Responsibility

The concept of responsibility permeates social life. While it has many meanings, they often centre around questions of practical and moral accountability, culpability and liability. One can learn a great deal about a social formation by looking at the way the meanings of responsibility are deployed within it, the way they vary from one social space to another, and the way they are often at the centre of a political struggle over how we define and apportion blame. The essays in this book do more than examine such processes. Each in its own way also invites the readerto push existing assumptions about what individual, political, ecological and corporate responsibility entails.

Ghassan Hage is Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory at the University of Melbourne. He has written extensively on the comparative anthropology of nationalism, racism and multiculturalism. His most well-known works are White Nation (2000) and Against Paranoid Nationalism (2003). Responsibility is the third collection edited by Ghassan with MUP. It follows Waiting (2009) and Force, Movement, Intensity (2011).

Robyn Eckersley is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne. She has published widely in the fields of global environmental politics, political theory and international relations, with a special focus on climate change. Her most recent book is Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power (2012, co-authored).