There is a reoccuring set of themes that provide a strong conceptual base for the entirety of Culturing Care. Many of the concepts lie in the world of post-humanist and feminist thinking, and aim to dig deep into the critical world of intersectionality. Many of these concepts are not as straighforward as they seem: they present a multifaceted, nuanced and vibrant perception of the world around us.
Heritage as process
For a long time, the field of heritage has been defined by Western notions of conservation informed by colonial and post-Industrial tendencies that have focused on heritage as a non-renewable cultural resource. However, current critical discourses on heritage recognise that rather than being a static ‘thing’ with inherent value, heritage is “about the process by which people use the past a ‘discursive construction’ with material consequences” [1]. Understanding heritage as a process enables it to become a strong conceptual resource to examine the future-making aspects of culture, and in doing so, can readily engage with the ethical and moral questions of today.
Naturecultures
The concept of naturecultures acknowledges that the separation between nature and culture is an imposed duality. The idea of nature being inextricable to culture is something that is foundational to many Indigenous cultures and the term naturecultures is an academic term that addresses this way of being.
Ethics of care
The ethics of care emerged as socio-political feminist theory in the 1980s as a challenge to pervasive Kantian moral reasoning when discussing care in the fields of psychology and philosophy. Though the concept of care has been defined in many different ways, I rely on Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto’s definiton, where care is understaood as “a species activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” [2]. Importantly, I see care as a heterogeneous concept, which –contrary to normative discourses on care– is not inherently productive or generative. Rather it is just another way to, in the words of Donna Haraway, “stay with the trouble of living and dying” [3].
Embodiment
The ways in which we inhabit the world matter. Embodiment essentially refers to the process of meaning-making where the contextual body is understood as a vessel through which significances flow through. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus elucidates this cycle: the gestures of the body are employed to externalise inner ways of being, which inform a wider cultural context, but which is in turn, internalised itself. Heeding to the process of embodiment reminds us that meaning is not created in a vacuum and that we are, in essence, embedded in our socio-cultural contexts.
Cultural resilience
The concept of resilience is becoming increasingly popular as the field of sustainability becomes an all-encompassing conglomerate of ideas. Resilience, which originally appeared in the psychological and medical field, refers to “the capacity for successful adaptation, positive functioning, or competence despite high-risk status, chronic stress, or following prolonged or severe trauma” [4]. In the context of culture, resilience becomes a useful term to encompass the capability to develop in the face of –or perhaps precisely because of– change. This iterative conversation between continuity and change refers back to the importance of accepting cultural heritage as an ever-evolving process rather than an object fixed in time.
Heritage futures
The backdrop of the climate crisis with its many uncertainties within the future affects the ways in which we think about our heritage of today. In a world where change is rapidly becoming inevitable, heritage also needs to be allowed to “grow, change, rejuvante , collapse,” and at times “decay” [5]. Thinking about heritage in terms of its future rather than its past pushes us to reckon with the speculative ethics of conservation.
Interspecies entanglements
As humans we are entangled in a web of interspecies interactions wether are aware of it or not. In Haraway’s words, “all actors become who they are in the dance of relating, not from scratch, not ex nihilo, but full of patterns in their sometimes-joined, sometimes-separate heritages both before and lateral to this encounter” [6]. Interspecies entanglements are hardly ever without an unequal power dynamic; encountering other-than-human bodies in a generative manner often requires hard work. To enter into an intentional and attentive relationship with other species assists in starting to create a careful contact zone that is perhaps mutually beneficial rather than reciprocally destructive.
Liminality
The root of the word ‘liminality’ is the latin word limen, translated as ‘threshold’. Liminality refers to a state of in-between. Neither here nor there, liminal spaces are spaces of ephemerality, transition, contention and oftentimes, opportunity.
Contextual relationships
More often than not, it is not the ontology of something that makes it valuable or positive. This is the case with both heritage and care: just because something is pronounced as heritage does not necessarily mean that it is inherently valuable to everyone, and just because one cares for something does not mean that that caring relation is only good. Rather, in both cases, it is the contextual relationship that they enter into that defines their actual utility and value.
References (In order of appearance)
Smith, Laurajane. “Intangible Heritage: A challenge to the authorised heritage discourse?” Revista d’Etnologia de Catalunya 40 (2015): 133-142.
[1] Harvey, David C. “The History of Heritage.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Edited by Brian Graham and Peter Howard. Routledge, 2016.
Butler, Beverly. “Heritage and the Present Past.” In Handbook of Material Culture. Edited by Christopher Y. Tilley Webb Keane, susanne Kuechler, Mike Rowlands and Patricia Spyer. Sage Publications, 2006). 463-479.
Goodchild, Melanie. “Relational systems thinking: That’s how change is going to come, from our earth mother.” Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change 1, no. 1 (2021): 75-103.
Held, Virginia. The ethics of care: Personal, political and global. Oxford University Press on Demand, 2006.
[2] Fischer, Berenice and Joan Tronto. “Toward a feminist theory of caring.” Circles of care: Work and identity in women’s lives. Edited by Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson, 35-62. Albany: State University of New Yorl Press, 1990. 40.
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America. Harvard University Press, 2010.
[3] Clarke, Adele E. “Introducing Making Kin Not Population.” In Making Kin Not Population. Edited by Adele E. Clarke and Donna Haraway, 1-40. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2018. 16.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Routledge Classics, 2010.
[4] Egeland, Byron, Elizabeth Carlson and L. Alan Sroufe. “Resilience as process.” Development and Psychopathology 5 (1993): 517.
Holtorf, Cornelius. “Embracing change: how cultural resilience is increased through cultural heritage.” World Archaeology 50, no. 4 (2018): 639-650.
Heritage Futures: Comparative approaches to natural and cultural heritage practices. Edited by Rodney Harrison, Caitlin DeSilvey, Cornelius Holtorf, Sharon Macdonald, Nadia Bartolini, Esther Breithoff, Harald Fredheim, Antony Lyons, Sarah May, jennie Morgan and Sefryn Penrose. London: UCL Press 2020.
[5] Jones, Siân. “‘They Made it a Living Thing Didn’t They…’: The growth of things and the fossilization of heritage.” In A Future for Archaeology. Edited by Robert Layton and Stephen Shennan, 107-126. ECL Press/Left Coast Press, 2006. 110.
[6] Haraway, Donna. When Species Meet. In Posthumanities, Volume 3. Edited by Cary Wolfe. University of Minnesota Press, 2008. 25.
Mälksoo, Maria. “liminality and contested Europeanness: Conflicting memory politics in the Baltic Space.” In Identity and Foreign Policy: Baltic Russian Relations and European Integration. Edited by Eiki Berg and Piret Ehin. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. 65-84.
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