ABSTRACT
Introduction What does it mean to care? And what is the significance of being a caregiver or a recipient of care? Within the social sciences, ‘care’ is paradoxical. On one hand, it is based in intimate and human relations which value giving, love and concern. On the other, it is a set of practices-and theories about those practices-which are codified by the ‘caring professions’ as an occupation and the basis for disciplinary power and authority (Gardner 1992). As Thomas (1993:649) also points out, care entails both the emotional ‘caring about someone’ and the more instrumental ‘caring for a person’. ‘Care’ is a growth area for discourse at the present time, and careers in care professions and in research and academic life are being forged from the disciplinary work of care theorists: the fabrication of what I have called elsewhere (Fox 1995a) the vigil of care. These discourses on care are about power, intricately associated with ‘knowledge’, as it impinges on its subjects: those who are the recipients of this care-as-discipline.
