Beyond an Ethnographic Sensibility? Developing a Logic of Emergency Politics

• In Event: Ethnography and Political Theory

Abstract

This paper develops a “logic” of emergency politics, a set of linked ideas about value, agency, urgency, and the status quo that make emergency claims (claims that particular situations are or are not emergencies) recognizable as such. It is because emergency politics has a distinctive logic that the terms “fashion emergency” and “emergency chocolate kit” make sense. It is also why referring to climate change as a “climate emergency” has such different connotations than referring to it as a “climate disaster,” “climate crisis,” or “climate catastrophe.” Elucidating the logic of emergency politics helps us differentiate discrete types of emergencies, and consider in a more systematic and thorough way questions that are addressed in the existing literature only partially, for example, questions about the relationship between the moral and political dimensions of emergencies (Fassin) and about maintaining democratic norms in emergency contexts (Honig).

Much of the excellent recent work on emergencies is insightful in large part because it is so granular – much of it is either ethnographic (e.g. Fassin, Pandolfi, and Redfield) or interpretive (e.g. Scarry, Honig, Feldman, and Fink). Yet I argue that much of this work bypasses crucial questions and issues because it is not animated by a full account of the logic of emergency politics. In this paper, I discuss the kinds of methodology and evidence that need to be brought to bear to elucidate and demonstrate the existence of a logic of emergency politics. I consider in more depth the kind of thing this logic is—an interpretive framework? A conceptual schema?—and the relationship between the claim that it “exists”, and its deployment to understand and engage critically with existing practices. I consider issues of case selection, as well as the role of interviews, ethnography, participant-observation, and quantitative data.

Author

• Jennifer C. Rubenstein, University of Virginia