Caring for Life

A Postdevelopment Politics of Infant Hygiene

Kelly Dombroski

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781452970776
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The transformational possibilities of everyday hygiene and care practices

 

In order to mitigate the worst forecasts of climate change, many of us need to make drastic adjustments to how we live and what we consume. For Kelly Dombroski, these changes must also happen in the home: in rethinking routines of care and hygiene that still rely on disposable and plastic products. Caring for Life examines the remarkable evolution in Asia-Pacific hygiene practices and amplifies the creative work of ordinary people guarding human and more-than-human life in their everyday practices of care.

 

Dombroski develops the concept of “guarding life,” a viewpoint that counters homogenous cultural practices and imposed sanitation standards and instead embraces diverse hygiene practices that are networked across varying wisdoms and bodies. She traces how the Chinese diaper-free infant toilet training practice of baniao has traveled to Australia and New Zealand, and she explores the practice of elimination communication, in which babies learn to communicate to their caregivers when they need to eliminate, thus removing the need for diapers. A mother herself, Dombroski conducted ethnographic research while mothering to examine how collectives of mothers draw on Chinese knowledge and their own embodied practices of childcare to create new hybrid forms of infant care. 

 

Caring for Life is a call to action, a theory of change, and a fascinating account of the transformational possibilities of care practices. It shows how experiments in personal care can lead to collective, widespread change, ultimately providing a practical and hopeful vision for environmental action.

 

 

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Thinking Multiplicity
• Interlude: In the Courtyard of Venerable Grannies
• Chapter 2. Holding Out
• Interlude: The Body Multiple
• Chapter 3. Shifting Assemblages
• Interlude: Situated Hygienes
• Chapter 4. Traveling Practices
• Interlude: Experiments
• Chapter 5. Reassembling Hygienes
• Chapter 6. Guarding Life
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author