The session recording will be archived on the site until June 25th, 2023

This session was streamed but not recorded

Curated Track: AAG Specialty and Affinity Group Highlighted Sessions, Disability Specialty Group Curated Track

Description:

This session evolved from a discussion with disabled and chronically ill scholars, as we engaged with the concept of “care” as a term that is used broadly within academic and organizing spaces. Care has been widely theorized, discussed, and (tentatively) practiced especially in the field of feminist geography over the past few decades, including work that critiques of US- and white-centric perspectives of care in the field (Datta & Lund, 2018; Raghuram, 2016), and how care is practiced in Geography itself (Faria et al., 2021; Hawkins, 2019). Still, even while disability is becoming more visible in geography, we have experienced a continued lack of serious and critical engagement with disabled knowledge and practices of care.

Thinking about our relationship to care work and mutual aid in this context provided an opening for us to reflect on how we build spaces for survival in ways that can either reinforce or challenge existing oppressive power dynamics, including in regard to our own positions within the academy. This panel thus builds on disability justice and crip perspectives that know the inherently racialized and gendered violence of ‘care’, the possibility of being unable to accept care, and the importance of intentionally developing care webs that are based on solidarity and radical love rather than charity or just friendship (Sotiropoulou & Cranston, 2022; Bartos, 2021; Spade, 2020; Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2010). As Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2010, p. 4) writes: “Whether [care webs] are disabled only or involved disabled and non-disabled folks, they still work from a model of solidarity not charity – of showing up for each other in mutual aid and respect.”

We invite attendees to consider the ways in which power and positionality shape how we receive and give care. Participants in this discussion will evaluate the ethics of care as an organizing principle and reimagine what this might look like, and where it happens.

REFERENCES

Bartos, A. E. (2021). Troubling False Care: Towards a More Revolutionary ‘Care Revolution’ in the University. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 20(3), 312-321.

Datta, A., & Lund, R. (2018). Mothering, mentoring and journeys toward inspiring spaces. Emotion, Space and Society, 26, 64-71.

Faria, C., Caretta, M. A., Dever, E., & Nimoh, S. (2021). Care in/through archives: Postcolonial intersectional moves in feminist geography research. Emotion, Space and Society, 39.

Hawkins, H. (2019). Creating Care-full Academic Spaces? The Dilemmas of Caring in the ‘Anxiety Machine’. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(4), 816-834.

Raghuram, P. (2016). Locating Care Ethics Beyond the Global North. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 15(3), 511–533.

Spade, D. (2020). Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid for Mobilization and Survival. Social Text, 38(1 (142)), 131-151.

Sotiropoulo, P., & Cranston, S. (2022). Critical friendship: an alternative, ‘care-full’ way to play the academic game. Gender, Place and Culture. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2022.2069684

Non-Presenting Participants