Editorial: Care in STS


 During the last 10 years Science and Technology Studies (STS) community has witnessed a flourishing, intense multifaceted engagement around “care”. While care had been addressed already before in Joanna Latimer’s The conduct of care: Understanding nursing practice (Latimer, 2000) , Jeanette Pols’ Good Enacting complex ideal long term-psychiatry (Pols, 2004), seemed to be on everybody’s lips 2010. Around same time, edited volume Care practice: On tinkering clinics, homes farms (Mol et al., 2010) article Matters technoscience: Assembling neglected things (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011) were published. With akin, yet partly diverging, agendas concerns, these two key publications drastically increased amount research that identify with something like an area “care studies” STS. This can also seen publication special issues devoted during years, notably much-cited 2015 issue Social focused feminist technoscience interventions into politics “darker sides” (Martin 2015), more recent relationalities specificities East Asian Science, Society (Coopmans & McNamara, 2020). Noteworthy is “The policy practices” Sociological Review Monograph, where Gill al. (2017) discuss how are entangled, such entanglements could enacted “care-fully”. These have spurred rich generative engagements about ways attend affective, ethico-political and/or material layers care, within beyond areas traditionally thought as related (such healthcare childcare).