What good is anthropology? Care work in a “useless” discipline

Abstract

Different forms of care work are essential for the practice of anthropology in South Africa. In this biographical commentary, I describe how I enacted care work in my anthropological practice. I suggest that what is good about anthropology is its potential to be attentive to the multiple ways in which care work is enacted by us as anthropologists, as teachers of the discipline, as well as by our interlocutors.