Care Anthropology / Anthropology of Caring

Welcome to Module 14 of Transforming Lives through Care . This is part of a course in the Anthropology of Care at La Trobe University. 🎯 Learning Goals By the end of the this week you should be able to: Explore how care can involve coercion, control, and violence Examine how moral and social obligations shape care decisions Reflect on involuntary care practices in your own context 🚦 Introduction Violence… It’s not the first word we usually associate with care. But what if care involves being tied to a hospital bed? Locked in a room by your family? Or forced to endure pain as part of treatment? This week we explore the uncomfortable space where care and coercion overlap. In some communities, violence is seen as a necessary step toward healing—and family members become both protectors and enforcers. Is this still care? 📚 Recommended Materials 📘 Essential Materials Read: Garcia, Angela. “Serenity: Violence, Inequality, and Recovery on the Edge of Mexico City” ...

13. Conclusion: Anthropology & Care Welcome to Module 13 of Transforming Lives through Care 🎯 Learning Goals By the end of this week, you should be able to:  Reflect on key themes and case studies from the subject.  Revisit and connect major anthropological concepts used to understand care.  Identify areas where you'd like to explore further or deepen your understanding. Recognise how this subject has transformed your thinking about everyday life . 🚦  Introduction Welcome to Week 12 of Transforming Lives through Care. This final week is all about reflection and revision. You’ve journeyed through many forms of care—across borders, generations, species, and institutions. This week gives you the space to look back on what you’ve learned, revisit what stood out, and consolidate your understanding of how care transforms lives—and how anthropology helps us make sen...

Welcome to Module 12 of Transforming Lives through Care . This is part of a course in the Anthropology of Care at La Trobe University. This week we explore the idea of self-care —a form of care that emerges not from institutions, but from community, resistance, and refusal. What happens when self-care becomes a political act? What does it mean to survive under conditions of neoliberal neglect? Drawing on applied and public anthropology, we consider care not just as a practice of support, but as a politics of solidarity and survival. 🎯 Learning Goals By the end of this week, you should be able to: Understand radical care as a response to neoliberalism and systemic neglect. Reflect on how care can function as collective survival and political resistance. Explore the “politics of refusal” in the context of self-care, solidarity, and everyday life. Apply anthropological insights to your own life: What might radical care look like for you? 🚦 Introduction Neoliberal s...

Main point Since the 1980s, governments around the world have introduced major reforms to healthcare and other public services. Instead of governments providing all services directly, businesses and other organisations increasingly compete to provide them. Meanwhile, you are increasingly expected to choose what kind of care you want, who provides it, and how to manage it. We have analysed these changes using the theory of neoliberalism . In the interactive tasks, we broke neoliberalism down into five principles: marketisation , individual responsibility , cost–benefit efficiency, outsourcing , and moralised citizenship . We then applied these principles to the NDIS. We saw that some features of the NDIS fit neoliberalism quite well, but others do not. After all, the NDIS involves substantial government funding. So neoliberalism helps us understand the NDIS, but it doesn't explain everything about it.  Significance The significance goes well beyond the NDIS. We can see similar...

Introduction: NDIS as Neoliberal care What is the logic or rationale behind Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)? One way to analyse this is using the concept of neoliberalism. In what follows we'll: study 5 neoliberal principles, get an overview of the NDIS, apply the 5 principles to the analyse NDIS reflect on the usefulness of this neoliberal analysis By doing this, you'll develop your skill at using this theory to analyse care. 5 Neoliberal principles First, pick one of these 5 principles at the heart of neoliberal care: 1. Marketisation  Where do you get your care? Instead of receiving care directly from the government, you enter a marketplace. Different providers compete for your business, and you become a consumer of care.  Neoliberal pioneer Friedrich Hayek stated:   “The more the state ‘plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”   The idea is that giving you choices in a market gives you greater contro...

11. Neoliberal Care: From Welfare to Self-reliance Welcome to Module 11 of Transforming Lives through Care .  This week we turn our attention to neoliberal care —how care is reshaped when states withdraw from direct provision and individuals are expected to become self-reliant, responsible citizens. Neoliberal reforms reflect deeper changes in how care, personhood, and citizenship are understood. What happens to care when it is no longer a right, but a personal duty?  🎯 Learning Goals By the end of this week you should be able to Examine how neoliberal reforms reshape understandings of personhood, care, and citizenship. Critically reflect on the role of the state, family, and market in elder and disability care. Compare Dutch reforms to Australian care frameworks, especially in the wake of austerity and marketisation. 🚦 Introduction Neoliberalism : Although this week’s reading focuses primarily on care policy, it is also about changing ideas of...

  Main point Governments care for citizens; but along with that comes control. That's this week's takeaway. Specifically, in the modern era, governments took on the task of safeguarding people, who were now understood as 'population' or 'citizens'. To achieve this care, new kinds and levels of knowledge were created. People became legible to the government through things like statistics. This is the governmentality concept. Significance Using the structure-agency concept we could say that governmentality is a structure. We can use the " governmentality" to analyse government policies. But I think Foucault's point is not that the governments force this on us. It's not some big conspiracy. Instead the point is that we do this to ourselves. We make ourselves legible and keep an eye on ourselves. We turned ourselves into disciplined subjects. And that's where it might become really significant for you. Who you are might be, in part, a dis...

🇨🇦 Canada Canada is a vast country in northern North America, known for its multicultural society and history of colonialism. While often presented as a modern liberal democracy, Canada’s formation and development have been deeply shaped by the displacement, marginalisation, and governance of Indigenous peoples. Inuit women and children at summer camp, Fullerton Harbour, Nunavut , August 1906 ( Guardian ) 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Indigenous Canada Two main groups who are considered Indigenous to Canada are the  Inuit  and the  First Nations . These groups have distinct languages, histories, territories, and relationships to the Canadian state. 🔍 Comparison Chart Category Inuit First Nations Used to be known as… Eskimo (now outdated and considered offensive) Indian (outdated; still used legally in the Indian Act but not preferred) Region Arctic regions : Nunavut, northern Quebec , Labrado...

Tackling TB Imagine it is 1955. You are a government official in Ottawa. Tuberculosis is devastating the Inuit population, and you have been told to bring the epidemic under control. Here are some challenges: Inuit live across an enormous, remote area, often moving between camps. There are very few hospitals in the Arctic. Doctors generally don't speak Inuktitut. Inuit names can change and people don't necessarily have surnames, making it difficult to keep track of patients. Housing is often crowded, which helps TB spread. You have limited money and staff. Come up with five practical things the Canadian government should do. Think about: How will you identify people? How will you find and regularly test them? Where will people with TB be treated? Could you change where/how people live to make healthcare easier to provide? How will you know whether your policies are working? Governmentality To analyse our responses, let's build a deeper understanding of governmentality...

Welcome to Module 10 of Transforming Lives through Care , a first-year Anthropology subject at La Trobe University.  In this module, we anlayse welfare and care in terms of governmentality . The basic idea is that modern systems of care though non-violent, actually create greater control over the population. This is not overtly violent but it is more effective. 🎯 Learning Goals By the end of this week, you should be able to: explain the idea of  governmentality use  governmentality  to analyse caring practices  critique the idea of  governmentality 🚦  Introduction Governmentality is a mentality. Most people are unaware that they have this mentality. Although this mentality has only emerged in Europe's modern period, it seems to us to normal and natural. We think that governments should help people live long and happy lives. To achieve this we expect governments not to control us but to take  care   for of us. We, in turn, make ourselves g...

  Main point We are accustomed to thinking of rules as things that constrain us. But actually, rules also free us: Language rules restrict what I can say but also allow me to communicate.  Road rules restrict how I drive but also allow me to travel safely and efficiently. So, instead of thinking in terms of rules and freedom, we need other concepts. This is where the concepts of structure and agency come in.  Structure refers to the social arrangements, rules, and arrangements that shape what we can do. Agency is our capacity to act and make choices within these structures.  Consider a Filipina migrant employed to care for an elderly person in Taiwan. Many aspects of her situation are structured . Migration laws affect whether she can enter Taiwan and what work she can do. Her employer determines many of her working conditions. Wages, gender expectations and economic inequalities between countries also shape her situation. But she still exercises agency ....

Structure & Agency  How did you get to class or work today?  If you drove, you:  (a) had a range of roads available to you.  (b) chose which route to take.  If you took public transport, you:  (a) had trains, buses, or trams running on particular routes and timetables.  (b) chose which service to catch.  If you travelled another way, explain:  (a) the physical and social arrangements that made your journey possible. (b) the choices you made within those arrangements.  In the examples above, does " structure " describe (a) or (b)? What about " agency "?   Anthropologists often distinguish between structure and agency .  "Structure" refers to the social, economic, political, and physical arrangements that shape what people can do. Structures create opportunities but also impose limits.  "Agency" refers to a person's capacity to make choices and act within those structures. We cannot act with complete freedom, but...