Affect & Care
In this working group, we concentrated on the task to refine the concept of Care from the perspective of affect and emotion theory, while taking dynamics that result from the historicity and temporality of Care into focus.
We asked about the institution of Care to look at its complexity from the Affective Societies perspective within a framework of a society that is concerned with continuity and topicality. We aimed to develop a working concept that allows us to look at the dynamics of "Community Care" as well as the understanding of Care as subjective caring, therapeutic services, professional nursing, and civil society involvement. We addressed the following questions: How do mobility and diversity change our ideas and expectations when we turn to a public institution with a need? What defines Care? Does a journalistic reporter provide a form of Care when he takes an objective perspective on an event or when he allows his/her felt intensities to flow into the reporting? Do actors understand mindfulness as a form of relational or self-centred care? And what is the connection between Care and power?
The working group invited participants to develop an interdisciplinary terminology and examine the applicability of the understanding of Care in their research projects and adjust it in a joint exchange. The group aimed to shed light on the dynamic relationship between emotion, affect, and care against the background of ongoing processes of institutionalization within the framework of a collaborative writing project.
Our discussions resulted, among others, in chapters of the subproject A02 in "Umkämpfte Vielfalt" (eds., Dilger, Hansjörg and Matthias Warstatt, campus, 2021) and "Affect, Power and Institutions", (eds., Calkins, Sandra and Millicent Churcher, Jan Slaby, Routledge Verlag, 2023). Furthermore, Anita von Poser and Edda Willamowski published the 2021 Stirling Prize for the Best Published Work in Psychological Anthropology der Society for Psychological Anthropology (American Anthropological Association) winning article "The Power of Shared Embodiment. Renegotiating Non/belonging and In/exclusion in an Ephemeral Community of Care" in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry (2020) and the entire Team of subproject A02 published an article on "Carescapes in the Making" in the open access Journal Southeast Asian Studies of Kyoto University (submitted).
In addition to academic contributions, Eric Hahn and Thi Minh Tam Ta as well as Anita von Poser and Edda Willamowski appeared on the SFB podcast More than a Feeling; Max Müller spoke on the Vietnamese Studies podcast Trà Đá Chats. Edda Willamowski was also able to successfully establish the online discussion Open Door about the psychosocial care landscape in Vietnamese lifeworlds of Berlin
Coordination:
Anita von Poser (A02)
Edda Willamowski (A02)
Max Müller (A02)
Participants:
Eric Hahn (A02), Thi Minh Tam Ta (A02), Thi Quynh-Nhu Tran (A02), Nora Stumpfögger (A02), Gabriel Scheidecker (A01), Karina Rocktäschel (B03), Juliane Gorke (C05), Mario Truong (A02), Julia Demirdizen (A02), Nua Ursprung (Z)