WEAPONIZING CARE
BY NISHANT SHAH
(the scale of the institution)
“What does Care mean when it is offered by institutions and structures, instead of individuals and communities?
In recent years, there has been a lot of attention given to the need for care, and how institutions need to be shaped in order to provide care. The dialogue often takes the script of vulnerable people demanding care from institutions and structures they work in, and the institutions performing care work, as a response. And yet, there seems to be both an intensification of vulnerability and an increased state of precariousness for people, especially in our academic and arts and culture institutions. As we talk about building communities from below, we need to focus not only on how care is articulated by those who need it, but how it is being packaged, almost weaponised, by organisations that use it to exploit those who are the most in need of care. In this input, I invite you to think about the very idea of care-making and care work, particularly drawing upon my experience of working in academic leadership, to identify patterns through which care performativity is hosted without care action.”
Nishant Shah is a feminist, humanist, technologist, who works on academic and research institution building at the intersections of digital technologies, cultural practices, and human rights. He has served in leadership positions across India, USA, Germany, and the Netherlands, and continues to build community-drive approaches to sustainable and humane governance. His research focuses on questions of care, safety, and justice in emerging technological domains of artificial intelligence, platformization, and misinformation. He currently holds a chair professorship at ArtEZ University of the Arts, Endowed Professorship at Radboud University, and a Faculty Associate position at the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society, Harvard University.