When time freezes. Socio-anthropological research on social crises.

SERGIO EDUARDO VISACOVSKY

Ibero Americana

Latinamerika-Institutet i Stockholm

Lugar: Estocolmo; Año: 2017 vol. 46 p. 6 - 16

Social and cultural anthropologists have made a unique, relevant and anti-normative contribution to the study of crises. By means of ethnographic fieldwork in specific settings, anthropologists have provided significant information on how social groups try to cope with critical situations in everyday life resorting to different strategies, forms of cooperation or political action. Simultaneously, anthropology has brought to light the role played by cognitive schemata and symbolic resources in making sense of crisis situations, turning them intelligible and developing possible resolutions. Anthropology has carried out important studies on how people experience time, give meaning to and produce plausible images of the future in crisis situations, when time freezes. The main theoretical contributions to the study of crises will be discussed, together with a number of empirical studies among which special attention will be paid to those carried out in Latin America, including my own research on the experiences and responses of the middle class during the 2001 Argentine crisis.