Crises Redefined: Historical Continuity and Societal Change


Crisis is a central concept of modernity. Historically, it has had a wide range of various meanings and connotations. While ‘crisis’ has typically referred to various political events, conflicts, and states of emergency, its emphasis in contemporary discourse is predominantly on economic problems, natural disasters and catastrophes. Despite being, by definition,  abnormal states or states of emergency, crises seem to have become embedded into the routine condition of life.

Project Crises Redefined introduces a new multidisciplinary research unit that is focused on study of crises, continuity and change. The three departments of the University of Jyväskylä: the Department of History and Ethnology, the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies and the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy are combining their forces to find a new profile for their research and to foster co-operation between these different fields of science.

The leading objective of our research is to understand various, competing definitions of crisis: how crises come about and how they evolve; how they are defined and understood; and how they relate to global, national, and local physical environments, as well as human action.