Crises of Care in China Today

Abstract

AbstractThe introduction to this special section presents an overview of crises of care in China today, specifically as they affect the fields of kinship, health and government. To study care ethnographically, we distinguish between the attentive and active dimensions of care: what people care about, and how they care for others. Acts of care always relate to larger concerns and general values, but they scale up in different ways. The imbalances that emerge are central to the politics of care that our contributors describe. Care as attentive co-growth engages different values, remakes inequality and nourishes political life. The contributors use the same framework of attention, action and politics to investigate crucial issues in Chinese society, including family, health, environment, ritual and animals. In all these fields, care provides a privileged vantage point from which to understand social and moral change in China today.