Poly Crisis Interrogated
In recent years, the vocabulary of “Poly Crisis” has become central among international institutions, policy-makers, in academia, and in global affairs. However, although the term/concept is now firmly embedded in attentive-elite public discourses and among decision-makers, it is so multifaceted a phenomenon, so complex in its approach to the world crisis, that both what it means and how it might be navigated in the real world, remains poorly understood or thought through. The density and complexity of the challenges of Poly Crisis, and the demand for integrated solutions to overlapping and intersecting multi-domain or sub-crises, means that there is little clarity or consensus on the term, its advantages and limitations. It can mean everything, everywhere, all at once, is in crisis, flux, volatile and unpredictable. Yet, it is not empty or meaningless – it expresses a widely and deeply felt sense of disorder, breakdown, social and political turmoil, economic and financial precarity, return of geopolitics and war and danger of even deadlier wars between nuclear-armed powers, existential dangers of climate change and global pandemics. It expresses deep-seated concerns over chronic inequalities and social polarisations driven by globalised capitalism, social ruptures around culture wars and the weaponization of history, handwringing over the decline of the West and rise of the Rest; racial, religious, and epistemic injustices, erosion of social cohesion, concerns over liberal order and democracy, scientific authority, and trust that inextricably empowers and disempowers local voices. Poly Crisis captures the temperature of our times but what does it mean as a concept, a theory, and as source of practice, policy, and strategies.
From the multidisciplinary perspectives of domestic and global politics, economics, history, criminology and sociology, the School of Policy and Global Affairs at City, University of London, aims to investigate and interrogate overlapping sinews, tentacles, networks and intersections of Poly Crisis. These interconnections are important, for example, because prosecution of geopolitical wars rests on understanding of war financing within global capitalism; it asks questions about whose human rights are worth defending, whose lives are worthy and unworthy. Similarly, border and migration crises have societal implications on the politics of friend versus enemy even if migrants are required to address labour shortages. The focus on the Global South cannot ignore the transnational elites and diasporic connections that are inextricably linked with the liberal world system and reproducing it with new vocabularies. In the age of digital technologies and hyper-connectivity, tech firms and states extend their powers even as more diverse voices from ‘below’ are able to critique and challenge injustices, build movements for change. Yet others, however, are enabled to connect and empower white supremacists and far right extremist minorities. Is this inexplicable? How might we think about the current conditions of the world? Is it all Unprecedented? Unmanageable? Can anything be done?
The School of Policy and Global Affairs is organising a two-day conference to engage with the conceptual, practical, multi-disciplinary, and interconnected aspects, and limitations, of Poly Crisis in our era. We are launching the Finsbury Institute as a major step in the School’s and University’s scholarly engagement with the worlds of policy and practice. The Finsbury Institute aims to provide a meeting of minds, a space for the worlds of scholarship and research to consider and explore ideas and practices, to work with external institutions and practitioners to enable and expand ideas and practices.
The Finsbury Institute aims to explore critical thinking about the knowledge and power nexus, debate and develop theories of knowledge and practice; question the relationship between knowledge and power; consider who produces knowledge, how, why and for whom? Hence, we aim to explore the possibilities and limits of decolonising, declassing, and de-gendering knowledge and practice, to deconstruct knowledges and practices, to globalise knowledge and practice.
Abstracts and bios can be accessed here.
Schedule
Thursday 23rd May 2024
09:30 - 10:10
Arrival, registration and refreshments
10:10 - 10:40
Welcome and introductions
Dean - Prof Charles Lees (City, University of London)
The Lord Mayor
ADRE's introduction
10:45 - 12:30
Panel 1: Conceptualising Disorder, Crisis, and the Crisis of Knowledge
Chair: Prof Inderjeet Parmar (City, University of London)
The panel delves into the conceptualization of poly crisis; interrogates the network of multiple crises, orderly unfolding that creates disorder, and our inability to make sense of the problem due to the current gap in accepting alternative epistemic understandings of the world. From critical political, economic, and sociological perspectives, the panel makes a beginning and offers novel/critical conceptualizations of poly crisis, uncovering its complexities, contradictions, and limitations.
- Dr Alex Williams (University of East Anglia) "From Polycrisis To Hegemonic Crisis: Theorising Political Complexity".
- Dr Aaron McKeil (London School of Economics) "Understanding Strategies for Order in an Era of Geostrategic Competition".
- Prof Bobby Banerjee (City, University of London) "Settler colonial (dis)order: The case of Palestine".
- Prof Dan Mercea (City, University of London) "The Sense of Democratic Decline That Bears on Political Participation".
12:30 - 13:30
Lunch break
13:30 - 15:15
Panel 2: Geopolitics, Geo-economics, and the Global South
Chair: Dr Geoffrey Swenson (City, University of London)
Picking up some threads from the first panel, this panel explores poly crises from a hierarchical perspective of the super- and sub-ordination problem in the international system, with particular attention to its impact on the Global South. It explores how geopolitics of the Global North through wars and weapons, backed by geoeconomics of Dollar Diplomacy, racialises its impacts. By putting the Global South at the forefront, the panel shows poly crises in a different light. Has the Global South been in poly crisis already? Could this be the new (global) normal?
- Dr Farwa Sial (SOAS) "The Crisis of accumulation, Epistemicide and the Global Financial Architecture".
- Prof Photis Lysandrou (City, University of London) "Disorder and Dollar Dominance".
- Dr Ahmed Waheed (ROADS Inititive) "Polycrisis or Imperial Crisis? Navigating the Eurocentric Trap".
- Dr Mark Ledwidge (City, University of London) "Understanding the Crisis in Reparations".
15:15 - 15:30
Afternoon break
15:30 - 17:15
Panel 3: Health, Pandemics and the Crisis
Chair: Prof Sophie Harman (Queen Mary University of London)
The panel examines how poly crisis manifests in crises in physical and mental well-being including its socio-economic and political implications in a digitally networked world. By interrogating pandemics and health crises through the lens of health of individuals, the panel explores the complexities and problems of treating poly crises as numbers and charts in economic indices. Panellists show how ‘health’ is fundamental to our understanding of world’s challenges – in terms of misinformation, securitization, public trust, and gender inequality.
- Dr Orkun Saka (City, University of London) "Public Trust in the Aftermath of Epidemics".
- Dr Agne Suziedelyte (City, University of London) "Have Girls Been Left Behind During the COVID-19 Pandemic? Gender Differences in Pandemic Effects on Children’s Mental Wellbeing".
- Dr Stephanie Alice Baker (City, University of London) "The role of new media technologies in the spread of false and misleading health information".
- Dr Charlotte Godziewski (City, University of London) "Exploring the EU’s expanding health security role since COVID-19".
17:15 - 18:15
Reception for all
Friday 24th May 2024
09:15 - 09:45
Arrival, registration and refreshments
09:45 - 11:15
Panel 4: Migration, Borders and Violent Crime
Chair: Valentina Aronica (City, University of London alumna)
The panel interrogates poly crisis and its manifestations beyond cartographic borders. The speed and complexity of human migration, legal and illegal border crossing, new criminal networks enabled through poly crisis creates novel policy challenges. From intrusive policing of internal order, scapegoating refugees, to the crisis of civil society, poly crises bring the dark side of the world and spins it faster. The panel offers a new way to understand these problems through the vulnerabilities of existing institutions in our world.
- Dr Maya Goodfellow (City, University of London) "Race, class and the economy: how is the term ‘economic migrant’ used in British political discourse?".
- Dr Liza Schuster (City, University of London) "Migration Policy-making in and about Afghanistan".
- Dr Alice Mesnard (City, University of London) "Revolving Doors: How Externalization Policies Block Refugees and Divert Other Migrants Across Migration Routes".
- Dr Can Cinar (City, University of London) "Labour in Limbo: The Dynamics of Bargaining Power Among Refugees and Migrants".
11:15 - 11:30
Morning break
11:30 - 13:00
Panel 5: Crises, Societal Disorders, Carceral State
Chair: Prof Eugene McLaughlin (City, University of London)
This panel continues and develops the discussion from the previous panel. It delves into the emergence of crime and violent punitive measures within societies as a cause and consequence of poly crises. The rise of challenges to civil liberties, social injustice, and increasing gender inequalities are products of poly crises. But carceral states maintain these by using disorder as licence for violent punitive measures. The panel contributes to an understanding of different unfoldings of poly crisis domestically and internationally.
- Dr Alexandria Innes (City, University of London) "Mapping the effects of insecure migration status: inequality, exploitation and violence".
- Prof Carrie Myers (City, University of London) "'Whose crisis? Lessons from Behind the Lines".
- Dr Anna Katila (City, University of London) "Perceptions of incarceration and (dis)order in post-genocide Rwanda".
- Prof Emmeline Taylor (City, University of London) "Stealing with Impunity: Have we decriminalised theft?".
13:00 - 13:45
Lunch break
13:45 - 15:15
Panel 6: War, Conflict, and Disorders
Chair: Dr Ahmed Waheed (ROADS Initiative)
The panel will examine the links between wars, war crimes, and hypocrisies such as Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, US-China, to scrutinize how poly crises gives rise to global disorder. The panel will explore how crisis affects conflicts and how ongoing conflicts affects the network of poly crisis in different regional, local, and global environment.
- Prof Michael Ben-Gad (City, University of London) "Si vis pacem, para bellum".
- Dr Zeno Leoni (Kings College London) "A return to clashing geopolitical blocs?".
- Dr Madura Rasaratnam (City, University of London) "The politics of global ordering and ethnic conflict: the Sri Lankan case in comparative perspective".
- Prof Inderjeet Parmar (City, University of London) "Made in America? How the Ford Foundation Transformed and Integrated China into the Liberal International Order".
15:15 - 15:30
Afternoon break
15:30 - 16:30
Round Table on Praxis: Bringing Theory and Empirics Together; Reflections on ways forward for The Finsbury Institute
Chair: Prof Inderjeet Parmar
- Susan Coughtrie (Foreign Policy Center)
- Prof Atul Shah (City, University of London)
- Prof Bela Arora (Keele University)
- Dr George Giannakopolous (City, University of London)
- Prof Sophie Harman (Queen Mary University of London)
- Prof Eugene McLaughlin (City, University of London)
- Dr Bamo Nouri (University of West London)
- Dr Ahmed Waheed (ROADS Initiative)