Among the peoples of the Western Kimberleys of northwestern Australia, we find yet another solution. 5 In this case the figures in paintings, which are found on the walls of certain caves, are immobile like the landscape because they are actually fused with it. That is to say, they are as tied to the sites in which they occur as are the rock faces that bear them. The principal figures depicted in these paintings are anthropomorphic creator beings known as Wandjina . These beings are of bulbous, rotund build, somewhat resembling the human neonate, which gives the impression that they would be incapable of supporting themselves, let alone of autonomous movement. The head is usually surrounded by a broad, halo-like band often divided by lines that radiate outwards. Having neither mouths with which to breathe or sing, nor ears to hear, they are clearly inanimate, while their large round eyes stare vacantly out from the rock face. The Wandjina figures are often accompanied by similarly lifeless figures of animal form, depicting the species that they are supposed to have originally brought into being. According to Aboriginal legend, having

Among the Telefol people of central New Guinea, and indeed throughout this region, one of the most ubiquitous and multifunctional accessories to everyday life is the string bag or bilum . It is made by means of a looping technique from two-ply string spun from plant fibres. Children are introduced to the techniques of bilum making from a very early age. All young Telefol children, both boys and girls, help their mothers and elder sisters in preparing fibres for spinning. 'From the age of about two onwards they begin to experiment with roving, rolling the shredded fibres down their thigh to make a single ply, and progress to experiments with spinning. It is not uncommon to see very young girls, mere toddlers, diligently attempting to loop the string they have made into bilum fabric' (MacKenzie 1991: 101). Boys, as they grow older, do not go on to master fully the skills of looping, for the simple reason that they are soon removed, by the conventions of their society, from the sphere of women's activities. Men have no need to make their own bags, as these are willingly supplied for them by women, who thus maintain an effective monopoly on bilum making. Girls, by contrast, remain close to their mothers and other female relatives, and continue to develop their skills, quietly and unobtrusively following in their mothers' footsteps.

Of string bags and birds' nests: skill and the construction of artefacts 349

From MacKenzie, Androgynous Objects: string bags and gender in central New Guinea , published by Harwood Academic, 1991, pp. 86–7.

Three further stylistic features of totemic depiction follow from what I have said so far. First, animal-like figures are not generally arranged together to form a narrative scene. For to show such a figure engaged in any kind of activity, on its own or with others, would be fundamentally incompatible with both readings of what it depicts, whether the dead body of a creature that has been hunted and killed or the body of an ancestral being metamorphosed into the landscape. It is true that in some compositions, animal figures appear in symmetrically disposed pairs (Taylor 1996: 164), but this appears to be in the interests of formal balance rather than due to any narrative requirements. Once again, this is in striking contrast to paintings of anthropomorphic mimih figures, both ancient and recent, which often show many figures together engaged in a variety of activities (Carroll 1977: 122–5, Taylor 1996: 188). Secondly, the animal is specified, in pictorial form, by a fixed profile or silhouette which itself frames the painting. For what is depicted is not a particular being situated within a world, but rather the world as it is enfolded within a particular being. The bodily limits of the being are therefore the limits of the world. There is nothing beyond. Admittedly, in Figure 7.3 the portrait of the mimih spirit lies outside the profile of the animal. But as we have seen this portrait, rather like a signature in the corner of a modern Western work of art, is a projection of the identity of the painter rather than a disclosure of the underlying order of the world, and in this sense is not really part of the picture at all. Thirdly, since there is nothing beyond the body profile, we must look to what is inside it – to the relations between its divisions and between these and the whole – to understand the significance of the painting. Where, for example, an ancestral being is credited with the creation of sacred objects to be used in ceremonies, these objects are indicated in paintings as organs internal to the ancestral body in its animal form, rather than as implements in its hands (Taylor 1989: 379–80). Here, too, there is an obvious contrast with depictions of mimih , which are often shown brandishing tools and weapons that serve to indicate the activities in which they are engaged (Taylor 1996: 187–9).

All the points I have made about skill, in the previous section, apply to the making of string bags. Apart from the maker's body – and especially her fingers – the only tools used are the mesh gauge ( ding ), made from a strip of leaf, to maintain the constancy of the mesh in an open weave (see Figure 19.1), and the needle ( siil ), made of bone, which is needed for making tightly looped baskets without the use of the gauge (MacKenzie 1991: 73). But in use the needle or the gauge, along with the fingers that hold it, are as much a part of the user as they are used. Moreover the accomplished bilum -maker does not experience the movements of her body as being of a mechanical nature. Far from answering to commands issued from a higher source, they carry their own intentionality, unfolding in a continual dialogue with the material. Telefol people liken this movement to the flowing water of a river. Thus the body-in-use is not moved, like a rigid object,

but rather becomes one with the flow (p. 102). However, in order to maintain the evenness of the string, in spinning, or of the weave, in looping, it is necessary to make continual adjustments in the course of the movement itself. 'By adolescence', MacKenzie writes, 'all girls have mastered the technique of spinning, gaining visual acuity in selecting equal assemblages of filaments during the roving process; and a sensitivity or balance in the amount of pressure applied between palm and thigh during the rhythmic plyng motion' (p. 76). As this passage clearly reveals, dexterity in spinning depends on the fine-tuning of visual as well as haptic perception. And it is equally clear that the form of the bilum is an emergent outcome of rhythmically repeated, controlled movement in the processes of spinning and looping.

Among the Telefol people of central New Guinea, and indeed throughout this region, one of the most ubiquitous and multifunctional accessories to everyday life is the string bag or bilum . It is made by means of a looping technique from two-ply string spun from plant fibres. Children are introduced to the techniques of bilum making from a very early age. All young Telefol children, both boys and girls, help their mothers and elder sisters in preparing fibres for spinning. 'From the age of about two onwards they begin to experiment with roving, rolling the shredded fibres down their thigh to make a single ply, and progress to experiments with spinning. It is not uncommon to see very young girls, mere toddlers, diligently attempting to loop the string they have made into bilum fabric' (MacKenzie 1991: 101). Boys, as they grow older, do not go on to master fully the skills of looping, for the simple reason that they are soon removed, by the conventions of their society, from the sphere of women's activities. Men have no need to make their own bags, as these are willingly supplied for them by women, who thus maintain an effective monopoly on bilum making. Girls, by contrast, remain close to their mothers and other female relatives, and continue to develop their skills, quietly and unobtrusively following in their mothers' footsteps.

The designs themselves are of extraordinary intricacy, and were once recorded on cotton fabric sheets bound into 'books' – leading to speculation that the Indians in this region might have possessed a form of hieroglyphic writing. None of these books survive today, but the villagers among whom Gebhart-Sayer carried out her fieldwork recalled that an old man from a nearby village, the son-in-law of a shaman, had kept a school exercise book whose pages were filled with minute red and black patterns. One woman remembered how, as a child, she had managed secretly to get hold of the book and to copy four of the designs before being caught and scolded by her grandmother. She claimed never to have forgotten them, and was able to redraw them from memory (Gebhart-Sayer 1985: 155). One of her drawings is reproduced in Figure 14.2. It is not hard to see why European observers should have been moved to compare such graphs to writing. It seems, on the face of it, that the Shipibo-Conibo shaman apprehends the sounds of song in much the

Telefol women, according to MacKenzie, place great value on the standardisation of their looping techniques, since this is a way of confirming tribal identity (1991: 103). But I would contend that this standardisation is not brought about, as MacKenzie claims, by conformity to rules. Indeed there appear to be no rules, beyond general exhortations of the kind delivered by the mother to her daughter in the case described above, or vague 'rules of thumb' that help prepare the practitioner for her impending activity but in no way determine its course (Suchman 1987: 52). Like most commonplace practical skills, such as tying shoelaces in Western society, looping resists codification in the form of generative rules or algorithms (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1987). One becomes aware of this simply by looking at the elaborate diagrams, accompanied by written commentary, by means of which MacKenzie attempts to explain the step-by-step procedure for open-spaced looping (pp. 83–99, and for an example, see Figure 19.1). Though these diagrams are admirable for their intended purpose, of ethnographic description, any attempt by the untutored reader to follow them in practice would likely lead to the same kind of tangle that the inexperienced Telefol girl produces, on secretly attempting to carry on with her mother's work. It would be quite mistaken to suppose that anything remotely equivalent exists in the native mind. But if standardisation does not follow from the application of rules, how are we to account for the persistence of technique from one generation to the next?

Where the corn has been freshly cut, it presents a sheer vertical front, not far short of a man's height. But this is not a boundary feature, like a hedge or fence. It is an interface, whose outline is progressively transformed as the harvesters proceed with their work. Here is a fine example of the way in which form emerges through movement. Another example can be seen further off, where a man is engaged in the task of binding the wheat into a sheaf. Each completed sheaf has a regular form, which arises out of the coordinated movement of binding. But the completion of a sheaf is only one moment in the labour process. The sheaves will later be carried down the path through the field, to the haycart in the valley. Indeed at this very moment, one woman is stooped almost double in the act of picking up a sheaf, and two others can be seen on their way down, sheaves on their shoulders. Many more operations will follow before the wheat is eventually transformed into bread. In the scene before you, one of the harvesters under the tree, seated on a sheaf, is cutting a loaf. Here the cycle of production and consumption ends where it began, with the producers. For production is tantamount to dwelling: it does not begin here (with a pre-conceived image) and end there (with a finished artefact), but is continuously going on .

This paper develops an agenda for a broadened conceptualisation of urban caring within geographical research. We open by identifying three existing domains of urban care research: examining spaces of care, materialities of care, and asking who are the subjects of care? We then synthesise three platforms that can be the foundation of a geographical theory and approach to urban care. Drawing from feminist care research and recent keystone pieces on urban caring, we argue, first, that there is a need for a broadened conceptualisation of urban care that emphasises the universal need for care and care that supports human and non-human flourishing. Second, we propose an expanded scale of urban care analysis that attends to the ways that lives are lived within and through the city. Third, we open up an analysis of where care is located in cities, arguing for the value of locating urban care beyond interpersonal care and care through welfare, to urban governance and planning, markets, and more-than-human materialities. We conclude by conceptualising how care might inform utopian dreamings for the just and caring city. We challenge urban geographers to think through the possibilities of care to transform cities.

Caring with signifies a practice of communal solidarity that sees care and care responsibility become public concerns. Societies that "care with" make care possible through public policy, for instance, that is supportive of care and the equitable distribution of care and responsibility. Tronto's work can frame a vision of cities that cares well and provokes urban researchers to attend to the urban assemblages that more equitably distribute care and responsibility. Similarly, research might turn to questions of caring capacity, asking how care, in all its forms, is made possible. Power (2019) develops caring-with as an analytic to inform analyses of caring capacity. Caring-with places care in a temporal, spatial, and sociomaterial frame, prompting urban care researchers to interrogate the "depth of emplaced histories, material and political affiliations that shape the capacity and potential for care" (Power, 2019, p. 1).

In order to obtain a deeper understanding of how interlinkages between theories of practice are operationalised in different knowledge fields, a document co-citation analysis is conducted. Co-citation analysis is an effective method for discovering the intellectual structure of research domains and its deployment makes it possible to measure similarities between documents by means of citation relationships [52,53]. Co-citation was firstly defined by Small [54] as the “frequency with which two documents are cited together by other documents”. A co-citation exists when two references appear together in the same publication and the more co-citations two documents have, the higher the degree of similarity between them [54,55].

The resulting co-citation map illustrates the relations between the relevant literature cited in this field. In more detail, the map captures the following features.

References 436

CITATIONS

All names in bibliographical references in the text and endnotes have been included.

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To cite this article: Tölg, R. and Fuentes, C. (2025) Care and circularity: how the enactment of care enables and shapes the circular consumption of clothing, Consumption and Society , 4(2): 213–231, DOI: 10.1332/27528499Y2024D00000032

This paper develops an agenda for a broadened conceptualisation of urban caring within geographical research. We open by identifying three existing domains of urban care research: examining spaces of care, materialities of care, and asking who are the subjects of care? We then synthesise three platforms that can be the foundation of a geographical theory and approach to urban care. Drawing from feminist care research and recent keystone pieces on urban caring, we argue, first, that there is a need for a broadened conceptualisation of urban care that emphasises the universal need for care and care that supports human and non-human flourishing. Second, we propose an expanded scale of urban care analysis that attends to the ways that lives are lived within and through the city. Third, we open up an analysis of where care is located in cities, arguing for the value of locating urban care beyond interpersonal care and care through welfare, to urban governance and planning, markets, and more-than-human materialities. We conclude by conceptualising how care might inform utopian dreamings for the just and caring city. We challenge urban geographers to think through the possibilities of care to transform cities.

Caring with signifies a practice of communal solidarity that sees care and care responsibility become public concerns. Societies that "care with" make care possible through public policy, for instance, that is supportive of care and the equitable distribution of care and responsibility. Tronto's work can frame a vision of cities that cares well and provokes urban researchers to attend to the urban assemblages that more equitably distribute care and responsibility. Similarly, research might turn to questions of caring capacity, asking how care, in all its forms, is made possible. Power (2019) develops caring-with as an analytic to inform analyses of caring capacity. Caring-with places care in a temporal, spatial, and sociomaterial frame, prompting urban care researchers to interrogate the "depth of emplaced histories, material and political affiliations that shape the capacity and potential for care" (Power, 2019, p. 1).

In order to obtain a deeper understanding of how interlinkages between theories of practice are operationalised in different knowledge fields, a document co-citation analysis is conducted. Co-citation analysis is an effective method for discovering the intellectual structure of research domains and its deployment makes it possible to measure similarities between documents by means of citation relationships [52,53]. Co-citation was firstly defined by Small [54] as the “frequency with which two documents are cited together by other documents”. A co-citation exists when two references appear together in the same publication and the more co-citations two documents have, the higher the degree of similarity between them [54,55].

The resulting co-citation map illustrates the relations between the relevant literature cited in this field. In more detail, the map captures the following features.

2002). First, and most important, there must be care awareness (Tronto, 1993). Indeed, there must be an indication of a care deficit; someone or something must be seen as needing care and this 'other' must also be seen as worthy of care. Without such an identification of a care deficit, the enactment of care would be misdirected. Care awareness or 'caring about', as argued by Tronto (1993), is therefore a prerequisite for the enactment of care. It is, however, not enough for care to be acted out. As explained by, for example, Shaw et al (2017), merely being aware of care needs does not necessarily lead to the enactment of care; the actors must also perceive themselves to be responsible for addressing that care need. Therefore, responsibility taking is key to the mobilisation of care.

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The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

Source: Author's own work

What can we learn from repair and maintenance labour, which, on the one hand, has historically sustained capitalism and its accelerating ecological injuries, to the detriment of its maintainers; and on the other, has the potential to offer a regenerative relation to others and the world? Tronto’s care ethics helps us to distinguish between repair and maintenance work that undergirds exploitative relationships, and an ethic of care which emphasises intentional relationality that attempts to live together in this world “as well as possible”. Tronto’s ethics of care begins with looking outside the self; to practice an ethics of care “requires that one start from the standpoint of the one needing care or attention” (1993:19). For Tronto, a care ethics consists of four “interconnected phases” (1993:106): 15 caring about (which begins with that initial recognition of the need for care); caring for (the process of recognising one’s responsibility in caring); care- giving (the work of care); and care- receiving (the recognition of care by that entity which has been cared-for). Subsequently, Tronto (2013:23) adds a fifth phase: caring with (how caring needs and the ways in which they are met are rendered consistent with democratic commitments to justice, equality, and freedom for all, thereby ensuring that care burdens do not disproportionately fall on society’s most vulnerable populations). Tronto is careful to differentiate an abstract notion of “care” from “caring about”, because simply recognising that someone else needs care is not a securely moral space, and therefore inadequate for a genuine ethic of care. In other words, care requires actual practices of care ; one cannot simply “care” about something and remain disengaged from it. Similarly, Tronto (1993:105) parses care work from care: care work may occur without the presence of care itself, as happens in jobs that require attention to another’s wellbeing but that are done for compensation rather than as an act that begins by “taking the other’s needs as the starting point for what must be done”.

Nothing stands alone in this world. I think that's the Hegelian Philosophy. Everything is joined, you know, like a big massive jelly. You shake it here and another bit moves over there. Because of those, that thinking within my own self, my own personal development, I feel all is interconnected, and living without my stuff, that is what I need and I just know someone else is living with my stuff and it feels good. (Andrew)

The quote borrowed as the title for this essay, 'nothing comes without its world' (Haraway, 1997: 137), reveals that the discussion unfolds as a re-reading of Donna Haraway's work, more particularly its take on feminist discussions on the situatedness of knowledge (Haraway, 1991c, 1997). That knowledge is situated means that knowing and thinking are inconceivable without a multitude of relations that also make possible the worlds we think with. The premise to my argument can therefore be formulated as follows: relations of thinking and knowing require care.

Maybe Haraway's antidote to normativity itself, whether epistemological or moral, is an appetite for unexpectedness pervasive in her ontological web-bings: 'I am more interested in the unexpected than in the always deadly predictable' (Haraway, 1997: 280, n. 1). Because 'nothing comes without its world' we do not encounter single individuals, a meeting produces a world, changes the colour of things, it diffracts more than it reflects, distorts the 'sacred image of the same' (Haraway, 1994: 70). Knowing is not about prediction and control but about remaining ' attentive to the unknown knocking at our door' (Deleuze, 1989: 193). But though we do not know in advance what world is knocking, inquiring into how we can care will be required in how we will relate to the new.

struction of the given, but to 'passionate construction', to 'passionate connection' (Haraway, 1997: 190). We can see as the basis of careful constructivism, an attempt to offer 'a better account of the world' rather than just showing 'radical historical contingency and modes of construction for everything' (Haraway, 1991c: 187). In sum, thinking-with belongs to, and creates, community by inscribing thought and knowledge in worlds one cares about in order to make a difference – a diffraction. Nonetheless, the ways in which (a) difference is made here do not reside so much in contrasts and contradictions but in prolongations and interdependencies. Thinking with care is a response led by awareness of the efforts it takes to cultivate relatedness in collective and accountable knowledge construction without negating dissent. To explore ways of taking care for the unavoidably thorny relations that foster rich, collective, interdependent, albeit not seamless, thinking-with. Below I propose an account of two moments drawn from Haraway's work that I read as concrete instances of engagement with the articulations of a caring 'we', as efforts vital to thinking-with.

This stroke dissolves the Cartesian dichotomy between physical and psychic experience. Goods that minister to physical needs-food or drink-are no less carriers of meaning than ballet or poetry. Let us put an end to the widespread and misleading distinction between goods that sustain life and health and others that service the mind and heart-spiritual goods. That false distinction leaves a mass of unnecessary luxuries to be accounted for by a mixture of consumer gullibility and sinister advertising. 2 The counterargument proposed here is that all goods carry meaning, but none by itself. Just as one gesture of saving cannot be interpreted by itself, but only as part of the whole perceived flow of income throughout the lifetime, and just as one word from a poem used in another context has no poetry, so one physical object has no meaning by itself, and the question of why it is valued has no meaning either. The meaning is in the relations between all the goods, just as music is in the relations marked out by the sounds and not in any one note.

The quote borrowed as the title for this essay, 'nothing comes without its world' (Haraway, 1997: 137), reveals that the discussion unfolds as a re-reading of Donna Haraway's work, more particularly its take on feminist discussions on the situatedness of knowledge (Haraway, 1991c, 1997). That knowledge is situated means that knowing and thinking are inconceivable without a multitude of relations that also make possible the worlds we think with. The premise to my argument can therefore be formulated as follows: relations of thinking and knowing require care.

Thinking with care inevitably brings us to the limits of academic knowledge. Yet in this essay I have argued for the meaningfulness of care for thinking and knowing within this context. So is this all about a new theory of knowledge? But then, how is thinking with care a non-normative proposition? If there is an ethics and a politics of knowledge here, it is not a theory that would serve us as a 'recipe' for doing our encounters. Care is a good word to exhibit the singularity of the non-normative ethics carried here. Not only because caring is always specific – a mode of caring is not necessarily translatable elsewhere – but because it cannot be reduced to a moral disposition, nor to an epistemic stance, a set of applied labours, not even to affect.

What is the significance of caring for thinking and knowing? Thinking and knowing are essentially relational processes. Grounded on a relational conception of ontology the essay argues that ‘thinking with care’ is a vital requisite of collective thinking in interdependent worlds, but also one that necessitates a thick vision of caring. A speculative exploration of forms of thinking with care unfolds through a rereading of Donna Haraway’s work, specifically of its take on feminist discussions on the situated character of knowledge. The notion of thinking with care is articulated through a series of concrete moves: thinking-with , dissenting-within and thinking-for . While weaving Haraway’s thinking and writing practices with the trope of care offers a particular understanding of this author’s knowledge politics, the task of caring also appears in a different light.

Care has been largely overlooked in the development of Western thought, lingering on the margins of the bigger philosophical, moral and ethical debates if present at all. A rare exception to this is the work of phenomenologist Heidegger who spoke about care as being-in-the-world and being-together-with-things . To Heidegger, the concept of care was primarily a 'primordial structural totality' and 'an existential a priori '. He also saw it as a phenomenon that prioritises the 'practical' (quotation marks in original) rather than theoretical behaviour. Heidegger argued that