IGLP: Liberalism, Empire, and Capitalism: Rematerializing a Research Agenda

Date: 

Monday, October 17, 2016, 3:30pm to 4:30pm

Location: 

Harvard Law School – Hauser Hall, Room 102

 

The Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) is sponsoring a talk by Onur Ulas Ince, IGLP Faculty and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Singapore Management University. His paper is part of a larger book project that examines the impact of colonial economic relations on the formation of liberal thought in the early-modern British Empire. Today, “liberalism and empire” stands as a shorthand for a growing field of study in political theory, which centers on the premise that liberalism (as a political language, philosophical tradition, or normative system) has emerged and evolved in the context of European colonialism and its enduring legacies. In his paper, Ulas traces the contours and identifies the limitations of this literature, and proposes a new interpretive framework for studying liberal ideas that complements the current state of the art.

Onur Ulas Ince is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Singapore Management University. His research focuses on the history of political thought, critical theory, history of capitalism, and colonial studies. His work has been published in The Journal of Politics, The Review of Politics, Polity, New Political Economy, and Rural Sociology. He is currently completing his first book, “Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism,” which is under contract with Oxford University Press.