Revaluing Care in Theory, Law & Policy: Cycles and Connections

In light of contemporary debates and challenges, this book introduces a new framework for articulating the value of care. Existing work on care has cohered around three key themes: the need to value caring and domestic labour in law and society; the utility of a feminist ethics of care; and latterly, the limitations of care as a normative and conceptual framework.

The proposed collection expands these themes: both theoretically, and in a movement beyond the usual focus on familial interconnection, to also include professional care contexts, care by strangers, and care for and about animals. Containing eighteen original analyses of care practices across a range of interdisciplinary and international contexts, it formulates a more nuanced 'cycles' approach to care that captures how subjects move between instances of care-receiving and care-giving.

In this respect, the book proposes an approach to care that centralises embodied experiences of responsiveness and affect - both in relation to caring for and caring about different people, practices and places.