History tells us that it is by no means a matter of course for the spectacle of misery to move men to pity. -Hannah Arendt, On RevolutionIt was mid-2003, and I was attending a volunteer training class offered by the Catholic organization Caritas in an old-age home on the dreary outskirts of the northern Italian city of Milan. A Caritas representative was holding the workshop for about 30 elderly volunteers who spent time with those unfortunate souls who rarely had visitors, feeding them, caressing them, taking them for short walks. At one point, the representative asked the volunteers what they had to offer that was distinct from the services of the professional nursing and doctoral staff. Without hesitation, the group called out, "Love!" The lady sitting next to me tapped me on the arm and pointed toward a nurse sitting in front of us. "See," she said, "that nurse over there treats the patients very badly-for her this is just a job, and she doesn't care at all." This class was part of Caritas's larger attempt to foster a citizenship that claims "responsibility for recogniz [ing] and promot[ing] the dignity of the person through public action." 1 Good citizenship, it seems, relies not only on the capacity to enunciate one's interiority in contexts such as that of the training class but also on the ability to engage in specific acts of other-recognition and action.Two years later, I found myself in the classroom of a high school in Milan, this time watching Michele, the head of a nonprofit organization called Passo dopo

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I dedicate this essay to anthropologists' heightened attunement to precarity but also to what Michel-Rolph Trouillot, who passed away last year, called our "moral optimism." As I show, much of our work is written from within and against precarity while at the same time being committed to this specifically anthropological ethic.This ethic permeates many of the articles surveyed here and can be found in all of the sections into which they are grouped: On Capital and How We Can Know It; Ethical Encounters; Politics and Protest; Religious Ethics; andAnatomies of Relatedness. I ask what the task of ethnography is now that "things are falling apart, again." This question is crucial because precarity has inserted itself into the very heart of anthropology itself. [precarity, moral imagination, year in review, 2012, sociocultural anthropology] RESUMEN Dedicoéste ensayo a la intensificada sensibilización de los antropólogos a la precariedad pero también a lo que Michel-Rolph Trouillot, quien falleció el año pasado, llamó nuestro "optimismo moral." Como lo demuestro, mucho de nuestro trabajo es escrito desde dentro y en contra de la precariedad mientras al mismo tiempo estando comprometido con estaética específicamente antropológica. Estaética permea muchos de los artículos identificados aquí y puede ser encontrada en todas las secciones en las que ellos están agrupados: Sobre capital y cómo podemos conocerlo; Encuentroséticos; Política y protesta;Ética religiosa; y Anatomías de la relacionalidad. Cuestiono cuál es la tarea de la etnografía ahora que "las cosas están desmoronándose, de nuevo." Esta pregunta es crucial desde que la precariedad se ha insertado ella misma en el corazón mismo de la antropología. [precariedad, imaginación moral, año de revisión, 2012, antropología socio-cultural]

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In this article, I track the ways in which Catholicism articulates with contemporary neoliberalism.Grounded in an analysis of how neoliberal welfare-state reform in Lombardy, northern Italy, is rendered through core idioms of the Catholic imaginative universe, I argue that the Lombardian case offers general insight into the "moral style" of contemporary neoliberalism. In contrast to the messianic gospel of prosperity exhibited by the Protestant ethic at the turn of the millennium (a gospel that promised instantaneous rushes of wealth through quasi-magical means), the charisma of Catholicized neoliberalism lies not in its rejection of the market but in its injunction that parts of this wealth ought to be redistributed through charitable actions. Catholicized neoliberalism thus hinges on a loving empathetic subject that purportedly repairs the damages of excessive marketization. It couples market rule to moral sentiment, economic rationality to the emotional urgencies of caritas. Although this new culture of feeling and action tends to leave neoliberalism's basic structural features intact, it also at times allows for the disruption of market rule. [neoliberalism, Catholicism, love, voluntarism, moral style] RESUMEN En este artículo sigo las formas como el Catolicismo se articula con el neoliberalismo contemporáneo.Basado en el análisis de cómo la reforma neoliberal del estado benefactor en Lombardía en el norte de Italia, fue representada en modismos centrales del universo imaginativo católico, argumento que el caso Lombardino ofrece conocimiento general en el "estilo moral" del neoliberalismo contemporáneo. En contraste al evangelio mesiánico de prosperidad exhibido por laética protestante al inicio del milenio (un evangelio que prometía instantáneas avalanchas de riqueza a través de medios casi mágicos), el carisma del neoliberalismo catolizado se sitúa no en su rechazo del mercado sino en su requerimiento de que partes de la riqueza deben ser redistribuidas a través de acciones caritativas. El neoliberalismo catolizado gira alrededor de un sujeto empático amoroso que supuestamente repara los daños de una mercadización excesiva. Acopla reglas del mercado con sentimiento moral, racionalidad económica con urgencias emocionales de afecto. Aunque esta nueva cultura de sentimiento y acción tiende a dejar las características estructurales del neoliberalismo intactas, también algunas veces permite la alteración de la regla del mercado. [neoliberalismo, Catolicismo, amor, voluntarismo, estilo moral] RIASSUNTO In questo articolo vengono indagate le diverse modalità attraverso le quali il Cattolicesimo contemporaneo si interfaccia con il modello neoliberista. Muovendo da un'analisi di come la recente riforma neoliberista del sistema socio-sanitario Lombardo sia stata articolata tramite i tropi dell'immaginario Cattolico, la mia ricerca vede nel caso lombardo un esempio paradigmatico del particolare "stile morale" assunto oggi dal neoliberismo. In