Paper long abstract:

Companies worldwide claim to care for nature and the need to care for the environment has never been more acknowledged. The tension between the economy-controlled corporation and the warm fuzzy concept care may leave bystanders suspicious. Care is a powerful word that often is connected to normative ethics or affective states. However, by considering care as a practice and by thinking with care we can find new ways to relate to research and to our research fields. In my research I study the enactments of care as practice in a medium sized company. Through observations and interviews with employees I explore how sustainability is enacted in (caring) practices. I study when and why environmental issues are made into a matter of care and when sustainability is made invisible. I aim to think from within this community I have come to care for by discussing what Puig de Bellacasa (2012) calls dissenting-within. I accept myself as a part of making the worlds that I study and I take the employees and their worlds seriously. Dissenting-within is about fostering concerns that we care about (such as sustainability) while refusing self-erasure. Care is, thus, a standpoint to speak from that allows me to care for some issues more than others. In this way, thinking with care is to enable situated knowledge rather than abstract normative ethics.