Resonating Crises: A Longitudinal Study of Ruptures in Times of Crises

Crises have usually been considered temporary states of exception, but research is increasingly exploring slower, less visible, and more chronic crises, acknowledging that they differ in their characteristics and experiences. Echoing these shifts, we explore how crises and ruptures resonate through time. Using natural language processing and conventional qualitative methodologies to analyse diaries written over more than two decades, we noticed that events people reported as personal ruptures did not always correspond to societal crises. Instead, they often invoked other crises meaningful to them. The ruptures were also rarely experienced as isolated events but, at times, seemed to “resonate” with one another on different grounds. These resonances could either mitigate or amplify how crises and ruptures were experienced. Based on an analysis of one diary, written by a man in his seventies from the southern United States, we theorise three characteristics of resonances:
temporal, embodied, and cumulative. We argue that resonance may also influence whether the crisis becomes a rupture, how it is made sense of, and acted upon – in other words, whether it contributes to the person’s development.