Crisis,change,and continuity

Abstract

This commentary responds to Wendy Larner’s (2011) article regarding contemporary crisis, in which she asks whether the present is a period of change or continuity, and what forms of analysis are appropriate for both understanding and responding to the current situation. A non-essentializing approach to the present allows us to recognize continuity (of, for example, capitalism, racism, or environmental change) while also remembering that patterns and processes of the past are never reproduced exactly. This is crucial for analysis and for more practical responses, which must be premised not on a politics of purity but a politics of messy engagement that proliferates new ways of thinking and being.