Capitalism in Global Crisis: economic transformations, new authoritarianism, and resistance
The DiscourseNet Winter School brings together advanced MA as well as PhD students (BA students with an own research project are also welcome) who want to pursue research on Capitalism in Global Crisis revolving around economic transformations, new authoritarianism, and resistance with respect to Discourse Studies and to discuss the methodological and theoretical challenges of their thesis projects or first ideas.
In the last decades, the economies in different countries and regions as well as the global economic power relations have changed. Three characteristics are significant: first, the US economic hegemony, expressed by a dominant position in almost all traditional leading industries, becomes step by step replaced by a tri-pole structure consisting by a rising Asian field of economic innovation (with China as regional superpower), a declining North American pole and a consolidating European
pole (with Germany as regional hegemon) torn between the aspiring East and former West. Second, rising economic inequalities can be observed in all capitalist economies, including China, Russia and East/Central Europe, with the formation of a small wealthy elite on the top of economic hierarchy, shrinking middle classes splitting up between the top and bottom, and a widening array of lower classes more and more excluded from social recognition, welfare, consumption and other forms of
social participation. Wealthy and innovative areas on the one hand, and declining regions disconnected from global innovations on the other hand reflect these cleavages geographically. And, finally, a forth technological revolution (catchwords: Industry 4.0, digitalisation, 5G, green economy) is currently changing global value chains, working relations and the general distribution of labour and value. These tendencies of the global economy have huge impacts on political discourses, social
identities, life styles, social conflicts and the formation of new milieus. Among diverse social, cultural and political reactions to these global transformations new forms of authoritarianism seem to be of significant analytical importance.