Companies and territories faced with the challenge of deglobalization

This article presents this thematic issue of the Annals of geography, dealing with the new relations that companies and territories develop in facing the consequences of deglobalization. Although the notion of “globalization” does not pose any particular problems of definition in economic geography. This is not the case for “deglobalization,” whose use is still controversial. It denotes essentially a specific phase of contemporary globalization, the “crisis of globalization.” A new diagram helps to clarify the respective places of globalization and deglobalization in the economic dynamics of the contemporary world. It is characterized by two simultaneous movements, but in opposite directions: the first promotes the process of opening up to the world (globalization); the second advocates more the status quo, i.e. retrenchment and closing-off from the world. Companies and territories are on the front line of this duality. In the face of rising uncertainties, in the end, companies and territories are eagerly in search of solutions to withstand the effects of the crisis.