Caring practices can be seen as a tangible manifestation of interdependence. From a care perspective, individuals are seen as part of a network of relations and dependencies between each other (Moriggi et al., 2020b). The emphasis of the need to understand and acknowledge this diverse web is fundamental to care ethics and has been inspired by indigenous knowledge and ecofeminism (Warren, 2000). The relevance of this interdependence has long been recognized in several fields relevant to sustainable transitions, such as the fields of resilience, deep ecology and systems thinking (Moriggi et al., 2020b).
Such caring practices can become sites of 'ethical creativity', showing how every day actions have political potential. Moriggi et al. (2020b) propose that these ethically informed practices foster the evaluation of our norms and values in our everyday decision making to which these are relevant. Further, increasing attentiveness of values and interconnections, can translate into intentions and actions (Moriggi et al., 2020b). However, for this reflection to be fruitful towards transformation emotional awareness is required. It shapes care practices in the two following ways.
First, emotional awareness can be seen as being part of the care practice itself. For example, Wells and Gradwell (2001, p. 111) have defined the verb ‘to care’ as “Caring expresses ethically significant ways in which we matter to each other, transforming interpersonal relatedness into something beyond ontological necessity or brute survival”. The latter part of the definition showcases the relatedness not being functional, but more than that. This, caring practices can show how the personal and the communal or collective are ethically connected (Moriggi et al., 2020a; Moriggi et al., 2020b).
Second, emotional awareness is elemental for the care practices to translate into transformative potential. Emotion can be noticed indicative of one’s intuitive feeling of right and wrong and therefore create change agency where wrong is assumed to happen (Moriggi et al., 2020b). Summers-Effler (2002), who studies emotional energy, finds that between humans, care helps provide the emotional energy people need to exert their agency in the world, individually and collectively. Care can help create the space for emotions and struggles that are normally not recognized or accepted. Under-recognized and unaccepted emotions form the basis for the development of individual and collective critical consciousness - an understanding that something is wrong with society and change is needed (Summers-Effler, 2002). Hence, practices of caring can foster relational 'response-ability', i.e., the ability to form an empathic, reactive and interactive response to the observed needs of the community (Moriggi et al., 2020a). Paying caring attention helps focus people's intentions, and through those intentions, can help focus actions (Moriggi et al., 2020b).
Through mentioned emotional awareness, care and intentions for change, an agency for change that is created. This agency for change stimulates the imagination of alternative futures, and possible pathways towards it (Moriggi et al., 2020b). Thus, are can shape individual and collective imaginations and open up new possibilities (Moriggi et al., 2020b); and care and imagination together can extend who and what is included as worthy of care - from other humans to non-human species or from the living to the non-living environment (Anthis & Paez, 2021).
In their study on conditions for transformative change, Tschakert & St. Clair (2013) propose that transformative change towards sustainability requires a manifestation of responsibility and care. More specifically, they propose practices that facilitate the realisation of individual responsibility relational to the vast network including close and distant interconnections (Tschakert & St. Clair, 2013). Hence nurturing care and imagination can enhance the transformative potential of this agency (Carmeli et al., 2017; Moriggi et al., 2020b). Creative practices and art offer a unique possibility for care, compassion and recognition around such emotions and experience (Carmeli et al., 2017). Care facilitates the trust and safety to help such a transformation to get the space to emerge (Carmeli et al., 2017).
Being cared for, learning to care, and caring are connected in a positive feedback loop. In the study of green care practices, five stages of care have been identified, that connect to each other in a self-enhancing manner. (1) To care about, which requires to be attentive to valued connections such as the connection between humans and nature or social inclusion. (2) To care for, which identifies the actors towards which care if performed. (3) to give care, which embodies the actual practice of care through meaningful work. (4) to receive care, which hopes to shift the wrong towards the right; and lastly, (5), caring with, which promotes the care practices to the community level through learning and reciprocity. The latter then enhances stage (1) again. Since these stages form a positive feedback loop, (green) care practices have transformative potential (Moriggi et al., 2020a).