Transforming Lives through Care – Subject Overview

 Subject Overview

Anthropology increasingly recognises care as a fundamental aspect of human life—not just in terms of healthcare, but also in its social, moral, and relational dimensions. This subject uses an anthropological perspective to analyse how care shapes human experience, both in everyday life and through systems like health and welfare.

We use key concepts to help us analyse and understand care in a variety contexts:

  1. Society and Culture
  2. Kinship
  3. The Gift
  4. More-than-human
  5. Embodiment
  6. Gender
  7. Structure & Agency
  8. Violence
  9. Governmentality
  10. Neoliberalism
  11. Self-Care
By examining care through these concepts, we learn how people support each other and how societies manage vulnerability and need. As we will see, care belongs alongside classic anthropological themes like kinship, language, the body, religion and magic, ethnicity and race, and gender and sexuality as a core concern of the discipline.



Assessments

Quizzes (1,200 words equivalent)--30%
Short Essay (1,300 words equivalent)--30%
Long Essay (1,800 words equivalent)--40%

1. What Is Care? What Is Anthropology?


Prompt: Chimpanzees, whales and many other animals exhibit care. So what is human about caring? We use the anthropological approach, and specifically ideas of culture and society to answer this question.

Theme: Care is cultural not just natural.

Key concept: Culture & Society

Core reading: Arnold & Aulino "A call to care"

Interactive Task: Draw a kinship diagram; depict care relations; indicate your no.1 carer.

2. Kinship: Caring & Family

Prompt: Much of the care humans give and receive is organised within families. What about in your case? And what counts as family? What kinds of family relationships are caring? This varies according to culture. 

Theme: Obligations of care shape family--if you can marry, who you must care for, and how you can expect to be cared for

Key Concept: Kinship

Core Reading: Winarnita & Herriman, "Caring and Family".

Interactive Task: Solve some kinship puzzles, demonstrate caring family roles

3. The Gift: Care & Reciprocity

Prompt: How do gifts of money and messages hold a group you belong to together—and with what tensions? (use example of family, friendship groups)

Theme: Caring is a reciprocal exchange of greetings and remittances

Key Concept: the Gift

Core Reading: Mauss The Gift (800-word excerpt)

Core Reading: Arnold, "Communication as Care across Borders" 

Interactive Task: 🎁 Gift analysis and  🐾 My Pet Poll

 4. More than human Care: Caring for Animals

Prompt: Have you ever cared for an animal? Has an animal ever cared for you? Is care only about humans. Or is it more than human?

Theme: How do we care animals? How do they care for us?

Key concept: more-than-human

Core  Reading: Pig Love, Margaret Jolly.

Interactive Task:  Essay preparation 

5. Embodied Care: Care & Our Bodies

Prompt: When have you felt care through your body? Was it in lifting, touching, feeding, holding? Was it something you felt, or just something you did? Can care be meaningful even when it feels routine or automatic?

Theme: Care can be an repetitive bodily act, not just a deeply thoughtful gift

Key Concepts Embodiment

Core Reading: Aulino, “Rituals of Care: Karmic Politics in an Aging Thailand”


6. Masculinity: Gender & Care

Prompt: How do men experience care—and how does care reshape what it means to be a “man”? What happens when masculinity is lived not through dominance or detachment, but through emotional presence, routine tasks, and physical intimacy?

Theme: caring for cognitively disabled children forces fathers to reevaluate their idea of what it is to be man and their entire life's journey.

Key Concept: Gender 

Core Reading: Aaron J. Jackson, “Masculinity and the Modern Dad” (Sapiens.org)

Interactive Tasks: Masculinity & Care.

Prompt:
Who decides what “good care” looks like for older people—and how much say do care workers or older adults really have?
Is care something families should provide? Should it be professional? What does your answer say about your culture?

Theme: Taiwanese families expect their migrant care workers to act like dutiful dauthers-in-law.

Key Concept: structure-agency, 

Core Reading: Pei-Chia Lan, “Deferential Surrogates and Professional Others”

Interactive Task: Future Self Exercise. Describe how you would like to be cared for as an elderly person. Would you want emotional closeness? Professional distance? Independence?nThen consider: is your idea closer to Taiwanese expectations, Japanese models—or something else entirely?

8. Coercive Care: Healing in Violent Spaces

Prompt: Can care hurt? Sometimes care is forced—through institutions, families, or the state. Sometimes violence is framed as necessary for healing. When does care cross the line? And who gets to decide?

Theme: In these Mexican drug treatment centres caring is tough love.

Key Concept: Violence 

Reading: Angela Garcia, “Serenity: Violence, Inequality, and Recovery on the Edge of Mexico City”

Interactive Task: When is care an act of violence? Can violence ever be caring?What about involuntary care for psychiatric patients. is it different

9. Governmentality: Welfare as Control

Prompt: What if care isn’t just about kindness or compassion—but about making people easier to manage? Can care be a form of control?

Theme: With the best intentions, 'saving' Inuit from TB became an experience of violent colonial control

Key Concept: Governmentality

Reading: Michel Foucault, “Governmentality” (1991), The Foucault Effect, pp. 101–104

Reading: Lisa Stevenson, Life Beside Itself (selected excerpt)

Interactive Tasks: Identify governmentality in real-world care systems and decide whether the concept helps explain what’s going on—or not

10. Neoliberal Care: From Welfare to Self-reliance

Prompt: What happens when care is no longer guaranteed by the state—but becomes a personal duty?
Is this freedom to determine the care you want. Ot is it just responsibility passed down the line?

Theme: reforming the welfare state means recasting what it is to be a human.

Key Concept: Neoliberalism

Core Reading:
Barbara da Roit & Josien de Klerk (2014),
“Heaviness, intensity and intimacy: Dutch elder care in the context of retrenchment of the welfare state”, Medicine Anthropology Theory, 1(1): 1–20.

Interactive Tasks: Comparing neoliberal reforms in Australia

11.  Self-Care: Survival, Resistance, & Radical Refusal

Prompt: How do you care for yourself as a student? How will you care for yourself? How could that be political activism?

Theme: If you don't want to become a neoliberal human, you'll have to take care of yourself

3 key concepts: Self care, 

Core Reading: Hobart & Kneese, Radical Care 

Interactive Task: Write 'self- care diary' for 3 days. Track non-human daily care given, received, and neglected. Reflect on radical potential.

12. Conclusion: Anthropology & Care



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