Students on a theater trip in Iceland.
Drawing on OppAttune鈥檚 conceptualisation of everyday extremism, the Colab will consider how hostility is not confined to radical fringes but becomes normalized in ordinary settings. We will聽investigate together how extremism 鈥 threat construction, silent hostility, conspiratorial frames,聽transnational circulation, exploitation of crisis 鈥 is being actively mobilized against care and聽democracy. Care is framed as softness undermining strength; democracy as inefficiency聽undermining decisiveness. Both become targets of narratives that prepare citizens to turn their聽backs on others and accept authoritarian responses to contemporary social and political issues.
While care and democracy are often treated as separate spheres 鈥 one emotional or聽private, the other rational and public 鈥 the idea of Care Democracy offers a different perspective:聽that they build upon and sustain one another, and that they can create counter-narratives. An聽essential component of this Democracy Collab will be to examine how this perspective sheds聽light on the role of gender in the development of everyday extremism. Anti-gender mobilizations聽鈥 attacks on feminism, LGBTQAI+ rights, and reproductive justice 鈥 converge with anti-care聽and anti-democracy narratives, delegitimizing interdependence and solidarity. Everyday聽Extremism appears to be gendered, and this finding is emerging across methods, different聽nations, online and offline spaces within OppAttune and other related projects. Against this聽backdrop, the Democracy Colab takes up the hypothesis that when care is devalued, withdrawn,聽or commodified, democracy begins to hollow out. And when democratic institutions erode,聽infrastructures of collective care collapse with them. Gender is central to this process, as both聽care and democracy depend on the recognition of interdependence, equality, and embodied聽vulnerability.
At its most concrete, care ethics holds that our responsibilities do not arise only from聽laws or abstract principles but from the concrete relationships that sustain life. It emphasizes聽1attentiveness to others, responsiveness to their needs, and the responsibility to maintain the聽networks of support on which we all depend. Originating in feminist philosophy (Carol Gilligan,聽Joan Tronto), care ethics insists that dependence and vulnerability are not defects to be overcome聽but the very conditions of human existence, and that families, institutions, and societies must聽organize themselves to sustain these interdependencies fairly and justly.聽
The aim of this two-day event is to open a dialogue and enhance political attunement聽around a simple but urgent proposition: care and democracy are not parallel ideals, but mutually聽constitutive practices. To care is to enact a form of democratic attention; to democratize is to聽extend the field of those whose needs, voices, and vulnerabilities matter. The first day will be聽focused on stimulating talks and the second-day on workshops and activities in the form of a聽student academy.
We invite you to reflect together on what it means to think of care as a democratic method, and democracy as an antidote to extremism, rooted in caring practice, grounded not in聽abstraction, but in situated, embodied, and often fragile relations. Building on the premise that聽care is not merely a private sentiment but a public method of attention, obligation, and聽world-making, the conversation will explore how practices of care - whether interpersonal,聽institutional, or epistemic 鈥 can become tools of resistance, critique, and democratic reinvention.