• Measuring Performance in Civil Contingency Management, Edward Deverell, Adrian Ganic
• Novel Business Models, Digitalization and AI in Public-Private Critical Infrastructure Financialization: An Innovative Crisis Trinity? Lindy Newlove-Eriksson, Thomas Sandberg
• From tyche to Wild Cards: Ancient Inspirations for Coping with the Unexpected, Justine Walter
• Contingency and the inadequacy of cognitive understanding of threats, Magnus Ekengren

Panel description

Like many great crises, from the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the SARS-Cov-2 virus tears away the superficial face of societal stability, revealing the frightening reality of insecurity. When we are thrown into an unwanted and unexpected environment the stability of life anchored in the habitual and the mundane – dinning at restaurants, commuting to work, buying groceries or socialising in the local pub – are replaced in a moment with the primal need to survive. The uncertainty revealed in these moments of crises is not only about the scientific quest to understand the characteristics of a virus, predict the next hurricane or enhance response capacities of governments; it also lays bare the background assumptions that inform how we perceive and manage contingent relations. Even states equipped with the most sophisticated crisis management capacities and prevention plans, fortuna still finds her way to surprise us with undetermined events.

The idea of chance, luck or fortuna is integral to how many of us interpret crises as well as how we evaluate responses to them. There is an element of the unanticipated that accounts for what went wrong; it was an unexpected event, a wrong decision or a computer malfunction that was outside our ability to control. We consequently attempt to manage disasters, quantify and map risk, learn from our mistakes and improve our capacity to prevent, prepare, respond and recover. This includes seeking the underlying causes of crises that lie in social vulnerability, the lack of resilience as well as global inequity. In all of these efforts a fixation has been placed on our ability to control contingent relations. Indeed, we rarely reflect upon what contingent relations can mean.

Anticipating the next global virus, weighing financial investments or constructing a sense of stability through the reproduction of social structures, we all wrestle with the problem of contingency. Understood as events outside the control of agency, contingencies are fundamental for shaping our lives and central for thinking about crises and disasters. Of course, this is a well-worn feature in many social theories (see for example, Oakeshott, 1975, pp.101-8; Pocock, 1975; Rorty, 1989; Nussbaum, 1986) and an implied factor in our everyday lives and even the existence of the state (McCormick, 2017, p.171). However, what has changed – particularly in the last half century – is the intensity, complexity and even uncertainty of life. We live with an unprecedented level of interdependence and global interconnectivity, producing an alarming variety of social vulnerabilities and contingent relations. This social perturbation is moreover intertwined with nature. Due to the transformative power of human actions, the earth system has experienced a rupture from a certain and stable Holocene to a more volatile and uncertain socio-natural system known as the Anthropocene (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000; Crutzen 2002; Hamilton, 2017). Our physical reality has fundamentally changed begging the need to revise how we imagine disasters and crises. Never before has the import of contingency been so profound; yet, reflections on this central, albeit largely forgotten concept, have been sparse or non-existing within the field of disaster and crisis management studies.

This panel invites contributions that seek to problematize, reflect upon or apply the concept of contingencies for (re)imagining crises. This can include how the contingencies can nuance or challenge primary concepts in the field, such as risk, resilience, vulnerability or wicked problems or even demonstrate its usefulness empirically.

Organiser(s):

Contact person:
Simon Hollis
simon.hollis@fhs.se