Challenging the neoliberal ideal of autonomous and independent individuals, the global pandemic demonstrates just how much we rely on each other. Now more than ever it becomes clear that we need one another. We all care for someone and all of us need someone’s care; this is why we must understand what is care. Even though care is an integral part of what makes us human beings and is closely related to the moral values central to our self-understanding and ideas about how a society should operate, the concept and practice of care is approached in a fragmented and marginalized manner that only maintains the existing power structures and systems of inequality.

With the aim of starting a critical discussion and opening a dialogue around the issues and various perceptions of the concept of care, the Laboratory for Philanthropy, Solidarity and Care Studies (SolidCare) at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory is organizing a series of reading workshops on the issues of ethics and politics of care. Throughout our six online meetings, we will read and analyze the major philosophical, psychological, and socio-anthropological references on care in search for answers to the following: What is care? How is the ethics of care distinct from “core” ethical theories? What does the politics of care entail? How is care different from charity? What is the relation between care and justice? Is care work gendered and if so how? What does care look like in the semi-periphery?