By tracking an early twentieth-century convergence between modern ecological thinking around ‘life worlds’ and 'biospheres' and psychological theories of attachment, this project enables an understanding of care that moves beyond the qualities of human subjectivity towards a new consideration of the material environment. The ecological idea that there is an environment that cares for us, as well as an environment that we care for, became especially pronounced during the War period, expressing a profound discursive reconsideration of the relation between humans and their non-human surroundings. Military and technological re-orderings of physical space, philosophical investigations into the limits of ‘empathy’ (a term coined in English in 1909), and the institutionalisation of public health, exemplify the ways in which human care became subject to this new and rapidly changing order of expression.
Publication: Sheils, Barry (2015) ‘Caring to Know: Narrative Technique and the Art of Public Nursing in The Good Soldier’, Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier: Centenary Essays, International Ford Madox Ford Studies Series, 14, ed. Sara Haslam and Max Saunders (Leiden: Brill): 165-182.Sheils.pdf (1,1 MB)
