Helle Rydstrom, Guest editor of Crisis: Critical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives? Volume 12: Issue 3-4 (helle.rydstrom@genus.lu.se)
Crisis appears to frame our world from the Covid-19 pandemic to climate disasters, financial recession, and wars. In public discourse, crisis is broadcasted seemingly indefinitely as one crisis is conflated with the other and underlying crisis reasons eschewed (Roitman, 2022). Not uncommonly, crisis is used as a rhetorical tool in political plans and models (Andersson, 2022), sometimes even to purport populist and extreme views (Hearn, 2022; Kaur, 2022). Crisis, however, also is experienced in daily life as lifeworld and livelihood realities that call for mitigation strategies and social resilience (Bergman-Rosamond et al., 2019; Zhukova, 2022).
Attempting to capture the meaning of ‘crisis’ is not unlike looking in a kaleidoscope, each image reflecting different shapes, forms, and shades. Referring to an analytical concept, a social phenomenon, a lived experience, an everyday reality as well as a political means, every crisis emerges as another kaleidoscopic constellation, as a projecting of challenges and sometimes even potentialities.
Capturing the multi-dimensional conceptual and empirical character of ‘crisis’ means to place crisis in its right context (Fassin, 2022; Mbembe and Roitman, 1995), as elucidated by the thought-provoking articles included in the Global Discourse double special issue on “Critical Explorations of Crisis: Politics, Precariousness, and Potentialities” (vol. 12, no. 3-4, 2022). The issue, which is edited by Helle Rydstrom, Mo Hamza, Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, and Vanja Berggren, is one result of a series of crisis-focused activities carried out, in collaboration with the Social Resilience group, under the Society for Critical Studies of Crisis (SCSC).[1]
Crisis encroaches change in breaking down the usual order of things and, in doing so, creating insecurity about future conditions (Habermas, 1992 [1976]). In the special issue, articles point towards the significance of linking crisis with temporality, as also suggested by previous research (Roitman, 2014; Walby 2015). Connecting the dots between crisis and temporality encourages examinations of when and where a crisis erupted, whether a crisis was terminated and for whom, if the crisis interlocked with already existing crises (Rydstrom, 2020, 2022), cascaded from one realm into another (Walby, 2015, 2022), or morphed into a chronic condition (Vigh, 2008, 2022).
In the English language ‘crisis’ is intimately intertwined with temporality. ‘Crisis’, a Latinized version of the ancient Greek krisis, was applied by physician Hippocrates (460-370 BCE) to identify a decisive moment in a disease indicating either recovery or death (Etymyonline 2022; Merriam-Webster, 2021). In this optic, crisis emerges as a temporary interrupting incident expected to lead to either renewal or devastation (i.e., by extension catharsis or apocalypse). This binary approach to crisis, however, has been contested by research suggesting that crisis temporalities can both refer to an event and a process without being mutually exclusive (London, 2022; Offe, 1984), thereby accounting for the fluidity of crisis (Roitman, 2014), and the ways in which crisis modalities and intensities take shape within a continuum (Rydstrom, 2020, 2022).
In reconsidering crisis, the special issue moves away from a typical western stance on crisis to explore the range of crisis temporalities and phases, as manifested and experienced in various ethnographic contexts (Fassin and Honneth, 2022). The manifold ways in which crisis is conceptualized, what people in specific settings perceive as crisis, and how various types of crises are mitigated in daily life are thus brought to the fore in the issue to enhance current crisis research (Fassin, 2022). As highlighted, crisis understandings and realities in societies such as Guinea Bissau (Vigh, 2022), South Africa (Jensen and Schneidermann, 2022), and Vietnam (Rydstrom, 2022) counter common western-centric binary assumptions about crisis.
In Vietnam, as my ethnographic research indicates, crisis is approached both as an incident and as a process that disrupts the ordinary rhythm of daily life. Crisis ruptures go to the core of one’s body, to the heart, while also creating a state of the mind. Such a crisis condition may hold power to terrorize those upon whom it befalls (Rydstrom, 2022).[2] The negative impacts of a crisis, my research shows, correspond with the ways in which socio-economic resources are distributed along the lines of gender and class, amongst other parameters, as underpinning conditions for crisis navigation. Some can barely manage a crisis, while others may use a crisis as a steppingstone for improvement. Others, again, might witness how an incoming crisis entangles with already existing crises to surreptitiously transmute into a new normalcy of prolonged difficulties (Rydstrom, 2020). Thus, while a crisis might be heartfelt for anyone, different crisis mitigation options and ‘horizons of coping’ inform whether, and for whom, a crisis is closed, solidified, or exacerbated (Rydstrom 2022).
The asymmetrical ramifications of a crisis are not only conspicuous in respect to various social groups (Skoog et al., 2019), but also a Global South and Global North divide (Hamza, 2015; Zetter, 2022). The harm imposed upon people and societies by crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, financial recession, and wars epitomizes skewed opportunities and rights (Gammeltoft-Hansen, 2016; Kjarum, 2022). The study of crisis thus directs our attention towards human precarity as an analytical entry to unravel how socio-economic and political inequalities may render those who were already in a precarious situation even more precarious in crisis times, as they try to manage by developing coping strategies and building social resilience (Rydstrom, 2020, 2022).
Contents: Crisis: Critical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives? Volume 12: Issue 3-4
Didier Fassin: Preface: Crisis as Experience and Politics
Roger Zetter: Refugee crises – an architype for crisis studies
Sylvia Walby: Crisis and Society: Developing the theory of crisis in the context of COVID
Heidi Gottfried: Crisis and Change: The Politics of Potentialities (Reply to Walby)
Henrik Vigh: Slow Crisis: Critical continuities in Bissau and beyond
Ninna Nyberg Sørensen: Crisis as ‘slow’ or an existential state of being (Reply to Vigh)
Jonathan D. London: Social Reproduction meets the World Market (Reply to Rydstrom)
Jeff Hearn: The place and potential of crisis/crises in Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities
Ov Cristian Norocel: The conceptual imbrications of men, masculinities, and crises (Reply to Hearn)
Nanna Schneidermann: Surviving in Overcome Heights: Living in and alongside crisis in Cape Town
Anne-Meike Fechter: Humanitarianism, Mobility and Kinship (Reply to Zhukova)
Ravinder Kaur: Crisis Futures: Covid-19 and the Speculative Turning Point of History
Nanna Bonde Thylstrup: Crisis times (Reply to Kaur)
Fredrik N. G. Andersson: Macroeconomic Equilibriums, Crises and Fiscal Policy
Janet Roitman: The Ends of Perpetual Crisis
Morten Kjaerum: A Decisive Moment: Human Rights or Authoritarianism: It’s a Choice (Policy Article)
References
Andersson, F.N.G. (2022) “Macroeconomic Equilibriums, Crises and Fiscal Policy”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
Bergman-Rosamond, A., T. Gammeltoft-Hansen, J. Hearn, M. Hamza, V. Ramasar, and H. Rydstrom (2019) “The Case for Interdisciplinary Crises Studies”, Global Discourse. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1332/204378920X15802967811683
Etymyonline (2022) Accessed September 2022: https://www.etymonline.com/word/crisis
Fassin, D. (2022) “Preface: Crisis as Experience and Politics”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
Fassin, D. and A. Honneth (2022). Crisis under Critique. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gammeltoft-Hansen, T. (2016) “Hvordan løser vi flygtningekrisen?”, Cph.: Informations Forlag.
Habermas, J. (1992) [1976] Legitimation Crisis. Cambridge: Polity.
Hamza, M. (ed.) (2015) World Disasters Report: Local Actors the Key to Humanitarian Effectiveness, Geneva: IFRC.
Hearn, J. (2022) “The Place and Potential of Crisis/Crises in Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
Jensen, S. and N. Schneidermann (2022) “Surviving in Overcome Heights: Living In and Alongside Crisis in Cape Town”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
Kaur, R. (2022) “Crisis Futures: Covid-19 and the Speculative Turning Point of History”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
Kjarum, M. (2022) “A Decisive Moment: Human Rights or Authoritarianism, It’s a Choice”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
London, J. (2022) “Social Reproduction Meets the World Market”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
Mbembe, A. and J. Roitman (1995) “Figures of the Subject in Times of Crisis”, Public Culture, 7:323-352.
Merriam-Webster (2022) Accessed September 2022: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crisis
Offe, C. (1976) “Crisis of Crisis Management: Elements of A Political Crisis Theory”. International Journal of Politics, 6(3):29-67.
Roitman, J. (2014) Anti-Crisis, Durham: Duke University Press.
Roitman, J. (2022) “The Ends of Perpetual Crisis”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
Rydstrom, H. (2020) “Disasters, Ruins, and Crises: Masculinity and Ramifications of Storms in Vietnam”. Ethnos, Journal of Anthropology, 85(2):351-370.
Rydstrom, H. (2022) “The ‘Hardship’ of Ordinary Crises: Gendered Precariousness and Horizons of Coping in Vietnam’s Industrial Zones”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
Skoog, M., V. Berggren, and I.K. Hallström (2019), “’Happy that Someone Cared’: Non-Native-Speaking Immigrant Mothers’ Experiences of Participating in Screening for Postpartum Depression in the Swedish Child Health Services”, J. Child Health Care, 23(1):118-130.
Vigh, H. (2008) “Crisis and Chronicity: Anthropological Perspectives on Continuous Conflict and Decline”, Ethnos, Journal of Anthropology, 73(1):5-24.
Vigh, H. (2022) “Slow Crisis: Critical Continuities in Bissau and Beyond”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
Walby, S. (2015) Crisis, Oxford: Polity.
Walby, S. (2022) “Crisis and Society: Developing the Theory of Crisis in the Context of Covid”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
Zetter, R. (2022) “Refugee Crises – An Architype for Crisis Studies”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
Zhukova, E. (2022). “Chronic Crisis and Nuclear Disaster Humanitarianism: Recuperation of Chernobyl and Fukushima Children in Italy”, Global Discourse, 12(3-4).
[1] Hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University, Sweden; https://scsc.blogg.lu.se/about-the-society-for-critical-studies-of-crisis-2/
[2] Thanks to Huong T.T. Nguyen for inspiring communication on crisis.
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