Short Abstract

This panel focuses on “urgency” as an analytical lens. How do the dimensions of urgency shape societies, both as an analytical framework for crises and as a mode of action? We scrutinize the multiple meanings, mobilizations, and consequences of urgency as it shapes discourse, affects, and action.

Long Abstract

Across the political spectrum, actors invoke urgency to compel action, justify decisions, and moralize political positions. From far-right populists warning of imminent threats to radical environmental activists calling for immediate transformation, urgency has become a pervasive idiom of polarized and “overheated” times. Its appeal lies in its power to condense crisis, emotion, and legitimacy, thereby transforming complex problems into imperatives for rapid response that potentially overrule democratic processes.

Drawing on situated and comparative insights from ethnographic work, we seek to understand the specific ways in which urgency is mobilized for political effects. Therefore, we invite contributions that interrogate how urgency is articulated, circulated, and embodied in different contexts. We are interested in ethnographically informed analyses that explore the invocations, articulations, and materializations of urgency in political discourse and practice. We welcome papers that address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

What affects are mobilized and achieved as a result of urgency claims?

How do mobilizations of urgency relate to crises, temporalities, and affects?

What forms of exclusion, inclusion, and participation are engendered in the wake of urgent calls for action?

How do urgency claims acquire legitimacy, and how do they generate moral hierarchies, prioritizing some urgencies over others?

And how do urgency claims frame actions as ethical necessities, eliminating other alternatives by asserting that ‘there is no alternative’?

How is urgency mobilized „from below“, by governments, mass media, and lobby groups?

What kinds of "economies of action" emerge from urgency claims and practices, with which effects and unintended consequences?

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