{"title":"Nursing crabs and the biopolitics of care","authors":"Xuefei Shi","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.12958","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines the biopolitics of care within Madagascar's live mangrove crab trade. It reveals how care operates as a governance mechanism beyond ethical or affective practice. Care in this context is both technoscientific and embodied, shaped by regulations, market demands and labour hierarchies. I argue that the care provided to crabs – whether through nursing facilities, cold-chain logistics or the attentive handling by female traders – serves to sustain life and optimize vitality for economic purposes. This tension highlights the crucial yet often overlooked political dynamics of care in sustaining the global live seafood commodity chain. By recognizing the diverse forms of care within the seafood industry, the article also uncovers the socio-economic inequalities and ecological precarity embedded in these asymmetrical care practices.</p>","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"41 3","pages":"19-22"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Anthropology Today","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.12958","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article examines the biopolitics of care within Madagascar's live mangrove crab trade. It reveals how care operates as a governance mechanism beyond ethical or affective practice. Care in this context is both technoscientific and embodied, shaped by regulations, market demands and labour hierarchies. I argue that the care provided to crabs – whether through nursing facilities, cold-chain logistics or the attentive handling by female traders – serves to sustain life and optimize vitality for economic purposes. This tension highlights the crucial yet often overlooked political dynamics of care in sustaining the global live seafood commodity chain. By recognizing the diverse forms of care within the seafood industry, the article also uncovers the socio-economic inequalities and ecological precarity embedded in these asymmetrical care practices.
期刊介绍：
Anthropology Today is a bimonthly publication which aims to provide a forum for the application of anthropological analysis to public and topical issues, while reflecting the breadth of interests within the discipline of anthropology. It is also committed to promoting debate at the interface between anthropology and areas of applied knowledge such as education, medicine, development etc. as well as that between anthropology and other academic disciplines. Anthropology Today encourages submissions on a wide range of topics, consistent with these aims. Anthropology Today is an international journal both in the scope of issues it covers and in the sources it draws from.
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