« Crisis » in the Americas : Is there a Regionally Distinctive Kind ?

• Main Author: Laurence Whitehead
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institut des Amériques 2013-10-01
• Series: IdeAs : Idées d’Amériques
• Subjects: American studies; conceptual analysis; crisis; exceptionalism; interpretativism; panics
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ideas/611

Although the idea of « crisis » is indispensable it eludes categorical definition because of its polysemy. What the multiple variants of the term share is a prior notion of some kind of normalcy or order. That is what every crisis disrupts. But conceptions of the normal order of things are variable across time and space. So, are there features specific to the Americas (or to some sub-regions within the continent) that differentiate their crises from those encountered elsewhere ? The article explores this possibility, by disaggregating key aspects of the broad concept, and by sketching some relevant aspects of the American context. At most, the difference between the Americas and the rest would be an inflection point, a matter of emphasis, and not a categorical contrast (for example an American accentuation of the phenomenon of « market panic »). There is some evidence of a distinctively American take on the idea of crisis over the past two centuries, but in current conditions of accelerated globalization such regional differentiation is on the decline.