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Genocide, Race and Movement in the Capitalist Development of the Modern World-system

Sun, August 23, 10:30am to 12:10pm, TBA

Abstract

Genocide over land and racist constructions of slavery and other systems of labor exploitation have been central features in the "capitalist" development of the modern world-system for the past 500 years. This paper discusses theoretical constructs and then provides concrete examples of genocide being employed by dominant Euro-American state structures, through three distinct phases: non-tributary conquest, colonialism, and capitalist formation; followed by contemporary movement into a global hegemony through policies of neoliberalism. All four of these world-system phases develop and apply racist constructions for genocidal land-takings, enslavement and labor exploitation by race/ethnicity, and maintenance of wage-labor inequality by race and geographic location, post hemispheric wealth transfer and resource extraction through global trade networks, and the rise of industrial capitalism. Civilization discourses are used to rationalize and deny these systems, and are still plainly evident in social movements, wage labor inequalities and current applications of genocidal suppression and racist repression. Ideological and academic denial and distortion of these historical developments, through misplaced claims of democracy linked to "free markets" arising from western systems, contributes to mis-understandings and inability to comprehensively deal with global crises of the modern world-system.

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