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Going South: capitalist crisis, systemic crisis, civilisational crisis

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Barry Gills

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Abstract

This article argues that the current protracted and severe financial and economic crisis is only one aspect of a larger multidimensional set of simultaneous and interacting crises on a global scale. The article constructs an overarching framework of analysis of this unique conjecture of global crises. The three principal crisis aspects are: an economic crisis of (over) accumulation of capital; a world systemic crisis (which includes a global centre-shift in the locus of production, growth and capital accumulation), and a hegemonic transition (which implies long term changes in global governance structures and institutions); and a worldwide civilisational crisis, situated in the sociohistorical structure itself, encompassing a comprehensive environmental crisis and the consequences of a lack of correspondence and coherence in the material and ideational structures of world order. In these ways, the global system is now 'going south'. All three main aspects of the global crisis provoke and require commensurate radical social and political responses and self-protective measures, not only to restore systemic stability but to transform the world system.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Gills BK

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Third World Quarterly

Year: 2010

Volume: 31

Issue: 2

Pages: 169-184

Print publication date: 01/03/2010

Date deposited: 04/11/2010

ISSN (print): 0143-6597

ISSN (electronic): 1360-2241

Publisher: Routledge

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436591003711926

DOI: 10.1080/01436591003711926

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