What is it about?
The article is about a baby foundling room in the Netherlands, where one may leave their infant anonymously behind. This is a very curious place, because anonymous child abandonment is illegal under Dutch law. We explore how the room works as a place of imaginaries, hope, politics and normativities.
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Photo by Nynne Schrøder on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The article's findings show a very different way of how places work. It is important to understand that places can sometimes do very intense work elsewhere, pushing the definition of what a place is to new frontiers.
Perspectives
Writing this article was very affective, at times difficult and disconcerting. The topic is not an easy one to spend time pondering. Yet it was also inspirational to interview people who are working hard to help foundlings and who volunteer their time in such a selfless way. I hope the article will be thought provoking not only on a conceptual level, but also regarding the empirical topic.
Dara Ivanova
Radboud University Nijmegen
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Place-by-proxy: Care infrastructures in a foundling room, The Sociological Review, July 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0038026119868642.
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