Kraemer Klaus, Steg Joris
Department of Sociology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
Department of Sociology, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany.
Front Sociol. 2025 Jul 4;10:1596427. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1596427. eCollection 2025.
Since the emergence of sociology, it has been part of the discipline's self-image to diagnose crises in modern societies. Sociology, however, has no theory that differentiates between normal and extranormal or singular crises. In this article, we want to develop a crisis typology that distinguishes between these two types. While a normal crisis is characterised by cyclical and structural patterns, which usually build up gradually and lead to incremental change, a singular crisis is characterised by eruptive ruptures in relation to the pre-crisis state. Such ruptures can challenge the traditional social order, both institutionally and narratively. Unlike normal crises, a singular crisis is marked by exogenous shocks like wars, natural disasters, or pandemics. This shock marks the beginning of a process of crisis intervention, which we examine to reconstruct the sociological peculiarities of a singular crisis. By using the Covid-19-crisis as an empirical slide, we analyse a singular crisis and list various dimensions and criteria-namely involvement and impact, temporality, principle of order, social change, isomorphism, path dependency, collective morality, mode of legitimation and spatial order-that can be used to differentiate between singular and normal crises.
自社会学诞生以来，诊断现代社会的危机就一直是该学科自我形象的一部分。然而，社会学并没有一种理论能够区分正常危机和超常或特殊危机。在本文中，我们想要构建一种危机类型学，以区分这两种危机类型。正常危机的特征是周期性和结构性模式，通常会逐渐形成并导致渐进式变化，而特殊危机的特征是相对于危机前状态的爆发性断裂。这种断裂在制度和叙事层面都可能挑战传统社会秩序。与正常危机不同，特殊危机的标志是战争、自然灾害或大流行病等外部冲击。这种冲击标志着危机干预过程的开始，我们将对此进行研究，以重构特殊危机的社会学特性。通过将新冠疫情危机作为一个实证案例，我们分析了一场特殊危机，并列出了各种维度和标准——即参与度和影响、时间性、秩序原则、社会变革、同构性、路径依赖、集体道德、合法化模式和空间秩序——这些可以用来区分特殊危机和正常危机。
