Join CAPPE for a day of workshops with leading authors working on the politics of care, Noam Lesham (Durham) and Emma Dowling (Vienna).
Date: Friday 12th December
Time: 09:30 – 16:30
Location: Huxley 401 (Morning) / Watts 313 (Afternoon)
Register for the Politics of Care workshop here.
(On registration, attendees will be given access to the set readings)
Workshop Part One: Noam Lesham, Edges of Care (2025)
Friday 12th December 2025, 9.30-12.00, Huxley 401
The discussion will focus on the ‘Introduction’ (pp. 7-22) and ‘Beyond Care’ (pp. 82-129)
Edges of Care provides a firsthand look at the lives of those who reside in no man’s land—the violence they endure and their immense resilience. “No man’s land” invokes stretches of barren landscape, twisted barbed wire, desolation, and the devastation of war. But this is not always the reality. According to Noam Leshem in Edges of Care, the term also reveals radical abandonment by the state. From the Northern Sahara to the Amazon rainforests, people around the world find themselves in places that have been stripped of sovereign care. Leshem is committed to defining these spaces and providing a more intimate understanding of this urgent political reality.
Based on nearly a decade of research in some of the world’s most challenging conflict zones, Edges of Care offers a profound account of abandoned lives and lands, and how they endure and sometimes thrive once left to fend for themselves. Leshem interrogates no man’s land as a site of radical uncaring: abandoned by a sovereign power in a relinquishment of responsibility for the space or anyone inside it. To understand the ramifications of such uncaring, Leshem takes readers through a diverse series of abandoned places, including areas in Palestine, Syria, Colombia, Sudan, and Cyprus. He shows that no man’s land is not empty of life, but almost always inhabited and, in fact, often generative of new modes of being. Beautifully written and evocative, Edges of Care reveals the unexamined complexities and political dynamics hidden within and around places governed by callous indifference.
Workshop Part Two: Emma Dowling, The Care Crisis (2021)
Friday 12th December 14.00-16.30, Watts 313
The discussion will focus on the ‘Introduction: What is Care?’ (pp. 1-20) and ‘A Perfect Storm’ (pp. 105-140)
Every one of us will need care at some point in life: social care, healthcare, childcare, eldercare. In the shadow of COVID-19, care has become the most urgent topic of our times. But our care systems are in crisis. Concern for the most vulnerable has been overtaken by an obsession with profits and productivity. How did we end up here?
In an era of economic turmoil, lower birth rates and increased life expectancy mean a larger proportion of the population than ever before is of retirement age. As a result, more people need care, and their numbers are rising. Yet, despite the demand, public services continue to be cut and sold off. Those most in need are left to fend for themselves.
In this groundbreaking book, Emma Dowling charts the multifaceted nature of the care crisis. Telling the stories of those on the frontlines through conversations with paid and unpaid carers, doctors, social workers, parents, and eldercare workers, she exposes the devastating impact of financialisation and austerity. The Care Crisis reveals a system that places profits before people and shows that privatisation has been key to producing a state of disarray. Dowling maps the new economy of abandonment, raising the unavoidable question: how do we end the crisis?
Noam Lesham is Professor in the Department of Geography and a member of the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Durham University. In his research and writing he works closely with communities grappling with the impacts of violent conflict, emphasising creative methods and innovative collaborations.
Emma Dowling is Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Change at the University of Vienna. Combining feminist political economy, political sociology and the sociology of work, she researches the dynamics of crisis and change in welfare and social care systems and has a long-standing interest in how emotions are put to work in contemporary capitalism.
If you have any questions about the event, please contact the organisers, Dr German Primera (g.primera@brighton.ac.uk) and Dr Jo Kellond (j.kellond@brighton.ac.uk).
