Practice Dialogues: Listening to the Wisdom of Care Work
Publisher
Lever Press
ISBN
978-1-64315-098-7
Publication Date
6-2026
Description
Attending to the wisdom that emerges through care work, Practice Dialogues uplifts the complexity, creativity, and interconnection of care across fields of endeavor. Written by a collective of practitioners, Practice Dialogues calls readers to learn from, not simply about, care work and those dedicated to it. Recognizing the need to understand care work as practice that furthers people’s survival and thriving, this volume advances a method of research rooted in radical presence, mutual listening, and collaborative writing. Centering care work as and through co-authorship, the essays spotlight fields including medicine, somatic practice, teaching and school leadership, martial arts, organizing, the arts, and family caregiving. In the framing chapters, Practice Dialogues draws on scholarship from education, postcolonial cultural studies, Black studies, Indigenous studies, social work, trauma studies, and critical feminist studies. The volume creates an exchange among scholarship, questions of research methodology, and the ecosystems of care work, pushing the limits of what is possible within and beyond conventional boundaries.
Comments
The Practice Dialogues Collective are co-authors of this book who come from the fields of education, social work, youth development, family caregiving and archiving, somatic practice, medicine, cultural arts, and organizing. All see themselves as care work practitioners.