The Reality of Contingency: Implications for Crisis Management

ABSTRACT We live in a time of overwhelming uncertainty. Whether it is the consequences of the 2025 global trade war, the war in Ukraine, the outbreak of new pandemics, the validity of knowledge, or the possible extinction of humans as a species, the power of contingency has never been so profound. Understood as events outside the control of human agency, contingencies are fundamental for shaping our lives and central for thinking about whether and how we can detect, prepare for, and manage crises. Yet scholarship within crisis management studies tends to focus on the epistemological generating insights and solutions to thelogical challenge of contingency rather than its nature: “if we can only know more about contingencies and crises we can stop them and avoid surprises.” This places limits on the types of questions we can ask, what we can possibly know, and how we prioritize efforts to manage crises. This explorative article shows that our understanding of the nature of contingency has direct repercussions for how and what we can know. Using the categories of indeterminacy, conditionality, and uncertainty, it reveals the value of reflecting on the ontological wagers for generating insights and solutions to the complex set of crises we live with today.