journal
01 Jan 2017

The politics of care in technoscience

In this special issue of Social Studies of Science, each contributor approaches the topic of care within technoscience with a lens that privileges the power relations that entangle humans and more-than-human others, carefully articulating “a feminist politics of care” (626). These articles each grapple with ‘darker’ sides of care: “The essays in this Special Issue […] Pat Ng
book
03 Jan 2017

The Logic of Care

Mol, in the early pages of this book, recounts a panel discussion she is invited to chair on patient choice and autonomy. The discussants – ethicists and psychiatrists – are presented with the case of a patient on a psychiatric ward who does not want to get out of bed. The panellists are asked, “are […] diva admin
book
04 Jan 2017

Care in Practice

In what way is care a matter of tinkering? Rather than presenting care as a (preferably “warm”) relation between human beings, the various contributions to the volume give the material world (usually cast as “cold”) a prominent place in their analysis. Thus, this book does not continue to oppose care and technology, but contributes to […] Pat Ng
book
10 Jan 2017

Adventures in Aidland

Anthropological interest in new subjects of research and contemporary knowledge practices has turned ethnographic attention to a wide ranging variety of professional fields. Among these the encounter with international development has perhaps been longer and more intimate than any of the others. Anthropologists have drawn critical attention to the interfaces and social effects of development’s […] Pat Ng
journal
03 Feb 2017

Risk, Vulnerability, and Harm Reduction

Based on long-term ethnographic research, Nichter explores how and why the use of antibiotics as prophylaxis has emerged as the main way that sex workers and their clients believe they can protect themselves from Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). Nichter’s research provides some excellent insights into the often noted disjuncture between behaviour and knowledge, arguing that […] diva admin
journal
06 Apr 2017

Nothing Comes Without Its World

What is the significance of caring for thinking and knowing? Thinking and knowing are essentially relational processes. Grounded on a relational conception of ontology the essay argues that ‘thinking with care’ is a vital requisite of collective thinking in interdependent worlds, but also one that necessitates a thick vision of caring. A speculative exploration of […] Pat Ng
journal
07 Apr 2017

Making time for soil

The dominant drive for understanding soil has been to pace its fertility with human demand. Today, warnings about soil’s exhaustion and endangered ecology raise concerns marked by fears of gloomy environmental futures, prompting scientists and soil practitioners urgently to develop better ways of taking care of soils. Yet the pace required by ecological soil care […] Pat Ng
book
01 Jul 2017

Death Without Weeping

When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of […] Pat Ng
book
05 Jul 2017

Life Beside Itself

In Life Beside Itself, Lisa Stevenson takes us on a haunting ethnographic journey through two historical moments when life for the Canadian Inuit has hung in the balance: the tuberculosis epidemic (1940s to the early 1960s) and the subsequent suicide epidemic (1980s to the present). Along the way, Stevenson troubles our commonsense understanding of what life is […] Pat Ng
book
10 Aug 2017

Casualties of Care

This book explores the unintended consequences of compassion in the world of immigration politics. Miriam Ticktin focuses on France and its humanitarian immigration practices to argue that a politics based on care and protection can lead the state to view issues of immigration and asylum through a medical lens. Examining two “regimes of care”—humanitarianism and […] Pat Ng
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