This edited volume offers a contemporary rethinking of the relationship between love and care in the context of neoliberal practices of professionalization and work. Each of the book's three sections interrogates a particular site of care, where the affective, political, legal, and economic dimensions of care intersect in challenging ways. These sites are located within a variety of institutionally managed contexts such as the contemporary university, the theatre hall, the prison complex, the family home, the urban landscape, and the care industry. The geographical spread of the case studies stretches across India, Vietnam, Sweden, Brazil, South Africa, the UK and the US and provides broad coverage that crosses the divide between the Global North and the Global South. To address this transnational interdisciplinary field of study, the collection utilises insights from across the humanities and social sciences and includes contributions from literature, sociology, cultural and media studies, philosophy, feminist theory, theatre, art history, and education. These inquiries build on a variety of conceptual tools and research methods, from data analysis to psychoanalytic reading. Love and the Politics of Care delivers an attentive and widely relevant examination of the politics of care and makes a compelling case for an urgent reconsideration of the methods that currently structure and regulate it.

List of FiguresNotes on ContributorsPrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionStanislava Dikova, Keele University, UK; Wendy McMahon, University of East Anglia, UK; and Jordan Savage, University of Essex, UKPart 1: Love and Cultures of Marriage1. Public Romance in India and Its Transgressive PotentialMeghna Bohidar, University of Delhi, India2. Gratitude's CompulsionLan Kieu, Umeå University, Sweden3. The Beatitudes of Love: Revisiting Stanley Spencer's Ways of SeeingRacheal Harris, Deakin University, Australia Part 2: Love and Communal Pedagogies of Care4. Symbiosis Masquerades as Love in the (Post-)Apartheid World of Marlene van Niekerk's AgaatShekufeh Owlia, University of Tehran, Iran5. Parenting as a Political Pedagogy: Love as Methodology, Parenting as PraxisShelley Maddox, Loyola University Chicago, USA6. Caring with, Voice and Under-Represented Expressions of Love in and through The Undefinable by She Goat: An Artist-Researcher's PerspectiveEugénie Pastor, Little Bulb Theatre, She Goat, and London South Bank University, UK; with Shamira TurnerPart 3: Love and Neoliberal Care7. Not in the Mood: Reading Love in the Contemporary UniversityKaren Schaller, University of East Anglia, UK8. Should I Be Scared When You Say That You Love Me? Youth Work Practice and the Power of Professional LoveMartin Purcell, University of Huddersfield, UK9. Reciprocity, Love and Market in Brazilian Care Work for the ElderlyAnna Bárbara Araujo, United Nations Women, Brazil10. Love, Power and Justice in the Shadow of the Contemporary English PrisonChristina Straub, Leeds University, UKIndex