Care Anthropology / Anthropology of Caring

Welcome to Module 6 of Transforming Lives through Care. This is part of a course in Anthropology at La Trobe University. In previous modules, we analysed care through the lens of: kinship (Module 2) the Gift (Module 3) gender (Module 4) social reproduction  (Module 5) Now that you’ve explored how care operates among humans you're ready to extend those insights beyond human relationships. This week, we ask what happens when care crosses species lines. How do we care for animals and how do they care for us?   🎯 Learning Goals By the end of this week, you should be able to: Analyse how care for animals expresses broader social, gendered, and spiritual dynamics Reflect on how ritual, emotion, and power are entwined in human-animal relations Compare the Melanesian "pig complex" with pet care in Australia and other industrialised societies Begin to de-centre Western ideas of “animal care” by engaging with ethnographic evidence 🚦  Introduction Care for 'animals' is a c...

Why Gifts Matter Part of being social in your culture means participating in a  gift economy . But most of the time we’re hardly aware of it. We just do it: we give, receive, and reciprocate—following along with often invisible rules. But these rules matter. They shape who we care for, and who cares for us. They reveal hidden hierarchies, expectations, and affections.  In this worksheet, you’ll observe how gifts move through your kin network and what that tells us about your own  social world . As we explore care in this subject, this understanding will become central. Gifts for the Dead Gift-giving isn’t just for the living. Who are the recipients in the following examples? Laying flowers at a grave site Saying a toast to deceased friends or family Water and tequila on a Día de los Muertos altar Wearing poppies on Anzac Day  What do the dead  receive  in these moments? Can we analyse these acts as gifts? Why or why not?  Saludos & Remitt...

Seminar Activities  Reciprocity: Saludos and Remittances When someone migrates for work, they often stay connected to their family not just through phone calls—but through money. Arnold shows us that in many Salvadoran families,  remittances and warm greetings go hand in hand . If the money stops, the messages stop too. Is this cold? Not necessarily. It might just be another way of keeping love going across distance— through mutual responsibility . t he Portillo family recorded saludos to several mi- grant siblings. The son who had stopped sending remittances was not included in the list of those being greeted (p. 143) In this way,  money doesn’t cancel love—it makes it possible . Without remittances, the migrant is no longer part of the family circuit of care. The relationship frays. It’s tempting to say that if love is real, it shouldn’t depend on money. But Arnold helps us see it differently: in these families,  emotional connection is expressed through acts of gi...

 Welcome to Week 3 of Transforming Lives through Care.  Last week, we saw how care can be analysed in terms of the kinship. Now we are going to another classic anthropological concept--The Gift--in order to understand care. Now we are going to look at communication as care.  Say "hello" to your mum from me. Why is passing on a "hello" important for some people? Arnold thinks that communication is not just about passing along information. Actually, it can be a gift and a form of care. 🎯 Learning Goals You should be able to: analyse gift-giving practices using the concepts of the Gift  and reciprocity 🚦  Introduction The gift  a crucial concept in anthropology. When we get a present from someone we feel (if we are social people) at least a tiny obligation to give something back. This means that an object, say flowers or a card, is actually a form of currency for social relations. The idea here is that much of the care that humans provide for each other take...