ABSTRACT
Care may be carried out in a variety of contexts, including domestic, institutional and community-based. Care may be conceptualized in a variety of ways — as a duty, as a responsibility, as a professional task, as a labour of love. Care is affective as well as effective. 'Care' is very resistant to such clarification because of the taken-for-granted, practical and yet highly emotionally charged nature of caring practice. The boundaries of care have been constituted in such a way as to marginalize care within the medical, academic and political world and to maintain its low and devalued profile. Contemporary dilemmas and debates concerning care indicate that social, cultural and technological changes have brought into question different assumptions intrinsic to the way care has been conceptualized. Care could remain associated with female nurturance, while at the same time be assumed to develop with universal progress and science in a dependent role.
