Care books of the year

Looking back on a year of care-ful reading

As we approach the end of 2024, I’ve been reflecting on a year of reading about care theory - and thinking about which would be my care books of the year. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the benefits of hosting the Careful Thinking podcast has been the opportunity to read (and in some cases re-read) some brilliant books about care, as preparation for interviewing my guests.

As I looked back over the year, I realised that one or two of the care theory books that I most enjoyed reading in 2024 were actually published in 2023. If I’d been writing this post at the end of last year, my best books of that year would definitely have included James Thompson’s Care Aesthetics: For Artful Care and Careful Art, which I discussed with him in Episode 11 of the podcast, and which has rightly been described as a paradigm-shifting text that reinvigorates a view of care as a sensory, aesthetic practice. Another of my care books of 2023 would certainly have been Wonder, Silence and Human Flourishing: Toward a Rehumanization of Health, Education, and Welfare, co-edited by Carlo Leget, my guest on Episode 8 of the podcast, a collection which explores in diverse ways the part played by moments of wonder in the practice of care. I’ve found both of these books personally transformative and would argue that in their different ways they open up radically new possibilities for understanding care.

Another highlight of 2024 for me was having the opportunity to re-read Aaron Jackson’s Worlds of Care: The Emotional Lives of Fathers Caring for Children with Disabilities, which was originally published in 2021, in preparation for interviewing its author for Episode 12 of the podcast. Returning to the book this year only deepened my admiration for its unique combination of reflection on personal experience and sophisticated theoretical analysis. It’s a rare book that manages to be intellectually exciting and emotionally affecting in equal measure. Another book from 2021 which was a personal reading highlight for me this year was Christine Leroy’s Phénoménologie de la danse: De la chair à l'éthique, the main focus of my discussion with her in Episode 7. Given my patchy understanding of French, I can’t claim to have read, still less fully understood, every word of the book, but I grasped enough to have been excited by its ambitious claims for the connections between dance and care, and by its innovative exploration of kinaesthetic empathy. I’m hoping that 2025 will see progress with plans to translate the book, and perhaps some of Christine’s other ground-breaking work, into English.

However, if my best care books of 2024 have to be books that were actually published this year, then in my view there are two stand-out candidates, both of them written by guests on Careful Thinking. The books are very different in format and style, but they have in common a vision of care as personally and socially transformative, as well as the fact that they have both ignited renewed debate about care in the public sphere.

A new book by Maurice Hamington is always an event and it’s been twenty years since he published his last single-author volume, Embodied Care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Feminist Care Ethics (there have been many co-written and edited volumes in between), which has had a profound impact on the field and which was cited as a key influence by many guests on Careful Thinking this year. I suspect that Maurice’s new book, Revolutionary Care: Commitment and Ethos, which he discussed with me in Episode 6 of the podcast, will be equally influential, broadening as it does the scope of care ethics to include global voices and influences that have previously been marginalised, and making a powerful case for the revolutionary potential of care.

Revolutionary Care will probably have most impact among academics, activists and care practitioners. By contrast, Elissa Strauss’ When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others, the focus of my conversation with its author in Episode 16, is aimed at a broad general audience, and therein lies much of its distinctive power. Among its many achievements, When You Care manages the rare feat of explaining feminist care ethics in clear and compelling terms for a non-academic readership. The book has already featured, understandably, on a number of ‘best books of the year’ lists in the mainstream media.

So, Revolutionary Care and When You Care are my personal best care books of 2024, and it was a privilege to have the opportunity to discuss both books with their authors on the podcast, and to have played a role, however modest, in promoting them.

However, the year is not quite over yet, and just this month, two other podcast guests have published intriguing new books. Loss, Grief and Existential Awareness: An Integrative Approach, co-written by Carlo Leget and Mai-Britt Guldin, was previewed by Carlo when I interviewed him for Episode 8. I’ve only just taken delivery of my copy, so a full review will have to wait. However, I have started to read The Phenomenology of Pregnancy and Motherhood: Ethical, Social, and Psychological Perspectives, the new book by the prolific Susi Ferrarello, my guest on Episode 14 of the podcast. Judging by what I’ve read so far, I think this may be Susi’s best book yet, and it’s certainly her most personal, drawing as it does on her own experience of pregnancy, motherhood and baby loss, but combining that with her usual incisive philosophical analysis.

December has also seen the publication of Relational Caring and Presence Theory in Health Care and Social Work: A Care-Ethical Perspective, by Dutch care theorists Andries Baart and Guus Timmerman. I’m pleased to announce that Andries and Guus will be joining me on the podcast to discuss the book in 2025. If you can’t wait for that episode and would like an earlier opportunity to learn more about the book, you can listen to the authors talking about it, in conversation with Maurice Hamington, at the online version of the forthcoming conference on ‘Care, Aesthetics, Repair’, organised by the Care Ethics Research Consortium, which will take place on 30 and 31 January.

I’ll be presenting at the same conference, on ‘A Masculine Art of Care? Exploring Men’s Creative, Playful, and Embodied Responses to Grief and Loss’. James Thompson will be giving a lecture on ‘Care Aesthetics’ at the online conference, and he’ll also be a key note speaker at the ‘in person’ conference in Utrecht a week earlier, as will Christine Leroy, and Merel Visse, who is also scheduled to be a guest on Careful Thinking in 2025. Other previous podcast guests will also be speaking at the conference, including Maurice Hamington, Carlo Leget, Inge van Nistelrooij, Petr Urban and Steven Steyl. Registration for the in person conference has now closed, but you can still sign up (for free) for the online conference here.

As I sign off on at the end of the year, I’d like to to say ‘thank you’ once again to everyone who has subscribed to the podcast in 2024, and thanks to all of my Substack subscribers for your support this year. Here’s to a care-ful and thoughtful New Year.

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The header image is ‘The Library’ (1960) by African-American artist Jacob Lawrence (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC).