Collective Care and Affective Contextures in the Anthropocene: Reframing Sustainability in Nursing Work - A Lecture by Dr. Ivana Guarrasi

Thursday, February 6, 2025
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Zoom

This talk explores how nurses in U.S. hospitals co-create and rely on informal forms of collective care to compensate for a lack of adequate organizational support. Drawing on interviews with nurses, the analysis focuses on collective care through the lens of affective contextures—a dynamic relational fabric intertwining emotional, social, and material dimensions of care. The findings reveal that while these practices can lead to burnout and exhaustion, they simultaneously mobilize creative and informal resilience, fostering communal support. These emergent practices not only sustain the institutional ecosystem of healthcare but also prefigure more humane and sustainable approaches to organizing care work. By emphasizing the significance of affectivity and collective care, this talk critiques the neoliberal logic and current organization of care work that render these vital practices invisible and unaccounted for within formal systems.