I co-directed Cultures of Care with Giovanna Fischer while at the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley.
Cultures of Care celebrates people that practice collective care in unconventional and insurgent ways. Care is an essential, immediate and practical way to create belonging. A Culture of Care is an affirmative, generative form of resistance and adaptation.
Cultures of Care was initiated in the fall of 2020 as we faced a deepening pandemic and economic inequality, popular uprisings against state-sanctioned violence against Black people, an expanding border wall and a deluge of traumatic climate events. These conditions continue to grow today. In the chaos, isolation and fear of these multiple storms, we also witness beautiful points of shelter. These practices center an ethos of collective care in the face of multiple forms of overlapping othering and oppression. Some of these are new and emergent, like harnessing technology to adapt to social isolation. Others are long-standing, such as stewarding ancestral lands through fire. Most, if not all, are an evolving mix of new and old ways to practice collective care. Cultures of Care are practices that create belonging in the context of othering.
The project includes short edited video interviews with nine practitioners, a poster identifying 14 key practices, provocations for further action and research, and learning guides.
Project team:
Project Directors
Evan Bissell
Giovanna Fischer
Video Editor
Majo Calderon
Music
Alex Lemire Pasternak
Website Design & Podcast
Erfan Moradi
Graphic Design & Illustrations
Yuri Sakakibara
Copyeditor
Marc Abizeid
Research Assistant
Jo Williams