Facing the Crisis: (Im)possibilities for Repair and Care in Contemporary Societies

The multiple crises we face today create blurred, unspeakable, and even catastrophic situations. In this thematic issue, we are interested in considering how people and collectives of various kinds, be they communities or organizations, cope with and respond (or not) to these situations through caregiving processes intended to repair lives and forms of human and non-human life. Against this backdrop, this introductory article to the dossier argues that crisis situations are problematic states and that, as events, they cut across everyday life. Confronted with them, people and collectives engage in ordinary and extraordinary practices, sometimes managing to (re)create “new” forms of life. This article introduces three main thematic axes that are approached on the basis of the different empirical analyses contained in the articles that make up this special issue: crisis situations, care, and forms of reparation. The novelty of the proposal is to establish links between crisis, care, and reparation with a focus on how, in the wake of an event that disrupts everyday life, people manage, sometimes precariously, to build new meanings and construct new possible paths.