From Incineration to Insurrection: Cognitive Openings in Times of Crisis

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Political Processes (Table 18)

Abstract

While structural explanations, such as state collapse, inequality, and corruption, help explain why protests occur, they often fail to explain when they erupt. Disasters can generate conditions that make uprisings thinkable. When disasters strike, they do not only destroy physical landscapes, but they can also incinerate the illusion of stability and legitimacy of the current political order. In this paper, I argue that disasters act as moments of revelation that expose the failures of the government, reveal societal inequalities, and unveil people’s collective capacity to organize in the absence of the state. Drawing on McAdam’s (1982) concept of cognitive liberation and Spade’s (2020) work on mutual aid, the paper develops a framework for understanding how disasters can produce “cognitive openings” that reconfigure how citizens perceive the state and their own capacity. To explore this argument, I examine the case of the 2019 Lebanese wildfires and the subsequent mobilization that followed. Using in-depth interviews with individuals who experienced the fires firsthand, first responders, activists, residents, reporters, I can understand how the fires were experienced and interpreted in real time, and how these interpretations shaped public discourse, leading to mobilization. Rather than treating disasters merely as indicators of state failure, I propose viewing them as active, meaning-making events, that not only expose state incapacity but also highlight the emergence of new political imaginations that allow people to confront the existing status quo.

Author

• Maria Said, University of Pittsburgh