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Bernhard Weicht provides a multi-layered analysis of how we understand and construct care in everyday life, the meanings it has for ourselves, our families, our relationships, identities and our sense of society and what is right and proper, making an original contribution to the discussion of the nature of care ethics and its political potential.

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1. Introduction 2.Who Should Care? The Construction of Caring Relationships 3. Where Should Care be Given and Received? The Geographies of Care 4. How Should Communities Care? Nostalgia and Longing for the Ideal 5. Who is Seen to be Care For? The Construction of the Care Receiver 6. Buying and Selling Care? The Intrusion of Markets and Bureaucracy 7. Epilogue Bibliography

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"The Meaning of Care mainly discusses the construction of informal care for older people in European countries. ... The aim of the book is to demonstrate how discourses of care are interlinked with moral constructions, nostalgia and gendered practices. ... I see it as a valuable contribution to any education that involves care. And in an educational context it might even be advantageous that it is reiterative." (Janicke Andersson, Community, Work & Family, Vol. 19, January, 2016)

´This book takes a close look at discourses on informal elder care and break down the dichotomies inherent in the meanings of care. This is an essential reading for those interested in care.´ - Minna Zechner, Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences, Finland

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Bernhard Weicht is Lecturer at Leiden University College, The Netherlands. Bernhard has researched and published on the construction of care, ideas of dependency, migrant care workers, the intersection of migration and care regimes, and the construction of ageing and older people. He is vice-chair of the European Sociological Association Research Network ´Ageing in Europe´.

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