THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GLOBAL CRISES: STATE SURVEILLANCE, SOLIDARITY AND EVERYDAY LIFE
May 20–30, 2020 at The American University of Paris (This is a virtual conference. Participate from wherever you are.)
The current global Covid-19 crisis is unprecedented in many ways. Yet, ‘crisis’ as a phenomenon is everything but new. In the past years, we have been in the middle of the so-called ‘refugee crisis,’ the European sovereign debt crisis, the subprime mortgage crisis and the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. Some attest to a more general crisis of liberal democracy, an eventual crisis of capitalism, or a ‘population change crisis.’ Climate change is typically identified as a central factor in the emergence of future global crises. Beyond economically driven crises, we experience crises on the social and cultural levels: the Occupy movement, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, the global surveillance disclosures, etc. On a smaller scale, we witness crises of various academic disciplines, famous among them perhaps the replication crisis in psychology. Some go further and argue that the social sciences are in a state of perpetual crisis at least since the beginnings of the 20th century. Last not least, psychologists identify and treat crises on an individual level: loss of workplace, loneliness, depression. Every crisis phenomenon maps its territory and calls for its experts and expert discourses, measures and publicly communicated courses of action.
Sparked by current developments, the theme of this conference is ‘crisis’ in all its varieties. Who is speaking to the current crisis and with what advice? Which voices are heard? What can the … READ MORE