About

Care is ubiquitous. Care practices promote and sustain life, communities and nations, but they can also ‘other’, repress and control. As an agentive feeling, an everyday personal, social and institutionalised practice, a relational process and an infrastructure, closely entangled with other political, social and cultural logics, it produces bonds and performs exclusions. Duclos and Criado argue that care cannot be taken as a neat moral standard for any practice, including that of anthropology, since a naturalized understanding of care carries the violence of knowing what is at stake, and how to speak and go about it (2019). In academic scholarship, care became the focus of 1970s feminist Marxist thought, and has since encompassed its embodiment in medical spheres, its co-option for politics that do harm, its ability to perform citizenship, and its materialities across more than human worlds in the age of climate crisis. Anti-colonial, anti-racist, feminist, Black, Indigenous, queer and crip scholars call for care to carry something more: a politics of the otherwise, and an approach to research that is also deeply engaged.

But what constitutes care? Why does it matter? What are its materialities and performative politics? Does care as a concept apply everywhere?

This reading group explores care across its pluralities, contradictions, problematics and potential, as a social process and an analytical category. Our starting point is rooted in Anthropology, extending beyond the discipline in order to explore grassroots practices and problematizations through conventional text and also zines, collective conversations, film and art, guided by our joined interests. We see this group as a beginning for possible projects to emerge from our discussions - whether in new writing, events, collaborations, still to be imagined. All welcome.

Information

This reading group took place online, once a month, during 2021. It was organised by Ioanna and Emilie, PhD researchers at UCL Anthropology, and brought together academics across disciplines, geographies and diverse practitioners with interests in care.  

We are currently placing our care on other commitments, but remain open to possibilities as part of this group. For any enquiries, email us both at: 

ioanna.manoussaki-adamopoulou.14@ucl.ac.uk
emilie.glazer.11@ucl.ac.uk 

Weekly Readings

Below is the set of readings which became the basis for our monthly meetings. The idea was to adapt and shift these following our collective interests, as we engaged with the material together. For each session we explored care in relation to a particular theme. An extended reading list can be found here, for anyone who is curious and wants to delve further into the literature.  

Session 1. Introduction

• ‘Nothing Comes Without its World’: Thinking with Care, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa.
  
• Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa.
  
• Violence against Women: We Need a Transnational Analytic of Care, Elora Halim Chowdhury.
  

Session 2. Affect

• The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Introduction and conclusion, Sara Ahmed.
• The Need to Help, Introduction and conclusion, Liisa H. Malkki.

Session 3. Neoliberalism

• The Moral Neoliberal, Chapters 2 and 3, Andrea Muehlebach.

• Economies of Abandonment, Introduction, Elizabeth Povinelli.

Session 4. Biopolitics and the state

• The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir, Introduction, Saiba Varma.
• Casualties of Care, Introduction and Chapter 2, Miriam Ticktin.

Session 5. Political resistance

• Caretaking Relations, Not American Dreaming, Kim TallBear.
• Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid for Mobilisation and Survival, Dean Spade.
• #WhenIFellInLoveWithMyself: Disrupting the Gaze and Loving Our Black Womanist Self As an Act of Political Warfare, Jameta N. Barlow.
• Militant Care, Hannah Black.
• Beyond Resilience: Trans Coalitional Activism as Radical Self-Care, Elijah Adiv Edelman.
• Deviant Care for Deviant Futures: QTBIPoC Radical Relationasm as Mutual Aid against Carceral Care, Ren-yo Hwang.

Session 6. More-than-human

• Decolonizing Extinction. The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation, Introduction and Conclusion, Juno Salazar Parrenas.
• Becoming a Commoner: The commons as sites for affective socio-nature encounters and co-becomings, Neera Singh.

Session 7. Technology and infrastructure

• Waste is not the end. For an anthropology of care, maintenance and repair, Francisco Martinez.
• Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Accessibility, Introduction and Conclusion, Aimi Hamraie.
• Maintenance and Care. A working guide to the repair of rust, dust, cracks, and corrupted code in our cities, our homes, and our social relations, Shannon Mattern.

Session 8. Embodiment

• Rituals of care: Karmic Politics in an Aging Thailand, Introduction, Chapter 1, Conclusion, Felicity Aulino.

Session 9. Care for speculative futures

• From the human to the planetary: Speculative futures of care, Miriam Ticktin.
• Black AfterLives Matter, Ruha Benjamin.

Session 10. Care as method

• Critique as Care, Mayanthi Fernando.
• Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed.
• Knowledge from below. A roundtable conversation with the co-directors of the Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research in Athens, Moderated by Julia Tulke.