Confronting the uncertain: On crisis, time sociology and the narration of dangerous times

This is an attempt to explore the concept of crisis and its relevance within sociology through a focused analysis on the literature of the sociology of time and attending the role narrative and rhetoric play in making sense of crisis situations. Attempting to tackle the fuzziness of such a concept, crisis is discussed in the context where, according to most accounts, contemporary societies are deemed to be ever more accelerated, prone to change, uncertainty and open towards unforeseeable risks. In order to attain this, ‘crisis’ is put at the core of the tensions that current debates on the sociology of time expound, in relation to the conflict between diverse temporal logics that arise in an ever more compex world. Nonetheless, this insecure milieu is frequently confronted with our necessity to make sense of events, inscribing them in a narrative that allows for a minimum of foreseeability. In this tension political rhetoric often strives to make sense of economic bursts, natural disasters and other critical situations by inscribing them in a coherent plot, thus mitigating the impact of the experience of uncertainty. This carries within the risk of oversimplifying our quandaries and impoverishing the categories we use to comprehend our world and allow for the emergence of scapegoating strategies. This is followed by an assessment of the tension between our limited knowledge and our need for a narrative of our times, regardless of how insufficient it might be to fathom our predicaments and the role sociology should play in this milieu.