ABSTRACT
Since 2007–2008, large parts of the OECD states, as elsewhere, have been in a comprehensive crisis. This crisis – and otherwise it would not be such a crisis – has an impact on social relations, and thus on living conditions and political behaviour, as well as the way many people experience life. Crisis usually refers to an open situation of upheaval, a turning point, in which a decision is made: medically the decision about life and death, militarily about victory or defeat. A distinction can be made between exogenous and endogenous crises; however, this boundary is blurry at best. Crises only create the possibility of change in a social pattern of reproduction and regulation but are not themselves this change. In terms of social theory, this means that crises – be they of the economy, energy, the environment, politics or gender relations – are always concrete crises in particular contexts of domination.
