Care: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Sunday 5th July 2020 - Monday 6th July 2020
Bratislava, Slovakia

While the concept of care immediately triggers an association with the health and wellness sector, the idea of caring (or not caring) is much more than that. It is part of everyday life, informing how we treat ourselves, family, friends, strangers, animals, and the environment. Care can look like many things: from animal welfare organisations that span the globe to taking care of elderly populations, volunteering for youth organisations, coaching sports teams, planting a tree, raising children, teaching, defending the innocent, even standing in picket lines around abortion clinics—or defending those who need to walk past them—designing green architecture, donating clothing and time at refugee centres, and more. In fact, care underpins broad discourses of politics, law, ethics, health and media in contemporary society.

Today’s world is seeing a rise in ideologies that seem opposed to the basic concept of care, and yet alongside these rhetorics we see instances, events, and entire movements dedicated to caring for others. Even the recent political uprisings in Lebanon and Turkey could be said to spring from a place of care; human rights and choices about basic lifestyles are certainly encapsulated by the concept of care, and they are at the core of such movements. Around the world, donations to charities of all kinds easily top $500 billion annually. And while cash can sometimes be an easy way to care, not requiring much more than a push of a button, our daily lives are filled with care in one form or another.

In the context of the caring professions specifically, care is an umbrella term that subsumes policies, institutions, and a comprehensive work force of professions and occupations, and can be both ‘hands on’ and administrative. Importantly, health care also carries connotations of attitudes, ideologies, cultural values and community expectations that are implicated, not always harmoniously, in the dynamics of modern health care systems. While health care systems are concerned with the provision of services, the broad social domain of health care practices involves, equally significantly, the consumption of such services and the beliefs and activities of patients and clients.

What makes a human being show care? What is the appropriate way to show care? What factors cause a person to show more or less care? To what extent is care intertwined with personal sacrifice? Is care valued, promoted and properly compensated? Is it possible to care too much? Is there a limit to how much a person should care? Is anyone not worthy of receiving care? What would happen if the ethos of care were applied to everyday life and critical decision-making?

From the conversations and dialogues which take place, our intention is to form a selective innovative interdisciplinary publication to engender further research and collaboration.

Key Topics
In recognition of the complexities of questions around care, the interdisciplinary project on Care aims to provide a springboard for participants to engage in dialogues that explore not only the concept of care within the specific context of the health and wellness profession, but also how care (or lack thereof) impacts other professions, practices, and life experiences. The project organisers welcome proposals for presentations on any aspect of Care, including:

~ Ethics and ideologies of care
~ Health care systems: patients, staff and institutions
~ The care-giver – patient relationship
~ How to maintain care-giving resilience and coping potency
~ The relationship between care, empathy, and compassionate presence
~ Religious/spiritual perspectives on care
~ Historical and/or cross-cultural perspectives on care-giving practices
~ Physiological explanations of the impulse to care
~ Best practice for care-giving in particular professional contexts
~ Gender dynamics of care
~ Limits of care
~ Care in the workplace (rules and policies that express care for employees, care and collegiality, etc.)
~ Impact of technology on care
~ Economics of care (growth of care industries, recognition and remuneration of care given within the family structure, affordability of care)
~ Care and the law (good Samaritan laws, laws punishing neglect, etc.)
~ How social policy facilitates or restricts care-giving
~ Care in teaching and learning contexts
~ Care and the arts (expression of care through creative practice; use of the arts as part of care-giving; role of the arts in discouraging care)
~ Role of social media in directing/limiting care
~ Journalism as catalyst for care/apathy
~ Care for the self
~ Care for animals
~ Care for the environment
~ Intersections between care and activism
~ The relationship between care and culture

What To Send
The aim of this inclusive interdisciplinary conference and collaborative networking event is to bring people together and encourage creative conversations in the context of a variety of formats: papers, seminars, workshops, storytelling, performances, poster presentations, problem-solving sessions, case studies, panels, q&a’s, round-tables etc. Creative responses to the subject, such as poetry/prose, short film screenings/original drama, installations and alternative presentation styles that engage the audience and foster debate are particularly encouraged. Please feel free to put forward proposals that you think will get the message across, in whatever form.

At the end of the conference we will be exploring ways in which we can develop the discussions and dialogues in new and sustainable inclusive interdisciplinary directions, including research, workshops, publications, public interest days, associations, developing courses etc which will help us make sense of the topics discussed during the meeting. There is an intention, subject to the discussions which emerge during the course of the meeting, to form a selective innovative interdisciplinary publication to engender further research and collaboration.

300 word proposals, presentations, abstracts and other forms of contribution and participation should be submitted by Friday 10th January 2020. Other forms of participation should be discussed in advance with the Organising Chairs.

All submissions will be at least double reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a global panel drawn from members of the Project Team, The Development Team and the Advisory Board. In practice our procedures usually entail that by the time a proposal is accepted, it will have been triple and quadruple reviewed.

You will be notified of the panel’s decision by Friday 24th January 2020.

If your submission is accepted for the conference, a full draft of your contribution should be submitted by Friday 1st May 2020.

Abstracts and proposals may be in Word, RTF or Notepad formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in the programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) type of proposal e.g. paper presentation, workshop, panel, film, performance, etc, f) body of proposal, g) up to 10 keywords.

E-mails should be entitled: Care Submission

Where To Send
Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to the Organising Chair and the Project Administrator:

Nate Hinerman: nphinerman@usfca.edu
Len Capuli (Project Administrator): bratislavacare@progressiveconnexions.net


Please send all additional enquiries to: bratislavacare@progressiveconnexions.net

For further details and information please visit the conference web page: http://www.progressiveconnexions.net/series/interdisciplinary-perspectives/social-values/care/conferences/

Sponsored by: Progressive Connexions