Care, Cosmopolitanism, and Anthropology: Introduction to Special Section

Abstract

Cosmopolitanism speaks to pan-nationalist and pan-human experience. How can this be reconciled with the lived political economies of care across the formal and informal sectors? How do the critical and interpretive medical anthropological commitments to cultural critique and social justice articulate with cosmopolitanism? We examine these thematics through the contributions of Australian and New Zealand anthropologists. In both countries, paid and unpaid care work occurs within a neoliberal capitalist economy characterised by growing inequity between wealthiest and poorest citizens, privileging of autonomy and individualism over collectivist regimes of social organisation and resource allocation, transfer of assets and capital from the public to the private sector, and a significant shift in the balance of power toward employers in the labour marketplace. Each article illustrates the ways in which disability and care are constructed and contested, and the degree to which care exemplifies cosmopolitanism.