COVID-19, Routinedynamiken und Strukturreflexivität. Zum ereignishaften Wandel der Protestformen von Fridays for Future

This contribution focuses on the dis/continuity of routines at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is conceived as a nexus of multiple, intertwined crises of action and interaction (ÖZS special issue 2016, 41/1). Instead of understanding crisis as an external facticity, i.e., external cause of change, we argue that actors negotiate crisis in sociomaterial processes within historically specific contexts. Taking up the debate in organizational studies on the conception and description of intentional change, this article adds a reflection on intentional routine changes in times of crises. In methodological terms, the article connects routine dynamics with the perspective of eventful sociology. Eventful sociology emphasizes that sociomaterial negotiations of routines can unfold to more far-reaching structural changes and therefore calls for a rigorous temporal description along paths. Based on the results of a process-oriented ethnographic study of Fridays for Future Vienna, the article identifies two conditional moments (normative-discursive and material-bodily) through which structure is made reflexive. Finally, the pursued understanding of reflexivity is embedded in the debate on the (world)risk society.