Alice Corble and Rianne van Melik
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781529219005
- eISBN:
- 9781529219036
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529219005.003.0012
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Theory
This chapter investigates shifting public library meanings and practices in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom during and after the crisis. In both countries, public libraries were already in ...
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This chapter investigates shifting public library meanings and practices in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom during and after the crisis. In both countries, public libraries were already in some state of crisis prior to COVID-19 due to a decade of austerity measures. On top of that, the COVID-19 pandemic severely hampered the library’s function as social infrastructure, as libraries were being closed down for a while and reopened under strict regulations. This crisis-upon-crisis perpetuates social injustice for the most vulnerable of library users and workers, whose lives and livelihoods depend on social investment in libraries as spaces of care. This raises the question of who the public library is for, when services are stripped back to the bare functional minimum of information provision, and their vital social spaces and infrastructures are barred from urban life.Less
This chapter investigates shifting public library meanings and practices in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom during and after the crisis. In both countries, public libraries were already in some state of crisis prior to COVID-19 due to a decade of austerity measures. On top of that, the COVID-19 pandemic severely hampered the library’s function as social infrastructure, as libraries were being closed down for a while and reopened under strict regulations. This crisis-upon-crisis perpetuates social injustice for the most vulnerable of library users and workers, whose lives and livelihoods depend on social investment in libraries as spaces of care. This raises the question of who the public library is for, when services are stripped back to the bare functional minimum of information provision, and their vital social spaces and infrastructures are barred from urban life.
Brigit Obrist
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781447325253
- eISBN:
- 9781447325307
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447325253.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing
Grounded in ethnographic field research in Tanzania, this chapter asks what happens when older people become restricted in their movements. It shows that for old, ill and disabled people in coastal ...
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Grounded in ethnographic field research in Tanzania, this chapter asks what happens when older people become restricted in their movements. It shows that for old, ill and disabled people in coastal Tanzania the home becomes a place of particular importance. However, as the chapter illustrates with detailed case studies, the home should not just be considered in its material sense, as an enclosed and demarcated space, but rather as a lived space interacting with the broader lived spaces of care. Introducing the term ‘carescapes,’ the chapter argues that lived spaces of care are created at the intersections of the home in its material sense, embodied people, and the broader society. The everyday care of frail and disabled older people occurs at these shifting intersections, but only close kin – in a social rather than a geographical sense – are involved in the provision of intimate, personal care and livelihood.Less
Grounded in ethnographic field research in Tanzania, this chapter asks what happens when older people become restricted in their movements. It shows that for old, ill and disabled people in coastal Tanzania the home becomes a place of particular importance. However, as the chapter illustrates with detailed case studies, the home should not just be considered in its material sense, as an enclosed and demarcated space, but rather as a lived space interacting with the broader lived spaces of care. Introducing the term ‘carescapes,’ the chapter argues that lived spaces of care are created at the intersections of the home in its material sense, embodied people, and the broader society. The everyday care of frail and disabled older people occurs at these shifting intersections, but only close kin – in a social rather than a geographical sense – are involved in the provision of intimate, personal care and livelihood.
