Changeons de voie: Les leçons du coronavirus

Let's Change Course: Lessons from the Coronavirus Pandemic

Abstract

This review offers a positive and critically situated assessment of Edgar Morin’s Changeons de voie. Les leçons du coronavirus (2020), written with the collaboration of Sabah Abouessalam. Taking the Covid-19 pandemic as a revealing event rather than an isolated health emergency, the book explores the interdependence of ecological, political, economic, social and existential vulnerabilities. Its central contribution lies in mobilizing complex thoughts to challenge fragmented explanations and to outline a reorientation of collective life. The review follows the book’s progression from fifteen lessons of the pandemic to post-crisis challenges and, finally, to proposals for changing direction. Particular attention is paid to the value of the work for management studies, public governance and crisis decision-making, where uncertainty, institutional interdependence and the tension between efficiency and solidarity are especially salient. The book is commended for its intellectual coherence, accessible interdisciplinary argument and normative insistence on human dignity. Its broad program nonetheless raises legitimate questions concerning implementation, institutional trade-offs and empirical specification. These limitations do not undermine its achievement as an interpretive and programmatic essay. Rather, they clarify an agenda for research and public deliberation. The review concludes that Morin’s text remains an important resource for examining the governance of interconnected crises and for reconsidering the purpose of organizational and societal transformation.

Keywords: Complexity; Covid-19; Crisis governance; Public management; Solidarity; Societal transformation