Communication, Crisis, & Global Power Shifts: An Introduction

Abstract

This paper brings contemporary theoretical discussions on the nature of the evolving global order into dialogue with a set of transnationally, regionally, and nationally oriented studies addressing communication, crisis, and global power shifts. First, it brings in a class-centric perspective to complicate mainstream nation-state-centric narratives aboutU.S.hegemonic decline and global power shifts from the West to the Rest, especiallyChina. Second, it draws upon anti-racist and anti-imperialist critiques of the racial construction of sovereignty and the concomitant Western-originated capitalist nation-state logic to supplement the class-centric analysis. The resulting social revolutionary perspective on communication and historical change encompasses the analytical lenses of class, nation, state, race, empire, gender, and knowledge/power paradigms, and it also emphasizes the analysis of various social forces and their interrelations both among and within nations.