1 Global Discourse • vol XX • no XX • 1–19 © Bristol University Press 2022 • Online ISSN 2043-7897 https://doi.org/10.1332/204378921X16329024386613 Special Issue: Critical Explorations of Crisis: Politics, Precariousness, and Potentialities RESEARCH The ‘hardship’ of ordinary crises: gendered precariousness and horizons of coping in Vietnam’s industrial zones Helle Rydstrom, helle.rydstrom@genus.lu.se Lund University, Sweden This article explores crisis as social dynamics spurred by events that not only disrupt the normal order of things, but also transmute into crisis processes that generate persisting hardship and problems of the ordinary. Drawing on ethnographic feldwork conducted in the industrial zones of Northern Vietnam, the article highlights the ways in which women workers manage crisis as an underlying condition of daily life. Capturing the heterogeneity and volatility of crisis means to unravel the modalities, intensities and temporalities by which a specifc crisis is composed, and to identify how it interlocks with socio-economic crisis antecedents, such as gender and class. While crisis takes diferent shapes and undergoes various phases, a crisis tends to entangle itself with already-existing crises, fuelling or even exacerbating those, while fostering crises entanglements that impose difculties and harm upon lifeworlds. The diferentiated ways in which particular social groups can mitigate crisis challenges and build social resilience depend on ‘horizons of coping’, which inform the scales and impacts of crises entanglements. Thus, crisis studies direct our attention towards human precariousness and societal inequalities, as well as the ways in which crises entanglements are counteracted, closed, navigated or endured in specifc ethnographic contexts. Key words crises entanglements • horizons of coping • gender • labour • precariousness • Vietnam To cite this article: Rydstrom, H. (2022) The ‘hardship’ of ordinary crises: gendered precariousness and horizons of coping in Vietnam’s industrial zones, Global Discourse, XX(XX), 1–19, DOI: 10.1332/204378921X16329024386613 Introduction This article focuses on the ways in which women employed in Vietnam’s heavy industry 1 mitigate and cope with crises at the workplace and in social life. Drawing on ethnographic feldwork, 2 which I conducted in the industrial zones of Northern Unauthenticated | Downloaded 05/13/22 08:04 PM UTC