Law, crisis, revolution

Introduction. Crisis, it seems, is the order of things. Today, reading a newspaper involves ingesting a steady stream of crises. Most prominently, the 'Global Financial Crisis' has occupied the media sphere for the past two years, since the collapse of the US subprime market 'called into question', in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's words, 'the prevailing neo-liberal economic orthodoxy of the past 30 years.' Despite the crucial role of Rudd's own Australian Labor Party as neoliberal pioneers over the past two decades, the Prime Minister joined the chorus of those who saw the spectacular economic collapse as an indictment of what he portrayed as the 'free-market fundamentalism, extreme capitalism and excessive greed' of the existing economic orthodoxy. As footage of evicted Americans living in boxes began to circulate on the Internet, the extent of the economic crisis began to become apparent. Contemporary discourses of crisis are not confined to the so called Global Financial Crisis however. Today, climate change, 'failed' states, access to food, indigenous welfare and a range of moral panics over crime, race and gendered 'deviance' are all increasingly framed in terms of crisis.