International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2018 | Page 70

Crises and Attacks: Some Avenues to Be Explored and Guidelines for Action
and/or the “sanctuaries” needed for controlling the crisis (hospitals, emergency
aid centers, decision centers, etc.).
SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT AND COURSES OF ACTION
Faced with acknowledging the transformation and the permanence of a terrorist
threat whose purpose is to provoke major crises on national territory
and against France’s vital interests abroad, several lines of approach and
courses of action may be envisaged. These are not, of course, exhaustive.
It is important, first of all, to point out that there are several schools in France
whose work focuses on the study of crises; these have existed since the 1970s. We
should principally take note of the work done by Edgar Morin on the epistemology
of complexity at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS); the
strategic work on the study of nuclear crises conducted by Lucien Poirier at the
Centre de Prospective et d’Evaluation (CPE), under the Ministry of Defense, and
then at the Institut des Hautes Etudes de Défense Nationale (IHEDN); and Michel
Dobry’s sociological studies on multi-sectoral mobilization and political crises,
developed at the CNRS and the University of Paris 1. There are also the sociological
studies on collective risks and post-accidental crises that Claude Gilbert
has conducted under the umbrella of the CNRS, at the Pacte de l’Université de
Grenoble-Alpes laboratory; the praxeological ones on major risk and “unclassifiable”
crises realized by Patrick Lagadec at the econometrics laboratory of the École
Polytechnique; and the war studies on international crises by Jean-Louis Dufour
working at Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan.
Today, this legacy continues to be built upon, as illustrated by the seminar
on “The Factory and the Government of Crises” organized at the Alexandre
Koyré Center of the EHESS [School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences]
with the support of the IFRIS [Ile-de-France Institute for Research, Innovation
and Society] by Sara Aguiton, Lydie Cabane, and Lise Cornilleau; or the creation
of the Institut d’Étude des Crises (IEC) and the thematic section on “crisis study”
of the Association des Études de Guerre et de Stratégie (AEGES) [Association for
the Study of War and Strategy], which seeks to bring together researchers and
practitioners from different backgrounds. 6 The aim is to continue to make these
different legacies bear fruit, while preserving the individuality of each approach.
Despite these numerous intellectual resources, it is regrettable that the crisis
phenomenon continues to remain badly defined or even undefined (Meszaros
2017). 7 However, it appears essential to define the notion in order to develop
6 This thematic group presented a panel at the AEGES annual conference in December 2016, on the
theme “Le brouillard de la crise: Quand des phénomènes exceptionnels remettent en question notre
action et notre connaissance.” [The Mist of Crisis: When Exceptional Events Question our Action
and Knowledge].
7 The 2013 White Paper on Defense and National Security is one illustration of this. The word “crisis”
appears 166 times; however, at no time is the notion precisely defined, and this in a document
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