Bathing - the Body and Community Care - Softcover

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Julia Twigg, University of Kent, UK

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Who cares for the body in community care?

Community care lies at the intersection of day-to-day life and the public world of service provision. Using the lens of one particular activity -- bathing -- the book explores what happens when the public world of professionals and service provision enters the lives of older and disabled people. In doing so it addresses wider issues concerning the management of the body, the meaning of carework and the significance of body care in the ordering of daily life.

Help with bathing and washing involves nakedness, touch and the transgression of the normal boundaries of social life. Drawing on an empirical study of washing and bathing, Julia Twigg explores what receiving such help means from the perspectives of both recipients -- older and disabled people -- and careworkers, exploring the realities of work at the front line of care. The book deploys traditions of analysis from a number of fields, notably the body, but also historical, sociological and anthropological theorising in relation to diverse subjects such as time, space, food, gender and emotion, to present an account that radically challenges the ways in which we have traditionally understood community care.

Bathing -- the Body and Community Care provides a clear and accessible overview of the literature on the body and its relationship to community care, providing an engaging text for students that will be of interest to a wide range of audiences, both social science and health science students, and nursing and allied professionals.