Organic Crisis Research Articles

The north of Ireland during the interregnum: a Gramcian analysis of power and crisis

ABSTRACT The North of Ireland was induced in to existence over a century ago, yet the polity lacked societal-wide legitimacy. The outbreak of conflict in 1968 signalled the beginning of an interregnal period in which the old order was substantially challenged. Whilst the Good Friday Agreement was idealised as an end to this interregnum, Brexit has re-opened the battle for politico-ideological supremacy. This paper traces the contours of the hegemony-seeking strategies of the various political actors from 1968-present and assesses whether we are in the crucial and final phase of the organic crisis of the North of Ireland.

Cultural policy and emotional clusters in the context of an organic crisis. Performing arts and emotions between top-down and bottom-up negotiations

Cultural policy and emotional clusters in the context of an organic crisis. Performing arts and emotions between top-down and bottom-up negotiations

Political psychology of emotions in European Union foreign policy in times of ontological (in)security and crisis

ABSTRACT The article argues that understanding when and how emotions matter in times of crisis requires simultaneous contextualisation through setting out three different approaches to the political psychology of emotions in EU foreign policy in times of ontological (in)security and crisis. Firstly, through a longitudinal survey of emotional anxieties and fears in the EU from the 1990s to the 2020s drawing on the introduction of ontological security studies by Kinnvall, Manners, and Mitzen. Secondly the article analyses the SI contributions empirically in terms of the way in which the EU’s discrete crises are part of a wider planetary organic crisis. Thirdly, using the contributions as examples of theoretical contributions to the field of political psychology of EU, ranging from individual cognitive psychology to social psychology, social construction, psychoanalysis, and critical political psychology.

Pragmatist Power Europe: Resilience and evolution in planetary organic crisis

In this article, we join others in revisiting the concept of Normative Power Europe (NPE) through the lenses of pragmatist theory to engage with the emergent challenges of the planetary organic crisis. We argue that NPE rests on the binary distinction between moral and instrumental action and this, we argue, limits our ability to conceptualise resilience as evolutionary and to develop responses to the current crisis. Drawing on pragmatist philosophy, we argue that the project of conceptualising and pursuing planetary politics must start in the ongoing activities of actors, as an intervention into a stream of action with momentum and inertia. Our empirical analysis shows that although the European Union’s (EU) resilience turn shares some key normative commitments with a pragmatist approach, so far its resilience policies have been pragmatic rather than pragmatist. However, a closer look at the EU’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine reveals that the EU can cultivate resilience by transforming itself. We conclude by highlighting some ways a pragmatist view on normative power and resilience-through-evolution can guide reflection and action on the threats the planetary organic crisis poses to our continued survival.

Normative power in the planetary organic crisis

The lead intervention article argues that the new reality of the planetary organic crisis awaits a normative critical social theory of planetary politics, a means of understanding the sharing of relationships within International Relations and an agenda for action in concert found in the normative power approach. The article and subsequent 20th anniversary special issue provide an opportunity to reflect and develop the ideas of the original Journal of Common Market Studies ‘normative power’ article through a prospective on the use of normative power in addressing the planetary organic crisis. The special issue sets out a prospective on theorising normative power in the rapidly shifting context of 21st-century planetary organic crisis involving interacting and deepening structural crises of economic inequality, social injustice, ecological unsustainability, ontological insecurity and political irresilience – as demonstrated by the global financial crisis, COVID-19 pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine. It begins by setting out the normative power approach to planetary organic crisis, where 21st-century politics are characterised by truly planetary relations of causality that can only be understood and addressed holistically. In the wider context of climate emergency, food and water insecurity and their socio-economic and political consequences, a planetary political approach to understanding the European Union is an essential starting point.

The Urgency of the Settler Colonialism Framework in Understanding 7 October and the War on Gaza

Abstract The new far-right leadership under Benjamin Netanyahu has deployed the strategy of “conflict management,” which has a clear colonial marker to dismantle the Palestinian cause. This strategy involves the Judaization of the space, the alteration of demography, and the division of Palestinians into isolated communities under Israeli dominance. These policies were pursued under the auspices of international and Arab abandonment of Palestinians. Therefore, Palestinian hopelessness has intensified to an indescribable extent, leading to an intractable organic crisis that culminated in an eruption of extreme violence. Recognizing the colonial character of this dynamics is crucial for confronting it.

(Re)introducing world hegemony into the ‘global organic crisis’

Abstract Neo-Gramscians have drawn on the concept of interregnum and connected terms to shed light on the ‘global organic crisis’ they claim we have been living through since 2008. I examine their ideas, highlighting the important contributions they have made in this terrain. In doing so, however, certain oversights are detected in the neo-Gramscian theoretical framework, leaving them unable to explain fully the dynamics of the contemporary international system or, more pointedly, structural change itself. Ultimately this stems from ontological shallowness: a tendency to reduce reality to intersubjectivity and conscious class agency. Rooted in critical realism, and drawing on Gramsci and Gramsci-inspired scholars such as world-systems analyst Giovanni Arrighi, this article aims to offer a more convincing account of the present conjuncture. In contrast to the neo-Gramscian transnational perspective, I recognize the continuing relevance of ‘world hegemony’, arguing that the global organic crisis is actually an expression of a systemic crisis afflicting American world hegemony and the neoliberal accumulation regime it helps underwrite. Hegemony has never been solely based on consensus—coercion and militarism are integral to it. Nonetheless, this article questions the sustainability of a world hegemon (the United States) increasingly reliant on political and military means to overcome ‘incurable structural conditions’ in a changing global scenario.

The Organic Crisis of a Colonised State: Bulgaria in the Eye of the Pandemic, 2020–2022

Abstract Bulgaria’s particularly tragic experience with covid-19, with one of the largest death tolls per 100,000 in Europe, can be analysed in terms of purely natural factors (more lethal variants), the foibles and missteps of leaders, and unpredictable vaccine supplies. From a Gramscian critical materialist perspective, the pattern is better understood in terms of four interlocking structures: Bulgaria’s subaltern status as a downtrodden colony of Europe, its mode of insertion into globalised capitalism, the Orthodox Church’s strenuous effort to maintain its hegemonic position within Bulgarian nationalism, and the crisis of hegemony that engulfed a government already reliant on corruption more than persuasion, with an inchoate and ideologically variegated ‘Great National Revolt’ against it coinciding with the pandemic. The upshot of these structures was a rate of vaccination that was unusually low by European standards, leaving many Bulgarians, especially the elderly, lethally exposed to the disease and harmed by a widely distrusted corrupt neoliberal state.

Narrative Power in an Era of Crisis and Convergence

Recognizing the current conjuncture, this article explores the changing role of media and communications in the cohering of social struggles by antisystemic social movements. Transforming structural relations of media and their tactical uses, the authors argue, are key components to shifting the terrain upon which such movements build. In response to a deepening organic crisis, the authors argue for the importance of organizing against and beyond the existing political economy of platform media by building new narrative blocs as bases of power that can serve as one of several determining factors for the direction of popular movements and the generalization of new notions and political programs around which a counterhegemonic consensus may emerge for society. Transformative resistance and collective power will depend on the ability to develop movement-based media infrastructures to deepen international communication processes with and relationships to an ongoing global mass movement against the rise of antidemocratic politics, popular authoritarianism, and other morbid symptoms of a declining order.

‘The Fire This Time’: The Long Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalist Accumulation and Spectre of Neofascism

The era since the Great Recession of 2008/9 has witnessed the rise and increased sway of numerous authoritarian-right movements, regimes and leaders across the globe. Such political developments remain inadequately understood; yet several commonplaces have emerged. First, a tendency to eschew critical enquiry of the range of forces on the radical right, in favour of collapsing such political developments into generalisations such as ‘populism’. Second, such over-generalisations have commonly elided analysis of neofascist forces, strategies and processes. Third, despite some engagement with ‘economic’ factors, examination of these political developments has largely eschewed the underlying organic crisis of neoliberal capital accumulation. This article critiques such commonplaces. The first section problematises the category of ‘populism’ as largely inadequate in understanding the complexity of forces and dynamics on the radical right. The subsequent section argues that an emergent or immanent neofascism exists within such political developments, outlining eight theses on the spectre of neofascism and the conditions that underpin the rise of elements of fascistic politics. The final section concludes with key aspects for an antifascism, arguing that opposing neofascism entails the transcendence of neoliberal capitalism itself. And a meaningful alternative to neoliberal state and capital requires us to look again to socialism.

The Firm and the Nation: The Role of Fantasy in the Czech Populist Movements of ANO and SPD

Populism in Central Europe remains an elusive subject to grasp. In relation to neoliberal hegemony, the question remains whether populism represents its rupture or consolidation. This paper explores populist tendencies in Czechia by analysing the discourses of two prominent politicians, Andrej Babiš and Tomio Okamura, in their campaigns ahead of the 2017 parliamentary elections. Drawing on post-structuralist discourse theory, the analysis looks for key signifiers, narratives and ways certain topics are articulated, making use of a theoretical account of populism as a political logic, rather than an ideology, as well as the concept of fantasy derived from lacanian psychoanalysis. Exploration of the relation between fantasy and populism is of vital theoretical relevance. The paper focuses on corruption as a possible dislocation of neoliberal hegemony that led to an organic crisis. In the context of extreme distrust in politicians and parties both Babiš and Okamura presented anti-corruption narratives that gained resonance, both rearticulating neoliberalism in specific ways and relying on fantasmatic narratives. While Babiš drew on neoliberal discourses surrounding citizenship and work, Okamura radicalized them into an exclusionary populism that seeks to rid society of “parasites”. Both blame the elites - connected with corrupt politicians and their business godfathers.

The Neoliberal Organic Crisis: Constitutional Transitions and the Collapse of the Keynesian Social Pact

Abstract This article deals with the concept of organic crisis from a legal and a constitutional point of view and compares the different forms of constitutional transitions that have taken place in Europe and in Latin America from authoritarian regime to democracy. The reappearance of forms of neo-fascism is the result of the collapse of the Keynesian social pact, due to the ascension of neoliberal rationality, which is based on the dogmas of financial stability and hyper-competitiveness. The concrete result has been that inequality in the global distribution of wealth has reached astronomical levels. The question must be asked whether the ineptitude of the ruling classes in addressing the dramatic health and socio-economic effects of the covid-19 pandemic signify a neoliberal organic crisis.

South Africa enters the second wave of xenophobic violence: the rise of anti-immigrant organisations in South Africa

ABSTRACT Based on an analysis of authenticated YouTube videos and Internet news reports, this article argues that South Africa has entered the second wave of xenophobic violence targeting mainly black immigrants from other African countries. What makes this wave unique is the fact that organised formations that are relentless in their campaigns against immigrants have used various strategies and tactics, such as marches, protest actions, and social media, to identify or position immigrants as the cause of crime, poverty, and unemployment in South Africa. This phenomenon of organisations that have formal structures and leaders that are primarily formed to target immigrants in South Africa is still emerging and therefore little has been written on the topic, making it an under-researched area. The article contends that crime, economic decay, unemployment, poverty, and the general social and economic instability, and the organic crisis in general have led to the formation of anti-immigrant organisations.

Right-Wing Populism and Turkey’s Post-Hegemonic Populist Moment

: Populism, as a mode of political logic, always has been a significant factor within Turkey’s political landscape, and it strongly is associated with right-wing political parties. The AKP’s conservative democratic populism and neo-right-wing mission arose as a sui generis governmental orientation out of the organic crisis of the Kemalist regime by articulating the collective political passion and the common affects it engenders in the populace. This article argues that right-wing populism developed as a transformative politics embracing neoliberal economics that subverted the anti-status quo through a counter-hegemonic discourse and electoral strategy. The AKP’s empty signifier is an example of radical negativity with its antagonistic division between a hegemonic power bloc (corrupt elites) and an excluded underdog (pure people). However, within a post-democracy conjuncture, the AKP adopted a new radical right-wing populism based on a Turkish-Islamic synthesis. The party’s electoral hegemony is crumbling and ruptured by an authoritarian and illiberal politics that has created a post-hegemonic populist moment.

Achieving European Communion in the Planetary Organic Crisis: How Dominance and Differentiation affects the sharing of Genuine Democracy

Achieving European Communion in the Planetary Organic Crisis: How Dominance and Differentiation affects the sharing of Genuine Democracy

Will pigs solve the organ crisis? The future of animal-to-human transplants.

Will pigs solve the organ crisis? The future of animal-to-human transplants.

Where are we today with machine perfusion of liver in donation after circulatory death liver transplantation?

Livers procured from donors after circulatory death (DCD) have increasingly been used for liver transplantation (LT) to address the organ crisis. While DCD LT increases patient access to life-saving treatment, this practice creates risks for recipients, including primary allograft non-function, early allograft dysfunction, and ischemic cholangiopathy. These complications are due to the unique ischemia and reperfusion injury related to different phases of organ procurement and preservation in DCD. Therefore, substantial research efforts and innovations on DCD LT have primarily aimed at reducing these complications. One such advance is the utilization of ex vivo machine perfusion of the donor liver in DCD LT. This review focused on the data from clinical trials and studies in human DCD LT.

Theory after Practice

Theory after Practice

From the “Lost Decades” to the Organic Crisis of Post-1990s Japan

This article argues that, since the 1990s, Japan has faced conditions of enduring economic stagnation, political uncertainty, and various social and demographic challenges, dynamics that it theorises, drawing on Gramsci, as all inter-related elements of a broader organic crisis. In its analysis of Heisei Japan’s organic crisis, this article examines the underlying historical context that gave rise to the various conditions of the crisis since the 1990s, including a range of structural, institutional, and policy changes, within domestic politics and society and in the global political economy more generally. It then explores some of the key dynamics through which these changes disrupted the functioning of Japan’s prevailing regime of accumulation, political system and regime of social reproduction before pointing to some of the negative consequences of these conditions, both from the perspective of the Japanese state (and its ability to maintain conditions of hegemonic order) and from the perspective of equality and justice within Japan. Finally, it demonstrates how at stake in our understanding of Japan’s organic crisis is the way its various elements – including economic, political, social, and cultural elements, are dialectically interrelated, and how this interrelatedness has itself posed a barrier to the crisis’s resolution.

The great moving Boris show: Brexit and the mainstreaming of the far right in Britain

ABSTRACT This article argues that the Brexit campaign and subsequent rise of Boris Johnson to Prime Minister has seen campaigns and assumptions (such as anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism) that were previously associated with far-right groups and parties enter the mainstream political discourse. It suggests that this has been due to an organic crisis that has been prevalent within British political civil society since the Brexit vote. A crisis that has seen socialist, free market and popular nationalist projects all stake claims to develop competing visions of post-Brexit Britain and which has been intensified by the success of Celtic nationalism. This article will suggest that Boris Johnson’s government is attempting to co-opt such right-wing forces by engaging with much of its rhetoric as he attempts to construct his own post-Brexit reality – a reality that is fraught with inconsistencies and contradictions.