Reflections Before the Capstone Project

The landscape of care theories is vast and diverse, prompting me to venture beyond the initial repository and set of literature I found. I’ve been exploring various frameworks of care and ethics in practice, which has led to some intriguing insights.

• After reading Worldly Ethics - The democratic ethics of care for worldly things by Ella Myers, I’ve begun comparing how different authors distinguish their concepts of care. Annemarie Mol, for instance, approaches care through the lens of practice. I need to delve deeper into her work, but her approach contrasts with Myers in that she presupposes process within an established world, whereas Myers sees setting up the world as a preliminary task. Myers sets up her concept of care in opposition to the self/other care paradigm.
• Hannah Arendt’s idea of amor mundi, or love of the world, has piqued my interest. It would be insightful to explore how abstract ideas like love have been theorized outside the confines of self vs. others.
• Myers separates the concept of care etymologically into caring about and caring for. I wonder if a similar division can be applied to languages like Marathi and Malayalam.
• Concurrently, I’m exploring Indian ideas of care through literature, which seems a worthwhile pursuit given the two stories I recently helped translate.
• Prioritizing the reading (literature) and writing (reflections) tasks before May 20 will be challenging, given the depth of some of these texts. Ella Myers’ work takes precedence for now.
• Other areas to explore include conversational interfaces, the role of meta-tools in collaborative work, and how practice transitions into research or knowledge production.
• Hysallo’s The Mundane and Strategic Work in Collaborative Design and Annemarie’s understanding of care underscore the significance of routine work. It’s time to start analyzing clusters of care and how they interact with the world.

Clusters of Care

Oiling the Wheels - Archetypes

• Maintainers are crucial to keeping things alive. They embrace adaptability and tenacity, recognizing that conversations and processes need to continually evolve. Their actions are the moral activities of care.
• The maintainers I’ve observed include Shreyas, Vinay, Dilip, and Supriya, who understand that work must continue. For instance, as soon as the lockdown was announced, Shreyas, Geeta, and Supriya collaborated on building a website for DLL.
• Maintainers aren’t immune to failure but know how to recover. An oversight in invitation planning for a common lunch discussion led to a lapse in trust, but Dilip was confident they could regain that trust.
• Maintainers understand the importance of people—their bodies, practices, places—in holding networks together. An example of this is Liyaqat, a collector of historical artifacts.

Making as a Practice

• This includes the slow and polished, the quick and dirty, and meta-tooling.

Carefull-Conversation

• This involves representational design, researching through learning, and viewing conflicts as a practice of care.

Archiving as a Practice

• This is about not forgetting, and about preserving memory.

Thoughts About the Capstone - 1 Year Later

Domain Considerations

• Does this work need to be contained within a specific domain? Will this lead to its remediation?
• Will the concept of infrastructuring become a meme? How will this affect the context of remediation?

Reflections from Paul

“The archetypes work well because they can be plugged into different communities. A maintainer in one field looks very different in another.”

Archive

My writing process generally follows two approaches: gardening, planning, or a hybrid of the two.

The initial draft was structured using a simple outline, which I then expanded upon using graphic illustrations for each section. This helped me sort out my metaphors and create a more detailed outline.

After discussing with Shreyas, I decided to structure it the way that felt natural, without any academic boundaries. Is a translation possible between these two approaches?

Currently, my outline is based on questions, which allows for a form of non-linear storytelling.

Readings

One of the notable readings I’ve done recently is “Care Ethics and Care Contexts: Contributions from Feminist Philosophy” by Christine Hauskeller. The article highlights how the patient in the care process is often not unambiguously one person, but rather a complex entity comprising of the pregnant woman, the fetus, and the family in the Korean context. Family members are often directly involved in supplying means for, and negotiating the care of, the patient with clinical staff.

This reading has led me to other texts for further study, such as Carol Gilligan’s “In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development”. Gilligan proposes the concept of mature care ethics, where relations are interconnected, parts of webs in which individuality is enacted.

I’m excited to see where these readings and reflections will lead in the development of my Capstone Project.

What are we looking at

In Jenna Grant’s article, she explores the politicized context of Cambodia and how doctors express mixed feelings about the proliferation of imaging technologies. These doctors worry that the increasing reliance on imaging may lead to a decline in other diagnostic and caregiving skills, which they consider crucial for comprehensive patient care.

The centralization of professional caregivers is an important theme, despite the challenges they face in achieving work-life balance and navigating institutional constraints. Additionally, the role of the family within the caregiving context cannot be overlooked, as it influences and shapes the caregiving experience.

Sherwin contributes to the discussion by highlighting how care practices and the conditions that govern them reflect and perpetuate power hierarchies, both locally and globally.

By reevaluating medical imaging technologies, caregiving practices, and power dynamics through multiple lenses, we gain a deeper understanding of the complex ethical and social implications surrounding these areas.

To Read

Carol Gilligan’s influential work, “In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development.” This book delves into the ethics of mature care, emphasizing the importance of understanding, respecting, and valuing others and oneself. It examines the idea of mature care ethics, which emphasizes interconnectedness and the recognition that relationships form intricate webs where individuality is enacted.

Carefull Collectives and their Care Practices Care in Collectives