Competing Responsibilities

<div>Noting the pervasiveness of the adoption of responsibility as a core ideal of neoliberal governance the contributors to <i>Competing Responsibilities</i> challenge contemporary understandings and critiques of that concept in political social and ethical life. They reveal that neoliberalism's reification of the responsible subject masks the myriad forms of individual and collective responsibility that people engage with in their everyday lives from accountability self-sufficiency and prudence to care obligation and culpability. The essays-which combine social theory with ethnographic research from Europe North America Africa and New Zealand-address a wide range of topics including critiques of corporate social responsibility practices; the relationships between public and private responsibilities in the context of state violence; the tension between calls on individuals and imperatives to groups to prevent the transmission of HIV; audit culture; and how health is cast as a citizenship issue. <i>Competing Responsibilities</i> allows for the examination of modes of responsibility that extend challenge or coexist with the neoliberal focus on the individual cultivation of the self. <br><br>Contributors<br>Barry D. Adam Elizabeth Anne Davis Filippa Lentzos Jessica Robbins-Ruszkowski Nikolas Rose Rosalind Shaw Cris Shore Jessica M. Smith Susanna Trnka Catherine Trundle Jarrett Zigon</div>