The Sociological Review Monographs 65/2

Care and Policy Practices

There is currently a seeming widespread crisis in care and as a result the relation between policy and care is under intense scrutiny and contestation. Care, including an alleged loss of care in public services, has become a focus of increased public concern, political debate and academic research in the UK, Europe, the US and many other countries. At the same time, numerous policies have been exposed as ineffective, harmful or deliberately weak. Hence there is a concern that ‘policies’ are not care-full enough and may even promote relations of neglect and suffering. The monograph draws inevitably from this context, offering a collection of case studies of locations, relations and heterogeneous entities that make up policy practices in various sites. Drawing on two specific sources of inspiration – that of Science and Technology Studies and that of Critical Policy Studies – the authors of this collection empirically explore and theorise policy-care relations in geographically and substantively diverse situations. Each of the 8 contributions explores how policy and care are not separate matters, but are entangled in diverse ways. The monograph includes papers by Nigel Clarke and Giovanni Bettini (migration under climate change), Natalie Gill (waste recycling), Jennifer Gabrys (air pollution), Monica Greco (medically unexplained symptoms), Stephanie Lavau and Nick Bingham (food safety inspection), John Law and Solveig Joks (salmon fishing), Vicky Singleton and Steve Mee (compassion and health), Michael Schillmeier (cosmopolitics of care), Manuel Tironi and Israel Rodriguez-Giralt (toxic environment and citizen activism) and ends with a reflective Postscript by Richard Freeman. The aim of collecting these contributions together is to attend to and engage in the politics of policy in practices; to explore how we might think about care/policy relations; and ultimately, to explore how policy is and could be care.