Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

28

Author Meets Critics: Crisis by Sylvia Walby

RC02 Economy and Society (host committee)

Language: English

The crisis has cascaded through society: deregulation of finance, financial crisis, recession and crisis in output and employment, fiscal crisis and austerity, political crisis, and changes in the regimes of class and gender inequality. Rival interpretations of the crisis are used to justify radically diverse policies for the distribution of resources and strategies for economic growth. Contested gender relations lie at the heart of these debates. The crisis, which started in deregulated finance, is now centred in budget cuts and austerity that are deepening gender inequalities. 
Sylvia Walby’s book (Crisis, Cambridge Polity Press, 2015) offers an alternative framework within which to theorise the crisis and contributes to both social theory and public policy. It develops the concept of crisis, situating it within the wider field of study of risk, disaster and catastrophe. It provides a critique and revision of the social science needed to understand the crisis and to prevent such an event occurring again. It demonstrates the usefulness of a macro-level concept of gender regime, in order to theorise the varieties of forms that it takes. To achieve this, it produces a reworked concept and theory of society, drawing on complexity theory. It is a call to revitalise the traditional goal of sociology to study the whole of society, not only small parts of it.

Critics: Chris Chase Dunn and Stefanie Woehl.