Barry K. GillsUniversity of Helsinki | HY
Barry K. Gills
PhD ( London School of Economics)
Editor in Chief, Globalizations journal (Routledge)
ExAlt: Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (www.exalt.fi)
About
91
Publications
26,310
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2,399
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Additional affiliations
August 2013 - February 2021
Position
- Professor
Description
- professor of Global Development Studies member of the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT)
May 2006 - July 2013
Position
- Professor (Full) Global Politics
Description
- International Political Economy Globalization, Poverty, and Development
Publications
Publications (91)
This article addresses contradictions in the 'pluriverse' of radical alternatives to maldevelopment, and proposes a an integrative framework for fostering productive convergences among its forces. It argues that the 2020s and 2030s will be pivotal decades, in which the current global conjuncture, characterized by intensifying economic turmoil, clim...
This article examines global extractivisms and transformative alternatives; addressing: (1) access to and control over resources, (2) governance and recognition, (3) environmental-social harms, and (4) justice. The examination of these themes provides an understanding of the sociospatial links between extractivism and differentiated distribution of...
Research on extractivism has rapidly proliferated, expanding into new empirical and conceptual spaces. We examine the origins, evolution, and conceptual expansion of the concept. Extractivism is useful to analyze resource extraction practices around the world. ‘Global Extractivism’ is a new conceptual tool for assessing global phenomena. We situate...
Viewed in a world-historical perspective, social change, or social transformation, is not an “event” but rather a constant, a perpetual historical process. Human social organisation is perpetually in motion but within certain parameters of continuity. For over five millennia, since the origins of cities, the state, and class society, human social o...
In this paper we reprise some of the themes set out in our recent special issue of Globalizations, which explores the contributing role of mainstream economics in the current climate emergency. We provide a brief update on the current state of the declared 'climate emergency' and we make the case for a paradigm shift informed by quite different pri...
The idea of globalisation has profoundly challenged pre-existing discourses, theories, and practices of ‘development’. However, the separation between the two academic fields of critical development studies (CDS) and critical global(isation) studies (CGS) is ideologically constructed. In this chapter, Hosseini and Gills argue that a transformative...
In this editorial postscript, we return to a primary theme of this special issue on Economics and Climate Emergency. We elaborate on some aspects of, and reasons why we need, urgent and radical transformative change. We briefly update the trends affecting climate change and ecological breakdown, assess the need for an end to the ‘war on nature’, wh...
In this paper we ask, what is mainstream economics education conveying to its students? Standard mainstream economics textbooks treat the environment as a specialist issue in addition to standard concerns and based on solutions that conform to those standard concerns. When viewed as socialisation for students this is a major problem. To illustrate...
Humanity is facing severe planetary and civilizational crises, interrelated and interacting at unprecedented scales. These multiple crises can be traced to the ‘globalization’ of a hegemonic mode of capitalist ‘(mal-)development’. In an increasingly volatile and indeterminate context, critical scholarship in global studies faces numerous challenges...
The Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies provides diverse and cutting-edge perspectives on this fast-changing field. For thirty years the world has been caught in a long ‘global interregnum’, plunging from one crisis to the next and witnessing the emergence of new, vibrant, multiple and sometimes contradictory forms of popular resist...
The fields of critical global studies and globalization studies face serious challenges as the result of deepening and interrelated global crises and the emergence of multiple and innovative forms of global uprisings, popular politics and (new) forms of resistance and emancipatory struggle. These crises are driven by remarkably complex structural a...
Evidence is mounting of severe planetary and civilizational crises, interrelated and mutually constitutive of one another at unprecedented scales caused by the ‘globalization’ of a hegemonic mode of civilizational ‘(mal-)development.’ Critical scholarship in both Development and Global(ization) Studies faces numerous challenges on the path to produ...
This Special Editorial on the Climate Emergency makes the case that although we are living in the time of Global Climate Emergency we are not yet acting as if we are in an imminent crisis. The authors review key aspects of the institutional response and climate science over the past several decades and the role of the economic system in perpetuatin...
This essay is an introduction to a Special Forum by critical scholar-activists responding to the late Samir Amin’s call for the establishment of a new political vehicle that would be capable of uniting diverse progressive and revolutionary movements consisting of the workers and peoples of the whole world. The purpose of this vehicle would be to co...
In this brief polemic we argue that Trump’s words, actions and inactions are potentially deeply damaging to the legitimacy of the office he holds and to the continuity of the institutions defining that position. This, writ large, is an issue for organization theory. We use Searle’s concept of status functions to argue that Trump invokes problems of...
In 21st century, “Capital” requires a more comprehensive and applicable definition than merely a social process where money makes more money through production relations. Capital, in its material manifestation, is a socially organized ‘process’, through which surplus value is produced and controlled by 'unsustainable' and 'un-sovereign' ways of exp...
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".... The planet’s bio-capacity to sustain the present form of global
‘development’ is nearly exhausted. Much of ‘development’ around the world could be characterized as ‘maldevelopment’, in which long-term negative consequences
tend to outweigh short-term positive benefits (Moore, 2015), thus prompting...
Download Full text from: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/rGE5JAbFa7ufUf9pN6iT/full
This article critically reflects on theoretical dilemmas of conceptualizing recent ideological shifts and contention among global transformative movements. Some studies conceptualize these movements as ideologically mature and coherent, while other inquiries highl...
We are living in an era of multiple crises, multiple social resistances, and multiple cosmopolitanisms. The post-Cold War context has generated a plethora of movements, but no single unifying ideology or global political program has yet materialized. The historical confrontation between capital and its alternatives, however, continues to pose new p...
In this introductory article we examine the recent resurgence of South–South cooperation, which has moved once again onto the centre stage of world politics and economics, leading to a renewed interest in its historic promise to transform world order. We provide an overview of contemporary debates surrounding this resurgence, noting in particular t...
In this interview Boris Kagarlitsky discusses the significance of contemporary ideas surrounding South–South Relations, the continuities and discontinuities between the ‘global South’ and previous notions of the ‘Third World’, and whether such changes in the world economy of over the past half a century can be understood as a form of hegemonic tran...
In this brief essay I will address a few key concepts, and make an argument concerning how I think they relate to one another, and how their combination will affect the future of our understanding and practices of Development. The principal concepts I will discuss are Global History and Global Crises, Global Development, Sustainable Development, an...
Andre Gunder Frank was a path-breaking scholar in several disciplines over an illustrious and contentious 50-year career. First amongst his many important works is the book ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age, which sought to correct a Euro-centric world view of the development of the global political economy. Frank passed away in April 2005...
Critical analysis of ideological divisions in the broad Global Left, via the historical, ideational and practical roots of these differences is important, for a key reason: it can help us explain the Left’s past and present shortcomings and difficulties in creating viable coherent solutions to the multiple crises of the world capitalist system. Thr...
In this paper, we have developed a set of criteria in the form of propositions for the operationalization of our transversalist evaluative framework. It is our intention that this framework can help us decode the conceptual settings and capacities of ideologies for being deployed by agents for promoting cross-ideological dialogues, or even "creoliz...
The World System Theory : an Analysis of Global History, Globalization and Global Crisis
This article provides a concise summary of the distinctive concepts and historical interpretations provided by the World System theory developed by the author and the late Andre Gunder Frank. A series of contrasts are made between this new approach and that of...
This article examines the relationship between oppression, injustice, and liberation both theoretically and practically and in relation to contemporary global events and political history. The struggle for human freedom and liberation from structures of oppression and exploitation, and the relation to democracy and to the agents of social change, i...
This article addresses the meaning of ‘crisis’ in both contemporary and historical perspective, utilising crisis as an analytical concept to understand transformation in socio-historical system structure and world order. It examines the nature of ‘capital’ and its relation to crisis through an understanding of the historical dialectics of capital(i...
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 econ...
If we look into the deep structure of global politics, the so-called ‘war on terror’ appears very differently, as a reflection of deep-seated historical trends and changes, some associated with the era of ‘globalization’. Among these is the persistent malaise of democracy in the West, and in many parts of the world, which has accompanied the reign...
Previously published as a special issue of Globalizations, this collection of essays addresses what is arguably the most pressing and urgent issue of our day - the continuing development of global environmental crises and the need for new and urgent responses to them by the world community.
The contributors include social scientists, environmental...
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
The article begins with a critique of the failure of the present world order, based on its exclusivity and reliance on a traditional international relations paradigm, including nationalism and cultural particularism. The post-cold war impetus toward universal liberalism has brought about conditions rendering this paradigm untenable. Globalization r...
The debate over the East Asian crisis has thus far been led by economists who have focused on technical economic issues and policy goals at the expense of macro historical-structural questions. Foremost amongst the neglected questions is whether and under what conditions ‘Postwar East Asian Capitalism’ (PWEAC) will either continue to flourish or un...
As a field of study, international political economy suffers from a significant historical deficit. Where this deficit is recognized, it is most commonly addressed by adding 'historical context' to the inquiry, as in the injunction to place globalization into its proper historical context. While this is a useful and necessary first step, it does no...
The term ‘globalization’ has served as an arresting metaphor to provide explanation, meaning, and understanding of the nature of contemporary capitalism, though not all of the processes that currently come under the rubric of globalization are new.1 It is meant to suggest a number of analytically distinct phenomena and developments within the inter...
The paradox of neoliberal economic globalization is that it both weakens and simultaneously activates the social forces of resistance. As the ‘global crisis’ of 1998–9 demonstrated to all of the world, the on-going debate on ‘globalization’ is strategic for the coming era. The shape of the future depends on its outcome. This book sets out to alter...
In this chapter I examine the ‘political economy of diplomacy’ through which both North and South Korea adapted to the post-war international system. I will argue that regime flexibility, and particularly a regime’s ability to adapt to changing conditions in the international political economy, is more important than ideology or social system in ex...
There is a strong assumption in the current intellectual and political atmosphere that we are witnessing an historical global advance of both capitalism and liberal democracy. If this were true, it could be argued that we are entering into a new golden age of human progress. However, there is evidence to suggest that this already conventional propo...
The thesis examines the adaptive responses of North and South Korea to change in the international system and analyzes the effects on their international standing. The framework of analysis is constructed from a selective review of the literature on hegemony and its relationship to international order and change. Special attention is given to the p...
Both regimes, North and South, developed their present character on the basis of the specific situation of national division. Reunification would so profoundly alter the national political and economic situation that both regimes are wary. Thus, separate development of capitalism in the South and socialism in the North seems set to continue for som...
By evoking the US counter-insurgency catch phrase 'low intensity conflict', it is out intention to show that perhaps more than at any other time in the recent past, today the struggle to define 'democracy' has become a major ideological battle. 'Democracy' has replaced 'development' as the buzzword for the 1990s. Democracy seems to be sweeping the...
International Relations, as an academic discipline, has the potential to formulate theory concerning general patterns of world historical development. Karl Popper’s admonition against the errors of historicism has not prevented a widespread renewal of academic interest in such general theory. However, unlike the claims that were once made on behalf...
Whole issue. Incl. biographical & bibliographic references & appendices
Questions
Question (1)
Dear Leslie, I read this description with interest, as i have been working with Hamed Hosseini and James Goodman, and a group of colleagues on a project "deliberating alternatives to capital", "transformative praxes" , and "transversal cosmopolitanism". You can see the description in Research Gate. How is your advocacy of cooperatives related to concepts such as the solidarity economy? or "anarchist" traditions of radical democratic and non-hierarchical social order? Does your approach advocate radical "de-commodification" of land and labour? Yours , barry
