Imagining Care

Imagining Care brings literature and philosophy into dialogue by examining caregiving in literature by contemporary Canadian writers alongside ethics of care philosophy. Through close readings of fiction and memoirs by Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Michael Ignatieff, Ian Brown, and David Chariandy, Amelia DeFalco argues that these narratives expose the tangled particularities of relations of care, dependency, and responsibility, as well as issues of marginalisation on the basis of gender, race, and class. DeFalco complicates the myth of Canada as an unwaveringly caring nation that is characterized by equality and compassion. Caregiving is unpredictable: one person’s altruism can be another’s narcissism; one’s compassion, another’s condescension or even cruelty. In a country that conceives of itself as a caring society, these texts depict in stark terms the ethical dilemmas that arise from our attempts to respond to the needs of others.

In a country that conceives of itself as a caring society, Imagined Care discusses texts which depict the ethical dilemmas that arise from our attempts to respond to the needs of others.

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 and what it means to care for the life of another. Through close attention to the images in which we think and dream and through which we understand the world, Stevenson describes a world in which life is beside itself: the name-soul of a teenager who dies in a crash lives again in his friend’s newborn baby, a young girl shares a last smoke with a dead friend in a dream, and the possessed hands of a clock spin uncontrollably over its face. In these contexts, humanitarian policies make little sense because they attempt to save lives by merely keeping a body alive. For the Inuit, and perhaps for all of us, life is "somewhere else," and the task is to articulate forms of care for others that are adequate to that truth.

The understanding that humans are relational beings is central to the development of an ethical perspective that is built around the significance of care in all our lives. Our survival as infants is dependent on the care we receive from others. And for all of us, in particular, in older age, there are times when illness, emotional or physical frailty, mean that we require the care of others to enable us to deal with everyday life. With this in mind, this book presents the findings of a project that seeks to understand what wellbeing means to older people and to influence the practice of those who work with older people. Its starting point was a shared commitment amongst researchers and an NGO collaborator to the value of working with older people in both research and practice, to learn from them and be influenced by them rather than seeing them as the ‘subjects’ of a research project. Theoretically, the authors draw upon a range of studies in critical gerontology that seek to understand how experiences of ageing are shaped by their social, economic, cultural and political contexts. By employing a broad body of work that challenges normative assumptions of ‘successful’ ageing,’ the authors draw attention to how these assumptions have been constructed through neo-liberal policies of ‘active ageing.’ Notably, they also apply insights from feminist ethics of care, which are based on a relational ontology that challenges neo-liberal assumptions of autonomous individualism. Influenced by relational ethics, they are attentive to older people both as co-researchers and research respondents. By successfully applying this perspective to social care practice, they facilitate the need for practitioners to reflect on personal aspects of ageing and care but also to bridge the gap between the personal and the professional.

How can we plan, organise, distribute, and offer care in ways that treat both those who need it and those who provide it with dignity and respect? Using the example of residential services, Troubling Care investigates the fractures in our care systems and challenges how caring work is understood in social policy, in academic theory, and among health care providers.

The early 21st century has seen an unexpected rise of new or rediscovered ways of reading the Bible, both in academic circles and in churches, with surprising results. These ancient texts appear to have a message that resonates with discussions in society at large. This textbook seeks to reclaim the Bible for a Christianity that is open to society and keen on participating in conversation about today's major issues; a Christianity that is relevant to the personal spirituality of people who aren't too sure what to believe and how to exercise faith.

This in-depth description of life in a nursing/care home for 70 residents and 40 staff highlights the daily care of frail or ill residents between 80 and 100 years of age, including people suffering with dementia. How residents interact with care assistants is emphasised, as are the different behaviours of men and women observed during a year of daily conversations between the author, patients and staff, who share their stories of the pressures of the work. Living Before Dying shows a world where, in extreme old age, people have to learn how to cope with living communally.

Imagining Child Welfare in the Spirit of Reconciliation is a most crucial look at child welfare practices in Canada, social work as a tool for advocacy, and the need to address the historical legacy of the Sixties Scoop.