Workshop on the Meltdown of the Icelandic Economy

Pennsylvania State Univ University Park, University Park PA

Investigators

Abstract

This workshop will bring together a group of 30 plus international scholars, primarily anthropologist, to produce a thick description of the causes and consequences of the meltdown of the Icelandic economy. The PI hypothesizes that the crisis involved a complex interaction of cultural, economic, political and ideological variables that played off each other from the 1980s surrounding the creation of Individual Transferrable Quotas in the Icelandic fisheries; it is this complex interaction that makes the case a very interesting one for a thick description methodology. The workshop is scheduled for Fall 2011 at the University Park Campus of Penn State and it is anticipated approximately 30 scholars and graduate students will participate in the 3-day project. The format of the workshop is a standard presentation of scholarly papers with discussion. The attendees will be prepared to discuss specific aspects of the organizing topic and following the workshop the individual papers will be gathered together into a volume, for which the PI Paul Durrenburger and co-organizer, Gisli Paulsson University of Iceland, will produce the introduction and conclusion for the edited volume.