Globalization and Crisis
This two part special issue of the journal Globalizations considers the multiple crises, dimensions, and interpretations of the global financial crisis.
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Academic Journal Article
Going South: Capitalist Crisis, Systemic Crisis, Civilisational Crisis
Writing in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, Barry K. Gills argues that the world is actually in “a multidimensional set of simultaneous and interacting crises on a global scale” that he terms a “triple conjuncture.” It involves: A capitalist crisis of over-accumulation that includes the externalities of neoliberalism. A world system crisis
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Overcoming Systemic Roadblocks to Sustainability: The Evolutionary Redesign of Worldviews, Institutions, and Technologies
The authors propose that socio-ecological systems feature the co-evolution of ecological systems and self-reinforcing complexes of (human) worldviews, institutions, and technologies (WITs). Contemporary WITs arose in a world of abundant resources and immense potential for growth but are now reaching the biophysical limits of the ecosphere. The authors thus advocate a deliberate shift from and
The Perfect Storm: Catastrophic Collapse in the 21st Century
Glen Kuecker argues that we are facing a catastrophic collapse of the global system, citing climate change, ecological destruction, pandemics, fuel shortages, warfare, and global hunger as interconnected points of failure. He suggests that sustainability perspectives miss the fundamental reality of the global crisis.
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Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social-Ecological Systems
The authors argue that “the stability dynamics of all linked systems of humans and nature emerge from three complimentary attributes: resilience, adaptability, and transformability” (p. 1), then distinguish and clarify these core concepts. “Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the
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What Is Systemic Risk, and Do Bank Regulators Retard or Contribute to It?
George G. Kaufman and Kenneth E. Scott provide one of the most often cited definitions of systemic risk as “the risk or probability of breakdowns in an entire system, as opposed to breakdowns in individual parts or components, and is evidenced by co-movements (correlations) among most or all parts” (p. 371). They explain how systemic
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Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems
C. S. Holling argues that ecosystems, economies, and societies periodically undergo four stages of an adaptive cycle in which their levels of resilience, connectivity, and wealth (or “potential”) vary in characteristic ways. Over time, a system gets locked-in to a particular way of operating in which it accumulates immense wealth, expands connectivity to maximize efficiency,
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