Higher Seminar: Conservation and Care – an introduction

What do we care for, how do we care, when and why? These are questions interesting to raise connected to the theoretical, methodological, and practical aspects of Conservation. In this seminar, I will introduce the concept of care and give some examples of the connection between conservation and care. The introduction is the beginning of a series of seminars that will be held during the Spring semester. 

Care is a theoretical concept that has been developed within feminist theory, useful when studying how we as human beings care for each other, for materials and material objects, animals, nature and the globe. Using care can be a subversive way to challenge a more traditional and conventional way of approaching different kinds of relations between humans and non-humans. 

Care can be understood as connected to feelings, attentions, and instinct as for example in relations between nurses and their patients, or parents and their small children. It also connects to the discussion on workload and how we distribute tasks between women and men in workplaces and in households. But it can also be about practices, including activities such as housekeeping or maintenance and repair on different scales. Connected to conservation, it is also about selections and deselections on what should be taken care of. Aspects that are interesting to discuss are matters of care, ethics of care, the situatedness of care, and care as a method for activism. 

This seminar intends to start a broader and deeper discussion about conservation and care, especially to explore the analytical potential, the possibilities it opens and the critical perspectives.