The literature on care shows that one of its central characteristics is its persistent association with women, subjects in whom gender, class, ethnic, racial and generational inequalities converge. In various territories of the Americas, this work is today sustained within contexts of constant violence: the presence of organized crime, forced displacement, the militarization of neighborhoods and communities, problematic drug use within families, anti-immigrant violence, and the precarity of health services, including mental health care. In these scenarios, violence does not suspend care: it multiplies and extends it. Caregivers have more people in their charge, in more precarious situations, for longer periods, assuming greater risks and an emotional burden rarely recognized in material or political terms.
The symposium starts from this observation: care is not a silent backdrop against which violence occurs, but one of the primary ways in which the harm produced by that violence is managed day by day. It becomes, without being planned, one of the mainstays sustaining individual and collective well-being. In this sense, we recognize care as one of the fundamental aspects to be understood, but also to be transformed toward building democratic and inclusive societies. We are therefore interested in identifying research addressing this phenomenon across the Americas. Among possible axes of analysis we might mention: care practices when crisis becomes a stable condition; the family, community and institutional management of tasks, time and responsibilities; conflicts within care networks themselves; the consequences of all this for the mental health of those who care and those who depend on that care; forms of support and protection, tensions and inequalities, among other aspects of daily life.
Papers based on empirical research in different territories of the Americas are called for, from anthropological, sociological, gender studies, cultural studies, public health, and psychosocial perspectives. Priority will be given to works that: a) analyze care as an everyday response to violence and social suffering; b) explore the psychic, bodily and relational effects of intensified caregiving; and c) reveal how care is regulated and distributed among the State, families, churches, community organizations and other actors.
Of particular interest is reflection on the memories of care: inherited practices that are sustained or broken, forms of protection that are modified, and knowledges that are lost or recreated when crisis ceases to be exceptional and comes to organize life.
