Institute on Inequality and Democracy

In October 2017, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin in partnership with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago convened a symposium on the theme, “Race and Capitalism: Global Territories, Transnational Histories.” A part of the national Race and Capitalism project led by Michael Dawson and Megan Ming Francis, the symposium sought to highlight how the study of racial capitalism in the United States must be situated in the long history of global systems of colonialism, imperialism, and development. With this in mind, the program was organized around four key themes: diasporas of racial capitalism; the land question; imperialism and its limits; race, capitalism, and settler-colonialism. Bringing together scholars from many different institutions, the symposium was also a space for shared work across different disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Writings and presentations by four scholars, Nathan Connolly, Keisha-Khan Perry, Allan Lumba, and Alyosha Goldstein, anchored a day of debate and dialogue. This collection provides a glimpse of their key provocations as well as of the questions and comments posed by invited interlocutors. It is not a culmination but instead a benchmark in the ongoing efforts to build collaborative scholarship concerned with race and capitalism. Central to our concerns has been the question of what this might mean for a new generation of curriculum and pedagogy and for the next generation of scholars, our graduate students. We hope that the conceptual and methodological frameworks and interrogations presented here are useful in the endeavor of speaking back to our disciplines and speaking across our disciplines.