Care of the body : spaces of practice.

Abstract

Care—concept, emotion, practice, politics, moral exhortation—is a starting point for a range of critical geographies. Care affords geographers a richness of possibilities through which to engage critically with a range of politically charged discourses. This special issue offers a suite of ‘think’ pieces on geographies of care which provoke further examination of three challenges. First, we need conceptual strategies to explore the connections of care across different spatialities and temporalities. Secondly, biases within current research on care help make invisible the multiple sites through which our practices are shaped. Thirdly, certain concepts within the care lexicon have gone unchallenged such as dependency and vulnerability. We contemplate the potential of imagining care both as relation and as flow. The nodal characteristic of a relational care shapes how care flows through those nodes to focus on the spatial and temporal unevenness and inequalities in care, the processes eroding situated traditions of care, and the spaces and practices facilitating care of the body.