Doing Care, Doing Citizenship Towards a Micro-Situated and Emotion-
This book examines the emotional, micro-situated dynamics of status inclusion/exclusion that people produce while caring for others by focusing, in particular, on non-conventional families. Grounded in empirical research that involves different types of c
- PDF / 2,824,927 Bytes
- 333 Pages / 419.58 x 612.28 pts Page_size
- 65 Downloads / 209 Views
Doing Care, Doing Citizenship “If parenthood is the epitome of social citizenship today, the normalisation of non-heterosexual parenting is a crucial step. Pratesi shows how this barrier has been broken in the interactions of everyday life, where the emotions surrounding doing care smooth the way. A deeply empowering and optimistic book.” —Randall Collins, University of Pennsylvania, USA “This enlightening book challenges many of the tired assumptions surrounding research on care by questioning binary and heteronormative accounts of expressive women versus instrumental men. The empirical focus on same-sex parents and the thoughtful theoretical combining of phenomenology and symbolic interactionism result in a novel account of doing care as a doing of citizenship that can sometimes create forms of emotional inequality. This helps further understandings of the complex interweaving of social stratification with felt experience and thus makes a welcome contribution to the sociology of emotion as well as to scholarship on care.” —Mary Holmes, University of Edinburgh, UK “This empirically grounded book provides an engaging explication of the meanings and experience of care in urban and suburban Philadelphia. Pratesi’s interpretive phenomenological analysis of the macro–micro intersections which inform the processes of doing care is skilfully executed. Rich and original data illustrate the informal and formal networks of care that emerge to support and sustain dependents, loved ones and lifestyles. Rather than focus on what people do, Pratesi instead focuses on how they feel and in so doing brings together the emotional dynamics and structural inequalities that shape caring responsibilities and different types of carers. Care is thus situated as a deeply emotional, multifaceted and problematic phenomenon that lies at the heart of contemporary citizenship. Some caring practices are strategic, others spontaneous; many derive from necessity and/or the political desire to do things differently. Across this diverse caring landscape, Pratesi weaves a path that unpicks the gendered paradigm of care, while the inclusion of queer and heterosexual participants ensures that analysis drills down into the materiality of caring practices, to contest the rigidity and reification of sexuality and gender as social categories. Paying equal attention to the nourishing and draining aspects of caring work, the analysis engages with and invigorates feminist writings on the ethics of care. While data
are rooted in the North-eastern United States, the analysis here has wider resonance across contemporary Western societies. The underpinning argument is rigorously theoretical, but the writing is anything but dry. Indeed, the account presented is full of tenderness and rich description; the writing brings both the subject and research subjects to life. The resulting embodied social theory of care which Pratesi crafts is accomplished, engaging and insightful.” —Jacqui Gabb, The Open University, UK “Alessandro Pratesi’s book engages with theory an
Data Loading...
