Caring about: attentiveness, passion and motivation
In her writings about care, Despret (2004: 131) depicts passion as referring “neither to some parasitic supplement nor to some sweet story of love: it means to make an effort to become interested, to immerse oneself in the multitude of problems presented […] to grow […]. It means to care.” She continues:
“To ‘de-passion’ knowledge does not give us a more objective world, it just gives us a world ‘without us’; and therefore, without ‘them’ […] And as long as this world appears as a world ‘we don’t care for’, it also becomes an impoverished world, a world of minds without bodies, of bodies without minds, bodies without hearts, expectations, interests, a world of enthusiastic automata observing strange and mute creatures; in other words, a poorly articulated (and poorly articulating) world.” (p131)
In the videos featured on the remainder of this page we ask the guest contributors to reflect on the role of attentiveness, passion and motivation in shaping and inspiring their academic scholarship. The contributors include both early career and more senior academics, as well as practitioners. Collectively their responses address matters relating to research, to teaching, and to doctoral supervision.
The RECOMS fellows in the first of these videos have profiles in Unit 8. If you would like to read more about a particular contributor, please click on their name below:
Prof Lummina G Horlings studied land- and water management and human (environmental) geography and currently holds a chair in Socio-Spatial Planning at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences of the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. To learn more about Lummina, see her profile in Unit 8.
Dr Chiara Tornaghi is a critical human geographer and scholar-activist, with a background in politics, sociology and planning.
Dr Geraldine Brown has a background in Sociology and Social Policy. Her research interests include Inequality; Social Justice; Race and Ethnicity; Research Methodology; Community Engagement and Action; Children Young People and Families; Health and Social Care Policy and Practice.
Prof Moya Kneafsey is the director at the Centre for Agroecology Water and Resilience at Coventry University, UK. Her research focuses on how ‘traditional’ cultural resources are commodified for tourism, especially in European rural contexts, and attempts to ‘reconnect’ consumers, producers and food through ‘alternative’, local and short food supply chains.
Rev Jon and Amy Berry lead a church in an area of Hinckley, England, that has a high rate of food poverty. In order to build a church that serves the local community, their Sunday services begin at midday (after the football matches on the local field) with a free nutritious meal. People are welcome to stay after they have been fed for a short Christian message, informal discussion and activities for the children.
'We often do research on what people do.... but I think it's also important to look at why people want to contribute to change' - Lummina Horlings
QUESTIONS:
- What is your passion?
- What is your enemy?
- Do you have any experience of returning to your passion at a moment of crisis and recentring around it?
