Support H-Net | Buy Books Here | Help Support the NBN and NBN en Español on Patreon | Visit New Books Network en Español!
- African Studies
- African American Studies
- American Politics
- American Studies
- American South
- American West
- Asian American Studies
- Australian and New Zealand Studies
- British Studies
- Canadian Studies
- Caribbean Studies
- Central Asian Studies
- Chinese Studies
- East Asian Studies
- Eastern European Studies
- European Politics
- French Studies
- German Studies
- Iberian Studies
- India Studies
- Indian Ocean World
- Iranian Studies
- Irish Studies
- Israel Studies
- Italian Studies
- Japanese Studies
- Korean Studies
- Latino Studies
- Latin American Studies
- Mexican Studies
- Middle Eastern Studies
- Native American Studies
- Pacific Studies
- Polish Studies
- Russian and Eurasian Studies
- Southeast Asian Studies
- South Asian Studies
- Turkish Studies
- Ukrainian Studies
- Western European Studies
- World Affairs
- Animal Studies
- Anthropology
- Archaeology
- Business, Management, and Marketing
- Media
- Critical Theory
- Disability Studies
- Drugs, Addiction and Recovery
- Education
- Economics
- Finance
- Geography
- Gender Studies
- Genocide Studies
- Higher Education
- Human Rights
- Journalism
- Language
- Law
- LGBTQ+ Studies
- National Security
- Philosophy
- Policing, Incarceration, and Reform
- Political Science
- Politics & Polemics
- Public Policy
- Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work
- Sociology
- Sound Studies
- Sports
- Urban Studies
- Big Ideas
- Celebration Studies
- Co-Authored
- Cover Story
- Historical Materialism
- History Ex Silo
- Invested Investor
- Landscape Architecture
- Mormonism
- NBN Book of the Day
- NBN Seminar
- Postscript
- Practical History
- Preparing for Life After Grad School
- Psychology and Climate Change
- Interpretive Political and Social Science
Sep 3, 2023
The Biopolitics of Care in Second World War Britain
Summary
During the crisis of the Second World War in Britain, official Air Raid Precautions made the management of daily life a moral obligation of civil defence by introducing new prescriptions for the care of homes, animals, and persons displaced through evacuation. This book examines how the Mass-Observation movement recorded and shaped the logics of care that became central to those daily routines in homes and neighbourhoods.
In The Biopolitics of Care in Second World War Britain (Bloomsbury, 2022), Dr. Kimberly Mair looks at how government publicity campaigns communicated new instructions for care formally, while the circulation of wartime rumours negotiated these instructions informally. These rumours, she argues, explicitly repudiated the improper socialization of evacuees and also produced a salient, but contested, image of the host as a good wartime citizen who was impervious to the cultural invasion of the ostensibly 'animalistic', dirty, and destructive house guest. Mair also considers the explicit contestations over the value of the lives of pets, conceived as animals who do not work with animal caregivers whose use of limited provisions or personal sacrifice could then be judged in the context of wartime hardship.
Together, formal and informal instructions for caregiving reshaped everyday habits in the war years to an idealized template of the good citizen committed to the war and nation, with Mass-Observation enacting a watchful form of care by surveilling civilian feeling and habit in the process.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
Related Topics
Your Host
Miranda Melcher
Dr. Miranda Melcher (Ph.D., Defense Studies, Kings College, London) studies post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with deep analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
