ABSTRACT
Like many phenomena explored in the social sciences, crises have multiple dimensions and can be defined in various ways. As Colin Hay has aptly maintained, “crises may be singular, exceptional, recurrent or periodic; momentary, ephemeral, enduring or eternal; linear or cyclical; destructive or creative; underdetermined or overdetermined; inevitable or contingent; pathological or regenerative; organic or inorganic; paralyzing or liberating; immanent, latent or manifest” (Hay, 1999, p. 318). To this empirical complexity and heterogeneity, we can add the variability that different approaches to theorizing about crises can generate. How one chooses to characterize and represent crises is clearly connected to the observer’s ontological and epistemological tenets. Indeed, as Janet Roitman (2014) notes, even to treat a given event or process as a crisis as opposed to some other kind of phenomenon involves specific theoretical and normative judgments. Likewise, Rahm Emanuel’s proposition that “you never want to let a serious crisis go to waste” (2008) 1 suggests that crises have at least a dual significance. Besides signalling a more or less significant rupture in established systemic, institutional, organizational, or behavioural routines, crises also provide opportunities for change and, perhaps, improvement. This indicates the importance of considering the subjective as well as objective features of crisis and, in particular, the importance of whether and, if so, how different kinds of social agent interpret, respond to, and learn about natural and social phenomena that come to be characterized as crises.
