Cherished World Thinking: Developing a Maintenance Mindset in Family Caregiving Contexts

Abstract

Contrary to the idea that the world is broken and beyond repair, ongoing care and maintenance are primary concerns of people learning with technologies. This paper advances a perspective that an ethic of care has epistemic significance and locates families’ caring practices in technologically-mediated home learning environments. I develop this perspective on human-technology relations, which I call “cherished world thinking,” as a response to social-ecological perspectives on “broken world thinking” (cf. Jackson). I frame family learning through critical care studies and feminist epistemologies, focusing on sociotechnical dimensions of care and maintenance. As I consider how families enacted care for and with their cherished technologies, I interrogate the social-ecological conditions that are simultaneously held in place through maintenance. Drawing from ethnographic data of 13 families in 2 US cities—including fieldnotes, informal interviews, and video collected in homes and neighborhoods—I found that families engaged in “cherished world thinking.” I develop this concept through interaction analysis of two cases where families caring for each other and their environments were sociotechnical achievements, calling attention to forms of learning that emerge when people care for that which they hold dear.

Acknowledgements

This work was only possible because of the generosity and hospitality of 13 families participating in Learning Across Networked and Emergent Spaces (LANES) and the support of Reed Stevens and Katie Headrick Taylor. Many thanks to reviewers and editors whose care and thoughtful critique greatly enriched this article throughout the revision process.

Notes

1 Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for foregrounding local tribal lands/waters relations as part of the ongoing history of the BPA dams and trails. For a longer discussion of how tribes and Native organizations in the US have created their own information communication technologies (ICTs) and grid systems, see Marisa Elena Duarte’s Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet across Indian Country.

Additional information

Funding

The Families and Media Project (FAM) was supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Bezos Family Foundation, AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.