SYLLABUS
Week 2 – Introducing Care
This lecture introduces the concept of care and examines theoretical attempts to define what care entails and how it differs from other intimate relations. Students will be asked to map the concept by exploring and reflecting on where caring practices are encountered and which social groups are traditionally associated with care, either personally or professionally.
Additionally, this lecture will provide an overview of the module, including expectations for independent study hours and assignment requirements.
No reading is required.
Week 3 –Economies of Care I
In this lecture we examine how the family has historically been constituted as a place of care. By turning into Marxist critiques of capitalism, we look into how the allocation of care within the family contributes to gendered inequalities. Additionally, we will examine feminist criticisms of marriage as an institution that perpetuates the gendered aspect of care prac-tices.
Essential Readings:
Engels, Friedrich, and Ernest Untermann. The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State. University Press of the Pacific, 2001. Chapter 2: The family
Federici, Silvia. Wages Against Housework. Power of Women Collective, 1975.
Additional reading:
Federici, Silvia. “Marx and Feminism.” TripleC 16.2 (2018): 468–475. Web.
Benjamin, J. (1978). Authority and the Family Revisited: Or, a World without Fathers? New German Critique, 13, 35–57.
Week 4 – Economies of Care II: Slave labour, migrant labour
This week, we turn to the continuing effects of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on the contem-porary organization of care. We examine how colonialism, enslavement, and forced labour contributed to the racialization and devaluation of care, and social reproduction practices. Additionally, we explore the lasting influence of colonialism onto contemporary phenomena such as the ‘global care chains’ and the impact of racialized Western childcare on children and families of workers from the Global South.
Essential reading:
Morgan, Jennifer L. (Jennifer Lyle). Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Chapter 4 ‘‘Hannah and Hir Children’’: Reproduction and Creolization Among Enslaved Women.
Additional Reading:
Hochschild, A., 2014. Global care chains and emotional surplus value, in Justice, Politics and the Family, eds. Daniel Engster, Tamara Metz. 1st ed. New York: Routledge.
Williams, Fiona. “Migration and Care: Themes, Concepts and Challenges.” Social policy and society : a journal of the Social Policy Association 9.3 (2010): 385–396.
Week 5 – Care is a Political Issue
Is care solely a private matter? What is the role of care in democratic states and institutions? In an increasingly neoliberal world where globalized markets and privatization dominate, how are childcare, healthcare, and education shaped? How can institutions, organizations, and individuals practice care ethically? To address these questions, we will examine the work of two important scholars in the field of care: Joan Tronto and Virginia Held.
Essential Readings:
Tronto, Joan C. Who Cares? : How to Reshape a Democratic Poliitcs. Ithaca: Cornell Selects, 2016. Chapters 1&2
Held, Virginia. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2006. Chapter 5: Liberalism and the Ethics of Care
Additional Reading:
Kellond, J. (2022). Donald Winnicott and the Politics of Care, London: Routledge. Chapter 7: The Politics of Holding.
Week 6 – The Carer (documentary and class discussion)
No readings this week.
Week 7 – Maternal Care
This week we explore how psychoanalysis has tackled the problem of care. We critically ex-amine what are psychoanalytic accounts emphasising maternal care in infancy and child-hood. We will also examine the myth of the ‘refrigerator mother’ and its links to autism. Last but not least, by historically contextualising the maternal turn in psychoanalysis at the end of the Second World War, we ask how maternal care inspired and shaped the emergence of the welfare state in Britain.
Essential Readings:
Winnicott, D. W. (1975) Chapter XXIV. Primary Maternal Preoccupation [1956]. Through Pae-diatrics to Psycho-Analysis 100:300-305.
Phillips, John, and Lyndsey Stonebridge. Reading Melanie Klein. London: Routledge, 1998. Chapter 2: Melanie Klein and the emergence of modern personal life.
Additional Readings:
Kellond, J. (2022). Donald Winnicott and the Politics of Care, London: Routledge. Chapter 4: Caring States: Maternal Care, Holding and Social Provision.
Bar-Haim, Shaul. The Maternalists. United States: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
Week 8 – The fallacies of self-care
In this lecture we critically examine the concept of self-care, feminist, critical, and psychoan-alytic lenses. Self-care is often described as a powerful, individualised practice which im-proves our well-being. Drawing on feminist, critical approaches on care in neoliberal socie-ties, we will investigate explore how discourses of self-care perpetuates systemic inequali-ties issues such as gendered labour, inequality, and the privatization of care.
Essential Reading:
Barnes M, Brannelly T, Ward L, Ward N, eds. Ethics of Care: Critical Advances in International Perspective. Bristol University Press; 2015. Chapter 4: Caring for ourselves? Self-care and ne-oliberalism, Lizzie Ward.
Additional Reading:
Dowrick, A., & Holliday, R. (2022). Tweakments: Non-surgical beauty technologiesand future directions for the sociology of the body. Sociology Compass, 16(11).
Taylor, Dianna, and Karen Vintges. Feminism and the Final Foucault. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Print.
Week 9 – Welfare and Dependence
In our last lecture we examine the relationship between care, dependence, and welfare, by critically exploring how contemporary societies provide for those in need and the ways in which care is organized. Feminist perspectives have traditionally challenged the assumption that dependence is inherently negative, by demonstrating that care work is often performed by women and marginalized groups, and as such it has been devalued within welfare sys-tems. This lecture encourages students to think of frameworks that value interdependence, while recognize care as a societal responsibility rather than an individual duty.
Essential reading:
Fraser, Nancy, and Linda Gordon. “‘Dependency’ Demystified: Inscriptions of Power in a Key-word of the Welfare State.” Social politics 1.1 (1994): 4–31.
Additional reading:
Kittay, Eva Feder. “The Ethics of Care, Dependence, and Disability.” Ratio juris 24.1 (2011): 49–58.
Joan C. Tronto (2010) Creating Caring Institutions: Politics, Plurality, and
Purpose, Ethics and Social Welfare, 4:2, 158-171
Week 10 –Care and Technology (student presentation)
No reading is required for this session.
Additional Reading:
Millar, Isabel. The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence. 1st ed. Cham: Springer Interna-tional Publishing AG, 2021. Chapter: What Can I Hope For? Reproduction, Replication, Im-mortality.
Week 11- Module Review and Assignments
This week, we will revisit the key themes covered in the module and discuss in detail the as-signment requirements. In preparation for this class, students are encouraged to select an essay question and draft an essay outline, indicating 4-5 relevant academic sources they plan to discuss in their essay.