ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by giving an overview of the growing debate around informal care and care-giving in contemporary western society. It discusses political and ideological shifts in the meaning and place of care in the late twentieth/early twentyfirst century and the implications for contemporary care-giving for frail older people. The chapter also critically reviews some of the key theoretical approaches that social scientists have used to explore the shifting place of care within society and within welfare state reform. In doing so, it suggests that the landscape of care needs to be understood as a multi-faceted concept in at least two distinct senses: firstly, it refers to the complex landscapes and organisational spatialities that emerge from the intersection of formal and informal care-giving in both domestic and institutional environments; and secondly, it represents a body of intellectual work. Within the discipline of geography, for example, there is now an identifiable strand of research that focuses specifically on how and where care takes place and how it is experienced by frail older people in our society and those involved in their care. This ranges across a spectrum from work on the shift from institutional to deinstitutionalised care, including care within the home and community-based settings (e.g. Twigg 2000; Milligan 2000 2001; Williams 2002; Brown 2003 2004; Conradson 2003; Wiles 2003 2005; Parr 2003; Skinner and Rosenberg 2006); to how care is conceived of, and delivered, within residential care settings (e.g. Willcocks et al. 1987; Rowles and High 1996; Peace and Holland 2001; Peace et al. 2006; Valins 2006). While individual studies located within these settings have employed differing analytic frameworks, they share in common recognition of the emplaced nature of the social practices and institutions of care.
