The spaces in between care: Considerations of connection and disconnection for subjects of care

Abstract

Drawing on work that explores human vulnerability and the incoherence of the subject in the process of subject formation, I build on the ideas of care as relational and connectedness within human geography. I examine how, in the process of becoming subjects of care, subjects encounter incoherence within themselves and between each other. I explore how this incoherence within and between subjects can be thought of as a disconnection, or the space in between subjects, and how the relationship of care can be conceptualised as the navigation of disconnections as those becoming subjects of care work to build connections. In this paper, I examine ethnographic data from northern Ghana, focusing in on the relationships of care that were constructed during one woman's end of life, highlighting the ways in which connections were forged across spaces of disconnect during the receipt and provision of care. Consideration of these spaces in between has the potential to contribute to our understandings of the experiences of the relational construction of care for both the recipients and providers of care. It also has the potential to contribute an understanding of the meaning and process of care that construct highly contingent and varied outcomesranging from soothing and supportive to distressing and invasivefor those involved.

Interstices of Care: Re‐Imagining the geographies of care

“…Intimate relations are again taken up in Kelsey Hanrahan's exploration of the knowledge of the other (). Here, an elderly woman dying in a small Ghanaian village restructures the caring networks that animate daily life.…”

Care as a many‐splendoured topology (including prickles)

“…Embodied aspects of care are at the centre of Kelsey Hanrahan's () paper, “The spaces in between care: Considerations of connection and disconnection for subjects of care,” but the losses and gains of agency can again be found in different forms. She presents findings from her study in Binalobdo in northern Ghana, coming close to an autoethnographic analysis of caring relations.…”

“…Hanrahan's () theoretical interest in the text is in the shaping of caring subjectivities, agencies, relations and communities. She sees people as embodied subjects who struggle “between themselves and others,” where the struggle itself represents the incoherent space in which care is created and negotiated (p. 248).…”

“…She sees people as embodied subjects who struggle “between themselves and others,” where the struggle itself represents the incoherent space in which care is created and negotiated (p. 248). When spending time with the elderly dying Nyaa Uchain in her house – with her family and community members constantly around by means of care provision – Hanrahan () became entangled in complex, intergenerational negotiations of care, where Nyaa Uchain was compelled to give up her established role as a care giver. She gradually grew into the cared‐for, yet not as an object but a subject of care who was very actively present, both as a body and a social self.…”

Leading refugee lives together: Familial agency as a political capacity

“…The question of how people may engender and practice mundane political agency as part of their families is at the heart of this paper. Specifically, the focus is on the familial relations and agencies of refugees who face the request to establish themselves as refugees in the communities and societies where they seek serious illness (also Hanrahan 2018). In these situations, where adequate extra-familial caring is not available, intergenerational responsibility for the family intensifies, involving children and parent alike as active participants (also Lind 2018).…”