ABSTRACT
Emotions are an integral part of our daily lives, and as such are also a critical facet of the complex landscapes of care. Emotions affect the way we see, hear, touch and respond to the environment, people and places that make up that landscape. Hence, our sense of who and what we are is continually being shaped and reshaped by how we feel (Davidson and Milligan 2004). The interrelationship between the physical and affective aspects of caring and how this both shapes and is shaped by the social and spatial environment within which care takes place is thus important in helping us to understand how care manifests in different ways in different places. Indeed, it has been claimed that for many informal carers, the physical nature and tasks of care-giving, however difficult, are secondary to the bigger emotional impact (Wiles 2003).
