Towards an Anthropology of Care: Cleanliness and Consumption in Urban Romanian Houses

Year, pages: 2011, 499 - 515

The anthropology of care has come to the fore in the recent years and has produced a number of distinctive and valuable approaches, which this paper characterises as relatedness, care politics, and as value-based. This paper argues that while all these approaches have merits, a better appreciation is required of the silent, embodied sense of care in specific localised contexts. The appreciation of care requires a more precise anthropological language to describe the variety of phenomena referred to, and use of the term care to refer to local manifestations, experiences, emotions and work practices. I outline one example of a material culture of care in urban Romania, which reveals how a procedural and creative sense of the domestic is manifested and appropriated through soaps and cleanliness.

Drazin, A. 2011. Towards an Anthropology of Care: Cleanliness and Consumption in Urban Romanian Houses. In Slovenský národopis / Slovak Ethnology, vol. 59, no.5, pp. 499-515. 1339-9357.

Drazin, A. (2011). Towards an Anthropology of Care: Cleanliness and Consumption in Urban Romanian Houses. Slovenský národopis / Slovak Ethnology, 59(5), 499-515. 1339-9357.