Geographies of Care and Responsibility

Geographies of care and responsibility examine how caring practices, ethical obligations and social support are embedded in particular places, scales and spatial networks. This field bridges human geography, ethics and social policy to reveal how responsibilities for well-being are allocated across households, communities, institutions and states. It foregrounds the relational nature of care, showing how material infrastructures, socio-economic inequalities and political regimes shape who provides care, where it happens and with what consequences. Recent scholarship highlights the dynamics of care in crises, everyday life and urban transformation, emphasising both the emotional labour of caring and its broader implications for justice and sustainability. Attention to geographies of responsibility illuminates how policies and practices redistribute burdens and benefits unevenly across space, and how new forms of collective provisioning can emerge through grassroots mobilisation, governance innovation and spatial planning.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Geographies of Care and Responsibility publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in geographies of care and responsibility across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Ethics of care: A normative framework that centres interdependence and relational responsibilities, emphasising context and emotion in moral reasoning.

Landscape of care: A spatial metaphor describing the network of places, actors and practices through which care is enacted and sustained.

Response-ability: The capacity and willingness of individuals or communities to recognise and respond to ethical demands in situ.

Spatial justice: The equitable distribution of resources, opportunities and responsibilities across different places and social groups.

References

1. Accounting for care within human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2020).
2. The suburban ethics of care: Caring for shared spaces in suburban regeneration. Cities (2023).
3. Urban governance: A food hall, and a city's capacity to care. Urban Governance (2024).