Redoing Caring Practices through Urban Neighborhood Materiality
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Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University
Submission date: 2021-08-02
Acceptance date: 2022-05-11
Publication date: 2022-09-19
Polish Sociological Review 2022;219(3):331-350
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
In this article we analyze the role played by materiality in the reproduction of caring practices in urban
neighborhoods. Our theoretical aim is to show the capacity of social practice theory to combine and reintegrate
the perspectives of sociology, anthropology, and geography through the concept of neighborhood caring, which
refers to the behavioral, symbolic, and spatial dimension of people’s attitudes toward their neighbors as well as
to the place they live in. Based on qualitative research in six urban housing estates in three cities, we want to
examine four modes through which materialities are entangled in the invisible work of the everyday collective
accomplishments of neighborhood well-being, that is: (1) integrating individual performances into collective
endeavors of caring practices; (2) creating conditions for the orchestration (or disorganization) of practices of
caring undertaken by a variety of entities (i.e., private and public, institutional and non-institutional); (3) being an
element of social practice involved in the collective processes of negotiating and reflecting; and (4) delivering an
emotional component facilitating or hampering day-to-day relations and interactions as preconditions of practices
of neighborly care.
FUNDING
This article is an output of the research project “Differences and Boundaries in the Process of Creating Neighborhood Communities in Large Cities: A Socio-Spatial Study,” funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, under grant no. UMO-2014/15/B/HS6/01949. Research team: Marta Smagacz-Poziemska (PI), Andrzej Bukowski, Marcjanna Nóżka, Karol Kurnicki, Natalia Martini and Krzysztof
Bierwiaczonek.