Approaching Actually Existing Neoliberalisms: Citizenship, Responsibility, and (Health)care in Anthropology

Abstract

Neoliberalism seems to be a ubiquitous concept, both in anthropological scholarship and in the public discourse, as global social inequalities continue to grow. In anthropology, neoliberalism has been particularly popularized in the past decade and a half, but - as is the case with most anthropological concepts - the consensus on its meaning has not been met. Furthermore, it is not rare to see neoliberalism being used in scholarship without an operational definition. Concurrently with its popularity, the concept attracted numerous criticisms. In this review article, I present a short overview of how neoliberalism has originated, then used, and criticized in anthropology and its sister disciplines such as human geography. Additionally, I focus on the transformations in the nature of the state, governance, and subjectivity that occur in late capitalism, as well as how we can approach those transformations ethnographically. The increased unavailability of welfare provision in neoliberalism has been heavily investigated in anthropology of health and care. I thus particularly discuss how the concepts of care and responsibility have been used in anthropology to that end.