This is a hybrid event. To attend in person please register here; to attend via Zoom, here.

Since the global financial crisis of 2007–9, global capitalism has shown a growing propensity toward systemic chaos—evident in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine War, the escalating genocidal violence in Palestine, and the global rise of the far right. Donald Trump’s second administration seems to represent a further acceleration of this chaos – externally, confrontation with the other leading capitalist states, internally, a sharp turn towards repression directed especially against immigrants and the Palestinian solidarity movement. For world-systems theorists such as Beverly Silver, these developments reflect the fracturing of US-led world capitalist hegemony. Drawing on her extensive research into the history of workers’ movements and global protest waves, Silver argues that this chaos is unfolding against a backdrop of intensifying social unrest, particularly since 2011, culminating in a peak of global protests in 2019. This seminar offers a compelling opportunity to understand the structural roots of today’s chaos and its intimate link to global social struggles.

SPEAKER

Beverly Silver is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Arrighi Center of Global Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Her publications include (2003) Forces of Labour: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870, (1999, with Giovanni Arrighi) Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System, and (2022, with Corey R. Payne and Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz), World-Systems Analysis at a Critical Juncture