On the Transnational Dialectics of Solidarity and Care

Abstract

The urgency to global political life that Shirin Rai points to in the lead article of this Forum is one that is, in major part, borne of a global crisis of social reproduction. This crisis is less immediately visible than the rise of terrorism, right-wing nationalism, or military conflict, but no less harmful, violent or deadly in its effects. Where the basic means for reproducing and sustaining labor power are so severely compromised as to undercut human life, or to curtail care for human welfare that would otherwise reproduce people as physical, social, and cultural beings, then this constitutes a political urgency like no other.