Contribution short abstract:

This paper aims to problematize community care, resulting in Based on 10 narrative productions carried out in 2020-2021, the research team views community care as a collective element, defining it as actions and practices that allow people to exist and organize collectively for a political purpose.

Contribution long abstract:

The concept of care has been widely used in gender studies, gaining significance during the latest feminist wave. It has led to academic, activist, community, and public policy developments, creating a contested field within the Latin American feminist movement. The ongoing challenge is to precisely define what we mean by care. Fisher and Tronto's (1990) definition resonates, portraying care as everything we do to sustain, perpetuate, and mend our world for optimal living. This includes three dimensions: affects and affectation, ethical and political considerations, and material practices.

We made 10 narrative productions (Galaz and Álvarez, 2020) in co-authorship with residents of Independencia, Santiago de Chile to problematize the idea of community care between 2020-2021.

These narratives serve as comprehensive accounts of affections and emotions, intertwined with critical and political stances on the subject. They underscore the pivotal role of women as primary advocates for community care, engaging in diverse care actions across the territory from spaces recognized as domestic and home.

This approach involved situating care within the reflective frameworks of the residents. Consequently, the distinction between the domestic/family and the community began to emerge as interconnected dimensions of care, encompassing various areas, including all community and self-managed practices of survival, organization, and political celebration. We reflect in this paper on community care as a collective element, defining it as actions and practices that allow people to exist and organize collectively with a political purpose.