This chapter provides an overview of how the concept of crisis can be seen as a way making sense of the structural changes of modern society. It is suggested that "crisis' responds to the latency between structure and semantics, or between the reality of society and the ways in which society describes itself. Following this the chapter suggests that structures themselves are embedded with and legitimized though crisis narratives, and that therefore the crisis paradigm can be said to have tangibility. Finally the chapter points to the work of Isabelle Stengers and her concept of "cosmopolitics' to show the limits of crisis theory as it has typically been practiced.