Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 4, No.
4, December 2003
Geographies of care: spaces, practices, experiences
David Conradson
School of Geography, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
Questions of care appear to be catching the
imagination of researchers across several areas
of human geography at present (see Parr 2003).
We can note, for instance, the growing body of
work that explores the significance of care in
particular settings. Milligan (2000) has written
of the home-space in this regard, while Twigg’s
(2000) work on bathing and intimate care is
similarly attentive to domestic spatiality. The
complex material and psycho-social dimensions
of care in the home emerge clearly in these
accounts; we see that despite benevolent inten-
tions, the quality and consistency of such care
is variable and its delivery often emotionally
demanding (see Allan and Crow 1989). Other
research has focused on mental health care
environments (Kearns and Joseph 2000; Parr
2000; Philo 1997; Pinfold 2000), hospices
(Brown 2003; Brown and Colton 2001), hospi-
tals (Allen 2001) and alternative medicine cen-
tres (Wiles and Rosenberg 2001; Williams
2000). Within these studies we see how rela-
tions and practices of care—things such as
listening, feeding, changing clothes and admin-
istering medication—are implicated in the pro-
duction of particular social spaces. The
care-taking tasks which bring people together
in these settings involve both physical and
emotional labour, and often depend dispropor-
tionately upon the commitment of women
ISSN 1464-9365 print/ISSN 1470-1197 online/03/040451–04  2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1464936032000137894
(Daly and Lewis 1998; Finch and Groves 1983;
Ungerson 1990).
Care can also be considered in more general
terms, however, as the proactive interest of one
person in the well-being of another (Silk 2000).
This is to frame care as an ethics of encounter
(Gordon 1999), as a set of practices which
shape human geographies beyond these fam-
iliar sites of care provision. Smith (1998) has
thus argued that our sense of connection and
empathetic engagement with unfamiliar others
is a significant determinant of the quality of
collective social life. In western Europe the
absence of such a sensibility certainly appears
to be important in the discursive sleight-of-
hand that conflates migrants with illegal over-
stayers, for instance, and which then seeks to
marginalize and exclude them accordingly (cf.
Sibley 1995). It is not hard to see how a
reinvigorated ethic of care might work to cir-
cumvent such discursive manoeuvres, with sub-
stantive implications for the everyday fortunes
of the individuals concerned. For Cloke (1999)
such an ethic is rooted in a sense not only of
the other, but also for the other.
There are, then, many different ways to
think about the geographies of care. In this
themed section of Social & Cultural Geography
we are particularly interested in the spaces,
practices and experiences that emerge through
452 Editorial
and within relations of care. The origins of this
focus lie in a one-day research symposium
held at the University of Southampton, the aim
of which was to bring together researchers
from human geography, sociology and health
studies to discuss new work on the spacing and
spatiality of care. In examining care in a variety
of settings—from the home and hospital
through to rural communities, urban drop-in
centres and voluntary counselling environ-
ments—the papers here each move beyond the
themes of accessibility and distribution that
characterized the earlier engagement of medical
geography with health care (see Curtis and
Taket 1996). To echo Parr (2003), however,
this is not to suggest that such issues have
become unimportant. Rather it is reflective of
the broader shift from medical to health ge-
ographies that Kearns and Moon (2002) de-
scribe, itself in part linked to the turn towards
culture in human geography. This leads us to
consider care as a form of relation more
broadly implicated in the unfolding of human
geographies.
The substantive papers begin with Christine
Milligan’s consideration of the home: a place
typically invested with shared memories, feel-
ings of belonging and attachment. To receive
care within the home is thus to negotiate
boundaries of privacy and intimacy (even when
such care is provided by family, friends or
neighbours). A further complexity is intro-
duced if an unwell or elderly person’s needs
become such that transfer from the home to a
long-term residential care environment is
necessary. Milligan explores some of the expe-
riences of individuals whose dementia required
such a move, noting the unfamiliarity and rela-
tive anonymity of many of their residential care
settings. As a theoretical framework for expli-
cating these experiences, she draws upon the
distinction Marc Augé (1995) makes between
‘anthropological place’ and ‘non-place’, where
the former describes a rich domain of associa-
tions and memories and the latter signals their
relative absence.
In their considerations of informal and for-
mal mental health care provision in the Scottish
Highlands, Parr and Philo similarly draw atten-
tion to the complex relational dimensions of
care. They highlight the stigma associated with
acknowledging mental health problems in rural
places where expectations of ‘getting by’ and
stoic independence are central to community
formation. Giving and receiving care in these
communities is thus very much a contested
social practice, problematized in part by the
social networks and gossip which render pri-
vacy and anonymity relatively elusive. They
conclude by noting the potential utility of
Freudian conceptions of the ‘unheimlich’ for
understanding the social unease associated with
disclosing mental health problems in these en-
vironments (see Wilton 1998; cf. Sibley 1999).
This theme of the social politics associated
with care provision is developed further in
Brown’s paper, albeit in a rather different do-
main. Brown examines the protest surrounding
the potential closure of two English hospitals,
noting the cultural expectations that had devel-
oped over time between local communities and
these institutions. At the heart of these protests
lay the symbolic importance of each hospital: a
constellation of meanings that reflected but also
exceeded their material roles in health care
provision. The struggle over the future of these
places was thus in part a discursive battle over
divergent understandings of health care in com-
munity life, whilst also on occasion involving
physical protest.
In a somewhat more informal setting, Con-
radson’s paper considers the dimensions of care
that emerge within a community drop-in centre
on a peripheral estate. Within a locality charac-
terized by deprivation and disinvestment, for
some individuals this drop-in was observed to

function as a place of support and practical
assistance. It was somewhere they were listened
to, but also a setting in which help with nego-
tiating the welfare system, managing debt and
accessing training opportunities could be ob-
tained. Unsurprisingly, however, not all locals
found the drop-in to be equally helpful or
welcoming; for some its faith-based rationale
and cup-of-tea sociability contributed to an
environment they simply were not comfortable
within. Yet this partial accessibility was per-
haps inevitable for a small and relatively fo-
cused organization reaching out to a socially
diverse local constituency. An understanding of
subjectivity derived from humanistic psy-
chotherapy is employed as a way of thinking
through the diverse experiences of this drop-in
space.
The final paper, by Bondi and Fewell, fo-
cuses upon practices of voluntary counselling
in a Scottish setting. Of particular interest
here are the ways in which counsellors con-
ceptualize the kind of care they offer, es-
pecially in terms of spatial metaphors such as
positionality, journeying and facilitating envi-
ronments. Counselling is often framed as the
provision of a safe and supportive space
within which individuals are able to reflect
upon and explore the shape of their lives. The
nature of such spaces is fundamentally rooted
in the relationship between counsellor and
counsellee, however, and their emergence is
thus always a provisional and partial achieve-
ment. It is closely dependent upon mutual
effort and trust. Drawing upon interviews
with counsellors, Bondi and Fewell explore
some fascinating dimensions of the experien-
tial geographies of care-giving and receiving in
this context.
Together these papers provide a diverse set
of windows on to particular care environments.
This, of course, is valuable in itself, but in
doing so common themes also emerge. Firstly,
Editorial 453
across a variety of settings, the papers under-
line the complex negotiations of trust, disclos-
ure and vulnerability that are central to giving
and receiving care. The authors take us beyond
formulations of places as either caring or care-
less to a more subtle and variegated picture.
They show how care is woven into the fabric of
particular social spaces and communities, at
times supporting individuals and facilitating
their well-being; at times breaking down and
leaving significant gaps; and often requiring
very significant amounts of effort. Secondly, the
papers demonstrate the use of a range of theor-
etical frameworks and concepts in the explica-
tion of geographies of care. Milligan’s
deployment of Augé’s ideas is novel in this
regard, whilst psychoanalytic formulations also
feature strongly. Bondi and Fewell, for in-
stance, employ notions drawn from psy-
chotherapeutic practice, thereby contributing to
the ongoing conversation between geography
and psychoanalytic literatures (itself the focus
of a recent Social & Cultural Geography
themed section). This connection is also made
in Parr and Philo’s paper and by Conradson,
and as such is suggestive of a potentially fruit-
ful area for future investigation.
In a variety of ways, then, the papers here
further our understanding of the interweaving
of care within everyday human geographies.
As such they can be read alongside other
themed sections on this issue (Silk 2000; Stae-
haeli and Brown 2003). The discussion of
particular settings, such as the home or rural
community, will undoubtedly be of value to
readers whose research concerns these arenas.
More broadly, however, the papers are
suggestive of new ways of thinking through
the spatiality of care—whether manifest be-
tween socially proximate or more distant indi-
viduals—and it is hoped that their arguments
will foster further enquiry and conceptualiza-
tion in this area.
454 Editorial
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to all the participants at the
‘Geographies of Care: Spaces, Practices, Expe-
riences’ symposium at the University of
Southampton for their enthusiastic involvement
and discussion. I am grateful to the Economy,
Culture, Space research group at Southampton
for financial support that made this event poss-
ible. Many thanks also to all the authors for
their interesting and thought-provoking contri-
butions to this themed section. We are grateful
to the anonymous referees for helpful com-
ments on earlier versions of the papers, and to
the one individual who read through the set in
their entirety. Finally, I would like to thank
Rob Kitchin for his support as editor.
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