Categories
Blog

Didier Fassin, Social Sciences in Times of Crisis – Book Review

During his inaugural speech for the chair of “Moral questions and political challenges in contemporary societies” at the College de France, on the 30th of March 2023, Didier Fassin offered a reflection on the place of social sciences in times of crisis[1]. This seemed of high interest as radicalization constitutes one of the current readings of the situation as “crisis”. I will try to summarize his speech here while drawing some parallels with the questions of the field of radicalization studies. 

Didier Fassin is a doctor of medicine, but also of sociology and anthropology. He is now a member of the College de France, but he has worked in Hong Kong and Princeton, more specifically on crises and public health, which allowed him to become the first social scientist to receive the Nomis Distinguished Scientist Award. More generally, his entire career has revolved around a political, scientific and moral commitment to highlighting inequalities, whether in access to health, education or freedom. 

This book focuses on the theme of ‘crisis’, a commonly used word that needs further analysis. As he notes, ‘historians, anthropologists or sociologists don’t ask how things should be, but how they actually are’ (p.9). Fassin begins by comparing the lives of two French thinkers, Claude Levi-Strauss and Marc Bloch, both Jews who lived during the Second World War. The former chose to go to the United States, where he concentrated on his study of kinship structures and eventually became famous, while the latter joined the French Resistance and was tortured and shot by the Gestapo in 1944. Both wrote about the war, but one after the events and the other during them. 

These two examples illustrate the variety of situations that social scientists encounter “at the moment of danger” (p.18). For Fassin, they show how personal and professional trajectories are strongly influenced by choices, dispositions, contexts and circumstances. He argues that even if the current context is less dramatic than that experienced by Bloch and Strauss, we are currently living in a time of multiple crises, should they be climatic, democratic, of global governance or international relations. 

Returning to Anatole Bailly’s definition, he notes that the word “krísis” in Greek refers to “the act of distinguishing, of separating, and the act of deciding, of judging” (p.20), thus combining an analytical and a normative sense. He speaks of a “critical phase” that requires a “critical evaluation”. For him, there is an important link between the words “crisis” and “critic”, both coming from the same origin and one requiring the other. This is very important for the social sciences, since the designation of a “crisis” “tends to suspend or even disqualify the critical sense, in the name of the need to intervene without delay” (p.21). As an example, it is possible to come back to the last attacks in Europe, should they be “islamist” or from the far-right. As said by Emmanuel Valls, French prime minister in 2016, after the Charlie Hebdo shooting, “To explain is to try to excuse a little”[2]

Back to a more theoretical debate, according to Fassin, both Koselleck and Foucault see, in their own way, the signature of (western) modernity in the crisis. However, he claims that they both offer an ethnocentric vision of the concept of “crisis”, which invisibilizes non-occidental and minority populations (racialised, gendered…) and the fact that the Western critique is strongly linked to colonial and imperial expansion. Even today, Fassin notes, Western societies and the “white elite” still seem to be the only ones able to “claim a true radicalism of thought” (p.23). He shows how, in the vein of Edouard Said, even the criticism of colonialism and oppression remains the privilege of the “privileged”. 

For the author, this reality creates a huge aporia in the thought on crises, amputating to a large extent even the social sciences, and especially the French ones, of the valuable insights of women, minorities and non-Western populations. For him, W.E.B. Du Bois’s question “What does it feel like to be a problem?” is more relevant than ever in understanding the experience of black and Muslim minorities in Europe. Regarding radicalization studies, this question could also be an interesting starting point to a discussion on causal explanations of the phenomenon.  

Returning to our main topic, Fassin quotes Habermas, who states that a crisis always contains an objective and a subjective component. He explains: “It is not enough for society to have a problem; it must also be understood as such […] What we call ‘crisis’ is always a social construct. Whether it is based on facts or not, it needs agents to legitimise it”. (p.26-29). 

Here, Fassin takes the example of the 2015 migration crisis, which saw one million asylum seekers arrive in Europe and Austral Africa. While the former was highly publicised and considered “dramatic”, the latter went completely unnoticed. Similarly, the US incarceration crisis, which saw millions of young black men imprisoned, was only criticized when white men started to get affected.  

These two examples allow the author to show that, in general, “countries in the South rarely have the authority to impose their own crisis discourse, which can only legitimately come from countries in the North” (p.30).

For the social sciences, therefore, a critique of the crisis consists in highlighting “the abusive use of authority to declare crises without objective reality” (p.31) and “identifying these deprivations of authority that lead to critical situations not being recognized” (p.31).

Indeed, the identification of a situation as a “crisis” is never neutral; it has effects, such as the tightening of border controls for the migration crisis and the normalization of the mistreatment of refugees. It is therefore important for researchers to analyze what the recognition or denial of crises allows or, on the contrary, what it hides. What are the logics of power at work, the strategies used by those in power to impose their vocabulary and interpretations, the tactics deployed by those without a voice to try and resist?

In fact, a “language of crisis” (p.32) is regularly encountered, tending to create affectivity, often fear or empathy, and a temporality of urgency. This urgency produces a consensus around decisionism, which “justifies bypassing the usual legislative, judicial or administrative procedures” (p.33). This is also what seems to be happening in numerous countries where the crisis discourse around radicalization justifies exceptional and sometimes anti-democratic means.

This is where the social sciences have a role to play, as “Naming the crisis, often creates the risk of denying ourselves the opportunity to think it” (p.33), especially as a crisis can often hide another one. 

For example, the 2020 covid crisis revealed the “unequal values of life” in the sense that it focused on the importance of defending human life, often overlooking those of prisoners or exiles. Likewise, the American “war on terror” completely hide the link between the attacks and previous American actions in the Middle East.

However, that doesn´t mean that the researcher’s positionality is easy. Indeed, they may be called upon by authorities and organizations to provide their expertise, while at the same time wanting to expose problems that are sometimes linked to these same institutions. For Fassin, “the dividing lines between these different positions and nuances are much more blurred than we thought we could define on the basis of a superficial reading of Max Weber’s supposed ‘axiological neutrality'” (p.35). 

 For the author, it is now central to reflect on the impact of the “public life of the social sciences” (p.39), where academics are called upon to comment on events, participate in commissions, advise institutions…. 

This is all the more true as public statements can have direct consequences for the researcher. Fassin recalls the criticism by French and American politicians of some researchers’ findings in recent years, but also, more sadly, the imprisonment and murder of researchers by authoritarian regimes. There is a high risk, he argues, that academics will self-censor or at least avoid sensitive topics. 

Fassin concludes by saying that “moral questions” are always linked to “political challenges” and that it is now time for the researcher to plunge into them, “without being swallowed in the ocean of opinions, nor blinded by the shock of events” (p.44), as written by Claude Lefort.

For our topic, this book seems full of lessons and perspectives, evoking both the political strategies linked to the description of an event as a “crisis” and the importance of the researcher’s positionality. It urges us to remain vigilant, especially about what seems to be “ a given”.   


[1] Fassin, D., 2023, Sciences sociales par temps de crise, Editions du Collège de France.

[2]  https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/la-revue-de-presse/expliquer-c-est-excuser-4707811