400002 FK State, Care, Kinship (2022W)

Whether it is healthcare or public childcare during the pandemic, elder care in ageing societies or transnational care migration, care poses challenges for states around the world. Research has been overly determined research: "good" (supporting) versus "bad" (controlling) care, "micro" care practices versus an encompassing "macro" state. These two dimensions parallel and encourage us to see the state in opposition to kinship, while the state and its others (family/kinship) actually coevolve in negotiations of care. The seminar addresses PhD students with a research project at the intersection of the state, care and family/kinship. The conceptual split and separation between kinship and the state is one of the central tenets of Western self-understanding and has enormous consequences for research, international relations, development policies, as well as colonial and modern military practices. In the seminar we will jointly start to rethink the epistemological foundations of the relation between care, state and kinship in the social sciences. We begin with some basic text on the making and unmaking of categories and their travelling to other social and geographical realms before we read texts from different disciplines concerning the topic. Phd-students will have the opportunity to discuss their research project in relation to central texts.