Matters of Care

"Through its observations and appreciations of the worlds in which many forms of care happen, this bold and synthetic book makes two transforming contributions to contemporary theorizing as it subtly invites everyone to appreciate the centrality of posthuman thinking. Feminists and posthumanists can no longer speak past each other: heres why."Joan C. Tronto, University of Minnesota "Aesthetic analyses such as these would carry the potential to generate care within and for the entanglement of relations to which we all belong, a task that Puig de la Bellacasas book accomplishes exceptionally well."Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory "Matters of Care provides us with a theory of transformative change that is not anchored in violence and bloodshed, but in the everyday occurrences of caring with and for. This is a revolutionary book!"Hypatia Reviews "Matters of Care offers a dive into an always-political ethics that is inspired by agricultural practices and the more-than-human beings wrapped up in them."CENHS "It offers a serious and thoughtful contribution to debates around the place of politics within posthumanism, connecting a radical openness to human and non-human others with an enduring concern for the excluded and marginal. In doing so it reimagines how we might know the world and places care at the heart of a hybrid practice of knowing, relating to, and sustaining worlds." Society + Space "Matters of Care feels at once like a new beginning for ethics and politics in more than human worlds, yet also the logical outcome of many years of work in new materialist and feminist thought. It is a masterfully lucid and challenging theoretical exposition in which a feminist ethic of care is extended through speculation on its limits." Journal of Cultural Economy "Her speculative ethics of care joins together an affective state, a material vital doing, and an ethico-political obligation (42) to imagine how to live in these worlds. The book draws upon and will be of interest to practitioners of science and technology studies, feminist care ethics, and posthumanism, among others." ISLE "Puig de la Bellacasas Matters of Care offers a stirring and thoughtful meditation on how to engage in a speculative task and an ethical commitment that brings together humans and more-than-humans." Tapuya

Mara Puig de la Bellacasa is associate professor in science, technology, and organization at the University of Leicester School of Management.

Contents Introduction: The Subtle Thought of Care Part I. Knowledge Politics 1. Assembling Neglected Things 2. Thinking with Care 3. Touching Visions Part II. Speculative Ethics in Antiecological Times 4. Alterbiopolitics 5. Soil Times: The Pace of Ecological Care Coda Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index