5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

This session addresses recent debates on care in urban studies (Binet et al., 2023; Gabauer et al., 2022; Greenhough et al., 2023; Healey, 2024) by exploring various conceptualizations and manifestations of care in contemporary cities. How can cities be reimagined as spaces that prioritize care work and care-full relationships to enact just and sustainable cities in the Anthropocene? Scholars are invited to examine how urban design, governance, and social practices can nurture or undermine knowledges, practices and imaginaries of care and discuss the socio-spatial dynamics of care for care-based urban governance.

Contributions are welcomed across various analytical levels—from micro-perspectives on care relations to meso-perspectives on infrastructures and cultures, and macro-perspectives on political economies of care— employing diverse analytical approaches, contexts, and case studies. Additionally, we seek to employ care as a critical lens to illuminate alternative knowledges and practices often obscured in Anthropocene debates (Barca, 2020) and interdependencies between human and more-than-human entities. We invite theoretical and empirical research on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to:

• Care as a transformative ethic, distinct from rights and justice discourses
• New places, spaces, and practices of care
• Care economies and political economy of care
• Care infrastructures and care as infrastructural labor
• Re-imagined care relations, practices, and policies in individual and institutional care
• Care as solidarity and collective reproduction
• Formal and informal cultures of care
• Care as socio-ecological empathy for ecosystems
• Care as a critical inquiry into intersectional inequalities through norms, performance, literacy, and responsibilities in care
• Care consciousness