Care-tographies: Finding Failure in Navigational Settings

In this chapter I offer a methodological framework for how to think about navigational failure, considering navigation as instituting networks of care or ‘care-tographies’. In order to do so, I first lay out the feminist understanding of care as a practical activity, dependent upon specific ‘phases’ of care. Then, I consider how failure has routinely been studied by scholars, in respect to events like train crashes and nuclear accidents. In light of these efforts, some have considered how theories of care might be applied to such failures, offering an analysis of how ‘matters of care’ might crystallize, helping to prevent or alleviate the effects of technological or organizational, failure. Building upon these insights, I consider how navigation might be similarly understood through a care-tographic framework, and how navigational devices, interfaces, and infrastructures mediate caring relations between people and worlds. In the final two vignettes, I briefly evidence how care is practiced in navigational settings, with reference to protest events and autonomous vehicle tests.