The Imperative of Crisis : Power, Knowledge and Action in the Swedish Crisis Management System

Sammanfattning: This thesis investigates Swedish crisis management. This thesis aims to contribute to crisis research by providing critical perspectives on the role of knowledge in crisis management settings. The papers in this thesis stem from empirical studies of the major cases of Swedish crisis management during the last decade, including the Swedish refugee crisis in 2015, the wildfires in 2018, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Moreover, two papers concern the re-establishment of a Swedish total defence, which has been an ongoing reform since the Crimea crisis in 2014. In crisis management settings, response work is shaped around authentic, factual, and reliable accounts of ‘reality’ paired with seemingly value-free judgements of what needs to be done. This brings a particular form of assertiveness in the way threats and crises are communicated in narratives that stress the important need for urgent and drastic interventions in order to solve problems. Such imperative crisis narratives shape societal power relations, which is a central theme in this thesis. The synthesis in this thesis contributes with critical perspectives on Swedish crisis management by discussing the link between crisis-specific knowledge and power and by tracing how discursive representations and operative logics condition actions and influence in crisis management settings. In addition, the discussion draws attention to discursive struggles and the role of affects in these settings, and how the notion of crisis and uncertainty establishes a relation to the future in particular ways.