2025/07/09 by Elizabeth Jordie Davies · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #World Systems and Global Transformations
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/psquar/qqaf083
openalex publication_date 2025/07/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Abstract Dara Strolovitch's excellent new book, When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People: Race, Gender, and What Makes a Crisis in America, argues that the word “crisis” carries political possibilities. She offers several examples of how denoting an event as a crisis has the power to mobilize the government or pathologize victims. In this way, Strolovitch demonstrates how politicians, the press, and communities define problems precipitates national action or inaction. Strolovitch follows the use of the word crisis throughout American history, focusing on the emergence of crisis politics in the United States in the early twentieth century and its ubiquity through the twenty-first century. Strolovitch shows that unnamed crises that arise among people of color and women, like the expansion of predatory lending in the 1990s, can lead to major crises in the majority, like the 2007 housing market collapse and economic meltdown. This timely book contributes to several important literatures, including how race and gender are utilized by politicians to activate the public; media framing, racial discourse, and the impact of public perception of crises; and how race shapes political agendas and policy feedback. Moreover, this book stokes pressing questions about how Americans will mobilize on behalf of their neighbors during times of crisis, especially as the specters of catastrophe begin to cast a wider and wider net. Strolovitch speaks to the silences concerning crises among racial and gender minorities, challenging readers to question which crises are recognized and addressed and which crises are ignored by those in power.