It can seem that we are always in crisis. Both the political worlds we study, and our own vantage point in academia, are near-constantly subject to crisis claims (Spector 2019). But how do we understand 'crisis', and what are the implications of these understandings for the way in which we study crisis phenomena? This paper takes a step back to reflect upon not just what crisis means in academic research, but also its use as a concept over time: what does crisis do? There is significant ambiguity and diversity in academic understandings of crisis (Wolbers et al. 2021), which this paper aims to illuminate and unpack.
This paper therefore conducts a condensed genealogy of the use of the term 'crisis' in the social sciences, drawing upon Schaffer's (2015) approach to concept elucidation and Oren's (2014) reflexive genealogy. It traces a narrative of the evolution of ‘crisis’ in public administration, public policy and political leadership (e.g. Rosenthal, Charles and ‘t Hart 1989; Hewitt 1983; Boin et al. 2016), up to a crescendo of research during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The paper provokes particular reflection upon what meanings of crisis do in social science research - including the power of epistemological and normative assumptions behind the term. Such meanings are found to be disparate and diverse, ranging from the objective-positivist to the subjective-interpretive. These diverse understandings also have implications for what it means to respond to or manage crisis. This paper shows that different crisis meanings have been used for such purposes as discipline building, speaking to urgency in research, explaining social change, and constructing ideas of the 'normal' or 'status quo'. For this reason, it is useful to be aware of the use of 'crisis' as both an experience-near (or empirical) concept, and an experience-distant (or academic) concept, and the distinctions between the two (see Schaffer 2015).
Given the popularity of 'crisis' to conceptually frame research in political science, interrogation on our use of the term is warranted. The article will therefore lead to some final provocations on how and why we study crisis; particularly the importance of reflexive and critical approaches.
