Redoing Caring Practices through Urban Neighborhood Materiality

In this article we analyze the role played by materiality in the reproduction of caring practices in urban neighborhoods. Our theoretical aim is to show the capacity of social practice theory to combine and reintegrate the perspectives of sociology, anthropology, and geography through the concept of neighborhood caring, which refers to the behavioral, symbolic, and spatial dimension of people’s attitudes toward their neighbors as well as to the place they live in. Based on qualitative research in six urban housing estates in three cities, we want to examine four modes through which materialities are entangled in the invisible work of the everyday collective accomplishments of neighborhood well-being, that is: (1) integrating individual performances into collective endeavors of caring practices; (2) creating conditions for the orchestration (or disorganization) of practices of caring undertaken by a variety of entities (i.e., private and public, institutional and non-institutional); (3) being an element of social practice involved in the collective processes of negotiating and reflecting; and (4) delivering an emotional component facilitating or hampering day-to-day relations and interactions as preconditions of practices of neighborly care.