CAST (Care and State)

Description

Whether it is healthcare or public childcare during the pandemic, elder care in ageing societies or transnational care migration, care poses challenges for states around the world. Although we know that practices of care respond to state policies and can reproduce social inequalities, we lack theory that can systematically account for how care structures social hierarchies and state configurations. CAST develops a relational theory free of key binaries that have over-determined research: “good” (supporting) versus “bad” (controlling) care, “micro” care practices versus an encompassing “macro” state. These two dimensions parallel and encourage us to see the state in opposition to kinship, community and civil society. My project instead proposes that the state and its others coevolve in negotiations of care.

Key publication

Thelen, Tatjana (2021) "Care as Belonging, Difference, and Inequality." In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Mark Aldenderfer. New York: Oxford University Press.

Thelen, Tatjana and Cati Coe (2019) "Political belonging through elder care: Temporalities, representations and mutuality." In: Anthropological Theory 19 (2): 279-299.

Thelen, Tatjana, Larissa Vetters and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann (2018) "Stategraphy: Relational Modes, Boundary Work, and Embeddedness." In: Stategraphy: Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State, edited by Tatjana Thelen, Larissa Vetters and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, 1–19. New York, Oxford: Berghahn.

Thelen, Tatjana (2015) "Care as Social Organisation: Creating, Maintaining and dissolving significant relations." In: Anthropological Theory 15 (4): 497-515.

Tags: Collaborative Project

Further Information