Towards an anthropolgy of care: cleanliness and consumption in urban Romanian homes
Towards an anthropolgy of care: cleanliness and consumption in urban Romanian homes

Summary/Abstract: The anthropology of care has come to the fore in recent years and has produced a number of distinctive and valuable approaches, which this paper characterises as relatedness, care politics, and as value-based. This paper argues that while all these approaches have merits, a better appreciation is required of the silent, embodied sense of care in specific localised contexts. The appreciation of care requires a more precise anthropological language to describe the variety of phenomena referred to, and use of the term care to refer to local manifestations, experiences, emotions and work practices. I outline one example of a material culture of care in urban Romania, which reveals how a procedural and creative sense of the domestic is manifested and appropriated through soaps and cleanliness.

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