Crises are characterized by the fact that all those involved experience a problem as existential and urgent in some way. For a solution, otherwise non-negotiable rules can therefore be overridden and usually unauthorized means can be used. In the exceptional character of a crisis there is already a germ of hope for a solution. In medical emergencies, you can hope for rescue workers who don't have to stop at every red light. In the case of major social crises such as the climate crisis or the Covid 19 pandemic, this seems to be different. Although the threats are existential, and although there is no lack of broad support or suggestions, rescue is still a long way off. Discomfort spreads.
This is why the new book by the Munich sociologist Armin Nassehi is also called “Uneasiness”.
However, it is not about human discomfort in the face of social crises.
How this discomfort is articulated, whether it is a question of a feeling, an atmosphere or even a certain form of communication, remains undetermined.
Whatever it may be: the discomfort is not the subject matter, but only the occasion for a sociological analysis that investigates the question of which social structures fail to resolve crises in society as a whole.
Lots of conflicting perspectives
According to Nassehi, based on the systems theory of the sociologist Niklas Luhmann, the structures of contemporary society have proven to be relatively stable since the dawn of modernity: There was and still is general support for the expectation that prices in the economy are formed and with Money is paid, that politics makes collectively binding decisions in an interplay between government and opposition, or that science achieves knowledge. Such social "functional systems", which also include art, education, medical care and others, would have achieved success thanks to their specialization,However, due to the fixation on their own rules and logics, they can no longer be integrated into a centrally controllable social unit.
Functional systems are insofar incapable of offering solutions “from a single source” for problem situations in society as a whole in the form of the climate crisis or the Covid 19 pandemic. The alignment of scientific knowledge, political power calculations, economic profit interests and legal conditioning towards a common goal contradicts the structure of modern society. Nassehi only considers war to be an exception. The calls for a collective approach are mostly based on exaggerated expectations, underestimate social complexity and address "society", which does not exist as a unit, but always breaks down into many contradicting perspectives. Society overwhelms itself by generating unattainable demands,and this is precisely the root of the unease in and on society.