Times of Crisis under Anthropological Scrutiny

March 27-28, 2025

Lucie Benoit, UNIBE

Lucien Schönenberg, UNIBE

Paule Pastré, UNIBE

Prof. Heath Cabot, University of Pittsburgh/University of Bergen

'Ecological crisis', 'financial crisis', 'migration crisis', 'sanitary crisis'... The term 'crisis' and its semantics have become so pervasive that we seem to be living "in a time when our dominant representation of the world is one of crises" (Fassin, Honneth, 2022, 1). The normalization of the rhetoric of crisis and its impact on the interpretation of situations designated as such calls for a critical examination of the term and its derivatives.

Given the lack of a "concise and theoretically sound concept of crisis" in anthropology (Beck and Knecht, 2016, 56), we take as a starting point the double meaning of the Greek krisis, which refers both to an event of rupture and to critique or judgment (Koselleck, 2000 [1988]). By adopting this perspective, this module will examine how the notion of 'crisis' can be rendered intelligible to make it methodologically and theoretically productive for participants' research projects.

To do so, we will experiment "crisis as a method" (Cabot, 2023) to explore possible approaches to situations or contexts framed in the vocabulary of crisis. Workshop participants are invited to reflect on the ways 'crises' emerge as ruptures and are brought into being in their respective research sites. We will ask ourselves how an anthropological perspective can help us to challenge the exceptionality of 'crises', by looking both at the changes and continuities that occur in times of 'crisis'. Together, we will inquire the mechanisms that establish and maintain so-called 'crises' and their authorships which have the power "to transform the representation of the world" (Fassin, 2021, 272) and are mobilized against or in defense of a certain status quo (Roitman, 2014). Building on krisis and its potential for critique, we will also consider how 'crises' can bring to the fore creative or novel ways to deal with debated and conflicting situations. 

Through preparatory work and attendance to the workshop, participants will: (a) critically reflect on the term 'crisis' in their own research site through the production of a short paper (will be circulated, commented on, and elaborated before and during the workshop); (b) discuss implications of using 'crisis' as a theoretical concept and/or as a methodological tool in ethnographic research. (c) critically engage with the language of 'crisis' and apprehend the apparent omnipresence of crises in various environments and its relevance for anthropological conversations.

Invited expert:

Heath Cabot is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Bergen. Her work mainly focuses on citizenship, morality and migration in the European asylum regime. Through her deep engagement with the migration 'crisis' in Greece (see e.g. Cabot, 2014, 2015, 2019), she has developed an innovative methodological framework to approach "crisis as [research] method" (2023). Critically building on the work of the Manchester School, she invites anthropologists to look beyond the 'urgent' to examine the role of social structure in the emergence of those occurrences deemed as crises.

Literature:

Beck, S. and Knecht, M. (2016). "Crisis" in Social Anthropology. In: Schwarz, A. et al. (eds). The Handbook of International Crisis Communication Research.

doi.org/10.1002/9781118516812.ch6

Cabot, H. (2014). On the Doorstep of Europe: Asylum and Citizenship in Greece. The

Ethnography of Political Violence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

--- (2015). "Crisis and Continuity: A Critical Look at the 'European Refugee Crisis'". Allegra Lab Anthropology for Radical Optimism.

--- (2019). "The European Refugee Crisis and Humanitarian Citizenship in Greece".

Ethnos. 84 (5): 747–71. doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2018.1529693.

--- (2023). "Crisis as Method: Critical Events and Moral Breakdowns". Anthropology

Today. 39 (2): 12–14. doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12795.

Fassin, D. & Honneth, A. (2022). Introduction. The Heuristic of Crises: Reclaiming Critical Voices. In: Fassin, D. & Honneth, A. Crisis Under Critique: How People Assess, Transform, and Respond to Critical Situations. New York Chichester. West Sussex: Columbia University Press. doi.org/10.7312/fass20432.

Fassin, D.( 2021). "Crisis". In: Das, V. & Fassin, D. (eds). Words and Worlds: A Lexicon for Dark Times. Durham: Duke University Press. 261–76.

Koselleck, R. (2000) [1988]. Critique and crisis: Enlightenment and the pathogenesis of

modern society. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Roitman, J. L. (2014). Anti-Crisis. Durham: Duke University Press.

University of Berne

Participation fee: CHF 50 

For students of the CUSO universities (Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel and Fribourg) and from the universities of Bern, Zürich, Luzern, Basel and St. Gallen, meals are organised and covered by the CUSO doctoral program in anthropology. 

Travel expenses will be reimbursed via MyCUSO based on half-fare train ticket (2nd class) from the student's university to the place of the activity.

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