Fall Series 2022

Cultivating ‘Care’ for the Climate: From the Intimate to the Planetary

The current state of ecological, political and public health crises unfolding across the globe calls for a renewed attention to ‘care.’ In their recent ‘Care Manifesto,’ the Care Collective – an interdisciplinary group of scholars – articulate ‘care’ as “a social capacity and activity involving the nurturing of all that is necessary for the welfare and flourishing of life. Above all, to put care centre stage means recognising and embracing our interdependencies (2020).” Our current time demands, they argue, a radical rethinking of ‘care’ and a moral and political recognition of our responsibility to one another, other species, and the Earth.

Faced with the prospect of increasingly unliveable environments, the question of how ‘one ought to live’ (Laidlaw, 2002: 316), is particularly resonant. The turn in the humanities and social sciences to the ‘ethical’ (Fassin 2013; Laidlaw 2002) requires that we move beyond ‘matters of concern’ (Latour 2004) to ‘matters of care’ (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017); it demands of us as scholars (and citizens) to move from states of examination to active practices of care.

This Weather Matters series hopes to explore how the lens of ‘care’ can be useful in bringing forward a ‘relational politics’ (Massey 2005) that acknowledges our interdependent fates and opens the possibility of an alternative ecological contract premised on the flourishing of all life forms.