The Ethics and Practices of Caring
Mentor 1
Arijit Sen
Location
Union 280
Start Date
27-4-2018 12:40 PM
Description
Stewardship and caring are concepts that appear frequently in scholarly discussions within professional disciplines such as nursing, psychology, and social work. Residents of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods, too, refer to acts of caring as they describe community engaged practices. Yet, the meaning, use and references to these terms vary with the audience and their social context. In the Buildings, Landscapes, and Cultures (BLC) field school, I was part of a team of students in a community engaged public history research project called Picturing Milwaukee. We worked for five weeks in the Sherman Park neighborhood, where we conducted twenty interviews with local residents, business owners, and members of the Sherman Park Neighborhood Association. From there, I analyzed the practices of caring that these community members partake in. I identified four main acts of caring: working (when residents take care of streets, yards, and gardens), helping (when neighbors lend a helping hand to one another or join a block watch group), discerning (learning and upholding shared forms of aesthetics and taste), and training (passing on to the new generations those care practices that have been instilled in one’s lives). After a semester worth of research on nursing, psychology, and social work, I see the disjuncture between academic and grassroots use of the term “caring.” The academic realm confines it to something explicated on a page in a code of ethics, whereas the grassroots are applying the term in multiple facets. These grassroots ideas ultimately contribute to academic literature and provide a much more comprehensive look into this gap.
The Ethics and Practices of Caring
Union 280
Stewardship and caring are concepts that appear frequently in scholarly discussions within professional disciplines such as nursing, psychology, and social work. Residents of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods, too, refer to acts of caring as they describe community engaged practices. Yet, the meaning, use and references to these terms vary with the audience and their social context. In the Buildings, Landscapes, and Cultures (BLC) field school, I was part of a team of students in a community engaged public history research project called Picturing Milwaukee. We worked for five weeks in the Sherman Park neighborhood, where we conducted twenty interviews with local residents, business owners, and members of the Sherman Park Neighborhood Association. From there, I analyzed the practices of caring that these community members partake in. I identified four main acts of caring: working (when residents take care of streets, yards, and gardens), helping (when neighbors lend a helping hand to one another or join a block watch group), discerning (learning and upholding shared forms of aesthetics and taste), and training (passing on to the new generations those care practices that have been instilled in one’s lives). After a semester worth of research on nursing, psychology, and social work, I see the disjuncture between academic and grassroots use of the term “caring.” The academic realm confines it to something explicated on a page in a code of ethics, whereas the grassroots are applying the term in multiple facets. These grassroots ideas ultimately contribute to academic literature and provide a much more comprehensive look into this gap.
