Farewell note from outgoing co‐editor, Mythri Jegathesan

I have always been struck by the fact that Anthropology of Work Review began as the two-page NOW Anthropology of Work newsletter in March 1980. One of my regular practices as AWR co-editor over the past four years has been to return to the journal's archives. In doing so, I pause to recognize the journal's beginnings, scholars' desires to create a space for sharing their work and ideas, and the iterations of collective efforts this space has cultivated over the last 44 years. Despite many changes in our section, readership, and discipline, AWR, as a space of scholarship and gathering, remains committed to the “now” in anthropologies of work. Seeing the journal enter production of its second issue of its 45th volume this year, I want to take this opportunity to pause and remember what we have accomplished at the journal during my tenure as a co-editor of AWR over the last 4 years (Associate Editor in 2021 and co-Editor from 2022 to 2024), what we have built for the journal's future, and why, now, more than ever, anthropologies of work remain central to our discipline and our commitments as engaged scholars. The past 4 years have brought a host of changes to the publishing landscape in anthropology. Guided by our journal's revised Aims and Scope, my priorities as editor have been to focus on publishing original research that reflects the timely engagements of the discipline but also the citational ethics and commitments to question the conditions of colonialism, patriarchy, and racism under which anthropology began and expanded and the necessity to address its ongoing legacies of violence and oppression. Since 2021, I have been fortunate to co-edit the last seven issues of AWR, publishing the scholarship of 61 distinct scholar-authors who presented their original research and commentaries about anthropologies of work across 31 different geographic locations (see Figure 1). Their scholarship on work has been both timely and boundary-pushing in methodology, format, and theoretical innovation. From examining the experiences of workers on the frontlines of Hawaii's hotels at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to exploring the work of disabled Pakistani software designers thinking about accessibility, AWR authors have identified the necessity of timely scholarship that speaks to the current conditions and systems of work often taken for granted. Our journal has also been a site where scholars have found solidarity with one another—as evident in three roundtable and commentaries we have had on immunocapital and militarization in Sri Lanka's higher education system at the height of the country's economic crisis, Jane Collins' Arensberg Lecture and attached commentaries on essential work during COVID-19, and the most recent 2023 AAA roundtable on community organizer Harsha Walia's lifelong work on border imperialisms. Each has taken seriously the ways in which anthropologies of work cut through and speak to the core of key studies on human difference, power, politics, and social and economic evaluation. As I end my tenure as co-editor, I look forward to seeing our journal continue to publish on these timely areas of study from organizing and care work (this issue) to disability and chronicity in worlds of work, the racialization of gig economies, and the moral and ethical spheres of labor. I also look forward to seeing the journal, through the leadership of my co-editor, Tarini Bedi, and the incoming new editorial collective, continue our mentoring work with early career, underrepresented, and marginalized scholars. First, I want to extend gratitude to my co-editor for the past 3 years, Tarini Bedi, alongside those across the journal, AAA, and the Society for the Anthropology of Work (SAW) for encouraging our collective to expand how we think about publishing in anthropology today. Particularly, I have appreciated our collective's shared commitment to treating peer review as an act of mentorship and also our encouragement of authors to see their writing as a dialogue with their peer reviewers and one of care. On that note, I want to thank Jenny E. Shaw for her commitment to seeing our journal as a place where mentoring can and must co-exist with our commitments to peer review. Second, I want to thank Marcel LaFlamme for his leadership in guiding our collective through challenging times in the publishing landscape of anthropology and for pushing us to think critically about questions of access, collaboration, format, and reach. Third, I thank our expanded editorial board for their commitments to the journal and sharing their visions for its growth and expansion and our previous copy editor, Kathy White, for the unwavering care and co-thinking they put forward in their work with our authors. Finally, I want to thank our peer reviewers for their time, readings, and engagements. None of this work would have been possible without their service, reading, and engagement. Between COVID-19, illnesses, grief, caretaking, and political and economic crises, I remain indebted to those scholars, authors, reviewers, and readers, who engaged our journal as a space of dialogue and collaborative thought and action. The “now” of our first newsletter in March 1980 may look and feel different from the “now” of AWR's articles today. But in many ways, as engaged scholars of work we have the same commitment to confront the violences and inequities that determines the conversations we need to have at this moment and the same choices to center the work of survival we continue to witness. From fights for academic freedom to raising support for Palestinians against Israel's ongoing genocide and scholasticide in Gaza to taking stands against the US imperialism and global forms of fascism, settler colonialism, authoritarianism, and industrial and militarized violence, anthropology of work scholars have long used their place to push how they think about the urgency of “now” in their work but also for and with the communities with whom they work. I look forward to seeing how Anthropology of Work Review will continue to be a space for such scholars to carry out this work and one of creativity, mentorship and collaboration in the years to come.