ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some critical reflections on care. It is structured into three parts: the contexts, concepts, and practices of care. The first part locates the crisis of care in the context of an age of carelessness, with its misplaced sense of confidence, and its intended and unintended consequences. The second part investigates the concepts of care, as a relation between need and ability and a response to vulnerability and precarity. It raises the questions of who provides and who receives care, and the relations of power, commodification, and three forms of solidarity: familial, civil, and social. The third part provides a critique of some practices of care, and how they may be subject to misuse and false claims, asking whether some claims to care can stand up to critical scrutiny.
