Politics of Vulnerability and Responsibility for Ordinary Others

Laugier, Sandra

doi:10.1080/14409917.2016.1153891

Cited by 39 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…French philosopher Sandra Laugier's (2016) proposal to understand care as a political principle that encompasses the domestic and public spheres leads us to another question: What is the role of public services, or the scarcity of these, in contributing to women being overloaded by the tasks of care? With the interruption of services such as schools and daycare centers since the beginning of the pandemic, children started to spend more time at home, demanding multiple levels of care: food, attention, and supervision during school tasks performed remotely and in conditions that are also precarious and unequal.…”

Section: Conceição's Familymentioning

confidence: 99%

May/June 2021 Print Issue: Care

2021

Anthropology News

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Section: Conceição's Familymentioning

confidence: 99%

May/June 2021 Print Issue: Care

2021

Anthropology News

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“…Gender researchers, especially materialist feminists and political economists, have shown that the gendered division of labour in the domestic sphere is central in the production and perpetuation of intersecting inequalities, and they have shed light on the power dynamics at stake in its delegation and distribution (Delphy et al, 2019;Falquet et al, 2010;Hirata and Molinier, 2012). Care work is understood both as an activity involving taking care of/caring for other people and feeling concerned about others (Laugier, 2016). To take care of and to care about someone or something means paying attention to the ordinary needs of others through "unnoticed, invisible tasks" (Laugier, 2016, p. 211).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whereas care work is considered essential and fundamental for human life, it has been historically depreciated, materially and symbolically, and has remained invisible and undervalued (Sayer, 2005). The feminist ethics of care (Laugier, 2016) invites us to think of care activities in relation to vulnerability and interdependence, not as specific characteristics of some groups of the population, but as an ordinary, yet crucial, part of life.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caring During COVID-19: Reconfigurations of Gender and Family Relations During the Pandemic in Switzerland

et al. 2021

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COVID-19 caused major changes in private and public arenas. Individuals were forced to reorganise their daily lives in response to the restrictive measures imposed by governments. The redistribution of gender roles and the responsibility for care provides an example of the reconfigurations that took place during the pandemic. This article sheds light on the implications of the pandemic for gender inequalities by exploring how care work was reconfigured as women and men sought to protect family members and navigated risks of infection. The study is based on qualitative data – interviews and observations – gathered in an interdisciplinary medical anthropology project. In the article, the authors focus on seven cases selected from a larger corpus to illustrate how reconfigurations of the gendered division of care work within families shifted during the pandemic as men assumed greater moral responsibility for safeguarding family members, without infringing the norms of masculinity. The first part of the article explores the intensification of care activities during lockdown for women living in the Canton de Vaud in Switzerland. The second part centres on the moral responsibility and duty for women and men to protect family members from viral exposure. The results from the study confirm not only that most care activities continued to be delegated to female family members, but also that men’s roles evolved. While their safeguarding role can be understood as a new form of caring for men, the findings suggest that it was essentially crisis specific and did not challenge masculinity norms. The extent to which this reconfiguration of gender roles might have a longer-term impact on gender inequalities remains to be seen. Meanwhile, these observations could have important implications for policies aimed at mitigating the medium and long-term effects of the pandemic on gender inequality.

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“…I will desist from offering yet another comment on this great innovation, as it has already been discussed and theorized in numerous writings and publications (see Cavell 2007;Laugier 2016;Deutcher 2016). Instead, I would like to draw attention to different perspectives that the use of the 'ordinary' brings into anthropology.…”

Section: Neighborhood: the Ethnographer's Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

From an ethnography of the everyday to writing echoes of suffering

Rechtman¹

2020

MAT

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Veena Das has introduced a major shift in our contemporary conception of ethnography. While she brings forward a new way of looking at everyday life, which is already a major achievement, she also offers a conceptual resolution to a classical unresolved opposition between the individual and the collective, and between idiosyncratic psychology (subjectivity) and collective modes of thinking, through a challenging debate on what makes one a member of a group and yet radically distinct from all others. The ethnography in her book Affliction stands on three major pillars: The first is the ethnographer's subjective position in the field regarding the issues of lives, testimony, and research. The second is the neighborhood as the site of fieldwork, with all of its heterogeneity, rather than the group, such as an ethnic or racial group or one cohering around another criterion of belonging. The third and final pillar is the focus on the ordinary through ethnography of the everyday. I then illustrate Veena Das's perspective on subjectivity with my own fieldwork with survivors of the Cambodian genocide.

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Politics of Vulnerability and Responsibility for Ordinary Others

Cited by 39 publications

References 8 publications

May/June 2021 Print Issue: Care

May/June 2021 Print Issue: Care

Caring During COVID-19: Reconfigurations of Gender and Family Relations During the Pandemic in Switzerland

From an ethnography of the everyday to writing echoes of suffering

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