What does it mean to "trouble" care in our rapidly changing world? During A Community Conversation "Troubling" Care, hosted by the Integrating Care and Livelihoods Research Cluster of the Live Work Well Research Centre, we explored this question in conversation with four panelists who have, in numerous ways, been involved in the hard work of "troubling" care. Panelists included: Nasra Hussein and Kevin Sutton, from the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition; Sonali Menezes, an interdisciplinary artist featured in ArtsEverywhere's Complicating Care series; and postdoctoral researcher, Elisabeth Militz from the University of Guelph (click here to access panelist bios)
Conversation Hosts and Panelists: Amy Kipp, Nasra Hussein, Kevin Sutton, Sonali Menezes, Elisabeth Militz and Roberta Hawkins
To ground our conversation we opened with the words of feminist scholar Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, who theorizes about the complexity of care, stating:
“Care, caring, carer. Burdened words, contested words. And yet so common in everyday life [...] Most of us need care, feel care, are cared for, or encounter care, in one way or another. Care is omnipresent, even through the effects of its absence. To care can feel good; it can also feel awful. It can do good; it can oppress [...] But what is care? Is it an affect? A moral obligation? Work? A burden? A joy? Something we can learn or practice? Something we just do? Care means all these things and different things to different people, in different situations.”
Throughout our conversation panelists described some of the many different meanings and experiences of care, in a range of community and academic contexts. They discussed their individual practices of care, making connections between the very personal objects and activities that represent care to them; the impact of their intersecting subjectivities on their understandings and affectual experiences of care; and the specific politics, structures, and geo-histories in which their practices of care are embedded.
As a starting question, we invited panelists to share an object, place or activity that represented care to them.
Nasra | In her response, Nasra explained that to her care is "connecting with others." Linking this to her Muslim and Somali-Canadian identities, Nasra shared, "it was important for my family [...] to connect with the Somali community and the Muslim community, to find that sense of belonging and community [in Canada]. And for me, that was a sense of care [...]."
Kevin | In response to this question, Kevin raised a pink and cream plushie to the camera, which they introduced as "Smarsh, my sleeping companion." They explained how this intimate, everyday object provided them with a sense of "being hugged," and cared for.
Sonali | Although quite different in form, Sonali and Elisabeth also shared the intimate and everyday objects through which they showed and received care. For Sonali, care is a cup of tea. "My background is South Asian from India [...]," she explained, "and in Indian culture, tea is the thing that you drink all the time [...] I start every morning with two cups of orange pekoe tea. And whenever anyone comes to my house, the first thing I offer is tea. When someone is upset, I say 'do you want a cup of tea?' And, people don't always want tea, but it's always my first go-to [...] It's that first offer."
Elisabeth | For Elisabeth, care is her mobile phone. She explained that her phone is the device through which she gives and receives care. As a postdoctoral researcher from Germany, she explained how her phone allows her to stay connected to a transnational network of family, friends, and colleagues through sharing voice messages, pictures, video calls and social media. Reflecting on a phone's relative simplicity, Elisabeth surmised, "I think it's such a mundane object, but it's so important to me. And maybe to many other people. It's my most important caring device."
In sharing what represented care to them, the panelists' reflections began to open up the notion of care and what it is and could be, encouraging audience members to think through the commonalities and differences in how care is understood, felt, and practiced in their own lives and the lives of others.
One definition of care commonly used by feminist scholars is: “all that we do to maintain, continue and repair our world so we can live in it as well as possible” (Tronto and Fisher 1990). Upon sharing this definition, we asked panelists to describe how they might define and practice care.
Nasra | Panelists agreed that care is difficult to articulate, and as Nasra put it, "much more complicated than a textbook definition." Drawing on her public health expertise Nasra defined care in the context of the social determinants of health. For her care means "to attend to unmet needs [...] including the needs that go beyond the physical."
Elisabeth | Similarly, Elisabeth understood care as "to attend, to attune, and to listen to others." This attending, attuning, and listening must extend to both human and non-human others, with Elisabeth acknowledging the "intimate entanglement of our surroundings."
Kevin | Or, as Kevin asserted, "We are all land. We're all part of one giant biosphere. We're all intimately interconnected." According to Kevin, moving towards understanding these connections - and the care they necessitate - is a complex process of consent and boundary setting. They explained, "Sometimes we can care for people the way we want to care for people, but they don't receive that as care therefore, it's not happening."
Sonali | Comparing such negotiation of care to the notion of love languages, Sonali explained, "care [and love] mean different things to different people." Using the example of her latest zine, Depression Cooking: Easy recipes for when you're depressed as fuck, Sonali reflected, "Maybe a zine I’m calling a love letter is not what every depressed person needs. But maybe it's what a few people need. I'm offering it to the world in the hopes it will meet someone's needs." In this way, panelists highlighted how good care requires a shared understanding, and reciprocity between those involved in relations of care.
Nasra | Perhaps unsurprisingly, in practice care looked different for each panelist. Nasra practiced care through intimate moments spent with her community. She also practiced self-care through "spending time outdoors and physical activity through hiking and running." Nasra connected her understanding of self-care (as being in movement in nature) to her ancestry of nomadic camel herders in Somalia, who spent centuries constantly on the move; thus, illustrating the contextual, place-based, and subjective nature of care.
Kevin | For Kevin, practicing care involved "doing that complex negotiation of consent and boundaries with people around [them]." Relating this to self-care, Kevin described, "When I take care of myself, I am actually making room to care for others. Being able to shift my focus away from what my needs might be in a given moment to take into account the needs of others, for me that has to be a constant."
Sonali | As an artist, the pandemic shifted what care looked like in practice for Sonali as she considered what her community needed during a moment of crisis. She explained, "a lot of artists were sort of re-evaluating what our relationship to our art is in this big moment of crisis in the world. [...]." With many asking, "Why should I make art? What does art have to do with any of this?" This questioning led Sonali to develop Depression Cooking. "That's how I’m trying to enact care at a distance during a pandemic. I want to cook for everyone, but I can't physically do that. I don't have the spoons to cook for everyone. I also don't have the resources [...]. So, this zine is my way of doing that. Of making what I call a "big pot of soup" for everyone."
Elisabeth | Elisabeth described how she practiced care in a neoliberal academic setting, stating, "[to practice care] is to take time and to mobilize from my privileges. I'm a relatively privileged academic. I have access to resources other colleagues and friends don't have. I have access to a specific knowledge, or I have experiences I can share with others. And to take the time to do that is how I try to stay true to my own commitment to be a caring academic." This involves transforming "[...] the institution from within by not complying to the expectations of being in competition with each other. And this takes a lot of time and listening and sharing. And being together. This is how I try to practice care." She explained that this is, "Not just sharing the burden and the pain, but also sharing the joy. To make [academia] a joyful place." For Elisabeth, this has involved participation in feminist collectives within and beyond her own university.
In this way, panelists' definitions and practices of care highlighted how care is (or ought to be) negotiated in relationship and practice with others, and how it is influenced by individuals' multiple and shifting subjectivities, as well as specific contexts that are at once personal, local, political, historical, and global.
The idea of ‘troubling' care has been conceptualized by feminist scholars such as Ann Bartos (2018) and Parvati Raghuram (2016), challenging us to consider the complex ways in which care is practiced, experienced, and understood. To explore what this looks like, we invited panelists to reflect on what 'troubling' care means to them.
Nasra | "The term 'troubling' care for me, means to stay with the trouble [...]" Nasra reflected, "care is quite nuanced. It's complicated. Care isn’t easy. It's messy. It's exhausting. But it's also beautiful. It's necessary for our survival. Our needs depend on that." Nasra spoke about 'troubling' how health-care is currently practiced, stating, "we have created a health-care system that often sees patients as numbers to go in and out of the door, lacking empathy, compassion, and care." She continued, "The old ways of care haven't been working. It revolves around productivity and capitalism and all the “isms.” We need to take it up a step further and this might be troubling care. Because we are escaping the status quo." As an alternative to mainstream health-care models, Nasra highlighted the importance of a "person-centred, compassionate, integrative health-care practice," that links patients with referrals to both health and social services "to address needs rooted in social determinants of health" and to "empower individuals and communities to build capacity in their self-determination." Nasra explained, "I think this is what care looks like, knowing that once you leave the doctor's office, you're still going to be cared for in the community, and have autonomy over that."
Kevin | In their 'troubling' of care, Kevin referenced different categories of care - including care for, care about, and care with - explaining that caring with requires solidarity with the person you care for or about. And that 'troubling' this type of care is about justice. Referencing the recent "Freedom Convoy", which involved a three week occupation of Ottawa by a group of people fighting to overturn pandemic related mandates (many with ties to white supremacist groups), Kevin raised questions about what care looks like when groups have conflicting understandings of care and justice, asking: "How do you care for people who don't care? How do you care for folks with whom reciprocity is non-existent?" Kevin explained that this is where they are currently 'troubling' care, "in those spaces dealing with the care-less and my own care-lessness and [asking] how do we have community cohesion [within this]?
Sonali | Sonali spoke about 'troubling' the prevailing (often liberal and capitalist) notion of self-care. She explained, "One thing I have been thinking about a lot in 'troubling' care is challenging the liberal capitalist self-care model that I see is very visible in our culture." In a liberal model of self-care, the individual is often seen as the most important unit in society. Although Sonali agreed that "The most important thing for each of us to do first and foremost is care for ourselves," she asserted that self-care must not come at the "expense of other people" or without a class analysis. To illustrate these reflections, Sonali shared her story of recently being evicted from a rental home. Her former landlord justified the eviction saying, “I'm trying to look after myself.” But "evicting is not self-care," Sonali stated firmly. This experience led Sonali to consider the ways in which the rhetoric of self-care is so often co-opted by capitalism. "I think people often think about self-care as consuming items, for instance 'I have to buy a candle to self-care.' Or 'I’II have to buy a cupcake to self-care.' Or 'I’II have to go to the spa to self-care.' It's like these are things only rich people can afford to do. Eating a meal is self-care, meeting your needs and caring for yourself, and feeding your housemates and your family is caring for them too."
Elisabeth | Elisabeth shared her insights on 'troubling' care in an academic context, explaining that it starts with asking the question “how can I make sure I do not leave the most marginalized behind?” Elisabeth described how those in academia often care about people with different roles in the institution in inequitable ways - for example privileging those who contribute directly to research and teaching over those who work to maintain the physical infrastructure and spaces, such as cleaning and maintenance staff. She explained the importance of 'troubling' how she cares "for those who care for me, but are very often invisibilized, or marginalized because their work is not appreciated in the same way [by the university]." She also spoke about the discomfort in acknowledging such inequities, reflecting on the importance of "staying with the trouble," and asking "how can I, and the people I work with, how can we act from this discomfort? [...] I have this race and class and citizenship privilege. How can I make this work for others?" For Elisabeth, it is "to lead, to guide, to act out of this discomfort and to not silence it, to not push it away, to not try to override it with joy, with laughter, with love, but to dig deeper, to sit with it. To think about what does it reveal, what does it show? What could it have me doing differently?"
'Troubling' care can also contribute to re-imagining more caring futures. So, as a final point of discussion, we invited panelists to do this 're-imagining' together, asking them to share what a care-filled future would look like for them and their communities.
Kevin | "Imagining a caring future, I found this image to be elusive" Kevin explained. "It's not something I myself can define alone just by the very nature of it. By the very nature of how subjective care is, I feel like it's important I contribute to a collective idea of what this could look like." Despite recognizing its elusiveness, Kevin highlighted that re-imagining care must be (and has in many ways already been) informed by humans and non-humans with different ways of knowing, being and doing. Going further with this imagining, Kevin explained that a more caring future must involve "a skillset that could become culture" one centred on "community cohesion" which involves "a process of skillfully navigating consent with each other." "If that skillset can become culture," they surmised, "I think we have a chance at creating a collective process of care that is normalized throughout our life."
Sonali | For Sonali, a more caring future would be "a future without capitalism." Emphasizing the many ways that capitalism and other structures of power limit the possibilities of care, she explained, "I don't see any possibility of us being able to care for the planet under capitalism or care for each other under capitalism. I would really see us abolishing systems like long term care [...] I would see us abolishing the police. I would see us abolishing a lot of these systems that prevent us from caring for each other." In this way, Sonali's vision for a more caring future is an abolitionist one, one in which systems are dismantled and new ways of being together, ways which centre care, are collectively built. She concluded, "I really see the [only] possibility of us having a care-filled future under socialism. I don't see there being any other possibility outside of that."
Elisabeth | Again, focusing her response on an academic context, Elisabeth shared with us her vision of a caring academic future, one in which there are "warm and welcoming and reflective academic spaces, where we collaborate instead of compete with each other, where we welcome people who are underrepresented or not represented in the university." Such care must also be extended to teaching in the university; for example, seeking to "create a space where [students and instructors] can grow together and in solidarity." Additionally, for Elisabeth this includes imagining "a practice of academia beyond the walls of the university" which seeks to meet the needs of, and care with, the communities that enable her research. And last, she spoke about the distance at which academics should care, stating "I think the last aspect for a care-filled academic future would be to really think about our global connections [...] To always think in transnational relation with others, to practice research and to teach keeping this in mind and connecting with scholars in other places."
Nasra | For Nasra, "what a carefilled future looks like is a future where everyone has what they need to not only survive, but to thrive." To survive is having basic needs met but to thrive also requires the dismantling of systems of oppression like patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, neoliberalism. This also involves "understanding the harms and histories of those systems for equity deserving individuals and groups" and "recognizing and addressing harm, either intentional or institutional, from these systems." This requires "meeting people where they're at [...] to cultivate a collective care model." Ending with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr, Nasra stated: “'No one is free until we are all free' - that's what a care-filled future looks like. When everyone has what they need to thrive without the burden of systemic oppression."
Thus, for panelists a more care-filled future is one in which care is centred, needs are met in a way attuned to the lived experiences of those giving and receiving care, and unequal systems of power are dismantled and new systems of care are collectively created.
Concluding thoughts
Throughout our conversation panelists 'troubled' care across interconnected communities, in a time when care was/is being challenged and reimagined in many ways. During our time together we pushed into the messiness of care, revealing that:
“care can be hard work: it can be messy, dirty, exhausting, burdensome and boring. At the same time, caring can be joyful, bountiful and beautiful […] Due to our collective dependence upon care for our survival, it is not possible to give up on care rather we need to ‘stay with the trouble’ of care in order to rework our collective understanding of care responsibility (Williams, 2020)”
We hope that this conversation was one of many in which we 'stay with the trouble' of care and rethink our collective understanding and responsibilities of care in these 'troubled' times.
Acknowledgement
This Community Conversation was a part of my Qualifying Exam preparation, as well as a launching event for the Live Work Well Research Centre's Integrating Care and Livelihoods Research Cluster. It was supported by Dr. Roberta Hawkins and Rana, Victoria, Kate, and Benedicta from the LWW Research Centre.
Panelists' Biographies
Nasra Hussein (she/her) | Nasra is a Somali-Canadian Public Health Practitioner who's a settler based in Guelph, Ontario (the ancestral and treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit). Nasra is the Health Equity Lead at the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition and a Community Organizer with Black Lives Matter Guelph and the City of Guelph’s anti-racism community plan. Her current work involves a combination of community engagement and participatory research to understand how the social determinants of health intersect and disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. She received her BSc and MPH from the University of Guelph. Nasra is passionate about informing systemic and policy change and promoting care and safety through the development of responsive, inclusive and anti-racist practices and interventions
Kevin Sutton (they/them) | Kevin is the Community Resilience Facilitator at the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition, whose work focuses on setting up and supporting the conditions for a community-led, consent-based trauma-informed supportive learning and working environment for all staff and volunteers of the GNSC. Kevin is also a facilitator, artist, and community change maker. To contextualize where they are coming from in this conversation on care, Kevin stated: "The concept of care and the concept of consent are inextricable from one another. The way we and the people we are in relationship with, whether it be personal, professional, social, or institutional, want to care for and be cared for don't necessarily align. Therefore the negotiation of consent is an integral factor in whether or not we or the people we are in relationship with feel cared for."
Sonali Menezes (she/her) | instagram @sonaleeeeeee | Sonali is an interdisciplinary artist based in Hamilton, ON. She tries her best to eat three meals a day and is the youngest of triplets. While her work spans many mediums, she has been most recently focused on poetry, video, printmaking, and zines. In 2018 Sonali’s chapbook zine won the Broken Pencil Magazine Zine Award for best literary zine. In 2019 she was the recipient of the City of Hamilton’s Emerging Artist Award in Media Arts. Right now her work is focused on care. Care for herself, care for her body, care for kin and community.
Elisabeth Militz (she/her) | @ElisabethMilitz | Elizabeth is a feminist geographer with a focus on global intimate relations and digital transformations. Her research brings together geographic theories of the body, emotion and affect, digital and affectual research methodologies and empirical fieldwork in the Global East. From an intersectional research perspective, she wants to understand how spaces of intimacy, everyday experiences of identity politics and digital technologies are interwoven. She has studied in Germany and in the US and received her PhD in Geography from the University of Zurich, Switzerland and has worked with feminist scholars in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Switzerland, and Canada from whom she has learned to incite change through collaborative and joyful research practices. Through the welcoming and inspiring spaces created by feminist geography collectives at the University of Bern, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Guelph, she has found her academic home in feminist geographies. She is interested in care/caring as an effective tool for changing the often isolating, exploitative, and technocratic spaces of academia. She strongly believes that caring produces an academia characterized by solidarity, collaboration, trust, appreciation, and social justice.
Resources
Interested in connecting with the Live Work Well Research Centre, or the organizations and panelists featured during this conversation? See below for links and resources shared:
Live Work Well Research Centre Integrating Care and Livelihoods Research Cluster: https://liveworkwell.ca/care
Amy Kipp: www.researchingcare.ca | twitter @amykipp | akipp@uoguelph.ca
Roberta Hawkins | rhawkins@uoguelph.ca
Elisabeth Militz | twitter @ElisabethMilitz | https://geg.uoguelph.ca/post-doc/militz-elisabeth
Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition: http://guelphneighbourhoods.org/
Nasra Hussein | twitter @Nasrassistic | nasra.hussein@guelphneighbourhoods.org
Kevin Sutton | visionwings@gmail.com
ArtsEverywhere.ca Complicating Care Series: https://www.artseverywhere.ca/series/complicating-care/
Sonali Menezes: Instagram @sonaleeeeeee | https://www.artseverywhere.ca/depression-cooking/
Aislinn Thomas: https://aislinnthomas.ca | https://www.artseverywhere.ca/maid-in-canada/
To access a recording of the event click here: A Community Conversation Troubling Care Recording
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