Producing the Ordinary in the Face of Crisis
Convenors: Martina Klausner (Humboldt-University), Livia Velpry (CESAMES/Université paris 8), Milena Bister (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
Daily routines and habits are usually characterized as seemingly implicit and self-evident and repetitious in nature. At the same time they are understood as highly important to organize everyday life and generate a sense of predictability. Usually through the experience of crisis and fundamental shifts in life those routines become challenged. Such circumstances lay bare the continuous work that has been needed to make them run smoothly. The workshop intends to focus on examples where the ordinary becomes radically unstable, that is crisis does not pass by but rather persists as a matter of permanent threat. Such forms of ongoing, persistent crisis – be it e.g. through the experience of chronic illnesses and respective relapses or of social and geographical displacement due to migration – demand continuous practices of integrating the uncertain into the daily routines of life.
In the workshop we aim to attend to these examples to scrutinize firstly, how a sense of the ordinary (e.g. in social relationships, mobility, time structures) needs to be continuously adapted and re-organized in order to establish routines. Secondly, those cases encourage examining how the constant process of anticipating potential subsequent crisis reshapes the meaning and value of daily habits.
Drawing from our own empirical research with people experiencing persistent mental illness we invite scholars from other fields who are interested in exploring what happens when crisis becomes „a way of living“ to join our workshop.
Please feel free to propose a paper via the EASA website!
http://easaonline.org/conferences/easa2012/index.htm