Both Gender and Aging Studies have long been concerned with the broad field of care practices in history and the present. Recently, approaches from care ethics in particular have triggered new insights by newly accentuating the significance of topics such as corporeality, responsibility and empathy in care relationships in private and public contexts and underlining their socio-cultural and democratic-political relevance.
With a lecture by Helen Kohlen (Vallendar) in the context of the "HuK-Forum" on December 6, a first insight into the eventful history of the concept of care as well as its relation to research directions in care ethics was shown. The following commentary by Merle Weßel (Oldenburg) opened the discussion to current areas of tension and at the same time indicated the interdisciplinary-discursive orientation of the event.
On December 7, the workshop led by Ulla Kriebernegg and Heidrun Zettelbauer brought the different research practices from Aging and Gender Studies on the concept of care into dialogue with each other, also in an interdisciplinary-discursive way. The current debates on care ethics were also examined for implications relevant to aging and gender theory as well as for historical depth dimensions. The speakers were: Louise Earnshaw, Andreas Heller, Anna Kainradl, Patrick Schuchter, Stefan Schweigler, Klaus Wegleitner and Viktoria Wind. From the multitude and variety of contributions, new and often unexpected perspectives from different disciplines and fields of experience opened up.
The lively discussions highlighted the need for further multi-perspective work on the concept of care as well as the importance of Ageing Studies and Gender History perspectives.