Care: Personal Lives and Social Policy considers how normative assumptions about the meanings, practices and relationships of care are embedded in our everyday lives. It explores the ways in which these shape our sense of self and the nature of our relations with others. At the same time the book examines how social policy and welfare practices construct these relations and give or deny them meaning and validity.
The authors draw upon a range of theoretical approaches and research evidence to bring into focus some of the different spaces and places where questions about care, in all its different dimensions, have been lived out, debated and struggled over. Each highlights the significance that class, 'race', gender, sexuality and age play in the analysis of care relations.
Questions of care Janet Fink: Introduction; Conceptualizing care, caring and carers: assumptions and contradictions; Theorizing care: questions and dilemmas; Welfare, care and personal lives; Conclusion; Further resources; References. Personal costs and personal pleasures: care and the unmarried woman in inter-war England Katherine Holden: Introduction; Policy contexts; Representing unmarried carers' personal lives; Conclusion; Further resources; References. Victims or threats? Children, care and control Barry Goldson: Introduction; Key concepts; The origins of modern institutions; Contemporary conditions, policies and practices; Conclusion; Further resources; References. Skin matters: 'race' and care in the Health Services Yasmin Gunaratnam: Introduction; Underlying concepts: the personal and care; Hospices, cultural competence and care; Intercultural hospice care: a personal account; Postcolonialism and multi-sited research; Reading Gill's account through a multi-sited analysis; Using the personal to take us to other contexts; Postcolonial collisions; Conclusion; Further resources; References. Care: meanings, identitites and morality Janet Fink: Introduction; Meanings; Identities; Morality; Conclusion; References.
