Care and State - YMGS658

• Title: Care and State
• Guaranteed by: Programme Gender Studies (24-KGS)
• Faculty: Faculty of Humanities
• Actual: from 2025
• Semester: summer
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: summer s.:
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:1/1, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: unlimited / unlimited (25)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: Mgr. Petra Ezzeddine, Ph.D.
• Teacher(s): Mgr. Petra Ezzeddine, Ph.D.
• Class: Courses available to incoming students

Annotation

The aim of the course is to introduce contemporary theoretical concepts in  care and state within social anthropology. During lectures, we will apply a critical understanding of the gender, social, political, and economic dimensions of social reproduction. We will focus on how political and economic processes shape identities, resources, and the productive/reproductive capacities of human .Based on academic readings (both theoretical–conceptual and ethnographic), we will critically reflect on how national policies (e.g. social policies), socioeconomic conditions, and global processes influence gender roles, care and (social)reproduction.

Last update: Ezzeddine Petra, Mgr., Ph.D. (02.02.2026)

Course completion requirements

Asessment Requirements

1. Active participation in classes and attendance (maximum of 2 unexcused absences) – 10%

2. Submission of responses to assigned questions – 30% (on MSTeams Platform)

3. Final written exam – 60%

Last update: Ezzeddine Petra, Mgr., Ph.D. (02.02.2026)

Teaching methods

Lectures, debates, discussions, film screenings

Last update: Ezzeddine Petra, Mgr., Ph.D. (02.02.2026)

Syllabus

CARE and STATE
Summer Semester 2025/2026

Dr. Petra Ezzeddine

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, room 2.09

Office hours by appointment

Email: [e-mail]

The aim of the course is to introduce contemporary theoretical concepts in  care and state within social anthropology. During lectures, we will apply a critical understanding of the gender, social, political, and economic dimensions of social reproduction. We will focus on how political and economic processes shape identities, resources, and the productive/reproductive capacities of human .Based on academic readings (both theoretical–conceptual and ethnographic), we will critically reflect on how national policies (e.g. social policies), socioeconomic conditions, and global processes influence gender roles, care and (social)reproduction.

Assessment Requirements

1. Active participation in classes and attendance (maximum of 2 unexcused absences) – 10%

2. Submission of responses to assigned questions – 30% (on MSTeams Platform)

3. Final written exam – 60%

What Will You Learn in This Course?

• To think critically about both classical and contemporary theoretical approaches to care and state from the perspective of social  anthropology

• To reflect on the role of the state in imagining, regulating, and (not) securing gender, family and care

• To understand the complexities of structural inequalities in care (gender, racial, age-based, class-based, global, etc.)

• To understand the political and moral economy of care in the contemporary world

• To understand the possibilities and limits of ethnographic research in the study of gender, family, and care

Grading Scale

• 100–90% → 1

• 89–80% → 2

• 79–75% → 3

• 74% and below → fail

Course Format

Lectures, debates, discussions, film screenings

COURSE OUTLINE

1. Introduction to the course, instructions on course organization (23.2.)

BLOCK A: Gender, Family, Care, and the State

1. The State, Reproduction, and Biopolitics (2.3.)

• Nationalism and the reproduction of the nation; state policies and reproduction

Recommended reading:
Yuval-Davis, N. 1997. Women and Biological Reproduction of the Nation, in Gender and Nation (pp. 38–50). London: Sage.

3. The State and (Non-)Reproduction: Gender, Body, and Power (9.3.)

• Pro- and anti-abortion discourses and policies; political mobilization and reproduction; disciplining the body

Recommended reading:
Ginsburg, F. D. 1998. Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community. Berkeley: University of California Press (Chapter 3: “Procreation Stories,” pp. 133–172).

4. The State, Family, and Care (16.3.)

• Social kinship, “doing family,” and the state (transformations of kinship relations, the role of the state in establishing norms and forms of belonging)

Recommended reading:
Thelen, T., Thiemann, A., & Roth, D. 2017. State Kinning and Kinning the State in Serbian Elder Care Programmes, in Stategraphy: Toward an Anthropology of the State (pp. 10–124). New York/Oxford: Berghahn.

BLOCK B: Globalization of Reproduction and (Child) Care 

1. Reproduction and Technology, Reproductive Tourism (23.3.)

Recommended reading:
Speier, A. 2016. Fertility Holidays: IVF Tourism and the Reproduction of Whiteness. New York: New York University Press (Chapter 1: “From Hope to Alienation,” pp. 17–41).

2. Surrogacy (30.3)

Recommended reading:
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 2015. “The Surrogate’s Womb.” Gender and Research 16(2): 42–52.

6.3. Holidays

3. The Nanny Problem – Gendered/Global Inequalities and Care (13.4)

• Commodification of care, global inequalities, transnationalization of care

Recommended reading:
Tronto, Joan. 2012. “The ‘Nanny’ Question in Feminism.” Gender and Research 13(1): 3–11.

BLOCK F: The Care Crisis 

 1. The Care Crisis and Its “Patching” (20.4.)

• Neoliberalization of the state, privatization and financialization of care

Recommended reading:
Dowling, E. 2021. The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It? (Chapter 2). Bristol: Policy Press.

2. Care in a Time of Multiple Crises (27.4.)

• The case of mobility in senior care

Recommended reading:
Ezzeddine, P. & Uhde, Z. 2025. Borderscapes of Care in Europe: The Case of Czech Live-in Care Workers in Germany, in Women, Migration and the Exchange of Knowledge from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-first Century (pp. 399–418). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

3. The Right to Care  (4.5.)

Guest lecturer Hum.right lawyer Dr. Maroš Matiaško (postdoc of CareOrg Project)

-reading wil be added later by guest teacher

4. Alternatives for Sustainable and Dignified Care (11.5.)

(Practice self-care=No reading )

1st Term of Final Test (18.5.) 

Changes to the course program are reserved. The instructor will inform students in advance and communicate changes via email to addresses listed in SIS.

Last update: Ezzeddine Petra, Mgr., Ph.D. (02.02.2026)

Learning outcomes

What Will You Learn in This Course?

• To think critically about both classical and contemporary theoretical approaches to care from the perspective of social and feminist anthropology

• To reflect on the role of the state in imagining, regulating, and (not) securing family and care

• To understand the complexities of structural inequalities in care (gender, racial, age-based, class-based, global, etc.)

• To understand the political and moral economy of care in the contemporary world

• To understand the possibilities and limits of ethnographic research in the study of gender, family, and care

Last update: Ezzeddine Petra, Mgr., Ph.D. (02.02.2026)