Idea Of Crisis Research Articles

Democracia em crise?

A ideia de crise ou degradação democrática é, assim como a própria noção de democracia, disputada teórica e analiticamente. Neste artigo, discorremos sobre as ações implementadas pela administração de Donald Trump nos Estados Unidos, focando a discussão nos impactos que os discursos e políticas adotadas pelo governo do republicano tiveram sobre os direitos de grupos historicamente marginalizados, como a população negra, as mulheres, as comunidades migrantes e a população LGBTI+. Defendemos que a análise de processos de desdemocratização devem considerar não só dimensões procedimentais, mas os efeitos desses quadros para a garantia e efetivação de direitos dos sujeitos. O reforço de desigualdades, o aumento de violências, a exclusão social e o desmonte de políticas públicas são alguns dos quadros observados, o que demanda reflexões mais amplas sobre as crises democráticas, bem como sobre as possibilidades de luta e resistência.

“The Greek Crisis Ends here Tonight”: A Qualitative Study of Labor Market Deregulation in Greece Beyond the “Crisis” Paradigm

Abstract The concept of crisis has frequently been used to characterize seismic historical events of the 21st century, and many scholars have interpreted it according to Agamben’s elaboration of the state of exception. Following this paradigm, the crisis period in Greece is often perceived as a violent rupture from the previous state of relative stability that spanned the whole social spectrum. We argue, however, that although the idea of exceptions and rupture may be valid for phenomena such as urban policies or social control, it does not apply in the context of the labor market. Attempting to go beyond the idea of crisis as a rupture, in this article we will illustrate how the current crisis instead masks a number of pre-existing phenomena. We do so through qualitative empirical data and analysis of workers’ perceptions regarding one of the most emblematic phenomena of the so-called Greek crisis: labor market deregulation.

Italian Perspectives on Pandemic Responses: Tracing Early Critiques from Europe’s First Lockdown

Abstract This paper is a translation of three early critiques of the responses of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy, each addressing a unique facet and different perspective of Europe’s first lockdown. Through bringing together these memorial traces, the article captures the heterogeneity of discussions taking place on the left at the very beginning of the pandemic, destabilizing a totalizing framing of Covid responses through simple binaries such as health vs economics or individual rights vs the collective good. Crisitina Morini addresses the ambivalences around the term ‘care’ (in Italian meaning both ‘attention’ and ‘cure’). Grounded in feminist economics, she argues for the establishment of a self-determination income envisioned as an unconditional and universal income, not linked to working positions. Sara Gandini ponders the possibility of turning anger into a political force and questions what forms this could take. Highlighting the problems related to turning a public health issue into one of national security, Gandini probes the politics of acceptability around Covid-related deaths against non-Covid related deaths, particularly deaths precisely exacerbated by confinement strategies. She speaks also of the silencing and policing of dissent when one tries to raise such issues in the public space. Lastly, Andrea Fumagalli uses the idea of crisis as an opportunity to rethink social and economic issues. These include readjusting the balance between private and public healthcare, (especially as Covid treatments are not very profitable), the implementation of a major European investment plan relating to social infrastructure and the environment, which will relaunch the European economy. Though these critiques were formulated at the start of the pandemic. many of the arguments and questions the authors asked themselves at the time remain highly topical: the role of welfare and income, the regulatory devices (including gender) that risk passing using the fight against the pandemic; all of which are central to maintaining a lucidity of analysis and to be resistant witnesses, politicizing anger to turn it into an agency that takes advantage of this difficult experience to build a slightly better world.

Dzieciństwo: projekt w kryzysie

This article considers the idea of crisis as one of the key tools for conceptualizing the ambivalent nature of childhood. Although crisis narratives have been an inseparable part of describing childhood, the concept of a crisis (an end, a death) of childhood itself may refer to such different phenomena as slave labor or lack of access to education on the one hand, and the consumerist lifestyle and media addiction on the other. The author focuses mainly on the idea of the disappearance of modern childhood derived from Postman’s concept. Childhood is viewed in connection with the concept of childhood’s toxicity, the dichotomy between over-controlling and ignoring childhood, and the idea of childhood being inappropriate. The article concludes that although some of the problems signaled as part of the crisis diagnosis have a negative impact on the development of young people and require solutions, the idea that childhood en bloc is in crisis is rather an expression of the collapse of the classic vision of childhood, and thus of the hierarchical, dichotomous relationship between childhood and adulthood that it is based upon. The relationship thus defined does not leave much conceptual space for recognizing the complex and ambivalent nature of childhood, or for describing the changes in childhood and adulthood and their mutual determinants.

Claiming crisis: narratives of tension and insurance in rural India

ABSTRACT This article discusses local expressions of crisis in Beed district, central Maharashtra. Both in public and academic discourse crisis has become the term of choice for the many structural deficiencies which make agriculture an increasingly precarious livelihood in India. While most voices subscribe to the explanation that the current state of distress can be attributed to the unprofitability of agriculture, a wide range of structural explanations are suggested as to why this might be the case. Consequently, in some debates agricultural crisis runs the risk of moving the experiences, agency and postionalities of those imagined to be living through its consequences to the background. This paper counterbalances such causal explanations by empirically delving into the imaginaries of agricultural crisis as they are articulated, negotiated and employed by farmers in Maharashtra. Based on twelve months of ethnographic research, the paper examines how ideas of crisis are entangled with colloquial understandings by taking experiences of ‘tension’, an Anglicised term used to express feelings akin to stress, as object of inquiry. I argue that by claiming crisis through invoking feelings of tension farmers mobilise a plurality of meanings, narratives and moral evaluations about what is wrong with agriculture in this part of India.

The social world of elite youth football in Germany – crisis, reinvention, optimization strategies, and the role of schools

The objective of this article is to analyse the system of top-flight youth football in Germany, its main institutions – the Academies (Nachwuchsleistungszentren) and the Elite Schools of Football (Eliteschulen des Fußballs) – and the relationship between them. The analytical focus centres on examining the ways in which quasi-professional youth football and the German educational system have cooperated in recent years. Special emphasis will be placed on the reconstruction and professionalization processes in the context of a perceived crisis in German football generally dating from the late twentieth century. It will be argued that the idea of crisis appears to be of systemic value for the social world of football in Germany. In the world of football, constant reference to crisis helps to create shared meaning among and between groups whose interests do not necessarily coincide, lending support to the argument that the idea of a crisis is important in facilitating action and change. The analysis will be underpinned by a case study focusing on the youth section of German Bundesliga club FSV Mainz 05 and one of its partner schools. Different perspectives on cooperation will be explored with a focus on the various perspectives of actors involved, drawing especially on qualitative and ethnographic interviews and fieldwork carried out in 2018 and 2019.

The Crisis of Becoming-Nature in Howard Barker’s Recent Dramas

AbstractThis article discusses how in Howard Barker’s recent work the idea of the subject’s crisis hinges on the introduction of an impersonal or transpersonal life force that persists beyond human agency. The article considers Barker’s metaphorical treatment of the images of land and stone and their interrelationship with the human body, where the notion of subjective crisis results from an awareness of objective forces that transcend the self. In “Immense Kiss” (2018) and “Critique of Pure Feeling” (2018), the idea of crisis, whilst still dominant, seems to lose its intermittent character of singular rupture and reveals itself as a permanent force of dissolution and reification. In these plays, the evocation of nonhuman nature in the love relationships between young men and elderly women affirms the existence of something that goes beyond the individual, which Barker approaches with a late-style poetic sensibility.

ON ACTUALIZATION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENERAL THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF CRIMINALISTICS

Some aspects of the philosophical ground of forensic science as a world-view basis of its general theory and methodology are specified in the article, as well as certain provisions of the prospects of “Philosophy of criminology” are given. The author supports the idea that this particular form of scientific and forensic cognition is the only possible solution and localization of most of the methodological problems of criminology, without which it risks disappearing as a science. The analysis of literature states that in modern conditions the role of philosophy as a scientific and methodological outlook is inevitably increased. And this, in turn, is the basis of the integration of sciences, the basis for comprehensive research on topical issues of modern practice and cognition. Being a science about the general laws of nature, society and human thinking, philosophy serves as a basis for building a separate scientific methodology, including such a variety as the general theory and methodology of criminology. Here philosophy carries out not only a special ideological function, which criminalistics does not have, but also a function of the philosophical method of cognition. It is also justified to assume that without reference to philosophical categories it would be impossible both the formation of forensic science, and its further improvement in the sense of formulating their own categories, that is, the most general concepts, in which, in general, the quintessence of the content of a separate branch of scientific knowledge is concentrated. According to “The procedure of training applicants of higher education for the degree of doctor of philosophy and doctor of sciences in higher educational establishments (scientific institutions) these applicants in Ukraine will be called “doctors of philosophy”. In addition, the educational – scientific program should include the component which provides for the acquisition of such competence in accordance with the National Qualifications Framework, as “… mastering general scientific (philosophical) competencies aimed at forming a systemic scientific views, professional ethics and general cultural outlook. Therefore, this aspect does not only justify, but inexcusably argues the need for scientific assimilation of philosophical categories by future lawyers, including the highest scientific degree”. One way or another, future lawyers, especially criminologists, must be aware of the reasons that led to the emergence and development of criminology; the factors that determined its methodological foundations and place in the system of scientific knowledge, in particular, in the system of criminal-law sciences; its tasks, social functions, the ways and mechanisms of their realization (in their philosophical comprehension). In addition, the elimination of the so-called in the literature ground of the “idea of ​​crisis” which leads to allegations of the need to change the “forensic paradigm”, the departure from the traditional forensic theory and methodology, could also be possible, to a large extent, due to the philosophical aspect of securing the active and progressive development of criminology, taking into account the preservation and respect of the traditions of forensic science, as well as the criminologists who created it. Key words: general theory, methodology, criminology, philosophy.

Manscaping and After: Power, Parody and the Hairy Chest

This article is concerned with the ways that contemporary ideas of crisis and struggle in relation to white, Western masculinity are expressed through the body, placing particular emphasis on the grooming of male body hair and of the chest, in particular. “Manscaping,” made mainstream in the early 2000s, was promoted in men’s magazines and newspapers, which encouraged men to groom their chest hair in the name of personal pride and hygiene. This article will explore how, in response to these fashionable cycles, deeper issues of masculine identity are being contested through the bodies of men in a variety of media. It will settle on an analysis of the way that chest hair and manscaping have converged in online activities, which display chest hair shaped in ironic ways. It will argue that this is a form of parody and resistance that can be connected to a volatile political landscape and uses Sally Robinson’s notion of the “wounded body” (2005: 6) to argue that this is a reactionary move intended to maintain masculine dominance by making a visible refusal to adhere to the complex demands made by fashions in male chest hair.

Classical humanitarianism and resilience humanitarianism: making sense of two brands of humanitarian action

Humanitarian aid has long been dominated by a classical, Dunantist paradigm that was based on the ethics of the humanitarian principles and centred on international humanitarian United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations. While in previous decades alternative paradigms and humanitarianisms evolved, this classical paradigm remained the central narrative of humanitarianism. In recent years, however, this paradigm has been paralleled by a resilience paradigm that is focused on local people and institutions as the first responders to crises. Whereas classical humanitarianism is rooted in the notion of exceptionalism, resilience humanitarianism starts from the idea of crisis as the new normality. This paper discusses the two paradigms and the incongruent images they evoke about crises, local institutions and the recipients of aid. The article puts forward the case for studying the ways in which these contrasting aid paradigms shape practices, dealing with the importance of discourse, the social life of policy, the multiplicity of interests, the power relations and the crucial importance of understanding the lifeworld and agency of aid workers and crisis-affected communities. The article demonstrates how the stories that humanitarians tell about themselves are based on highly selective views of reality and do not include the role they themselves play in the reordering and representation of realities in humanitarian crises.

Times of Crisis, Seeds of Modernity: Women and Popular Revolts in Modern Spain

In the 18th century, nations began acknowledging the presence of those who belonged to inferior classes and regarding them as the constitutive political subject of the modern state. Paradoxically, even as these marginal individuals were turned into central figures of the state’s political apparatus, they plunged the notion of sovereignty into crisis as they questioned the status quo and embodied an alternative to institutional power. In this light, the present essay explores the idea of crisis and modernity in the Spanish context from a historical, spatial, and gendered perspective. Women occupy a central space as a minority collective at the margins of the citizenry. But with their action and participation in mutinies, wars and revolutions—all landmarks of state crisis—they make themselves visible and open new spaces of agency from which to disrupt and renew traditional norms. By analyzing 18th- and 19th-century newspaper articles, literary works, and a number of visual representations by Spanish painter Francisco de Goya, this essay will examine the power of art to reveal how crises allow women to emerge as political subjects and to rewrite a narrative of modernity in which they take the leading role in propelling social change, influencing projects of political citizenship, and shaping a modern nation that needs to tend to all its members, making evident that crisis, while a break in the established order, is also a liberating step towards emancipation.

A melancolia conjunta escrita com a tinta em primeira pessoa

Este texto nasce de uma constatação frequentemente reiterada em análises acerca da atual conjuntura política nacional: o poder, organizando-se a partir da ideia de crise, melancolizou grande parte das subjetividades emergentes. Sendo esse este um enunciado verdadeiro, busca-se aqui, por meio de preceitos advindos, em grande parte, da filosofia e da psicanálise, a redescoberta de uma potência intrínseca à melancolia, capaz de reavaliar os impasses que inflamam o Brasil atual.

DO IMPERIUM AO REGNUM NA ANTIGUIDADE TARDIA: o exemplo do reino hispano-visigodo de Toledo (séculos VI-VII)

RESUMO Para o historiador, estabelecer balizas cronológicas precisas é uma tarefa de difícil realização. Mais complexo ainda se o período estudado está marcado com o selo de uma época de crise, como a Antiguidade Tardia. Denominado por alguns como "Baixo Império", para outros a "Alta Idade Média", o mundo tardoantigo (séculos II-VIII) se apresenta como portador de uma "identidade propria", como indicaram em seu momento Brown e Marrou, no qual a ideia de crise deve substituir-se por conceitos mais atuais, como os de transformação ou de readequação. Neste estudo, partindo dos elementos políticos e institucionais, analisamos como, de forma paulatina, fez-se a passagem do poder imperial romano às monarquias romano-bárbaras herdeiras da autoridade imperial no Ocidente romano. De forma particular, lançaremos um olhar especial à monarquia hispano-visigoda dos séculos VI e VII que manteve alguns importantes elementos políticos do passado imperial romano.

Crisis and critique in Jürgen Habermas’s social theory

At a time when ideas of crisis and critique are at the forefront of public discourse, this article seeks to understand moments of crisis vis-à-vis critique as a key feature of critical social theory. It addresses Jürgen Habermas’s strong claim that this relationship accounts for a ‘model of analysis’ concerned with grasping the ‘diremptions’ of social life. To elaborate this reading, the article pays attention to the main problems Habermas identifies in conventional ways of understanding the concepts of ‘crisis’ and ‘critique’ in social theory. The aim is to examine the mode in which he reconsiders each of these terms and then reasserts the dialectical link between them. I reconstruct this relationship by taking as cases two of his most substantive works of social theorizing: The Theory of Communicative Action, and Between Facts and Norms. Based on this interpretation, I suggest that though Habermas contributes to resituating the practice of critique as a communicative translation of objective crisis, he does not adequately account for another key movement: when critique actually initiates, enacts and furthers the moment of crisis.

International Human Rights Law and the Language of Crisis

This paper considers the idea that international human rights law is both produced by and dependent upon crisis. Surveying the capaciousness, ambiguity, and constructedness of the concept, we position the relative weight given to particular rights in terms of their framing as ‘crises.’ We focus on how the idea of crisis has been differently deployed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the division between civil and political rights and economic, cultural and social rights to argue for a critical engagement with the language of crisis in human rights law, and to ask how that language has shaped the value and meaning of rights discourse more generally.

Cries of crisis: rethinking the health care debate

Since the late 1960s, health care in the United States has been described as a system in crisis. No matter their position, those seeking to improve the system have relied on the rhetoric of crisis to build support for their preferred remedies, to the point where the language and imagery of a health care crisis are now deeply embedded in contemporary politics and popular culture. In Cries of Crisis, Robert B. Hackey analyzes media coverage, political speeches, films, and television shows to demonstrate the role that language and symbolism have played in framing the health care debate, shaping policy making, and influencing public perceptions of problems in the health care system. He demonstrates that the idea of crisis now means so many different things to so many different groups that it has ceased to have any shared meaning at all. He argues that the ceaseless talk of crisis, without a commonly accepted definition of that term, has actually impeded efforts to diagnose and treat the chronic problems plaguing the American health care system. Instead, he contends, reformers must embrace a new rhetorical strategy that links proposals to improve the system with deeply held American values like equality and fairness.

Explaining the crisis

Richard D. Wolff Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, Interlink Publishing: Northampton, MA, 2009, 272 pp: 9781566567848 16.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk) Paul Mattick Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism, Reaktion Books: London, 2011, 126 pp: 9781861898012 12.95 [pounds sterling] (pbk) David McNally Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance, Merlin Press: London, 2011, 230 pp: 9780850366785 12.95 [pounds sterling] (pbk) David Harvey The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, Profile Books: London, 2011, 312 pp: 9781846683091 8.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk) While the crisis that hit global capitalism in 2008 will be analysed and argued over for years to come, there is a ready audience for early efforts to explain why it occurred and offer prognoses for its resolution. These four titles, all published in North America and dealing mainly with the US experience, have four distinctive features in common. First, they all berate mainstream economics, with its celebration of free-market capitalism and its failure to anticipate the crisis. Second, they draw on a substantial reservoir of earlier analysis and debate, because the idea of crisis has always played a central role in the Marxist critique of capitalism. Third, they offer alternatives not only in explaining the crisis, but also in discussing progressive strategies for resolving it. And finally, they are all written for a non-academic audience--perhaps the sort of audience that the Left Book Club sought in Britain in the 1930s: intelligent, committed, but lacking the knowledge and patience to work through the results of specialist academic research. Richard Wolff's book is a collection of 63 short articles by the author, published between 2005 and 2009 on the website of the US journal Monthly Review. It is linked to a documentary film of the same name, made in 2009. Fifteen articles make up Part I on 'Roots of a system's crisis', with each addressing an economic or political issue that sheds light on what went wrong. Part II, 'Economics of the crisis', includes 33 articles in sections on mainstream economics, efficient market theory, wages and employment, government intervention and international issues. Part III then focuses on 'The politics of the crisis', with sections on mainstream reformism, socialist solutions and anti-capitalist politics, the last having a particular focus on France. The writing is consistently clear, informative and passionate, providing an excellent model for others looking to make use of the blogosphere to bridge the gap between theory and political action. As Wolff puts it in the introduction, 'It's a bit like reading a critic's diary of the crisis', and this gives the more assiduous reader a good idea of how different aspects of the crisis have evolved, and what mattered most at different times. Because the articles have not been edited or updated, and because each has its own distinctive focus, it is hard to build up a systematic picture of the author's analysis: but then the purpose of the book is not to carve out territory in Marxist political economy, rather to provide an accessible introduction for students and activists. Paul Mattick's brief account in Business as Usual is short on detail, but its tight focus on the basic economics of the crisis make it a good introduction for the non-expert looking for a more integrated story. Once again the writing is excellent, and although there are no tables or charts there is plenty of well-chosen information, wide-ranging as regards time and place, and both events and ideas are clearly summarised. His first chapter gives a summary account of the crisis and the mainstream analysis of it, starting from the impact that falling house prices had on the mortgage finance sector from 2006, and the way decades of financial liberalisation and internationalisation had created an ideal mechanism for spreading that impact into global credit markets. …

Universalismo: Reflexiones sobre los fundamentos filosóficos de la sociología

This article reflects on the link between sociology and universalism. Its central thesis is that, as a critical heir of natural law theories of the seventeenth century and of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, sociology adopts from them a claim to universalism with which it cannot do away. But if it does not want to become only a antiquarian-piece, the discipline must constantly re-think what is it, what are the shortcomings and how it can renew its own claim to universalism. The first section explores, with the help of Reinhart Koselleck, the linkages between the idea of crisis, the rise of sociology and the problem of universalism. The second seeks to unfold the elective affinity between modern natural law and sociology via works by Leo Strauss, Robert Fine and Jürgen Habermas. The third section centres upon the most extended criticism to the expression of this claim to universalism: its alleged Eurocentrism. The article ends with some comments on the challenges that the postmodern critique and the new orthodoxy on globalization pose to the traditional ways in which sociology has understood its universalistic horizon.

International Crisis Response and a Canadian Role

INTRODUCTIONIn the immediate aftermath of the end of the Cold War, there was a sense of general optimism that the end of the east-west struggle would open up new possibilities for dealing with international problems. There was talk of a peace dividend, of the spread of democracy, and of the prospect that together these would contribute to peace and development. Even in the early days of the post-Cold War period, however, there were indications that the surge of optimism was opposed by some hard realities. Writing in 1992, the secretary-general of the United Nations characterized the situation as follows:We have entered a time of global transition marked by uniquely contradictory trends. Regional and continental associations of States are evolving ways to deepen cooperation and ease some of the contentious characteristics of sovereign and nationalistic rivalries. National boundaries are blurred by advanced communications and global commerce, and by the decisions of States to yield some sovereign prerogatives to larger, common political associations. At the same time, however, fierce new assertions of nationalism and sovereignty spring up, and the cohesion of States is threatened by brutal ethnic, religious, social, cultural or linguistic strife. Social peace is challenged on the one hand by new assertions of discrimination and exclusion and, on the other, by acts of terrorism seeking to undermine evolution and change through democratic means.1More than ten years later, those contradictory trends and the blurring of national boundaries continue to generate a sense of opportunity and threat, hope and crisis. For states, these trends challenge government and society in new and unexpected ways. This has particularly been the case for Canada. The effects of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the attacks of 11 September 2001 have combined to prompt new thinking about national security and how to respond to such threats. These challenges, and their connection to the apparently accelerating interconnectedness of states, also raise questions about international responses.It is in that context that I was asked to explore the question of international or multilateral crisis response and emergency preparedness and whether Canada might play a role in advocating such an approach. This article proceeds in three sections. The first section explores the idea of crisis within the current international system. It discusses the idea of modern crises as a threat to the state and provides an overview of existing crisis response mechanisms within the United Nations system. Given that I focus on state-based responses, I have considered the United Nations, but not the role of NGOs or organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross. Similarly, I leave aside the whole question of international responses to humanitarian crises. Since the end of the Cold War, the nature and criteria for international responses to humanitarian crises has become an issue of considerable debate and study.2 While humanitarian crises are related to the issues discussed here, I have focused on a broader definition of crisis.The second section outlines the nature of the requirement for an international response to crisis management and discusses the advantages and disadvantages inherent in such an approach. The concluding section then addresses what form a Canadian effort might take and whether such an initiative is desirable.CRISIS AND THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMInherent in the secretary-general's reference to blurred boundaries is an assumption about the interconnectedness of states and societies that has now become part and parcel of academic and policy thinking on security issues. While the extent, nature, and implications of various globalizing tendencies can be debated, few would argue that the phenomenon does not exist. The result is an outlook that sees events and crises as newly threatening in two ways. …

Dynamic of the organisation and structural inertia

– The story of organisation is often related as a successive period of stability and crisis. This article is based on the hypothesis that it is the intra-organisational inertia (i.e.: the organisation lack of adaptation to any modifications of the environment) the cause of usual severe ruptures in the evolution of firms. Indeed if we consider as theorists of organisations that the interrelation settled between the organisation and its environment is structural, the questions of representation, the evolution and adaptation become essential to understand the dynamic organisation. Starting by a geometric construction a model describing the organisation dynamics will be introduced, with elements enabling us to understand what an organisational change is (construction of a taxonomy) by the forces that generate it (construction of a dynamic). It will be more precisely question of trying to identify the notion of force compared with the notion of efficiency. And taking into account “this idea of crisis” which characterise all organisational transformation a geometric explanation based on the rupture of the organisation trajectory and singularity will be suggested. The interpretation of the first results thanks to a mere example of a model application in dynamic organisation brings to the fore, the importance of its history (for instance training in this example) in its adaptation capacity proving that it may become the cause of inertia, and organisational inefficiency. Classification Codes: L21.