Crisis

Two comprehensive entries on crisis in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1968) and the first Dictionary of the History of Ideas (1968) cited, respectively, "unrestricted usage" and continuing "uncertainty." Any number of studies had accumulated on crises of moments, decades, even eras; on political, social, economic, mental, and moral crises; on minor, major, and mid-level crises. The most exacting definitions were abstract and redundant, as in the decision-planners' twelve "generic dimensions" of crisis (International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, v. 2, s.v. "crisis"). While suggestive connections were being made across fields, they came at the expense of clarity and coherence and sometimes recycled arguments that had already been discounted by experts in their own disciplines. Both articles placed hope in more precise future work.

In fact, the widespread interest in and development of crisis studies had already peaked by the early 1970s. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the language of crisis was worn out by overuse even as it was being eclipsed by the triumphalism of post–Cold War ideologies that prophesied, however credulously, the end of history and the containment of the upheavals and confrontations that had fueled it. The big crisis debates among historians mostly receded before the emphasis on long-term structural trends, the dismantling of so-called grand narratives, the deconstruction of the rhetoric of history, and the unfazed appreciation that conflict and confrontation were not the exception but the rule in history. The most concerted theoretical attention to crisis came from political scientists who continued to model schematic strategies for "crisis management," especially in international affairs. They salvaged analytical precision only by abstract model building and academic distinctions such as a sequence of phases of international crises from onset and escalation to de-escalation and impact.

The most conspicuous use of crisis terminology in the early twenty-first century is activist and political. Social movements, nongovernmental organizations, and government institutions, including the United Nations, have appropriated the term on occasion as a watchword to promote intervention in "crises" of genocide, women's rights, HIV-AIDS, environmental degradation, or economic globalization. A "crisis of liberal values" has become a target of both radical supporters of multi-cultural politics and self-styled traditionalists who feel called upon to defend their ideals of family, patriotism, and religion. These developments, together with the leveling effects of everyday usage, have furthered the depletion of the term as an all-purpose slogan or a banal cliché.