Featuring Prof. Manfred B. Steger, A/Prof. Chris Hudson, A/Prof James Goodman and Prof. Supriya Singh.The world is fast approaching a critical point of disjuncture in relations between the major powers, not least between the US, Russia and China, driven by the power rivalries of the ‘old order’ of nation-states. At the same time, across the globe vastly different movements organise via alternative dynamics that affect the lives of civilians as surveillance and securitising agendas recalibrate both compliance and contestation. Accompanying these developments is the increasing globalisation of culture. Ulrich Beck has argued that there is ‘a new kind of capitalism, a new kind of economy, a new kind of global order, a new kind of personal life coming into being, all of which differ from earlier phases of social development’. With these issues in mind we consider the following questions: Are we on the verge of global rupture triggered by the power shifts across and between states and movements? Is the increased coerciveness ofthe state, and attempts to control the ‘margins’, an inevitable outcome of this period of intensifying globalisation? How is the understanding of new cultural connections and the imagination of life with a global span made possible at the level of everyday social practices?