Care and precarity: potentials of a conceptual couple for the anthropology of health and illness

This commentary argues for a reconceptualisation of the relationship between care and precarity within medical anthropology, moving beyond the limiting framework of 'precarity-as-context'. By treating care and precarity as a fruitful conceptual couple, the paper traces a shared trajectory of these two concepts, both of which have been reframed, expanded, and opened to ethnographic complexity. Drawing on medical, social, and labour anthropology, philosophy, and ethnography, the commentary situates precarity as imbricated in the constitutive core of care. This approach allows for a consideration of precarity that exceeds a mere contextual frame within which care occurs. It is argued that examining care and precarity in tandem reveals vital connections between care practices beyond the clinic, and between forms of care subject to connected precarisation processes. Furthermore, it highlights the articulations between health, labour, and life, while keeping the door open for unexpected, ambiguous, and ambivalent outcomes. Ultimately, this pairing serves as a starting point for inquiring into the complex interdependencies and unequally distributed uncertainties that define contemporary human life.