Patricia Chavez
06/30/22
What are the author's definition of 'care'?
● The author's definition of care includes not only the hands-on care that is provided by
people or professionals, critical or urgent, but “is also a social capacity and activity
involving the nurturing of all that is necessary for the welfare and flourishing of life”(5).
Care is about being active and necessary across every distinct scale of life so that all
living creatures on this planet can thrive.
What do the authors mean by a "carelessness reign"?
● The author states that “In short, for a long time we had simply been failing to care for
each other, especially the vulnerable, the poor and the weak”(2). This means carelessness
reign means that care is being overlooked and there is a lack of care. It's acting like
everything is okay when it's not, yet we're not gonna do anything to fix it.
Give a brief summary of one of the example of the reign of carelessness discussed by the
authors.
● An example in the text on the reign of carelessness can be described in careless worlds
where “in the UK citizens are now encouraged to act like border guards and report
anyone they suspect of being an undocumented migrant”(9). This often racializes
individuals. It's a way to get rid of the “undesirable” citizen and to lock them up when
they are often doing nothing that is harming anyone. This is a xenophobic practice that
shows no care for others.
What do the authors mean by "universal care"?
● The author states that the vision and model of universal care is “the ideal of a society in
which care is placed front and centre on every scale of life”(19). This means that care is
the top priority in all spheres of life including community, state, and the planet.
List and describe 3 things that we learn in Chapter 1 (titled Care Politics) that help expand
our understanding as readers of what the authors mean by care.
● Not only recognize our mutual interdependencies and the intrinsic value of all living
creatures but also move back and forth from notions of proximate physical and emotional
care to ultimately conceptualize care for strangers and distant others.
● Promoting the idea of universal care, in which we are all responsible for hands-on care
and care work, and “cultivating and prioritizing the social, institutional and political
facilities that enable and enhance our capacities to care for each other”(26).
● Being able to recognize the need to give and receive care, provides us with a sense of
common humanity, and “in order to reimagine a genuinely caring politics, we must begin
by recognizing the myriad ways that our survival and our thriving are everywhere and
always contingent on others”(30).