Concepts of crisis in a turbulent era: world order hypotheses, scenarios, and questions

Stephen Gill

Chapter 1 in Globalization in a Turbulent Era, 2025, pp 5-21 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter has two separate but related purposes: (1) to make a contribution to thinking about global crises and (2) to assess and raise questions concerning aspects of our current historical situation and potential scenarios for the future of world order. Various perspectives and ideologies may define a crisis, its scope, depth, and nature, in quite different ways. With such contestability in mind, this contribution starts with an analysis of polycrisis, a concept that has become widely influential. It then sketches an alternative critical conceptualization, drawing on Antonio Gramsci's interpretation of the crisis of civilization in Europe between the two world wars and extending to the present era, which is characterized as undergoing a planetary organic crisis. The latter concept is linked to alternative scenarios for world order in relation to the dominant alternatives and strategies for global hegemony that are reflected in struggles over political power in the USA. The outcome of these struggles, notwithstanding unanticipated contingencies, will help shape the contours of US grand strategy (in 2025, and potentially beyond) with significant implications for world order and “globalization.”

Keywords: Organic crisis; Polycrisis; Hegemony; World order; Neo-liberalism; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035330492
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