Development of the Theory of Crisis in Sociology: Evolving Ideas and Modernity

The paper explores the question of what crisis is from the perspective of classical and modern sociology laying out a framework for developing the concept of crisis sociality based on the theories of liminality and the morphogenetic approach. Three stages of evolution are identified in theorizing the social ontology of crisis as disruptive events and processes on macro and meso-scale. Based on expert opinions, the paper argues for a specific pattern of current global development in the form of an intercrisis structure of a permanent-liminal type. According to the model, core and peripheral crisis phenomena are singled out as well as transgressive characteristics of institutional liminality and types of coping-behavior strategies are analyzed. Crisis traits of a BANI-world and the YOLO-economy are discussed among other things. The historical foundation for current crisis sociality is seen to be the very nature of modernization process, as the intrinsic imbalance of morphogenetic and morphostatic elements of such development inevitably brings on crisis dynamics and the following liminalization of society.

crisis, coping, BANI world, YOLO economy, modernization, liminality, morphogenesis, morphostasis