Sociology of Care

Our acts of concern for the self, for other people, and for our material and ecological surroundings pervade human life. We both give and receive care from our births to our deaths. As care has become increasingly commodified, redistributed through welfare states, strained by climate crises, and centered through the diversification of academic inquiry, scholars have turned greater attention to its social and political organization. This course asks: What is care? Who deserves it? Who provides it, under what conditions, and to what ends? With empirical analyses from around the world, we trace the institutions, ideas, labor and resources that shape contemporary care.