Do cities enable caring-with men? An ordinary politics of urban care

Abstract

This critical commentary unpacks the promise of care-full and just cities, and how men are understood as subjects of urban care. Overall, my discussion offers a generative space that forwards the situated practices of caring-with men as ordinary politics in order to fully realise the promise of a city for everyone. The main body is divided into three sections. The first section revisits the concept of care-full cities as an alternative vision of the city grounded in feminist ethics of care and justice. Here I aim to expand the discussion on men as subjects of urban care to consider the diverse performances of masculinities in relation to economic conditions, social meanings, and cultural norms which structure spaces and subjectivities of care giving/-receiving. In the second section, I conceptualise caring-with men as ordinary politics shaping the contested relations and place-making practices in the city. Here I highlight that caring-with involves transversal logics and heterogenous politics that enrich how care as a cultural value and everyday practice can be embodied, reinforced, or even neglected among certain groups of men. The last section provides a synthesis and several key reflections on the (im)possibilities of caring-with men in culturally diverse cities. The situated understandings of care giving/-receiving amongst men in the city inspire crosscurrents and interdisciplinary synthesis across bodies of work in urban studies, feminist care geographies and gender/sexuality studies. In conclusion, caring-with men as ordinary politics is a step towards encouraging situated and comparative inquiries through consolidating a hybrid praxis of global urban masculinities.