[PAST EVENT] Join us for the next AGENET webinar on 8th September 2021, 16.00 CEST/15.00 BST/10.00. EST, on Zoom. Basing on ethnographic fieldwork in Tajikistan, Dr Swetlana Torno (Heidelberg University) will talk about the importance of attending to the configurations of care in anthropological writing on life-course transitions.
The event is free but registration required under this link:
More details below:
Aspirations, Obligations, Linked Lives: Understanding Life-Course Transitions through Configurations of Care
Dr. Swetlana Torno, HCTS, Heidelberg University
8th September 2021, 16.00 CEST/15.00 BST/10.00. EST/19.00 TJT on Zoom
Taking as a starting point the assumption that lives are socially structured and contingent, this talk suggests the lens of “care configurations”for the study of life-course transitions and trajectories. Anthropological approaches to people’s lives tend to assume an automatic or obvious movement of a person from one life-course position to another. Moreover, anthropologists often focus on distinct life phases without extrapolating to previous and post-phase conditions. Finally, and seminal for this talk’s theme, the role of care in shaping people’s life trajectories is often overlooked. Acknowledging concepts developed in historical and sociological life course research and by attending to configurations of care that surround people in particular moments in time, this lecture offers an alternative framework for the study of life-course transitions and extended periods of life. To exemplify my approach, I will focus on the daily routine of a young girl from a low-income household in Tajikistan and discuss how different constellations and practices of care shaped her trajectory from school to university. The presentation is based on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork in a provincial town in Tajikistan on women’s life-courses and the re-organization of public and private care arrangements in post-socialist transformation contexts.
The photo by Swetlana Torno ©
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