Reflection Of Crisis Research Articles

Риски развития современной экономики Европейского союза как отражение кризиса национальных моделей социально-экономического развития

Риски развития современной экономики Европейского союза как отражение кризиса национальных моделей социально-экономического развития

Is democracy with Chinese characteristics possible? A theoretical and practical reflection of crisis in the Chinese party-state regime and post-revolutionary socialist hegemonic politics

This article discusses political challenges to the current party-state regime in China and the direction of its new political reform, on the one hand, and tries to theorize a post-revolutionary “socialist hegemonic politics” after the revolution, based on reinterpretation of Marxist political theory and Western democracy theory, on the other hand. It understands that there is a deeper crisis of Chinese politics, rather than simply providing an empirical analysis. In so doing, this article both reflects existing Marxist political theory and the concept of democracy while reconstructing both of them, interacting with the current Chinese political reality. Currently, the Chinese party-state regime is facing a compressed form of crisis due to rapid economic growth; that is, a kind of “success crisis.” The crisis is expressed in such phenomena as the breakdown of “identification of the party-state with society,” assumed since the revolution, the victimization of the working class and peasants, which have been regarded as the main driving force of the Chinese revolution, the emergence of demands for political and social plurality coming from a new wealthy class, and an outpouring of various resistances. If these phenomena were to converge, it could result in the “statization of crisis,” which means that all kinds of opposition would join together against the state. However, there are no political mechanisms to incorporate and mitigate grassroots opposition, through top-down reform of the party-state regime. Thus, I argue that democracy with Chinese characteristics should be imagined as the realization of a kind of socialist hegemonic politics. To understand this, we have to overcome both over-universalistic and over-particularistic perspectives on democracy. The Chinese regime's main innovation in socialist market reform has been to separate capitalism and the market, appropriating the latter in the name of making it more viable. Therefore, it should divide bourgeois democracy and its democratic elements, combining them with the Chinese political system in the name of enriching it, expanding endogenous democratic elements.

The Fimbulwinter theory and the 6th century crisis in the light of Norwegian archaeology: Towards a human-environmental approach.

In this article, I have tried to discuss the Fimbulwinter theory in a research historical perspective, in order to disentangle the premises presented by both advocates and critics alike. By and large, the current debate follows the contours of previous discourses on the 6th century transition, at the risk of entrenching the arguments within two defined and established perspectives: material change as a reflection of crisis, and, secondly, material change as an expression of cultural innovation. Neither of these perspectives is satisfactory, as they both run the risk of downplaying either, in the first case, long-term socio-cultural dynamics or, in the second case, environmental factors. In other words, an environmental perspective is inadequate as an analytical framework, since it is liable to provide simplified and deterministic interpretations of past societal change. The roots of environmental disasters must be studied from a social perspective, in which societal preconditions for vulnerability to hazards are analysed. Consequently, an integrated human- environmental approach must be developed, which takes into consideration the importance of both human and natural systems, and the interaction between them. There is, indeed, no contradiction between the two interpretative frameworks of crisis and a change of practice, as both perspectives are required for an in-depth understanding of the spatial and temporal complexity associated with the transition from the Early to the Late Iron Age. Considerable scientific potential might be obtained by employing a human-environmental approach, in which the 6th century transition is analysed at the interface of human and environmental systems, rather than within an explicit social or climatic interpretative framework.