
- Oct. 31 – Venezuela’s Barrio Adentro Public Health Program: A Preliminary Appraisal
- Nov. 7 – Mining, Human Rights, and Corporate Accountability Abroad: the Canadian Roundtables on Extractive Industries (Room 280, York Lanes)
- Nov. 14 – Canada’s Role in Afghanistan
- Nov. 22 – Disposable Futures, Dirty Democracy, and the Politics of Higher Education (special Thursday event with Faculty of Environmental Studies, in Burton Auditorium)
- Nov. 30 – Fieldwork in the Global South: Methods, Ethics and Activism (Friday event, in Founders Senior Common Room, 305 Founders College)