Conf/CfP - Care in Asia: Beyond and Across a Clinic, 28-29 September 2017, Denmark

While care is widely discussed across feminist studies and anthropology, it remains still undertheorized and subject to western-centric conceptualizations, as some recent studies point out (Aulino 2016). Frequently, explorations of care practices are limited to specific sites of inquiry – medical institutions or domestic space. For instance, scholars explore how care occurs at the clinics, and how it intertwines with knowledge production, governance of bodies and subject formation. However, in Asia (but to a large extent elsewhere as well), care is dispersed across a complex terrain of healthcare ecologies. Firstly, anthropologists have since long also been interested in care generated by relations, such as kin. Secondly, numerous studies show that healing (and thus care) takes place in and across diverse biomedical and ‘traditional’ medical institutions. Still, in attempts to conceptualize it, care is often designated as ‘self-care’; and familial or ‘traditional’ forms of care often remain to be viewed as hindrances for hegemonic biomedical care.