Adam David Morton is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, which he joined in 2014. Previously he was an Associate Professor in Political Economy and co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) in the School of Politics and International Relations (SPIR) at the University of Nottingham (2005-2014). Before joining SPIR, he was a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University (2002-5) and an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (2001-2), where he also completed his PhD. He specialises in the themes of political economy, state theory, historical sociology, globalisation and development in their relevance to the study of modern Mexico.
In 2008, he was the inaugural ‘Latin American Perspectives Visiting Fellow’ (2008) that involved a period of affiliation at the University of California, Riverside linked to the journal Latin American Perspectives. The fellowship facilitated the use of archival resources as well as the general holdings of the UCR Libraries and Special Collections and, also, a series of presentations to the Latin American Studies Program and Latin American Perspectives journal. This directly fed into his publication of an article entitled ‘Reflections on Uneven Development: Mexican Revolution, Primitive Accumulation, Passive Revolution’, in Latin American Perspectives, (Vol.31, No.1, 2010). Adam has also been a Guest Professor for the Mexico Solidarity Network (MSN) that involved organising a two-month study abroad program in Mexico, in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, and Mexico City teaching on ‘Mexican Social Movements—Theory and Practice’. The program focused on indigenous and urban social movements in Mexico, namely the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) and the Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente (FPFV-I).
These features and additional extensive research have informed the publication of his latest monograph Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), which is a groundbreaking study that develops a new approach to understanding the formation of the post-revolutionary state in Mexico. He was awarded the 2012 British International Studies Association (BISA) International Political Economy Group (IPEG) Book Prize for his book Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development (see 2012 IPEG Book Prize).
His previous book, Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy (Pluto Press, 2007), was also shortlisted for the BISA International Political Economy Group Book Prize (2008) as well as the Giuseppe Sormani International Prize (2011) organised by the Fondazione Istituto Piemontese Antonio Gramsci. This book has been translated into Turkish as Gramsci’yi Çözümlemek: Küresel Ekonomide Hegemonya ve Pasif Devrim, trans. Barış İnce (Kalkedon Yayınları, 2011) and both English/Turkish versions make extensive use of Antonio Gramsci’s writings, including his much-overlooked pre-prison journalism, prison letters, as well as his prison notebooks, to provide a fresh approach to understanding his contemporary relevance in the current neoliberal world order. Additionally, Adam is co-editor (with Andreas Bieler) of Images of Gramsci: Connections and Contentions in Political Theory and International Relations (Routledge, 2006) and he also published articles in various prominent peer-reviewied academic journals, including New Political Economy, International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Political Economy, Review of International Studies, Third World Quarterly, and The Journal of Peasant Studies. Recently, Adam edited a major special issue on ‘Approaching Passive Revolutions’ in Capital & Class, which is a definitive statement on the contribution of Antonio Gramsci’s notion of passive revolution to debates in and beyond historical sociology. His own lead article to the special issue, entitled ‘The Continuum of Passive Revolution’, sets up the importance of passive revolution as a backdrop to approaching passive revolutions of diverse varieties, which is the subject of the wider special issue.
Adam’s next monograph is a co-authored book project with Andreas Bieler aimed at recasting a historical materialist contribution to understanding global capitalism in terms of transnational restructuring and the centrality of class struggle in world order. This project aims to offer new lines of enquiry on themes of global capitalism and class struggle, uneven development and the states-system, imperialism, and varieties of anti-capitalist resistance in world order.
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