COGR 275: Cultures of Care

UCSD Dept of Communication | Fall 2013
Professor:  Brian Goldfarb
Meetings: Fridays: 10AM - 12:50 PM | Room: MCC 201
Office Hours: Tues 11:15 - 12:45 pm | Room MCC 241
Contact: bgoldfarb [at] ucsd . edu

husband holding hand of wife during delivery of their baby
nurse overseeing bed ridden veterans who are knitting Course Overview: In this graduate seminar we will investigate theories and cultural perspectives on care (both informal and clinical). Through weekly readings, screenings, and discussions we will consider a range of accounts and theories of care that address ethical, historical, institutional and transnational/global dimensions of how care contributes to institutional and social framing of illness aging and disability. Texts and examples will be drawn from scholarship across the humanities, social sciences and medicine, from 1970s feminist writing on the Ethics of Care to more recent work in Disability Studies.

Requirements:

  • Weekly readings (approx 50-60 pages) and film/video viewing.
  • Introduce and facilitate class discussion for one of the readings or weekly topics.
  • A research paper based on a topic related to the theme of the course.
 Required Texts:
  • Eva Feder Kittay and Ellen Feder, eds (2002). The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Care
  • Various articles on e-reserves (pwd bg275) or linked to the syllabus/WebCT

Recommended Text:

Course Schedule:
week: 1  |  2  |  5  |  6  |  7  |  8  |  9  |  10

doctor monitoring atomic medical insturments circa 1960s

Note:Weekly topics and readings listed here are provisional and may be updated after the course begins--please check this site weekly for updates. Some weeks list a number of readings--required readings will be selected from those listed by the instructor through discussion with participants. Some optional readings will be summarized and discussed by presenters.


WEEK 1 (Sept 28) : Course overview; Framing Care

Readings:

  • Michael Fine (2007), selections from A Caring Socitey?

Films/Media:

WEEK 2 (Oct 5): Feminist Ethics of Care

Readings:

  • Carol Bacchi and Chris Beasley (2005), "Reproductive Technology and the Political Limits of Care" in Ethics of the Body, eds, Shidrick & Mykiiuk. MIT Press.
  • Carol Bacchi and Chris Beasley, Moving Beyond Care and/or Trust: An Ethic of Social Flesh
  • Myriam Winance, (2010). "Care and Disability: Practices of Experimenting, Tinkering with, and Arranging People with Technical Aids" in Mol, Mose, Pols, eds,Care in Practice

Alternative/Additional Reading:

  • Carol Gilligan, "In a Different Voice: Women's Conceptions of Self and of Morality"
  • Nel Noddings,(1992) "Care" in The Challenge to Care in Schools
  • Cheshire Calhoun (1988), "Justice, Care, Gender Bias"
  • Sara Ahmed, "Killing Joy: Feminism and the History of Happiness"
  • Eva Feder Kittay and Ellen Feder, eds (2002), The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Care (Selections)
    • Eva Feder Kittay and Ellen Feder, "Introduction"

Films/Media:


WEEK 3 (Oct 12): Care of Self. Care of the Other

Readings:

  • Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol 3: Care of the Self (selections)
  • Emanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity (selections)
  • Richard Ganis, The Politics of Care in Habermas and Derrida: Between Measurability and Immeasurability (selections)

Alternative/Additional Reading:

  • Sara Ahmed, "This other and other others"
  • Sara Ahmed, "Affective Economies"
  • Sara Ahmed and Anne-Marie Fortier, "Re-Imagining Communities"
  • Eva Feder Kittay, "At the Margins of Moral Personhood"
  • Joan Didion, "In Bed"

Films/Media:


WEEK 4 (Oct 19): Critical Approaches to Empathy

Readings:
  • Elizabeth Wilson, Ch 4 "Trembling, Blushing" in Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body (also, "Darwin’s Nervous System")
  • Luc Boltanski,  "The Politics of Pity," "The Aesthetic Topic," and "How Realistic is Action?" in Distant Suffering: Morality, Media, and Politics
  • Michael Slate, The Ethics of Care and Empathy (selections)

Alternative/Additional Reading:

  • Rayna Rapp and Faye Ginsburg, "Enabling Disability: Rewriting Kinship, Reimagining Citizenship
  • Lilie Chouliaraki, "Post-humanitarianism: Humanitarian communication beyond a politics of pity"
  • Vilayanur Ramachandran: "A Radical Theory of Autism" http://bigthink.com/videos/a-radical-theory-of-autism and "The neurons that shaped civilization" (Ted Talk) http://www.ted.com/talks/vs_ramachandran_the_neurons_that_shaped_civilization.html?source=email#.UhOM0N_KSnx.email and his center: http://cultureofempathy.com/References/Experts/Vilayanur-Ramachandran.htm

Films/Media:

WEEK 5 (Oct 26): Politics of Vulnerability. Dependency, Independence, and Interdependence

Readings:

  • Ingunn Moser and John Law, "Making Voices"
  • Annemarie Mol "Care and Its Values: Good food in the nursing home," Care in Practice: Adaptable Technologies and Fragile Bodies, eds, Mol, Moser & Pols, eds.
  • Sara Ahmed, "Collective Feelings Or, The Impressions Left by Others"

Alternative/Additional Reading:

  • Eva Feder Kittay, "Vulnerability and the Moral Nature of Dependency Relations" from Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency
  • Dorothy Roberts, "Poverty, Race, and the Distorition of Dependency" in Eva Feder Kittay and Ellen Feder, eds (2002). The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Care
  • Sara Ahmed, "The Gendered Context of Vulnerability: Coping / Adapting to Floods in Eastern India"
  • Kate Brown "Re-moralising 'vulnerability'"
  • Isabelle Bartkowiak-Théron and Nicole L. Asquith, "The Extraordinary Intricacies of Policing Vulnerability"
  • Lennard J. Davis, "Dependency and Justice"
  • Martha C. Nussbaum, "Analytic Love and Human Vulnerabililty?"

Films/Media:


WEEK 6 (Nov 1): Care and the Boundaries of the Nation-State

Readings:

  • Eva Feder Kittay, "The Global Heart Transplant and Caring across National Boundaries"
  • Martha T. McCluskey, "Subsidized lives and the Ideology of Efficiency"

Films/Media:

WEEK 7 (Nov 8): (In)Visible Illness and Unrecodnized Difference

Readings:

  • Jen R, "Invisible Illnesses, Visible Stereotypes"
  • N. Ann Davis, "Invisible Disability"
  • Gagnon, M., & Stuart, M. (2008). "Manufacturing disability: HIV, women and the construction of difference." Nursing Philosophy, 10, 42-52.
  • Susan Leigh Star and Geoffrey C. Bowker, "Enacting silence: Residual categories as a challenge for ethics, information systems, and communication"
  • Susan Lingsom, "Invisible Impairments: Dilemmas of Concealment and Disclosure"

Alternative/Additional Reading:

  • Amanda L. Kundrat & Jon F. Nussbaum, "The Impact of Invisible Illness on Identity and Contextual Age Across the Life Span"

WEEK 8 (Nov 15): Lay Expertise: Care Activism and Participation in Knowledge Formation

Readings:

  • Steve Epstein (1996) Impure Science: AIDS, activism, and the politics of knowledge, (Selections)
  • Cathy Charles and Suzanne DeMaio, "Lay Participation in Health Care Decision Making: A Conceptual Framework," Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Vol. 18, No.4, Winter 1993

Alternative/Additional Reading:

  • N. J. Fox, et al, "The 'expert patient': empowerment or medical dominance? The case of weight loss, pharmaceutical drugs and the Internet"


Films/Media:

WEEK 9 (Nov 22): Lay Expertise: Participation in Knowledge Formation | Care and Excrement

  • Margaret Mead, "Research with Human Beings: A Model Derived from Anthropological Field Practice"
  • Alison Kafer, "At the Same Time, Out of Time: Ashley X" from Feminist, Queer, Crip
  • Joëlle Kivits, "Researching the 'Informed Patient"

Week 10 ( Dec 6): Care's Others: Culture and Politics of Carelessness

Reading:

  • Achille Mbembe, "Necropolitcs", Public Culture Winter 2003 15(1): 11-40
  • Sara Ahmed, "The Organization of Hate"
  • Adriana Petryna and Arthur Kleinman, "The Pharmaceutical Nexus" in Global Phamaceuticals eds Petryna, Lakoff, Kleinman

Alternative/Additional Reading:

Films/Media:

Final Paper Due: Friday, December 13th by noon

 

 

 

Alternative Week: Networked and Distributed Care

Readings:

  • Michael Hardey, "'E-health': the Internet and the transformation of patients into consumers and producers of health knowledge," Information, Communication & Society 4:3 2001
  • Ofelia Schutte, "Dependency Work, Women, and the Global Economy" in Eva Feder Kittay and Ellen Feder, edThe Subject of Care
  • Gunther Eysenbach,"Credibility of Health Information and Digital Media: New Perspectives and Implications for Youth"

Alternative/Additional Reading:

  • Alfred Katz, "Self Help and Mutual Aid: an Emerging Social Movement?"
  • Joëlle Kivits, "Everyday health and the internet: a mediated health perspective on health information seeking"
  • Patricia Radin, "'To me, it's my life': Medical communication, trust, and activism in cyberspace"

Films/Media:

 


Film/Videography: