This volume analyzes crises in International Relations (IR) in an innovative way. Rather than conceptualizing a crisis as something unexpected that has to be managed, the contributors argue that a crisis needs to be analyzed within a wider context of change: when new discourses are formed, communities are (re)built, and new identities emerge. Focusing on Ukraine, the book explore various questions related to crisis and change, including: How are crises culturally and socially constructed? How do issues of agency and structure come into play in Ukraine? Which subjectivities were brought into existence by Ukraine crisis discourses? Chapters explore the participation of women in Euromaidan, identity shifts in the Crimean Tatar community and diaspora politics, discourses related to corruption, anti-Soviet partisan warfare, and the annexation of Crimea, as well as long distance impacts of the crisis.

Erica Resendeis Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Superior War College, Brazil, and Affiliate Lecturer at the University of Oklahoma, USA. 
Dovil Budryt is Professor of Political Science at Georgia Gwinnett College, USA. 
Didem Buhari-Gulmezis Associate Professor in International Relations at Izmir University of Economics, Turkey.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Erica Resende, Dovil Budryt and Didem Buhari-Gulmez

 

Part I: Crisis and Change: Theory and Practice

 

Chapter 2: Crisis and Change in Global Politics: A Dialogue with Deleuze and Badious Event to Understand the Crisis in Ukraine

Erica Resende

 

Chapter 3: The Rationality and Emotion of Russian Historical Memory:  The Case of Crimea

Douglas Becker

 

Chapter 4: Collective trauma, memories and victimization narratives in modern strategies of ethnic consolidation: the Crimean Tatar case

Milana Nikolko

 

Part II: Crisis and Social Change: Ukraine in Comparative Perspective

 

Chapter 5: Corruption, Crisis, and Change: Use and Misuse of an Empty Signifier

Oksana Huss

 

Chapter 6: Gender-role Scenarios of Women's Participation in Euromaidan Protests in Ukraine

Tamara Martsenyuk and Iryna Troian

 

Chapter 7: Memory, War and Mnemonical In/Security: A Comparison of Lithuania and Ukraine

Dovil Budryt

 

Part III: International/Regional Dimensions of the Crisis in Ukraine

 

Chapter 8: Framing of Crimean Annexation and Eastern Ukraine Conflict in Newspapers of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in 2014

Katja Lehtisaari, Aziz Burkhanov, Elira Turdubaeva and Jukka Pietiläinen

 

Chapter 9: Crisis and Crimean Tatars: Discourses of Self-Determination in Flux

Didem Buhari-Gulmez

 

Chapter 10: The Self/Other Space and Spinning the Net of Ontological Insecurities in Ukraine and beyond: (Discursive) Reconstructions of Boundaries in the EU Eastern Partnership Countries vis-à-vis the EU and Russia

Susanne Szkola