ABSTRACT
How is care constituted in precarious social worlds? Much anthropological work has addressed care as an ethical practice that encompasses empathy and solidarity very often in social contexts where basic resources to assist those in need are available. But what happens when the resource that is care is scarce, as a result of the political–economic arrangements of specific social settings? What happens when care can only be offered in an imperfect and limited way? Drawing upon 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork at the La Merced shelter, a home for the abandoned elderly urban poor in Lima, this chapter explores the intricacies of care within a materially and emotionally deprived environment. It maintains that in places like the La Merced shelter, care is conducted in a disorderly and contradictory manner, performed in a dissociative way, and not infrequently associated with violent behaviour.
