In this article we analyse the process of the multiple ways place and care shape each other and are co-produced and co-functioning. The resulting emerging assemblage of this co-constituent process we call a carescape. Focusing on a case study of a nursing home on a Dutch island, we use place as a theoretical construct for analysing how current changes in healthcare governance interact with mundane practices of care. In order to make the patterns of care in our case explicit, we use actor-network theory (ANT) sensibilities and especially the concept of assemblage. Our goal is to show - by zooming in on a particular case - how to study the co-constituent processes of place- and care-shaping, revealing the ontological diversity of place and care. Through this, we contribute a perspective of the heterogeneity and multiplicity of care in its dynamic relationship of co-production with place.

With the advent of telecare and the logic of information technologies in health care, the idea of placeless care has taken root, capturing imaginations and promising placeless caring futures. This ‘de‐territorialisation of care’ has been challenged by studies of care practices ‘on the ground’, showing that care is always (materially) placed. Yet, while sociological scholarship has taken the role of place seriously, there is little conceptual attention for how we may think through immateriality and the changing nature of place in health care. Based on a case study of the introduction of a sensory reality technology into a care organisation, this paper argues that we need (1) to push the definition of placed care into new (digitally produced) landscapes and (2) a new vocabulary, with which to address and conceptualise this changing nature of care places. The paper introduces the term post‐place, as a first step in developing such a vocabulary. Post‐place care, unlike the idea of placeless care or emplaced care, is an inclusive, open and generative concept. Its strength lies in its disruptive potential for challenging existing place‐care ontologies and opening up productive space for thinking through the changing landscapes of health care.

The concept of place has become fertile ground for sociological investigations, yet it is still undertheorized and in need of further development. Its most advanced employment is to be found within a sociological agenda on materialities of care and health architecture. In this article, we build on this work to conceptualize ‘placed care’ and to show how ecologies of care are produced and maintained through care infrastructures. The article investigates the case of an illegal baby foundling room in the Netherlands, where one may abandon one’s infant anonymously. We conceptualize this place, continuously produced through its care infrastructures, as ‘place-by-proxy’: a place that allows, by virtue of simply being there, for the animation of infrastructures around it. With this concept, we advance discussions on places as bounded and open, pointing to the work and consequences of ‘binding’ place and opening up the concept for further application to various sociological concerns, particularly in healthcare.

The authors would like to thank all respondents for their kind collaboration through interviews, public performances and workshops (both public and by invitation) during this research. We are grateful to the Field Consortium and AIR for their hospitality and openness. We would like to thank Prof. Antoinette de Bont, Prof. Roland Bal, Dr. Lieke Oldenhof and Dr. Hester van de Bovenkamp for their thoughtful feedback and encouragement. We also thank Wouter Berkhout who, as an intern at our faculty, worked with the first author in the early stages of the fieldwork. Finally, we are especially grateful to the two IJURR reviewers who provided us with excellent feedback and kind encouragement that helped us in developing our argument. This research was partly funded by the NWA-agenda 'Towards resilient societies' and the article was written as part of the first author's PhD research which foregrounds processes of urban governance in different experimental sites in the city, NWA Startimpuls PROJECT 'JOIN: Young people in a resilient society. New arrangements for inclusivity and participation' (file number 400.17.603).

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